In her youth Mme. Récamier had been reputed beautiful, and her sole occupation then was to do the honors of her beauty. She did not dream of ever being anything else; and as she remained young marvellously long,--as her beauty, or the charm, whatever it was, that distinguished her, endured until a very late epoch of her life,--she was far advanced in years before the idea of becoming famous through any other medium save that of her exterior advantages ever struck her. Madame Récamier had no intellectual superiority, but, paraphrasing in action Molière's witty sentence, that "silence, well employed, may go far to establish a man's capacity," she resolved to employ well the talent she possessed of making other people believe themselves clever. Mme. Ancelot, whose "good friend" she is supposed to have been, and who treats her with the same sincerity she applies to Mme. d'Abrantès, has a very ingenious and, we have reason to fancy, a very true parallel, for Mme. Récamier. She compares her to the mendicant described by Sterne, (or Swift,) who always obtained alms even from those who never gave to any other, and whose secret lay in the adroit flatteries with which he seasoned all his beggings. The best passages in Mme. Ancelot's whole Volume are those where she paints Mme. Récamier, and we will therefore quote them.
"The Recluse of the Abbaye aux Bois," she says, "had either read the story of the beggar, or her instinct had persuaded her that vanity and pride are the surest vulnerable points by which to attack and subject the human heart. From the first to the last of all the orators, writers, artists, or celebrities of no matter what species, that were invited to Mme. Récamier's house, _all_ heard from her lips the same admiring phrases, the first time they were presented to her. With a trembling voice she used to say: 'The emotion I feel in the presence of a superior being does not permit me to express, as I should wish to do, all my admiration, all my sympathy;--but you can divine,--you can understand;--my emotion tells the rest!' This eulogistic sentence, a well-studied hesitation, words interrupted, and looks of the most perfect enthusiasm, produced in the person thus received a far more genuine emotion than that with which he was met. It was no other than the artifice of wholesale, universal flattery,--always and invariably the same,--with which Mme. Récamier achieved her greatest conquests, and continued to draw around her almost all the eminent men of our epoch. All this was murmured in soft, low tones, so that he only to whom she spoke tasted the honey poured into his ear. Her grace of manner all the while was infinite; for though she had no talent for conversation, she had, in the highest degree, the ability which enables one to succeed in certain little combinations, and when she had determined that such or such a great man should become her _habitué_, the web she spun round him on all sides was composed of threads so imperceptibly fine and so innumerable, that those who escaped were few, and gifted with marvellous address."