Madame Swetchine, when she arrived in Rome, was imbued with some prejudices against Madame Récamier, but they vanished at the first interview, and the love that sprang up between them was of the holiest kind: "I feel the want of you (she wrote in 1825) as if we had passed a long time together, as if we had old associations in common. How strange that I should feel so impoverished by losing what a short time since I did not possess! Surely there is something of eternity in certain emotions. There are souls--and I think yours and mine are among the number--which no sooner come in contact with each other than they throw off the conditions of their mortal existence, and obey the laws of a higher and better world." After an absence of eighteen months, Madame Récamier returned to Paris. It was in May, 1825. Charles X. was being consecrated at Rheims, and both Chateaubriand and Montmorency were there for the ceremony. When the former received a line to inform him that the cell in the Abbaye was again occupied, he lost no time in paying his usual visit at the same hour as before. Madame Récamier's residence in Italy had produced the desired effect on him. His fitful mood was over. Not a word of explanation or reproach was heard, and from that day to his death, twenty-three years later, the purest and most perfect harmony existed between them. He had again fallen from power, and had been rudely dismissed. His only crime had been silence. He would not advocate the reduction of interest on the public debt, which appeared to him an act of injustice. How many would be half ruined by the change from five to three per cent! He abstained from voting. De Villèle was incensed, and a heartless note informed one of the greatest men in France that his services were no longer needed. By a strange mishap he did not receive it at the right time, went to the Tuileries, attended a levee, and was going to take his place at a cabinet council, when he was told that he was no longer admissible. He had ordered his carriage for a later hour, and was now obliged to walk back in his full court robes through the streets of Paris. He long and bitterly remembered this ungenerous treatment. In his opposition to the Villèle ministry he displayed prodigious talent; and in January, 1828, it gave place to that of Martignae, and he was himself appointed ambassador at Rome.