in you.”  Madame Recamier’s insight never disturbed Chateaubriand, for it was of the heart, not of the intellect.  It was not a critical analysis that probes and dissects, but a sympathy that cheered and tranquillized.  There could be but little in common between two such women, though they were on friendly terms; and when Chateaubriand left his wife in Paris, he always commended her to Madame Recamier’s care.  On one occasion he writes,—­“I must again request you to go and see Madame de Chateaubriand, who complains that she has not seen you.  What would you have?  Since you have become associated in my life, it is necessary to share it fully.”

There is nothing to indicate Madame Recamier’s sentiments toward the wife of her friend, except a significant passage in one of Chateaubriand’s letters:—­“Your judgments are very severe on the Rue du Bac.[D] But think of the difference of habit.  If you look upon her occupations as trifles, she may on her side think the same with regard to yours.  It is only necessary to change the point of view.”

Madame de Chateaubriand died in February, 1847, from the effects of dieting.  A few months after her death her husband offered himself in marriage to Madame Recamier, who rejected him.  “Why should we marry?” she said.  “There can be no impropriety in my taking care of you at our age.  If you find solitude oppressive, I am willing to live with you.  The world, I am confident, will do justice to the purity of our friendship, and sanction all my efforts to render your old age comfortable and happy.  If we were younger, I would not hesitate,—­I would accept with joy the right to consecrate my life to you.  Tears and blindness have given me that right.  Let us change nothing.”

We have heard this refusal of Madame Recamier’s urged as a proof that she did not love Chateaubriand; but when we consider their respective ages at the time, this objection has little weight.  Chateaubriand was seventy-nine; Madame Recamier seventy.  The former was tottering on the brink of the grave.  He had lost the use of his limbs, and his mind was visibly failing.  Madame Recamier was keenly sensible of the decay of his faculties, though she succeeded so well in concealing the fact from others that few of the habitual visitors at the Abbaye recognized its extent.  The reason she gave to her friends for refusing him was undoubtedly the true one.  She said that his daily visit to her was his only diversion, and he would lose that, if she married him.

The record of these last years of Madame Recamier’s life is inexpressibly touching, telling as it does of self-denial, patient suffering, and silent devotion.  To avert the blindness which was gradually stealing upon her, she submitted to an operation, which might have been successful, had she obeyed the injunctions of her physicians.  But Ballanche lay dying in the opposite house, and, true to the noble instincts of her heart, she could not let the friend who had