Fox was in Paris in 1802 when Madame Recamier was at the zenith of her reputation. He almost divided with her the allegiance of the gay world. The Parisian beaux imitated his costume, and the Parisian shop-windows were crowded with his portraits. Between the statesman and the beauty so close an intimacy was established that scandal made busy with it. She called upon him one day to accompany her in a drive along the Boulevards. "Before you came," said she, "I was the fashion; it is a point of honour, therefore, that I should not seem jealous of you." When sitting with her in her box at the opera, a copy of an ode was placed in the hands of each, in which Fox was panegyrised as Jupiter, and Madame Recamier as Venus. The failure of Monsieur Recamier in 1806 affected her health, and she went to spend the summer months of 1807 with Madame de Stael at Coppet. Among the illustrious residents at Geneva at the time was Prince Augustus of Prussia, a nephew of Frederick the Great, and a handsome young man of twenty-four. He fell violently in love with the Parisian beauty, who was by no means indifferent to the passion he openly displayed. He offered her his hand if she could obtain a divorce from her husband, whom half Paris [according to an old scandal] declared to be her father. Madame was not unwilling to be a princess, and she wrote to her husband proposing a divorce. Monsieur Recamier, in reply, expressed his willingness, but at the same time appealed to her better feelings. Years afterwards the love-suit dropped, and the prince, instead of a wife, received her portrait. Other lovers followed, and her career came near its close. In 1849 the cholera broke out in Paris. Madame Recamier was not afraid of dying, but she shrunk from death in so terrible a form. To avoid its ravages she removed to the Bibliotheque Nationale, but she could not escape from fate. On the 10th of May she was seized with the premonitory symptoms; on the 11th she was a corpse. She had completed nearly two-and-seventy years when she was removed from life by a death which of all others she most dreaded.