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With the return of the Bourbons, Mme. Bonaparte was free to tread the soil of France, and among the throngs of lovely women who entered Paris after Waterloo she was no inconspicuous figure. Portraits and contemporaries represent her as uncommonly beautiful the spirited head crowned with waving brown hair; large, lustrous, liquid hazel eyes, promising a tender sensibility that did not exist; a nose of delicate Greek outline; mouth and rounded chin nests for Cupid; arms, bust and shoulders to satisfy a sculptor. Surgeon-General Larrey, the medical attendant at St. Helena, meeting Mme. Bonaparte at dinner in Paris, requested their host, Count Rochefoucauld, to intercede with her for the privilege of looking at the back of her neck. After studying her a moment, he said, "It is extraordinary! The bend of the neck, the contour of face, the pose of the head, even the manner of rising from her chair, are singular in their resemblance to the emperor." The duchess D'Abrantes (Mme. Junot) describes in her Memoirs a meeting with Jerome, "who showed us a fine miniature of his wife, the features exquisitely beautiful, with a resemblance to those of the princess Borghese, which Jerome said he and many Frenchmen in Baltimore had remarked. 'Judge, he said, replacing the portrait in his bosom, 'if I can abandon a being like her! I only wish the emperor would consent to see her, to hear her voice, but for a single moment. For myself, I am resolved not to yield." Walpole's friend, Miss Berry, met Mme. Bonaparte in the salon of Mme. Récamier, "who sat on a chaise longue with a headache and twelve or fifteen men, only two ladies being present Mme. Moreau and Mrs. Patterson, the ex-wife of Jerome Bonaparte, who is exceedingly pretty, without grace and not at all shy.... Mme. Récamier is the beauty of this new world, if she can be called handsome: her manners are doucereuses, thinking much of herself, with perfect carelessness about others, for, besides being a beauty, she has pretensions to bel esprit: they may be as well founded as the other, yet not sufficient to burn her for a witch." Now, Miss Berry called the black-Berry, in contradistinction to her duller sister, the goose-Berry was jaundiced in her estimation of both beauties, and Mme. Bonaparte bears tribute to "that rare loveliness of temper and tact in displaying the good qualities even of rivals that were potent weapons in Récamier's quiver of charms." Miss Berry's dictum is also outweighed by the homage of Mme. de Staël's envying sigh, that she "would willingly exchange her genius for Récamier's beauty." Mme. Récamier was anxious that Mme. Bonaparte should know "Corinne." "No, no," she replied: "De Staël est une colosse qui m'écraserait; elle me trouverait une jolie bête et je ne veux pas être tuée
She has a clear complexion, is young, tall; her manners are doucereuses, for, besides being a beauty, she has pretensions, I understand, to bel-esprit. The majority of those present were undeniably captivated by her peculiar fascination. Augustus Barfield has the following remarks in his famous Journal: There were no two opinions about the success of the débutante.
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