But her relations to Chateaubriand were fast becoming intolerable, and she resolved to break her chains and leave Paris. He regarded this resolution as a mere threat. "No," he wrote, "you have not bid farewell to all earthly joys. If you go, you will return." She did go, however, taking with her Ballanche and her adopted daughter, whose delicate health was the ostensible cause of her departure. What it cost her to leave Paris may well be conjectured, and nothing is more indicative of her power of self-control than this voluntary withdrawal from a companionship which fascinated while it tortured her. Chateaubriand sent letters after her full of protestations and upbraidings; but after a while he wrote less frequently, and for a year they ceased to correspond. To a friend who urged her to return Madame Recamier wrote,--"If I return at present to Paris, I shall again meet with the agitations that induced me to leave it. If Monsieur Chateaubriand were unhappy on my account, I should be grieved; if he were not, I should have another trouble, which I am determined henceforth to avoid. I find here diversion in art, and a support in religion which shall shelter me from all these storms. It is painful to me to remain absent six months longer from my friends; but it is better to make this sacrifice, and I confess to you that I feel it to be necessary." There was much to make a stay in Italy attractive to Madame Recamier, if she could have forgotten Chateaubriand, Her old admirer, the Duc de Laval, was ambassador at Rome, and put his horses and servants at her disposal. She renewed her acquaintance with the celebrated Duchess of Devonshire, (Lady Elizabeth Foster,) whose career was quite as singular as her own, while it was more open to reproach. The Duchess was a liberal patron of the fine arts, and the devoted friend of Cardinal Gonsalvi, from the shock of whose death she never recovered. Madame Recamier also found at Rome the Duchess of Saint-Leu, whom she had slightly known when she was Queen of Holland. For political reasons it was unwise for them to visit openly, so they contrived private and romantic interviews. Their friendship seems to have been close and sincere. Subsequently, Madame Recamier was able, through her political influence, to serve Hortense in many ways. She also took an interest in her son Louis Napoleon, and visited him in prison after his unsuccessful attempt at Strasbourg, which kindness he afterwards acknowledged in several notes preserved by Madame Lenormant.