A dense crowd was collected in the Piazza del Popolo to see the entry of Pius VII., after the Apollyon of kingdoms had been sent to Elba. The Roman nobles and gentleman headed the procession, and their sons drew the pontiff's carriage. In it he knelt, with his hair unsilvered by age, and his fine face expressing deep humility. His hand was extended to bless his people, but his head bowed before the almighty disposer of human events. It was the triumph of a confessor rather than of a sovereign--of a principle, not of a person. Never did such a rain of tears fall on the marble paving at St. Peter's as when at last he traversed the church and prostrated himself before the altar over the tomb of the apostles. Then the _Te Deum_ rose and echoed through those gorgeous arches, and Madame Récamier was not insensible to the affecting scene. Before leaving Rome the second time, she paid a farewell visit to General Miollis, who had commanded the French forces. He was extremely touched by this civility, and received her in a villa he had bought, and which still bears his name. He was quite alone, with an old soldier for his servant. She was, he said, the only person who had called upon him since he had ceased to govern Rome. After three years' absence she returned to Paris, and, still radiant with beauty and overflowing with gladness, resumed her undisputed empire over polite society. Her husband had regained his lost ground, and was again a prosperous banker, while she possessed in her own right a fortune inherited from her mother. The restoration of Louis XVIII. had changed the face of her salon and of society in general. Her friends were once more in power, and those who had vexed her and them were banished or forgotten. The Duke of Wellington often visited her, and she presented him to Queen Hortense. He shocked her, however, after the battle of Waterloo, by saying of Napoleon, "I have well beaten him!" She had no love for the ex-emperor; but France was her country, and she could not exult over its defeat. Her niece declares that Wellington was not free from intoxication with his success, and that nothing but the indignant murmurs of the pit prevented him from entering the royal box with his aides-de-camp. [Footnote 11] Madame de Staël died in 1817, and her friend, Mathieu de Montmorency, gathered up with piety and hope every indication of a religious spirit which she had left behind. She never raised her eyes to heaven without thinking of him, and she believed that {90} in his prayers his spirit answered hers. [Footnote 12] Prayer, she wrote, was the bond which united all religious beings in one, and the life of the soul. Sin and suffering were inseparable, and she had never done wrong without falling into trouble. During the long sleepless nights of her last illness she repeated constantly the Lord's prayer to calm her mind, and she learned to enjoy the "Imitation of Jesus Christ."