第96章 CHAPTER XIX. (3)

She, too, had been arrested with the others, but was so ill and weak that she was left to die by the roadside en route to Paris-- a fate from which she was saved by the kindness of a peasant. It was at this moment that Joubert befriended her. These numerous and crushing sorrows had shattered her health, which was never strong, but during the few brief years that remained to her she was the center of a coterie more distinguished for quality than numbers. Joubert and Chateaubriand were its leading spirits, but it included also Fontanes, Pasquier, Mme. de Vintimille, Mme. de Pastoret, and other friends who had survived the days in which she presided with such youthful dignity over her father's salon.

The fascination of her fine and elevated intellect, her gentle sympathy, her keen appreciation of talent, and her graces of manner lent a singular charm to her presence. Her character was aptly expressed by this device which Rulhiere had suggested for her seal: "Un souffle m'agite et rien ne m'ebrante."

Chateaubriand was enchanted with a nature so pure, so poetic, and so ardent. He visited her daily, read to her "Atala" and "Rene," and finished the "Genius of Christianity" under her influence. He was young then, and that she loved him is hardly doubtful, though the friendship of Joubert was far truer and more loyal than the passing devotion of this capricious man of genius, who seems to have cared only for his own reflection in another soul. But this sheltered nook of thoughtful repose, this conversational oasis in a chaotic period had a short duration. Mme. de Beaumont died at Rome, where she had gone in the faint hope of reviving her drooping health, in 1803. Chateaubriand was there, watched over her last hours with Bertin, and wrote eloquently of her death.

Joubert mourned deeply and silently over the light that had gone out of his life.

We have pleasant reminiscences of the amiable, thoughtful, and spirituelle Mme. de Remusat, who has left us such vivid records of the social and intimate life of the imperial court. A studious and secluded childhood, prematurely saddened by the untimely fate of her father in the terrible days of 1794, an early and congenial marriage, together with her own wise penetration and clear intellect, enabled her to traverse this period without losing her delicate tone or serious tastes. She had her quiet retreat into which the noise and glare did not intrude, where a few men of letters and thoughtful men of the world revived the old conversational spirit. She amused her idle hours by writing graceful tales, and, after the close of her court life and the weakening of her health, she turned her thoughts towards the education and improvement of her sex.

Blended with her wide knowledge of the world, there is always a note of earnestness, a tender coloring of sentiment, which culminates towards the end in a lofty Christian resignation.

We meet again at this time a woman known to an earlier generation as Mme. de Flahaut, and made familiar to us through the pens of Talleyrand and Gouverneur Morris. She saw her husband fall by the guillotine, and, after wandering over Europe for years as an exile, became the wife of M. de Souza, and, returning to Paris, took her place in a quiet corner of the unaccustomed world, writing softly colored romances after the manner of Mme. de La Fayette, wearing with grace the honors her literary fame brought her, and preserving the tastes, the fine courtesies, the gentle manners, the social charms, and the delicate vivacity of the old regime.

One recalls, too, Mme. de Duras, whose father, the noble and fearless Kersaint, was the companion of Mme. Roland at the scaffold; who drifted to our own shores until the storms had passed, and, after saving her large fortune in Martinique, returned matured and saddened to France. As the wife of the Duc de Duras, she gathered around her a circle of rank, talent, and distinction. Chateaubriand, Humboldt, Curier, de Montmorency were among her friends. What treasures of thought and conversation do these names suggest! What memories of the past, what prophecies for the future! Mme. de Duras, too, wore gracefully the mantle of authorship with which she united pleasant household cares. She, too, put something of the sad experiences of her own life into romances which reflect the melancholy of this age of restlessness and lost illusions. She, too, like many of the women of her time whose youth had been blighted by suffering, passed into an exalted Christian strain.

The friend of Mme. de Stael, the literary CONFIDANTE of Chateaubriand, the woman of many talents, many virtues, and many sorrows, died with words of faith and hope and divine consolation on her lips.

The devotion of Mme. de Cantal, the mysticism of Mme. Guyon, find a nineteenth-century counterpart in the spiritual illumination of Mme. de Krudener. Passing from a life of luxury and pleasure to a life of penitence and asceticism, singularly blending worldliness and piety, opening her salon with prayer, and adding a new sensation to the gay life of Paris, this adviser of Alexander I, and friend of Benjamin Constant, who put her best life into the charming romances which ranked next to "Corinne" and "Delphine" in their time; this beautiful woman, novelist, prophetess, mystic, illuminee, fanatic, with the passion of the South and the superstitious vein of the far North, disappeared from the world she had graced, and gave up her life in an ecstasy of sacrifice in the wilderness of the Crimea.

It is only to indicate the altered drift of the social life that flowed in quiet undercurrents during the Empire and came to the surface again after the Restoration; to trace lightly the slow reaction towards the finer shades of modern thought and modern morality, that I touch--so briefly and so inadequately--upon these women who represent the best side of their age, leaving altogether untouched many of equal gifts and equal note.