rallying-ground for all the brightest intellects of France. It is interesting to read that Talleyrand—the supple, silent, time-serving Talleyrand—was among her guests. She forgave him, of course, for his long oblivion of her old claims on his friendship; but not more thoroughly, in all probability, than he forgave himself. To Paris had returned the Abbé de Montesquion, Lally, Tollendal, Lafayette. How changed were the times since the latter had hurried thither to plead, and plead in vain, for his imprisoned King; since the Abbé had waited in disguise on the highroad for Madame de Staël to arrive in her carriage and convey him out of France; since Lally, "the fattest of susceptible men," had brought his eloquence and sensibility to help in enlivening the sylvan glades of Mickleham.
Madame Récamier had returned and Constant, at the ripe age of forty-eight and married for the second time, was so in love with her as to resent any allusion to the past which could divert him, even momentarily, from his all-absorbing passion.
Madame de Krüdener, worn and wasted with sybilline fervour, had commenced her religious gatherings, and the Czar was drawn daily within the circle of her spells; while Madame Récamier was banished from it, because her beauty could still claim glances that were vowed to heaven. Constant, going once, never went again; perhaps because Juliette was wanting; perhaps because such mystic utterances as fell from the inspired priestess's lips were too vague to find an echo in his passion-tossed soul. To Paris also had come Bonstetten, younger than ever in spirit, and hopeful, for all his burden of years.
The dawn of the new era—so quickly clouded for
