At that time, Monsieur Récamier’s bankruptcy entailed that of his wife. Madame de Staël at Coppet was soon informed: she immediately wrote a quite admirable letter to Madame Récamier which is often quoted. Her friends remained to her ‘and this time,’ as Monsieur Ballanche has said, ‘wealth alone vanished.’

Madame de Staël lured her friend to Coppet. Prince Augustus of Prussia, who had been taken prisoner at Prenzlow, passed through Geneva on his way to Italy: he fell passionately in love with Madame Récamier. The private and intimate life of every man goes on within the wider world of blood-stained battles and Empires in transformation: the rich man wakes to view his gilded panelling, the poor his smoke-blackened rafters; the same ray of sunlight illuminates them both.

Prince Augustus, thinking that Madame Récamier might consent to a divorce, proposed marriage to her.

A monument to this passion is the painting of Corinne which the Prince obtained from Gérard; he made Madame Récamier a present of it as a deathless memento of the feeling which had inspired him, and the glorious friendship which united Corinne and Juliette.

The summer passed in celebrations: the world was turned upside down, but the echoes of disaster mingled with the delights of youth redoubled their charm; one gives oneself up to pleasures all the more eagerly, when one feels one is close to losing them.

Madame de Genlis has written a novel on this attachment of Prince Augustus’. I found her one day in all the ardour of composition. She lived in the Arsenal in the midst of dusty books in a gloomy apartment. She expected no one; she was dressed in a black gown; her white hair veiled her face; she held a harp between her knees and her head was bowed on her chest. Touching the strings of the instrument, she brushed two pale thin hands across either side of the sonorous frame from which she drew delicate sounds, like distant and indistinct voices of the dead. What was this ancient Sibyl singing of? She was singing of Madame Récamier.

At first she had disliked her, but in the event she was conquered by her beauty and unhappiness.

Madame de Stael, in the prime of her life, loved Madame Recamier. Madame de Genlis in her old age found for her the accents of youth. I was unknown then, I who have since lost everyone, I whose friends have vanished, I who hear only the cries of shades from the other shore; I will soon go to meet again those predecessors who call to me. The things which have escaped me would destroy me if I were not on the brink of the tomb; but so close to eternal oblivion, truths and dreams are equally helpless; at life’s end all is merely time lost.