When I first knew her, in 1820, her
habitual dinner-party consisted of her father, her husband, Ballanche,
and myself. Both her father, M. Bernard, and her husband were agreeable
men. Ballanche was charming.'
'You believe,' I said, 'that Bernard was her father?' 'Certainly I do,'
he replied. 'The suspicion that Recamier might be was founded chiefly on
the strangeness of their conjugal relations. To this, I oppose her
apparent love for M. Bernard, and I explain Recamier's conduct by his
tastes. They were coarse, though he was a man of good manners. He never
spent his evenings at home. He went where he could find more license.
'Perhaps the most agreeable period was at that time of Chateaubriand's
reign when he had ceased to exact a _tete-a-tete_, and Ballanche and I
were admitted at four o'clock. The most illustrious of the _partie
carree_ was Chateaubriand, the most amusing Ballanche. My merit was that
I was the youngest. Later in the evening Madame Mohl, Miss Clarke as she
then was, was a great resource. She is a charming mixture of French
vivacity and English originality, but I think that the French element
predominates. Chateaubriand, always subject to _ennui_, delighted in her.
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