Meanwhile, in the interval between the banishment of Mme de Staël and her return, the most captivating mistress of a Paris salon appears to have been Mme de Beaumont. She was the daughter of M. de Montmorin, the minister of foreign affairs, who had immediately followed Necker. She married early, and not happily. She lived with her father, separated from her husband, and was intrusted to transcribe some of the very important correspondence between Mirabeau and the court. In the Reign of Terror, her father, and it is thought others of her family, fell by the guillotine; but she herself was spared, even against her will. She retired for awhile into the country, visiting among her friends, who did all they could to console her. She was the object of the strongest attachment on the part of Châteaubriand, Joubert, Fontanes, Molé, and many others; and when, once more, quiet and order were restored, even at the sacrifice of much of liberty, she came to Paris again. Her old friends rallied about her, her spirits seemed to revive for awhile, and her salon was for a year or two a scene of remarkable enjoyment. One who truly appreciated her, and who was worthy to be himself the centre of a social circle--M. Joubert, the author of some beautiful thoughts on literature and divers other subjects--thus tenderly commemorates the evenings to which we have alluded: 'Peaceful society! where none of those disuniting pretensions which spoil enjoyment could come; where acknowledged talent was not divorced from good temper; where praise was given to whatever was praiseworthy; where nothing was thought of but what was really attractive. Peaceful society! whose scattered members can never unite again without speaking of her who was the connecting link that brought them all together.' To our minds, there seems something unique and infinitely touching in this bursting out, though but for a short time, of the slumbering fires of an older society, from underneath the heaps of hard and alien material which had gone far to extinguish every spark of gentleness and refinement. The relics of families--their hearts still bleeding from their wounds--came to forget, if possible, the terrible past, and indulge their quiet hopes for the future. Very soon, indeed, the dream was dispelled; the tyranny proved to some unbearable; and some it vanquished in their highest part--their inward conscience--making them subservient when they might have shunned the danger altogether. But while the quiet interval lasted, it was like an Indian summer, prolonging the intellectual and tasteful beauty which was soon to be overwhelmed by the vulgar splendours of the Empire. The greatest loss this circle could have had was the first. Mme de Beaumont died at Rome in 1804--attended only by Châteaubriand--who has given an account of the closing scene in his memoirs, and thenceforth it does not appear that the same society reassembled.