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Récamier are left to us: one by her passionate but unsuccessful lover, Benjamin Constant, picturing her as the personification of attractiveness; the other by M. Lenormant, showing that she desired constant admiration: "She lacked the affections which bring veritable happiness and the true dignity of woman.
Madame Lenormant asserts that she was unconscious of her beauty, and yet, with an amusing inconsistency, she adds that Madame Récamier always dressed in white and wore pearls in preference to other jewels, that the dazzling whiteness of her skin might eclipse their softness and purity. It was, in fact, impossible to be unconscious of a beauty so ravishing that it intoxicated all beholders.
"You are one of the phenomena of the age," she writes, "and certainly the most amiable.... You can look back upon the past without remorse. At any age this is the most beautiful of privileges, but at our time of life it is invaluable." Madame Lenormant, even more enthusiastic, calls her a saint, which she certainly was not, but a gracious woman of the world.
It is, therefore, not surprising, if her narrative is at times broken and obscure, and she a too partial biographer. Not that Madame Lenormant can be called untrustworthy. She cannot be accused of misrepresenting facts, but she does what is almost as bad, she partially states them. Her vague allusions and half-and-half statements excite curiosity without gratifying it.
Once, when he had taken casual refreshment at a restaurant, a gentleman sitting at another table came forward and, with grave politeness, begged permission to pay for what Lenormant had consumed.
In reply to her questions, he quietly said, "Oh, yes, he had left it at Alexandria." He had, in fact, forgotten it; and it never occurred to him to replace it by another. Madame Lenormant relates an anecdote of his second interview with Madame Récamier, which is illustrative of his simplicity. "He found her alone, working on embroidery.
Madame Lenormant says of him: "he was avaricious as a Jew, and sumptuous as the most magnificent grand seigneur," and he seems to have been a most interesting character. He lived in a beautiful palace upon the Corso, wherein was placed Canova's Hercules and Lycas, and there he and his wife dispensed a most open-handed hospitality.
The loftiness which modern scholars like Haug, Lenormant, and Spiegel see in the Zend-Avesta pertains more directly to the earlier portions of these sacred writings, attributable to Zoroaster, called the Gâthâs. But in the course of time the Avesta was subjected to many additions and interpretations, called the Zend, which show degeneracy.
LENORMANT, Manuel de l'Histoire ancienne, vol. ii. p. 30. J. MÉNANT, Inscriptions de Hammourabi, Roi de Babylone; 1863, Paris. These inscriptions are the oldest documents in phonetic character that have come down to us. See OPPERT, Expédition scientifique, vol. i. p. 267. KER PORTER, Travels in Georgia, Persia, etc., 4to., vol. ii. p. 390.
We cannot dwell longer on this subject, but the little that we have said will be enough to show the reader the importance to history, ethnography, and philology, of the study of Sanskrit. For further details we refer him to the special works of Orientalists and to the excellent historical manuals of Robiou, Lenormant, and Maspero.
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