Madame de Genlis,çoisRené who had never had any relations with Madame Récamier, was eager to become better acquainted with her. I find a passage expressing a wish which, had it been realized, would have spared the reader my story:
"Here, madame, is the book which I had the honour to promise you. I have marked the things which I should like you to read....
"Come, madame, to tell me your story 'in these words,' as they do in the novels. Then I will afterwards ask you to write it in the form of recollections, which will be full of interest, because, in your earliest youth, you were cast, with a bewitching face and a mind full of shrewdness and penetration, into the midst of those whirlpools of errors and follies; because you have seen everything; and because, having preserved, during those stormy times, your religious sentiment, a pure soul, a stainless life, an impressionable and loyal heart, possessing neither envy nor hateful passions, you will depict everything in the truest colours. You are one of the phenomena of these days, and certainly the most amiable.
"You shall show me your 'Recollections;' my old experience will offer some advice, and you will write a useful and delightful work. Do not come and answer, 'I am not capable,' etc., etc. I will permit you no commonplaces; they are unworthy of your intelligence. You can cast back your eyes over the past without remorse: this is, at all times, the fairest of our privileges; in the days in which we live, it is an inestimable one. Avail yourself of it for the instruction of the young person[469] whom you are bringing up; it will be the greatest boon you can show her.
"Adieu, madame, permit me to tell you that I love you and that I embrace you with all my heart."
Now that Madame Récamier has returned to Paris[470], I will go back for some time to my first guides. The Queen of Naples, uneasy about the resolutions of the Congress of Vienna, wrote to Madame Récamier to find her a man who would be capable of handling her interests in Vienna. Madame Récamier applied to Benjamin Constant and asked him to draw up a memorandum. This circumstance had the most unfortunate influence upon the author of the memorandum; a stormy sentiment was the result of an interview. Under the empire of this sentiment, Benjamin Constant, already a violent Anti-Bonapartist, as is manifest in the _Esprit de conquête_[471], allowed opinions to overflow the course of which was soon changed by events. Thence arose a reputation for political fickleness baleful to statesmen.