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Gérard had built for himself a house in the Rue des Augustins, near the ancient church of St. Germain des Près; and there, every Wednesday evening, summer and winter, he received whatever was in any way illustrious in France, or whatever the other capitals of Europe sent to Paris, en passant. "Four small rooms," says Mme. Ancelot, "and a very small antechamber, composed the whole apartment.
One feature of the pre-Revolution era was revived in the feminine salons, which regained most, if not the whole, of their pristine renown. The Hotel de la Rochefoucauld of Madame Ancelot became a second Hotel de Rambouillet, where the classical Parseval-Grandmaison, who spent twenty years over his poem Philippe-Auguste, held armistice with the young champion of the Romantic school, Victor Hugo.
Mme. Ancelot confesses to having "studied narrowly" all Mme. Récamier's manoeuvres, and to having watched all the thousand little traps she laid for social "lions"; but we are rather astonished herein at Mme. Ancelot's astonishment, for, with more or less talent and grace, these are the devices resorted to in Paris by a whole class of maitresses de maison, of whom Mme.
All at once Mme. d'Abrantès exclaims, with an explosion of delight, "Ah! what a charming time is the night! one is so deliciously off for talking! so safe! so secure! safe from bores and from duns!" Madame Ancelot affirms that this speech made a tremendous effect, and that her guests looked at each other in astonishment.
He was on intimate terms with the Duchesse d'Abrantes and Mme. Sophie Gay; he was received by the Baron Gerard and by Mme. Ancelot; he announced to his publisher, Charles Gosselin, that Mme. Recamier had asked him to give a reading from his Magic Skin, "so that we are going to have a whole lot of people to boom us in the Faubourg Saint-Germain."
These habits of social intercourse gave a value to the intellectual and moral qualities of the individual, quite independent of his fortune or his rank; and in these little republics the real sovereign was merit." Madame Ancelot is right here, and there were in Paris several of these salons, which served as the models for those of all the rest of Europe.
The men most highly placed in literature at the time when I came to Paris were MM. de Chateaubriand, Jouy, Lemercier, Arnault, Etienne, Baour-Lormian, Béranger, Charles Nodier, Viennet Scribe, Théaulon, Soumet, Casimir Delavigne, Lucien Arnault, Ancelot, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Désaugiers, and Alfred de Vigny.
Madame Gay found in Gérard's salon all the people she had best known in her youth, and she was delighted to have her early years recalled to her. Mme. Ancelot, who, like many of her country women, felt a marked antipathy for Madame Gay, has given a very true portrait of both mother and daughter. Gay was far from popular.
For instance, if, after a dozen little unshaved, unkempt poetasters had been called "sublime," Victor Hugo vouchsafed to recite one of his really best Odes, what was the eulogistic form to be adopted? Mme. Ancelot will tell us.
To the "new society of July" Mme. d'Abrantès was an object of great curiosity. "I dote on seeing that woman!" said Balzac, one evening, to Mme. Ancelot.
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