"An unknown hand shall close my eyes; the tolling of a foreign bell shall announce my death, and voices which are not those of my country shall pray for me." Mathieu de Montmorency came to Lyons to visit Madame Récamier. She then knew M. Camille Jordan and M. Ballanche, both worthy to swell the train of friendships attached to her noble life. Madame Récamier was too proud to solicit her recall. Fouché had long and to no purpose urged her to adorn the Court of the Emperor: the details of these palace negociations can be read in the writings of the time. Madame Récamier retired to Italy[398]; M. de Montmorency accompanied her as far as Chambéry. She crossed the rest of the Alps with no other travelling-companion than a little niece of seven, to-day Madame Lenormant[399]. Rome was at that time a French town, the capital of the Department of the Tiber. The Pope was repining a prisoner at Fontainebleau, in the palace of Francis I. Fouché was on a special mission in Italy and commanded in the city of the Cæsars, even as the chief of the black eunuchs commands in Athens: he merely passed through; M. de Norvins[400] was installed in the quality of Minister of Police: the movement was bearing upon a different point in Europe. Conquered without having seen its second Alaric, the Eternal City lay silent, plunged in its ruins. Artists dwelt alone on that heap of centuries. Canova received Madame Récamier as though she were a Greek statue which France was returning to the Vatican Museum: the pontiff of the arts, he inaugurated her into the honours of the Capitol in deserted Rome. [Sidenote: Antonio Canova.] Canova had a house at Albano; he offered it to Madame Récamier; she passed the summer there. The balconied window of her bed-room was one of those large painter's casements which frame the landscape. It opened upon the ruins of Pompey's Villa; in the distance, over olive trees, one saw the sun set in the sea. Canova returned at that hour; stirred by that beautiful sight, he loved to sing, with a Venetian accent and a pleasant voice, the barcarolle, _O pescator dell'onda_; Madame Récamier accompanied him on the piano. The sculptor of Psyche and the Magdalen revelled in this harmony, and sought in Juliet's features the type of the Beatrix which he was dreaming of one day making. Rome had of old seen Raphael and Michael Angelo crown their models in poetic orgies, too freely related by Cellini[401]: how much superior to them was this pure and decent little scene between an exiled woman and that simple and gentle Canova! More solitary than ever, Rome at that moment wore widow's weeds: she no longer saw pass, blessing her as they did so, the peaceful sovereigns who rejuvenated her old days with all the wonders of the arts. The noise of the world had once again withdrawn from her; St. Peter's was deserted like the Coliseum.