Chateaubriand enlivens this period of his memoirs, which is neither signalised by political event nor remarkable literary effort, by a sort of biography of Madame Recamier, with whom he was on terms of intimate friendship. This remarkable person, who was beyond all question the most beautiful and attractive woman of her age in France, or perhaps in Europe, is now no more; and he appears to have obtained from her relatives, or perhaps from herself prior to her decease, not only many curious and highly interesting details concerning her early years and subsequent history, but a great variety of original letters from the most eminent men of the age, who were successively led captive by her charms, but none of whom appear to have impaired her reputation. In this country, where the lines of severance between the sexes are much more rigidly drawn, it would be impossible for a young and beautiful married woman to be in the habit of receiving the most ardent love-letters from a great variety of distinguished and fascinating admirers, without the jealousy of rivals being excited, and the breath of scandal fastening upon her as its natural prey. But it is otherwise on the Continent, where, although there is doubtless abundance of dissoluteness of manners in certain circles, yet in others such intimacies may exist, which are yet kept within due bounds, and cast no reflection on the fortunate fair one who sees all the world at her feet. Such, at least, appears to have been the case with Madame Recamier, the intimate friend of Madame de Stael, who said "She would willingly give all her talents for one half of her beauty;" and whose powers of fascination were such, that she not only inspired a vehement passion nearly at the same time, in La Harpe, Lucien Buonaparte, Murat, Moreau, Bernadotte, Marshal Massena, Benjamin Constant, Prince Augustus of Prussia, Prince Metternich, Chateaubriand, and a vast many others, but attracted the particular notice of Napoleon, and did not escape the vigilant and practised eye of the Duke of Wellington. The Prince of Prussia would have married her, if he could have effected her divorce from M. Recamier. It is one of the worst traits of the Emperor Napoleon's character, that he was not only so envious of the celebrity of her beauty that he banished her from Paris to extinguish its fame, but was inspired with such malignant feelings towards her, from her having rejected his advances, that he got a law passed which rendered the wives of persons engaged in commerce responsible in their separate estates for their husbands' debts; the effect of which was to involve Madame Recamier, whose husband, a great banker in Paris, failed, in almost total ruin, in the latter years of her life.