But it was evident that even if he had
really attempted to do anything for the son of his old love, he had
totally forgotten the result. I do not think that he was pleased at Miss
Clarke's attention and sympathy being diverted from himself. Later still
in Madame Recamier's life, when she had become blind, and Chateaubriand
deaf, and Ballanche very infirm, the evenings were sad. I had to try to
amuse persons who had become almost unamusable.'
'How did Madame de Chateaubriand,' I asked, 'take the devotion of her
husband to Madame Recamier?'
'Philosophically,' answered Ampere. 'He would not have spent with her the
hours that he passed at the Abbaye au bois. She was glad, probably, to
know that they were not more dangerously employed.'
'Could I read Chateaubriand?' I asked.
'I doubt it,' said Ampere. 'His taste is not English.'
'I _have_ read,' I said, 'and liked, his narrative of the manner in which
he forced on the Spanish war of 1822. I thought it well written.'
'It is, perhaps,' said Ampere, 'the best thing which he has written, as
the intervention to restore Ferdinand, which he effected in spite of
almost everybody, was perhaps the most important passage in his political
life.
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