Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/363

 Madame Récamier, the "Egeria" of the Hôtel Talleyrand,--the Princess Lieven. The latter would have resisted to the death any attempt to carry off "her Minister" from the _salons_ where his presence was the "attraction" reckoned upon daily, nay, almost hourly; and against such a rival as the venerable Princess Lieven, Mme. Récamier, spite of all her arts and wiles, had no possible chance. However, she left nothing untried, and when M. Guizot took a villa at Auteuil, whither to repair of an evening and breathe the freshness of the half-country air after the stormy debates of the Chambers, she also established herself close by, and opened her attack on the enemy's outposts by a request to be allowed to walk in the Minister's grounds, her own garden being ridiculously small! This was followed by no end of attentions directed towards Mme. de Meulan, M. Guizot's sister-in-law, who saw through the whole, and laughed over it with her friends; no end of little dancing _matinées_ were got up for the Minister's young daughters, and no end even of sweet biscuits were perpetually provided for a certain lapdog belonging to the family! All in vain! We may judge, too, what transports of enthusiasm were enacted when the Minister himself was _by chance (!)_ encountered in the alleys of the park, and with what outpourings of admiration he was greeted, by the very person who, of all others, was so anxious to become one of his votaries. But, as we again repeat, it was of no use. M. Guizot never consented to be one of the _habitués_ of the _salon_ of the Abbaye aux Bois. It should be remarked, also, that M. Guizot cared little for anything out of the immediate sphere of politics, and of the politics of the moment; he took small interest in what went on in Art, and none whatever in what went on in the so-called "world"; so that where a _salon_ was not predominantly political, there was small chance of presenting Louis Philippe's Prime-Minister with any real attraction. For this reason he was now and then to be met at the house of Mme. de Châtenay, often at that of Mme. de Boigne, but _never_ in any of the receptions of the ordinary run of men and women of the world. _His own salon_, we again say,--the _salon_ where he was what Chateaubriand was at the Abbaye aux Bois,--was the _salon_ of the Princess Lieven; and to have ever thought she could induce M. Guizot to be in the slightest degree faithless to this _habit_ argues, on the part of Mme. Récamier, either a vanity more egregious than we had even supposed, or an ignorance of what she had to combat that seems impossible. To have imagined for a moment that she could induce M. Guizot to frequent her _réunions_ shows that she appreciated neither Mme. de Lieven, nor M. Guizot, nor, we may say, herself, in the light of the high-priestess of Chateaubriand's temple.

However, what Mme. Récamier went through with regard to the arrogant Président du Conseil of the Orléans dynasty, more than one of her imitators are at this hour enduring for some "lion" infinitely illustrious. This kind of hunt after celebrated persons is a feature of French civilization, and a feature peculiarly characteristic of the French women who take a pride in their receptions. A genuine _maitresse de maison_ in Paris has no affections, no ties, save those of her _salon_. She is wholly absorbed in thinking how she shall render this more attractive than the _salon_ of some other lady, who is her intimate friend, but whose sudden disappearance from the social scene, by any catastrophe, death even, would not leave her inconsolable. She has neither husband, children, relatives, nor friends (in the genuine acceptation of the word);--she has, above all, before all, always and invariably, her _salon_. This race of women, who date undoubtedly from the famous Marquise de Rambouillet in the time of the Fronde, are now dying out, and are infinitely less numerous than they were even twenty years ago in Paris; but a few of them still exist, and in these few the ardor we allude to, and which would lead them,