My daughter cried this morning at my tears and yours. Dear Juliet, we both enjoyed the luxury that surrounded you; your fortune was ours, and I feel myself ruined because you are no longer rich. Believe me, some happiness remains when one has made herself loved thus. "Benjamin wants to write to you; he is much upset. Mathieu de Montmorency has written me a very touching letter about you. Dear friend, may your heart remain calm amid so many sorrows. Alas, neither the death nor the indifference of your friends threaten you, and those are the eternal wounds. Adieu, dear angel, adieu! Respectfully I kiss your charming face...." Madame Récamier now became the object of a new interest: she left society without complaining and seemed as much made for solitude as for the world. Her friends remained to her, "and this time," M. Ballanche has said, "fortune withdrew alone." Madame de Staël drew her friend to Coppet[380]. Prince Augustus of Prussia, captured at the Battle of Eylau[381], passed through Geneva on his way to Italy: he fell in love with Madame Récamier. The intimate and private life that belongs to every man continued its course beneath the general life, the blood of battles and the transformation of empires. The rich man, on waking, beholds his gilded panellings, the poor man his smoky rafters: there is but one sun-ray to give light to both. Prince Augustus, believing that Madame Récamier might consent to a divorce, proposed to her in marriage. A record of this passion remains in the picture of Corinne, which the Prince obtained from Gérard; he made a present of it to Madame Récamier as an undying reminder of the feeling with which she had inspired him and of the intimate friendship which united Corinne and Juliet. The summer was spent in merry-making: the world was upset; but it happens that the echo of public catastrophes, mingling with the joys of youth, redoubles their charm; we surrender ourselves the more eagerly to pleasures the nearer we feel to losing them. Madame de Genlis has made a novel out of this attachment of Prince Augustus. I found her one day in the throes of composition. She was living at the Arsenal, surrounded by dusty books, in a gloomy apartment. She expected nobody; she was dressed in a black gown; her white hair obscured her face; she held a harp between her knees, and her head was sunk upon her breast. Hanging on to the strings of the instrument, she allowed her pale and emaciated hands to wander on either side of the sonorous wire-work, from which she drew feeble sounds, resembling the distant and undefinable voices of death. What was the ancient sybil singing? She was singing Madame Récamier. She had at first hated her, but had later been conquered by beauty and distress. Madame de Genlis had just finished this page on Madame Récamier, giving her the name of Athenais: [Sidenote: Prince Augustus of Prussia.]