This was a master stroke--a ~tour de force~--a knock-out--anything you will. For, fat and curved-nosed bankers throughout the empire were yelping for slices of the state finances. And the post of lady in waiting was one for which nearly any woman of the court would gladly have parted with all she no longer possessed. Then came a shock; a rough, jarring shock; a shock worthy to be administered by, instead of to, the Corsican himself. Madame Recamier coldly refused the glittering offers; declined to be a lady in waiting; and gave Napoleon to understand, in terms he could not mistake, that she wanted nothing from him except unadulterated absence. It was probably the emperor's one heart rebuff. In a burst of babyish fury, he--the ruler of France and the arbiter of Europe's fate--crawled so low as to seek revenge on a harmless woman. He first wrecked the Recamier bank, driving old Recamier to the verge of ruin. Then he trumped up an asinine charge of treason or ~les majeste~ or something equally absurd, against Jeanne. And on the strength of it, he banished her from Paris. It was a revenge well worthy the eccentric who could rule or ruin half of Europe by a single convolution of his demigod brain; or could screech in impotent fury at a valet for getting the wrong part in his thin hair. From Paris went the Recamiers; the banker seeking gently to console his unhappy wife for the ruin she had so innocently wrought; and to build up for her, bit by bit, a new fortune to replace the lost one. Never by word or look did he blame her. And speedily he amassed enough money to supply her again with the luxuries she loved. To Lyons, the old home of both of them, they went; thence to Rome, and then to Naples. In Italy, Jeanne met once more her dearest woman friend; a ludicrously homely woman with the temper of a wet cat and a tongue sharp enough to shave with; a complete foil, mentally and facially, for her bosom friend, Jeanne. This miracle of homeliness was Madame de Stael, author and futile conspirator. For exercising the latter accomplishment, she had been banished, like Jeanne, from Paris. So ugly was Madame de Stael that when she once said to an ill-favored man: "You abuse the masculine prerogative of homeliness," her hearers laughed--at her, not at her victim. In Italy, too, Jeanne met Prince Augustus of Prussia, prince-royal and man of distinction and wealth. They met at a reception. Madame Recamier and Madame de Stael were seated side by side on a sofa. After the introductions, Prince Augustus seated himself between them, remarking airily: "I find myself placed between Wit and Beauty." "And possessing neither," commented Madame de Stael, with her wonted courtesy. The prince, from that inauspicious start, became the infatuated slave of Madame Recamier. He worshiped the ground she trod. He made no secret of his devotion.