Chateaubriand was not a conscious hypocrite, but he deceived himself. Proof of the manner in which he himself was affected by the reading of his _Martyrs_ is to be found in that refined and charming autobiographical work, which all agree in accepting as reliable--_Les Enchantements de Prudence_, by Madame de Saman, otherwise Madame Allart de Méritens, the last woman whom Chateaubriand loved, and who loved him in return.
This lady tells how, in the summer of 1828, they used to meet at the Pont d'Austerlitz and dine together in the Jardin des Plantes in a private room. "He ordered champagne, to dispel my coldness, as he said; and then I sang to him Béranger's songs--_Mon âme, La bonne vieille. Le Dieu des bonnes gens_, &c. He listened as if enchanted." She paints these meetings in the warmest colours,[6] and she mentions that it was one of Chateaubriand's greatest pleasures to listen to her reading passages from his works. (Both in this book and elsewhere Madame de Saman shows herself to have been possessed of excellent literary taste.) He especially loved to hear her read his descriptions of landscape. "But sometimes," she says, "to affect him more profoundly, I produced _Les Martyrs_, and read the speeches and thanksgiving hymns of the confessors, or the thrilling prison and torture-chamber scenes. Then he could not restrain his tears. One day he began to weep; I continued to read; he sobbed convulsively; I still went on, and when I came to the passage which tells how Eudore secretly offered to sacrifice himself in order to win the salvation of his mother, who had been too weak in her love for her children, he could contain himself no longer, and burst into a passion of tears and sobs. It was a case of emotions returning to their source. His highly strung nerves gave way. Completely overcome, exhausted with weeping, he expressed his gratitude to me, said that he had never experienced such rapture, called me by all the sweet names men give to the Muses, told me that I was beautiful, more especially praised my eyes and their expression, imagining in the ardour of his passion that he had never seen anything like them before." The lady was at this time about twenty, Chateaubriand exactly sixty years old.