Madame Bernard, with her love of display, took a pride also in gathering clever men around her. Laharpe, Lemontey, Barrère, and other members of the legislative assembly, frequented her drawing-room, and M. Jacques Récamier, an eminent banker of Paris, and son of a merchant at Lyons, was a constant guest. His character was easy and jovial; he wrote capital letters, spouted Latin, made plenty of money, spent it fast, and was often the dupe of his generosity and good humor. He had always been kind to Juliette, and had given her heaps of playthings. When, therefore, in 1793, he asked her hand in marriage, she consented without any repugnance, though Madame Bernard explained to her the inconveniences which might arise from their disparity of age, habits, and tastes--M. Récamier being forty-two and Juliette only fifteen. The wedding took place; but their union is a mystery which has never been solved with certainty. To her nominal husband she was never anything but a daughter. Her niece, Madame Lenormant, says she can only attest the fact, which was well known to all intimate friends, but that she is not bound (_chargée_) to explain it. Madame M----, another biographer, believes, as did many beside, that she was in reality M. Récamier's daughter; that, living, as every one did during the reign of terror, in fear of the guillotine, he wished to be able to leave her his fortune in case of his death, and, in the meantime, to place her in a splendid position; that Madame Récamier, made aware of her real parentage, would of course be the last to reveal and publish her mother's shame; and that this story, carefully borne in mind, explains all the anomalies of her life.
To this strange alliance, however, is due the formation of the most remarkable literary salon of the present age. It represented more perfectly than any other those of the Hôtel Rambouillet and of Madame de Sablé in the seventeenth century; of Madame Geoffrin, Madame d'Houdetot, and Madame Suard, in the eighteenth; [Footnote 5] and it surpassed in solid attractions those of Madame de Staël at Coppet, and of Madame d'Albany of { 81} Florence, of which it was the contemporary. She was herself its life, and diffused over it a charm no biographer can seize. So young and fair, so fascinating yet so innocent, she riveted every gaze, and attracted all hearts without yielding to any. Like the coloring of a landscape which changes every hour, she defied description, and found no adequate reflex save in the fond esteem and faithful memory of those who knew her. Yet her nearest and dearest friends felt that she was above them; and it might be said of her, as Saint-Simon said of the Duchess de Bourgogne, that she walked like a goddess on clouds. Her beauty made her popular, and she was talked of everywhere; for the Parisians at this time, like refined pagans, affected the worship of beauty under every form. She seemed, therefore, by general consent, to have a natural mission to restore society, which a series of revolutions had completely disorganized, and her power of drawing people together and harmonizing what party politics had unstrung, became more apparent every day. By birth she belonged to the people, by tastes and manners to the aristocracy, and had thus a double hold over those who, with republican principles, were fast returning to early associations of rank and order.