"To this day," said she fifty years afterwards, "I feel the magic of his wonderful deportment." Madame Recamier was so charming that when she passed around the box at the Church St.Roche in Paris, twenty thousand francs were put into it.
At the great reception to Napoleon on his return from Italy, the crowd caught sight of this fascinating woman and almost forgot to look at the great hero.
"Please, Madame," whispered a servant to Madame de Maintenon at dinner, "one anecdote more, for there is no roast to-day." She was so fascinating in manner and speech that her guests appeared to overlook all the little discomforts of life.
According to St.Beuve, the privileged circle at Coppet after making an excursion returned from Chambery in two coaches.

Those arriving in the first coach had a rueful experience to relate--a terrific thunder-storm, shocking roads, and danger and gloom to the whole company.

The party in the second coach heard their story with surprise; of thunder-storm, of steeps, of mud, of danger, they knew nothing; no, they had forgotten earth, and breathed a purer air; such a conversation between Madame de Stael and Madame Recamier and Benjamin Constant and Schlegel! they were all in a state of delight.

The intoxication of the conversation had made them insensible to all notice of weather or rough roads.

"If I were Queen," said Madame Tesse, "I should command Madame de Stael to talk to me every day." "When she had passed," as Longfellow wrote of Evangeline, "it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music." Madame de Stael was anything but beautiful, but she possessed that indefinable something before which mere conventional beauty cowers, commonplace and ashamed.