Madame Récamier, the youngest of all the women of fashion of the day, was born at Lyons, in 1777, and was named Jeanne-Françoise-Adélaide-Julie Bernard. She married, in 1793, Jacques-Bose Récamier, who was twenty-six years older than she. His fortune was derived from an immense hat factory founded at Lyons by his father. When he was still quite young, he travelled for the house, after receiving a classical education which enabled him to quote either Virgil or Horace when occasion required. He spoke Spanish, for his business had taken him more particularly into Spain. He was handsome, tall, of light complexion, strongly built, easily moved, generous, and light-hearted; and but slightly attached to his friends, although he never refused to lend them money. One of his best friends, whom he had aided pecuniarily many times, died; he merely said with a sigh: "Another money-drawer closed!" Married during the Terror, he was present at executions even on his wedding-day, just as he had been on the day previous, and would be on the following day. He saw the king and the queen die, together with Lavoisier and the twenty-seven farmers-general; Laborde, his most intimate friend; and, in short, almost all those with whom he had either business or social relations. When asked why he displayed such assiduity in attending the sad spectacle, he replied: "I wish to familiarize myself with the scaffold." And in fact he escaped being guillotined almost by a miracle. He did, however, escape; and the sort of supernumerary time he had spent with death was of no value to him. Was it in consequence of this daily contemplation of nothingness that he forgot his wife's beauty, so that he bore her only a paternal affection; or was it one of those imperfections by means of which capricious nature often renders sterile her most beautiful works? Be that as it may, the fact that she was a wife in name only remains a mystery but no secret. And yet, at the age of sixteen, when Mademoiselle Bernard became his wife, her biographer tells us that she had passed from childhood into the splendor of youth. A supple, elegant figure, shoulders worthy of the Goddess Hebe, a perfectly shaped and exquisitely formed neck, a small red mouth, teeth like pearls, arms which were charming though a little thin, chestnut hair which curled naturally, a nose both regular and delicate, although thoroughly French, a complexion of incomparable brilliancy, a face replete with candor (though at times it sparkled with mischief), whose gentle expression lent it an irresistible charm, a manner at once insolent and proud, the best set head in the world--with all these graces it might most truly have been said of her, as Saint-Simon said of the Duchesse de Bourgogne: "Her bearing was that of a goddess enthroned upon clouds."