I return at present to Paris, I shall again meet with the agitations that induced me to leave it.  If Monsieur Chateaubriand were unhappy on my account, I should be grieved; if he were not, I should have another trouble, which I am determined henceforth to avoid.  I find here diversion in art, and a support in religion which shall shelter me from all these storms.  It is painful to me to remain absent six months longer from my friends; but it is better to make this sacrifice, and I confess to you that I feel it to be necessary.”

There was much to make a stay in Italy attractive to Madame Recamier, if she could have forgotten Chateaubriand, Her old admirer, the Duc de Laval, was ambassador at Rome, and put his horses and servants at her disposal.  She renewed her acquaintance with the celebrated Duchess of Devonshire, (Lady Elizabeth Foster,) whose career was quite as singular as her own, while it was more open to reproach.  The Duchess was a liberal patron of the fine arts, and the devoted friend of Cardinal Gonsalvi, from the shock of whose death she never recovered.  Madame Recamier also found at Rome the Duchess of Saint-Leu, whom she had slightly known when she was Queen of Holland.  For political reasons it was unwise for them to visit openly, so they contrived private and romantic interviews.  Their friendship seems to have been close and sincere.  Subsequently, Madame Recamier was able, through her political influence, to serve Hortense in many ways.  She also took an interest in her son Louis Napoleon, and visited him in prison after his unsuccessful attempt at Strasbourg, which kindness he afterwards acknowledged in several notes preserved by Madame Lenormant.

But while accepting all the diversions offered her by the pleasant society at, Rome, Madame Recamier was not unmindful of Chateaubriand.  She ordered from the artist Tenerani a bas-relief, the subject to be taken from Chateaubriand’s poem of “The Martyrs.”  She wrote constantly to her friends in Paris for intelligence respecting him, and watched his course from afar with interest and anxiety.  It was not one to tranquillize her.  He had quarrelled with the President of the Council, Villele; and being also personally disliked by the King, he was peremptorily dismissed, and he bore this disgrace with neither dignity nor composure.  Turning his pen against the government, he did as much by his persistent savage opposition, clothed as it was in the language of superb invective, to bring about the final overthrow of the elder Bourbon dynasty, as either the stupid arrogance of Charles X. or the dogged tyranny of Polignac.  Yet no man was more concerned and disgusted than he was at the result of the Revolution of 1830.  So far true to his convictions, he refused office under Louis Philippe, priding himself greatly on his allegiance to the exiled princes, when neither his loyalty nor his services could be of any use.  The truth is, that, though Chateaubriand was fond of meddling and