But all this was subsequent to our first meeting with her at Coppet, when she was still fairly young and singularly pretty, and the gold in her tresses owed as yet no fancied splendor to the aureole of inspiration. Madame Récamier, the charming Juliette, was a far more normal, but a not less attractive person. Châteaubriand’s memoirs have made her famous, but he was among the latest of her many swains. Her path through life was strewn with conquests, and she had offers of marriage by the score. They continued up to the age of fifty-one, when the author of _Réné_ laid a heart which was hardly worthy of her at her feet. Three generations of Montmorencys adored her; a German prince of royal blood urged her to divorce her husband in order to marry him; and Lucian Bonaparte was among the most ardent of her slaves. Ampère the younger, at twenty, fell in love with her, she being then forty-three; and Châteaubriand addressed her as “_très belle et très charmante_” when she was seventy and blind. The little Savoyards turned round in the streets to look at her, and when they did so no longer she knew that her marvellous beauty was on the wane. But the fascination of her grace, her goodness, her unfailing tact and delicate intelligence survived her loveliness; and the men who knew her still worshipped her for years after fresher charms had attracted the eyes of the multitude. She was not a politician, but her friendship with Madame de Staël gave her decided opinions, and she incurred the anger of Napoleon by declining to be _Dame du Palais_ to one of his sisters. It was said, however, that what specially raised his ire was that a throng which on one occasion had been assembled to do homage to him, so far forgot his presence, when Madame Récamier appeared, as to have eyes only for her. Finally Constant, the inexplicable, unhappy, brilliant Constant, sought the peace which he had never found in anyone in a tardy passion for her. He sought in vain, for she treated him as she treated all men, with a kind and gracious indifference which her unique fascination robbed of all its sting. She influenced his political conduct—not altogether for good, as it turned out in 1814, when Napoleon returned from Elba. Vague hints at a rivalry before this date between her and Madame de Staël are to be found in some of the correspondence of the time, but they are contradicted by the tone of Madame de Staël’s letters to her _belle Juliette_, and by Madame Récamier’s own rare discretion.