Note 459 — BOOK X[399]

In the spring of 1832, when the cholera was raging most fiercely, the Duc de Noailles was introduced to Madame Récamier. He was at once adopted by her and M. de Chateaubriand. The latter prized very highly the judgment and political feeling, the reason and the upright character of the young peer of France, who had just made a brilliant first speech in the tribune of the Upper House, and who, seventeen years later, was to become his successor in the French Academy. In the month of September 1836, Chateaubriand went to spend a few days with M. de Noailles at the Château de Maintenon, and he wrote a chapter which he intended to form part of his Memoirs. This chapter, however, was not inserted there; the manuscript was given by the author to Madame Récamier. Madame Lenormant has published it in Vol. II. of her Souvenirs et correspondence tirés des papiers de Madame Récamier, pp. 453 et seq., and it is reprinted here as forming a natural and essential complement of the Memoirs.—B.