"You have read in my soul; you have seen there that I wore in it the mourning for the public misfortunes and for my own faults, and I could not but feel that this sad disposition formed too strong a contrast with all the brilliancy that encompasses your age and your charms. I even fear lest it should sometimes have made itself felt in the few moments which I have been permitted to spend with you, and I entreat your indulgence therefore. But now, madame, when Providence seems to show us a better future very near at hand, to whom could I better than to yourself confide the joy which I derive from hopes so sweet and, to my belief, so near? Who will fill a greater place than you in the private pleasures which will be mingled with the public joy? I shall then be more susceptible and less unworthy of the delights of your charming company, and how happy I shall deem myself still to count for something in it! If you deign to attach the same value to the fruit of my labour, you shall always be the first to whom I shall hasten to present it. Then no more contradictions nor obstacles; you shall always find me at your orders, and none, I hope, will be able to blame me for this preference. I shall say, 'Here is she who, at the age of illusions and with all the brilliant advantages that can excuse them, has known all the nobility and delicacy of proceedings of the purest friendship and, in the midst of every homage, has remembered an outlaw!' I shall say, 'Here is she whose youth and grace I have seen grow amid a general corruption which was never able to overtake them, she whose reason at sixteen years has often put mine to shame!' and I am sure that none will be tempted to contradict me." The sadness of events, of age and of religion, hidden under a melting expression, present in these letters a singular admixture of thought and style. Let us return once more to Benjamin Constant's narrative: "We come to the time when Madame Récamier saw herself for the first time the object of a strong and regular passion. Till then she had received unanimous worship from all who had met her, but her manner of life nowhere offered centres of union where one could be sure of finding her. She never received at home and she had not yet formed a society where one could penetrate every day to see her and try to please her. [Sidenote: Lucien Bonaparte.] "In the summer of 1799, Madame Récamier came to live at the Château de Clichy, a quarter of a league from Paris. A man since celebrated through different sorts of pretensions, and even more celebrated through the advantages which he has refused than through the successes which he has won, Lucien Bonaparte, obtained an introduction to her.