"To await or go in search of beauty; to see her come towards us in a wherry and smile to us from amid the waves; to float with her on the sea, while strewing its surface with flowers; to follow the enchantress into the recesses of that wood of myrtles and into the fortunate fields where Virgil set Elysium; that was the occupation of our days.... Perhaps there are climates dangerous to virtue through their extreme voluptuousness. And is it not this that an ingenious fable strove to teach, when telling that Parthenope[432] was built upon a syren's tomb? The velvet brilliancy of the country-side, the lukewarm temperature of the air, the rounded outlines of the mountains, the soft inflexions of the streams and valleys form at Naples so many seductions for the senses, which everything tends to rest, nothing to wound.... "To escape the noonday heat, we would retire to that part of the palace built under the sea. Stretched on beds of ivory, we listened to the murmuring of the waves above our heads. If some storm surprised us down in these retreats, the slaves brought us lamps filled with the most precious nard of Araby. Then entered young Neapolitan girls, bearing roses of Pæstum in vases of Nola; while the billows moaned without, they sang, performing tranquil dances before us which reminded me of the manners of Greece: thus were realized for us the fictions of the poets; we seemed in Neptune's cave to be watching the sports of the Nereids[433]." Madame Récamier met, at Naples, Count von Neipperg[434] and the Duc de Rohan-Chabot[435]: one was destined to climb to the eagle's nest, the other to wear the purple. They said of the latter that he was devoted to red, having worn the coat of a chamberlain, the uniform of a light-horseman of the Guard, and the robe of a cardinal. [Sidenote: The Duc de Rohan.] The Duc de Rohan was very pretty; he warbled plaintive ballads, painted little water-colours and was eminent for his coquettish and studied dress. When he became an abbé, his pious hair, tried by the iron, had all a martyr's elegance. He used to preach at dusk, in sombre oratories, before devout women, taking care, with the aid of two or three artistically-distributed tapers, to light up his pale features in mezzotint, like a picture[436]. We cannot, at first sight, explain to ourselves how men whose names rendered them stupid by sheer force of pride came to accept wages from a parvenu. Looking more closely into this aptness for entering service, we find that it proceeded naturally from their manners: accustomed to the domestic condition, little recked they if the livery was changed, provided the master were lodged at the castle under the same sign-board. Bonaparte's contempt appraised them at their true value; the great soldier, abandoned by his own people, said to a great lady: