He was in those days reading in Madame Récamier’s salon at the Abbaye-aux-Bois (in which building my mother’s friend, Miss Clarke, also had her residence), those celebrated _Mémoires d’Outretombe_, of which all Paris, or at least all literary and political Paris, was talking. Immense efforts were made by all kinds of notabilities to obtain an admission to these readings. But the favoured ones had been very few. And my mother was proportionably delighted at the arrangement that a reading should be given expressly for her benefit. M. de Chateaubriand had ceased these _séances_ for the nonce, and the gentleman who had been in the habit of reading for him had left Paris. But by the kindness of Miss Clarke and Madame Récamier, he was induced to give a sitting at the Abbaye expressly for my mother. This arrangement had been made before I reached Paris, and I consequently to my great regret was not one of the very select party. My mother was accompanied by my sisters only. I benefited however in my turn by the acquaintance thus formed, and subsequently passed more than one evening in Madame Récamier’s salon at the Abbaye-aux-Bois in the Rue du Bac. My mother, in her book on _Paris and the Parisians_, writes of that reading as follows:--“The party assembled at Madame Récamier’s on this occasion did not, I think, exceed seventeen, including Madame Récamier and M. de Chateaubriand. Most of these had been present at former readings. The Duchesses de Larochefoucauld and de Noailles, and one or two other noble ladies, were among them. And I felt it was a proof that genius is of no party, when I saw a grand-daughter of General Lafayette enter among us. She is married to a gentleman who is said to be of the extreme _coté gauche_.” The passage of the _Mémoires_ selected for the evening’s reading was the account of the author’s memorable visit to Prague to visit the royal exiles. “Many passages,” writes my mother, “made a profound impression on my fancy and on my memory, and I think I could give a better account of some of the scenes described than I should feel justified in doing, as long as the noble author chooses to keep them from the public eye. There were touches that made us weep abundantly; and then he changed the key, and gave us the prettiest, the most gracious, the most smiling picture of the young princess and her brother that it was possible for pen to trace. And I could have said, as one does in seeing a clever portrait, ‘That is a likeness, I’ll be sworn for it.’”