WHEN Elisabeth Louise VigÉe was born at Paris, April, 1755, the French court and monarchy were still at the height of their splendour and power. Only a few years since, the chronicler Barbier had remarked, “It is very apparent that we make all Europe move to carry out our plans, and that we lay down the law everywhere.” Louis XV. was upon the throne; the manners and customs of the ancien rÉgime were in full force, though mitigated and softened by the growing enlightenment and liberalism which were spreading not only in the literary and professional circles, but amongst the younger generation in all classes. Middle-aged men and women had seen Louis XIV., Louis le Grand, “le Roi Soleil,” as an old man; old people could remember him in the prime of his life, the most magnificent King with the most stately court in Christendom. The Cardinal de Luynes, the The Queen, Marie Leczinska, daughter of Stanislaus, ex-King of Poland, was a harmless, uninteresting woman, who had no ambition, no talent, no influence, and a great many children. The King had been married to her when he was fifteen and she two-and-twenty; and after the first few years had lived in an open immorality which was very general at his court, and for a long time did not much affect his popularity with the nation, though every now and then caricatures and epigrams more witty than prudent appeared; as, for instance, the following, written upon the base of the pedestal of an equestrian statue of him, around which were grouped the figures of Strength, Prudence, Justice, and Peace: “Grotesque monument, infÂme piÉdestal. Les vertus sont À pied, le vice est À cheval.” And a few days afterwards upon the same monument: “Il est ici comme À Versailles Louis, however, was more selfish and indifferent than cruel. He was by no means like Frederic William of Prussia, a savage to his family and his subjects, or like three out of the four Georges of England, who were not only outrageously immoral themselves, but brutal tyrants to their wives His court was the most splendid, the most extravagant, and the most licentious in Europe; the cruelty and oppression of many of the great nobles and especially the princes of the blood, were notorious; the laws were harsh and unjust to a frightful extent, but they were not of his making. He neglected the Queen, but did not ill-treat her; he was fond of his children and indulgent to them; while, far from being disliked by his subjects, he was called Louis le Bien-aimÉ. Barbier, writing in December, 1758, gives another sarcastic verse going about in society, which, as it was directed against the King’s all-powerful mistress, the Marquise de Pompadour, attracted general attention, irritated the King, and caused the author, who was discovered to be an officer of the guards, to be sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, after which to be banished to Malta, as he belonged to the order of St. John of Jerusalem. The lines are as follows, and refer to a chÂteau then being built by Louis for the Marquise de “Fille d’une sangsue, et sangsue elle-mÊme Poisson d’une arrogance extrÊme, Étale en ce chÂteau sans crainte et sans effroi La substance du peuple et la honte du Roi.” Barbier, a lawyer and man of the world, whose journal of eight volumes gives a vivid impression of the life of that time, after remarking that the sentence was a very lenient one, “For more than twenty years M. le Comte de Charolois has detained in captivity, against her will, Mme. de Conchamp, wife of a MaÎtre-des-RequÊtes, whom he carried off, and who would have been There had, in fact, been a strong reaction against the restraint and dullness of the last few years of the reign of Louis XIV., when the magnificent, pleasure-loving King, whose victorious armies had devastated Europe, who had made princes of his illegitimate children, lavished the riches of the country upon his mistresses, and yet in his stately beauty and fascination been the idol of France; had changed into a melancholy old man, depressed and disillusioned, looking with uneasiness upon the past, with fear upon the future; while the brilliant beauties and splendid festivities of bygone days had given place to virtue, strict propriety, and Mme. de Maintenon. When Louis XIV. died, people were very tired of this altered state of things. For some time they had been extremely dull and were eager for change and amusement. With a King of five years old, and such a Regent as the Duke of OrlÉans, they were tolerably sure of both. The reign of pleasure, luxury, and licence began with enthusiasm. Never, during the life of Louis le Grand, had the atmosphere of the Court been what it became under the regency, and under his great-grandson. The Regent OrlÉans was not, like the Princes of In reading the memoirs and chronicles of that time one scarcely realises the existence of the many families and households, especially among the noblesse de province Those whose ideas of France in the eighteenth century are derived only from such books as Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities,” or even from a casual acquaintance with a few of the histories and chronicles of the time, are apt vaguely to picture to themselves a nation composed partly of oppressed, starving peasants, and partly of their oppressors, a race of well-bred ruffians and frivolous, heartless women; all splendidly dressed, graceful, polite, and charming in their manners amongst themselves; but arrogant, cruel, and pitiless to those beneath them. Rigaud LOUIS XV. Many such undoubtedly there were; the laws But still, in all ages human nature is the same, and has to be reckoned with under all circumstances, and that people in general are much better than the laws which govern them is evident. If the cruel, unjust marriage laws of England, which until a few years ago were in force, had been universally and fully carried out, making the husband an almost irresponsible tyrant and the wife a helpless, hopeless slave, domestic life would have been hell upon earth. But as the great majority of men had no wish to ill-treat their wives, confiscate their money, deprive them of their children or commit any of the atrocities sanctioned by the laws of their country, families upon the whole went on in harmony and affection. It was only now and then, when a man did wish to avail himself of the arbitrary power placed in his hands, that the results of such iniquitous laws were brought before the public. At the same time, however, the knowledge of their existence and the tone of thought, prejudices, and customs which consequently prevailed, had an influence upon men who were not the least tyrannically inclined, but merely acted in accordance with the ideas and opinions of every one around them. And amidst all the oppression, vice, and evil of which we hear so often in France of the eighteenth century, there was also much good of which The noblesse d’epÉe was the highest, most brilliant, and most scandalous in France; but in its ranks were to be found heroic examples and saintly characters; while far away in the convents and chÂteaux scattered over the country and in quiet bourgeois families in the towns lives were led of earnest faith, devotion, and self-denial. Many an abbess, many a chÂtelaine spent time and money amongst the rich and poor; and there were seigneurs who helped and protected the peasants on their estates and were regarded by them with loyalty and affection. To some extent under the influence of the ideas and prejudices amongst which they had been born and educated, yet they lived upright, honourable, religious lives, surrounded by a mass of oppression, licence, and corruption in the destruction of which they also were overwhelmed. Amongst the philosophic set, the “encyclopÆdists,” so-called from the encyclopÆdia which had been started by Diderot, and to which Grimm, d’Alembert, Buffon, Marmontel, and many other well-known men were contributors, there was a spirit of passionate revolt against the cruelties and abuses of the time, an ardent thirst for liberty, They were, as usual, men of all sorts, shades, and aims. Many, inspired with lofty but unpractical enthusiasm, dreamed of an impossible republic founded upon that of Plato; the ideal of others was a constitutional monarchy and free parliament such as existed in England; there were also, of course, numbers who desired to upset the present order of things so that they might usurp the power and seize the property of everybody for themselves. But besides their hostility to religion, the private characters of these philosophers did not, in many cases, by any means correspond with their writings and professions. Rousseau, notwithstanding his assumption of superior virtue, his pretence of being a leader and teacher thereof, his especial exhortations and instructions to parents about the care and education of their children, and his theories on friendship and love, was absolutely without gratitude for the help and kindness of his friends, ill-tempered, conceited, and quarrelsome; saw no degradation in his liaison with a low, uneducated woman, and abandoned all his children in their infancy at the gate of the enfants trouvÉs. Freethinkers, deists, or open atheists most of them were, delighting in blasphemous assaults and attacks, not only upon the Church and religion in general, but upon God himself; and so outrageous and scurrilous was their habitual language The salon of the famous Mme. Geoffrin was the great resort of philosophers, literary men of different kinds, painters, musicians, and celebrities of various countries, people distinguished in the political world, or belonging to the court and the great noblesse, French and foreign. In art, as in everything else, it was still the age of the artificial. The great wigs and flowing drapery of the last reign had given place to powder and paint, ribbons and pompons, pink roses, and pale blue satin or velvet, À la Pompadour. When people in Parisian society thought of the country, they thought of lambs with ribbons round their necks, shepherdesses in fanciful costumes with long crooks, or a “rosiÈre” kneeling before the family and friends of the seigneur to be crowned with flowers and presented with a rose as the reward of virtue, in the presence of an admiring crowd of villagers; of conventional gardens, clipped trees, and artificial ruins; but wild, picturesque mountain scenery was their abhorrence. The taste of the day was expressed in the pictures of the favourite artists, Watteau and Greuze, who painted the graceful groups and landscapes every one admired: charming women sitting in beautiful gardens dressed in costumes suitable for a ball or court festivity, or anything on earth but being out of doors in the country. Fragonard, the ProvenÇal, had more depth and dramatic feeling, the passion of the south and the love of nature in his work gave a stronger, truer, more impressive tone to his pictures; but Boucher, the favourite painter of Louis XV., the Marquise de Pompadour, and the court would seem from his pictures to have looked upon everything in life as if it were a scene in a carnival or fÊte. His goddesses and saints, even the holy Virgin herself, were painted from models from the theatre, and looked as if they were; his gardens, roses, silks, satins, nymphs, fountains, and garlands were the supreme fashion; every one wanted him to paint their portrait; he had more commissions than he could execute, and his head was turned by the flattery lavished upon him. David, Chardin, the celebrated genre painter, Van Loo, GÉrard, La Tour, Joseph Vernet, and many others were flourishing. Louis VigÉe was also an artist. He painted portraits in pastel, of which his daughter says that they were extremely good, many of them worthy of the famous La Tour; also charming scenes after the style of Watteau, in oil. Although not a great painter he was absolutely devoted to his art, in which he would become so absorbed as to forget everything else. On one occasion he was going out to dinner and had already left the house, when he remembered something he wanted to do to a picture upon which he was working. He therefore went back, took off the wig he was wearing, put on a night-cap, and began to retouch the picture. Presently he got up, went out again, forgetting all about the night-cap which FOOTNOTES:THE early years of the childhood of Elisabeth VigÉe were peaceful and happy enough, and already at a tender age the genius which was to determine and characterise her future life began to appear. According to the usual custom she was placed in a convent to be educated, and though only six years old when she was sent there, she had then and during the five years of her convent life, the habit of drawing and scribbling perpetually and upon everything she could lay her hands on, much to the displeasure of the good Sisters and of her companions. For nothing was safe from her pencil: her books, her copy-books, even those of her schoolfellows, the walls of the dormitory, every available space was covered with heads, figures, and landscapes in crayon or charcoal, and when out in the playground she drew with a stick upon the sand. Little did the other children who made complaints that their books were “spoiled,” or the nuns “Tu seras peintre, mon enfant, ou jamais il n’en sera.” She always kept this drawing, her foretaste of the brilliant success that began so early and never forsook her. Lise, or Lisette, as she was generally called, was a delicate child, and her parents, who were devotedly fond of her and very anxious about her, frequently came and took her home for a few days, greatly to her delight. With them and her brother Louis, their only child besides herself, she was perfectly happy. Louis was three years younger, and did not possess her genius for painting, but the brother and sister were always deeply attached to one another. Her mother was extremely beautiful, of rather an austere character, and very religious. With her the children attended High Mass and the other offices of the Church, especially during Lent; and upon the sensitive, impressionable girl the solemn beauty of the music, and especially the deep notes of the organ, produced an almost overpowering effect. Often as she sat or knelt by her mother the rich, But her greatest love was for her father; it was almost adoration. Louis VigÉe was exactly opposite in disposition to his wife, to whom he was, however, devoted. Kindly, affectionate, light-hearted, and thoughtless, his love for her did not interfere with his admiration for other women; a pretty grisette was quite able to turn his head, and on New Year’s day he would amuse himself by walking about Paris, saluting the prettiest young girls he met, on pretence of wishing them a happy new year. Among his friends he was universally popular; every evening at his house were to be found some of the artists, poets, and other literary men who formed the society in which he delighted, and came to the suppers the gaiety and pleasantness of which were quite appreciated by the child who was always allowed to be of the party, but not to sit up after the dessert was upon the table. She would lie awake in her room, listening to the laughter and songs which she enjoyed without understanding, long after she was in bed. The days were as happy as the evenings, for they were spent in her father’s studio, where he allowed her to paint heads in pastel and to draw all day long with his crayons. At eleven years old Lisette was taken from the convent to live at home, after having made her first Communion. She had so outgrown her strength Amongst the friends who frequented their house her surprising talent naturally excited much attention and interest. One of those she liked best was the historical painter, Doyen, Poinsinet, the author, was a man of very different calibre. That he had plenty of ability was proved by the fact that on the same evening he obtained three dramatic successes, i.e., Ernelinde at the Opera, Le Cercle at the FranÇais, and Tom Jones at the OpÉra-Comique. But his absurd credulity made him the object of continual practical jokes, or mystifications as they were called. On one occasion his friends made him believe that there existed the post of “fire-screen to the King,” and that it might possibly be given to him. In order to qualify himself, they persuaded him to stand frequently before the fire until his legs were quite scorched, assuring him when he wished to move away that if he did not persevere he would never be able to fill that post. Yet his delineation of the society of the day was so true that somebody remarked about his play, Le Cercle, that Poinsinet must have been listening at the doors. He was drowned in Spain while crossing the Guadalquivir. Caresne was a painter and poet whose poems and pictures were bad, but his conversation amusing. He wrote the following verses to Lisette, whose rapid progress and intelligence made her seem to be already passing out of childhood into girlhood: Plus n’est le temps, oÙ de mes seuls couplets Ma Lise aimait À se voir cÉlÉbrÉe. Plus n’est le temps oÙ de mes seuls bouquets Je la voyais toujours parÉe. Les vers que l’amour me dictait Ne rÉpÉtaient que le nom de Lisette, Et Lisette les Écoutait. Plus d’un baiser payait ma chansonette, Au mÊme prix qui n’eÛt ÉtÉ poËte? He gave Lisette lessons in oil-painting for which his wife used to come and fetch her. They were so poor that on one occasion when she wished to finish a head she was painting, and accepted their invitation to stay and dine, she found the dinner consisted only of soup and potatoes. Time passed only too quickly in the happy Louis VigÉe was neither in principles nor tastes at all in sympathy with the new philosophic party; on the contrary, he looked with disapproval and uneasiness upon the future, from which they were so eagerly expecting their millenium. Returning home one day after dinner with Diderot, d’Alembert, Helvetius, and others of their set, he seemed to be so out of spirits that his wife asked if anything were the matter. “Ma chÈre amie,” he replied, “all that I have been hearing makes me think that the world will very soon be upside down.” He was not, however, to live to see the realisation of his fears. Not much more than a year after Lisette’s return from her convent, a terrible calamity befell her in the loss of the father whose love and protection had made the sunshine of her life, and by whose death her lot was entirely changed and her happiness ruined. The illness of Louis VigÉe was caused by a fish-bone which he had swallowed, and which had become fixed in the stomach. Although the mania for operations amongst English doctors of the twentieth century, which in this country adds a With her father’s death vanished for ever the bright, unclouded happiness of her childhood; her life henceforth was chequered with brilliant success, artistic and social, and acute sorrows in her domestic life; like a picture in which the brightness of the lights seem to deepen the gloom of the shadows. They were very badly off, for Louis VigÉe had left scarcely any provision for his family, and Lisette for some time was so stunned with the shock and grief that she seemed to be sunk in despair, taking no interest in anything, and giving up even the painting which had been her passion. Doyen, amongst other friends of VigÉe, used to come to see them; his visits were the greatest consolation to them all, especially to the young girl, who appreciated the affection he had always shown for her father, and by him she was persuaded to resume the studies and work which alone had power to divert her mind in some degree from her sorrow. She began to paint from nature, and did several portraits both in oil and in pastel, working Very often in the mornings the two girls went together to the artist Briard, who had a studio in the Louvre, and who, though an indifferent painter, drew well, and had several other young girls as pupils. Lisette and her friend used to stay there all day, taking their dinner in a basket, and had an especial weakness for certain slices of excellent boeuf À la mode which they bought of the concierge of one of the doors of the Louvre. Lisette always declared in after life that she could never get any so good. Lisette was now rapidly becoming very pretty, to the great satisfaction of her mother, who, seeing that in spite of her busy life and deep interest in her work, her spirits still suffered from the loss of her father, tried to give her all the distraction possible. She would take her to walk in the Tuileries gardens, where the beauty of both mother and daughter attracted much attention; and what pleased her most, to see all the picture galleries possible. They often went to the Luxembourg, in the galleries of which were then the Rubens and many others of the old masters now in the Louvre; besides which they saw all the good private collections. By far the best at that time was the gallery of the Palais Royal, collected by the Regent, Duc d’OrlÉans. These pictures were sold in the Revolution. Many of them were bought by Lord Stafford. Besides her delight in wandering through these galleries where she would stand before her favourite pictures, never tired of studying them, absorbed in their beauty, she copied heads from Rubens, Rembrandt, Vandyke, Greuze, and others, and although she was only fourteen years old, the portraits she painted were not only becoming known, but were the principal support of the family, besides paying for the school expenses, books, and clothes of her brother. But however hard she worked, the family finances did not become sufficiently flourishing to satisfy Mme. VigÉe, who, driven to desperation by their poverty, and of course anxious about the future, everything depending upon the work of a delicate girl of fourteen, resolved to marry again, and unfortunately selected a rich jeweller of her acquaintance, to whose house in the rue St. HonorÉ she removed with her children after the marriage. She had far better have remained in her old home, poor and free; for directly they were married she discovered the real character of her second husband: an ill-tempered, avaricious man, who refused his wife and step-children even the necessaries of life, although Lisette was foolish enough to give him all she earned by her portraits. She hated him still more because he had taken possession of her father’s clothes, which he wore, to her grief and indignation. Joseph Vernet, who, like many of her old friends, still interested himself in her, was furious at all this, and represented to her that she ought to pay a certain pension to her odious step-father and keep the rest of the money herself; but she feared such a She really cared very little for the money she so easily made, all her love was for her art, which alone had the power to raise her above the petty miseries and troubles of her present life. Her step-father was continually doing something or other to annoy and distress them. Their new home was immediately opposite the gardens of the Palais Royal, which in those days were not only very extensive but extremely beautiful, with great forest-trees whose deep shade the sun could not penetrate. The great avenue was a fashionable promenade on Sundays and fÊtes, and to Lisette and her friend Mlle. Boquet, both of whom grew prettier every year, it was a great amusement to walk there with the mother and step-father of the former. The Grand-OpÉra being close by, when the performance was over, which then was at half-past eight, it was the fashion, on summer nights, for every one to come out and walk about these gardens, where sometimes until two o’clock in the morning it was a scene of enchantment. People belonging to the court and society, bourgeois, actors, musicians, the demi-monde all went there. Every well-dressed woman in the evening carried a large bouquet of flowers, the scent of which filled the air, groups of people scattered about sang or played the harp, violin, or guitar, especially on moonlight nights; amateurs and artistes too, the delicious music of Saint Georges, Alsoredo and Garat often attracted crowds of listeners. The demi-monde at that time kept themselves apart from the rest of the company; Frenchmen of good position and manners did not appear with them in public. If they were with them at the theatre it was in a closed box; though in her “Souvenirs” Mme. Le Brun declares that the fortunes made by them and the men ruined by their extravagance far surpassed anything of the kind after the Revolution. The beautiful and notorious Mlle. DuthÉ was often to be seen, amongst others, attended by an Englishman who was not so scrupulous about appearances, and whom Mme. Le Brun saw again with the same person eighteen years afterwards at a theatre in London. Besides the gardens of the Tuileries, Luxembourg, and Palais Royal, there were plenty of other places to which the Parisians resorted for amusement. There was the ColysÉe, an immense place in the Champs-ElysÉes, with a lake on which were held regattas and round which were walks with seats placed about; also a large concert-room with excellent music, as the orchestra was a fine one and many of the best singers were to be heard there. A flight of steps led up to the portico which was the entrance to this concert hall, and was the favourite lounge of the idle, dissipated young men of fashion, who would stand there in groups, making insolent remarks upon the women who came in and out. One evening as Lisette was coming down the steps with her mother, the Duke of OrlÉans, afterwards the infamous Philippe-ÉgalitÉ, stood there with the Marquis de Genlis, both making outrageous remarks to annoy whoever “Ah! there is nothing to be said against that one.” A fashionable promenade was the boulevard du Temple, where every day, especially Thursdays, hundreds of carriages were to be seen driving up and down or standing under the shade of trees now replaced by houses, shops, and cafÉs. Young men rode in and out amongst them, notorious members of the demi-monde tried to surpass every one in the splendour of their dress and carriages. A certain Mlle. Renard had her carriage drawn by four horses, their harness studded with imitation jewels. It was not an age of imitation. In those days as a rule lace was real lace, jewels were real jewels, and if tawdry imitations and finery were worn it was by women of this class. Respectable people would never have dreamed of bedizening themselves with the sort of cheap rubbish with which the modern women of the lower classes delight to disfigure their houses and their dress. On one side of the boulevard were rows of chairs on which sat many old ladies of fashion, highly rouged, according to the privilege of their class. For only women of a certain rank were allowed to wear it. There was also a garden with seats raised one above the other, from which people could see the fireworks in the evenings. The odious step-father, whose name by the by, was Jacques FranÇois Le SÈvre, was annoyed at the universal admiration excited by the beauty of his wife and step-daughter. At one time he tried to Lisette rejoiced at this announcement, for she fancied she would like to live in the country, at any rate for a part of the year. But when they saw the place, which was at Chaillot, it was a miserable little house in a still more miserable little garden, without a tree or any shelter from the sun except a deplorable looking arbour against which nothing would grow properly, while in the next plots of ground were shop boys shooting at birds according to the odious fashion one still sees in the south. Lisette was in despair when she saw it, but fortunately some friends of her mother’s came one Sunday to dine there with them, and were so shocked that they used often to fetch her away and take her out with them on long excursions to all the parks, chÂteaux, and delightful places in the neighbourhood. The one she liked best was Marly-le-Roi, a royal palace entirely destroyed in the Revolution. It was then an abode of enchantment, and she always spoke with rapture of the chÂteau with its six pavilions, its trellised walks covered with jasmin and honeysuckle, its fountains, cascades, canal, and pools upon which floated tame swans, its lawns shaded by enormous trees, its terraces and statues, everything recalling Louis XIV. Here for the first time she saw Marie Antoinette, then Dauphine, walking in the gardens with several of her ladies, all dressed in white. Lisette and her mother were turning back, but the Dauphine stopped them, and speaking in the kindest manner to them begged them to continue their walk wherever they liked. In 1802 Mme. Le Brun revisited this enchanting place, or rather the ground where it used to be. It was entirely swept away; only a stone marked the spot where had been the centre of the salon. When the summer came to an end they gave up their visits to the horrible little villa, to the infinite joy of Lisette and her mother. FOOTNOTES:IN after life Mme. Le Brun used to say that her girlhood had not been like that of other young girls. And indeed it was not. By the time she was fifteen she was already not only a celebrated portrait painter, but very much sought after in society. A portrait of her mother, which she painted when she was not yet fifteen, excited so much admiration that the Duchesse de Chartres, who had often looked at her with interest from the gardens of the Palais Royal, opposite which she lived, sent for her to paint her portrait, and was so delighted with the pretty, gentle girl whose talents were so extraordinary that she spoke of her to all her friends. The beautiful Comtesse de Brionne and her daughter, the Princesse de Lorraine, who was also very pretty, then came to call on her, and their visit was followed by those of all the court and faubourg Saint Germain. She also knew all the great artists In her brilliant career, although the odious step-father was still a great disadvantage and annoyance, it was impossible that he could inflict much of his company upon her, full and absorbed as her life now was with her professional work and social engagements. The most celebrated foreign visitors to Paris generally came to see her, amongst the first of whom were Count Orloff, one of the assassins of Peter III., whose colossal height and the enormous diamond in his ring seem to have made a great impression upon her; and Count Schouvaloff, Grand Chamberlain, who had been one of the lovers of the Empress Elizabeth II., but was now a man of sixty, extremely courteous, pleasant, and a great favourite in French society. Her first great dinner-party was at the house of the sculptor Le Moine, where she met chiefly artists and literary people. It was the custom to sing at dessert, a terrible ordeal for young girls, whose alarm often spoilt their song, but who were obliged to sing all the same. Joseph Vernet had a little son of whose talent for drawing he was very proud; and one day at a party where his friends joked him on his infatuation, he sent for the child, gave him a pencil and paper, and told him to draw. He began at once to draw a horse so well and so boldly that murmurs arose. “Well! Very well! But he has begun too low down, he will have no room for the legs.” The boy, however, drew on with unconcern, finished the body of the horse, drew the upper portion of the legs, and then with a few strokes of the pencil indicated water at the bottom of the sheet, and gave the impression of a horse bathing his legs and feet. But as dinner-parties then took place in the day-time, often as early as two o’clock, Lisette soon found it impossible to spare the time to go to them. What finally decided her to give them up was an absurd contretemps that happened one day when she was going to dine with the Princesse de Rohan-Rochefort. Just as she was dressed in a white satin dress she was wearing for the first time, and ready to get into the carriage, she, like her father in former days, remembered that she wished to look again at a picture she was painting, and going into her studio sat down upon a chair which stood before her easel without noticing that her palette was upon it. The consequences were of course far more disastrous than what had befallen her father; it was impossible to go to the party, and after this she declined as a rule all except evening invitations, of which she had even more than enough. These evening parties were usually delightful; those of the Princesse de Rohan-Rochefort were especially so. The intimate friends of the Princess, the Comtesse de Brionne, Princesse de Lorraine, Duc de Choiseul, Duc de Lauzun, Cardinal de Rohan, and M. de RulhiÈres, a distinguished literary The evenings were spent in brilliant conversation and music, supper was at half-past ten, ten or twelve guests being the usual number at the table. It speaks well for Lisette that her head was not the least turned and her reputation blameless, considering that at an age when girls in our own day are at their lessons in the schoolroom, she, young, pretty, attractive, and celebrated, was constantly thrown into a society the most corrupt and the most fascinating that has perhaps ever existed. But although fully enjoying the amusement and admiration that fell to her lot, she passed unscathed through the temptations and dangers around her. The strength and devotion of her religious principles, the deep love of her art, which was the ruling passion of her life, her affection for her mother, who was always with her, and to whom she confided all her affairs, were her only safeguards. She was constantly surrounded by perils and temptations which to many would have been irresistible. Admiring eyes followed her at the theatre, people crowded round her in the gardens and places of entertainment, men of rank who wanted an opportunity of making love to her had their portraits painted by her for that purpose; but she treated them all with indifference, and when she noticed that their looks and glances were too expressive she would coolly remark: “I am painting your eyes now,” or would insist on the portrait being done with the eyes looking in another direction. The Marquis de Choiseul had just married a very pretty American of sixteen years old, which did not prevent his entertaining a violent passion for Lisette, and trying to make love to her on all possible occasions, but greatly increased her indignation at his doing so. In fact she had given her whole heart to her work. She thought and dreamed of nothing but painting, her career as an artist was her life, and her affection for her mother, her brother, and her friends sufficed for her domestic happiness; she wanted neither love intrigues nor even marriage to disturb the state of things she found so entirely satisfactory. So little did the idea of love enter into her life that until after her marriage she had never read a single novel. Then she read “Clarissa Harlowe,” by way of a beginning, and found it intensely interesting. Before, she only read Lives of the Saints, and various religious or instructive books. It is difficult for those who are accustomed to think of Paris only as it is now, to picture to themselves at all what it was like in the eighteenth century; for until years after the Revolution it was, to all intents and purposes, a mediÆval city. Paris without the wide streets of enormous houses, the broad, shady boulevards, the magnificent shops and crowded pavements, the glare and wealth and luxury of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Paris of old France, of the Monarchy, with its ancient towers and buildings, its great hÔtels and convents with vast gardens above whose high walls rose stately trees; its narrow, crooked, ill-paved The fÊtes and pageants of the Church and court were most gorgeous and impressive. Even to see the King, royal family and court set off for Versailles, Fontainebleau, or any other of the country palaces was a splendid spectacle, the immense number of state coaches which conveyed the King, The Parisians delighted in any shows or festivities, and the royal family were received with acclamations whenever they appeared from the mob, which twenty years later was yelling and howling with savage fury for their destruction. Arnault, in his memoirs, relates that he was brought up at Versailles, where he was at school from 1772 to 1776, and often saw Louis XV. pass in his carriage. The King had a calm, noble face and very thick eyebrows. He took not the slightest notice of the shouts of Vive le roi from the boys drawn up in a line, or from the people; neither did Louis XVI. when he succeeded him. A post in one of the royal households was an object of general ambition. DuruflÉ, though a poet and well-known literary man who had received a prize from the Academy, applied for and obtained the appointment of valet e chambre to the young Comte de Provence, second grandson of the King, afterwards Louis XVIII., and was in consequence obliged to put on his stockings, in doing which he accidentally hurt him. “How stupid you are!” cried the young prince, angrily. “I did not know, Monsieur,” replied he, “that one was stupid because one did not put on a stocking well.” “People are stupid,” answered the prince, “who have not the sense to do properly what they undertake to do.” DuruflÉ, who did not like this sort of thing, hastened to sell the post he had been so anxious to get. Most people at that time, like those before the flood, had no idea of the possibility of the coming destruction. Only the encyclopÆdists and such persons of advanced opinions had any presentiments of the Their great stronghold was the salon of Mme. Geoffrin, where all the radical, atheist, and philosophic parties congregated. D’Alembert, Condorcet, Turgot, Diderot, Morellet, Marmontel, and many other celebrated names were amongst the intimate friends of the singular woman, who although possessing neither rank, beauty, talent, nor any particular gift, had yet succeeded in establishing a salon celebrated not only in France but all over Europe. Owing to her want of rank she could not be presented at court, and yet amongst her guests were many of the greatest names in France, members of the royal family, strangers of rank and distinction. She knew nothing of art or literature, but her Monday dinners and evenings were the resort of all the first artists of the day, and her Wednesdays of the literary and political world. Her salon had been famous from 1750, before Lisette was born, and now, as an old woman, she came to visit the young girl of whose artistic genius she had heard enough to excite her curiosity. She arrived in the morning and expressed great admiration for the beauty and talent of her young hostess. To Lisette she seemed to be about a hundred years of age, though she was not really very old, but her costume, a dark grey dress and a cap over which she wore a large hood tied under her chin, and her bent figure, increased the appearance of age. Mme. Geoffrin M. Geoffrin did not altogether approve of his wife’s perpetual presence at the hÔtel Tencin, which had by no means a good reputation; and when she also began to receive in her own house a few of the literary men whom she met there, philosophers, freethinkers, and various persons upon whom he looked with suspicion, he at first strongly objected. But it was useless. His wife had found the sixteen years of her married life remarkably dull; she had at length, by good fortune, discovered the means of transforming her monotonous existence into one full of interest, and the obscurity which had hitherto been her lot into an increasing celebrity. She turned a deaf ear to his remonstrances, and after a good deal of dissension and quarrelling the husband gave way and contented himself with looking after the household and being a silent guest at the famous dinners given by his wife, until at length, on some one asking her what had become of the old gentleman “It was my husband; he is dead.” Although stupid, M. Geoffrin was harmless, good, and charitable. Their only child, the Marquise de la FertÉ Imbault, adored her father, whom she preferred to her mother. She was a pretty, high-spirited girl, an ardent Catholic, hated her mother’s atheist friends, and always declared that she had forced her into her marriage, which, although a great one, was not a happy one. When Lisette was about twenty, her step-father retired from business and took an apartment in the rue de ClÉry in a large house called hÔtel Lubert, which had recently been bought by the well-known picture dealer, M. Le Brun. Lisette was enchanted at this, as she knew that M. Le Brun had rooms full of the most splendid pictures of all the different schools, to which she would thus have constant access. And her anticipations were more than realised, for M. Le Brun was completely fascinated by her, and only too delighted not only to show her the pictures, but to lend her any she liked to copy. For six months she worked with enthusiasm, perfectly happy and engrossed with her painting, never noticing that her landlord, who was a good-looking, pleasant, but exceedingly dissipated man, was paying her great attention, having fallen violently in love with her. It was therefore a surprise, and not altogether an agreeable one, when at the end of the six months he asked for her mother’s consent to marry her. Lisette at first wished to refuse this offer. She did not at all dislike M. Le Brun, but she was by no means in love with him, and as she could make plenty of money by her profession, she had no anxiety about the future and no occasion to make a mariage de convenance. But her mother, who seems to have had the talent for doing always the wrong thing, and who fancied that M. Le Brun was very rich, did not cease to persecute her by constant representations and entreaties not to refuse such an excellent parti, and she was still more influenced by the desire to escape from her step-father, who, now that he had no occupation, was more at home and more intolerable than ever. So after much hesitation she consented, but so reluctantly, that even on her way to the church where the marriage was to be celebrated, The dishonourable nature of this transaction does not seem to have occurred either to her mother or to Lisette herself. She was rather glad to keep her own name a little longer, but not at all pleased when, it being rumoured that she was engaged to M. Le Brun, everybody began to warn her on no account to marry him. M. Auber, jeweller to the Crown, said: “You had better fasten a stone to your neck and throw yourself into the river than marry Le Brun.” The Duchesse d’Aremberg, Mme. de Canillac, and Mme. de Souza, then Ambassadress to Portugal, all young and pretty, all friends of Lisette’s, came to warn her not to marry the man whose wife she had already been for a fortnight. “In Heaven’s name don’t marry him,” cried the Duchess. “You will be miserable.” And they proceeded to tell her a number of stories, many of which she did not believe, until she found out to her cost that they were true; but which, nevertheless, filled her mind with uneasy suspicions; while her mother sat by with tears in her eyes, repenting of the new folly by which she had again ruined the happiness of her child. However, there was no help for it. The marriage was shortly acknowledged, and Lisette, whose mind was full of her painting, did not allow her spirits to be depressed; more especially as M. Le Brun, although he gambled and ran after other women, was not disagreeable or ill-tempered like her step-father, from whose odious presence she was now set free. Her husband spent all the money she made, and even persuaded her to take pupils, but she did not much mind. She never cared about money, and she made great friends with her pupils, many of whom were older than herself. They put up a swing, fastened to the beams in the roof of the studio, with which they amused themselves at intervals during the lesson. During the March that followed the marriage a There was at this same time a perfect rage for fortune-telling, second sight, and every sort of occult knowledge and experiences. The Comtesses de Flahault and de Marigny, two sisters, both young, thoughtless, and eager for adventures, were anxious to see and consult a certain wizard, then very much the fashion, about whom their curiosity was greatly aroused by the stories told of him. It was not altogether easy in those days for two women of their age and class to go out unattended and unseen, and if they had been discovered it would have caused gossip and scandal. So one dark night they disguised themselves as grisettes, put on large cloaks with hoods and let themselves out through a side door in the garden of the hÔtel. After a long walk they arrived, very tired and rather frightened, at a dirty house in a bad quarter, on the fifth floor of which the wizard lived. They rang a dirty-looking bell, a dingy servant appeared with a smoky lamp, and led them into a dimly-lighted room adorned with deaths’ heads and other weird-looking symbols. As they looked round them with misgiving a concealed door suddenly opened and the wizard stood before them dressed in a long flame-coloured robe, with a black mask, and began to make passes in the air with an ivory wand, using strange words they could not understand, while blue sulphur flames played around him. The two sisters clung to each other in terror, but the man, who saw quite well that they were no grisettes, came forward respectfully, saying to Mme. de Marigny, “Alas! Mme. la Comtesse, why consult destiny? It is pitiless. Nothing will succeed with you; you will die young.” With a cry of alarm she tried to draw her sister away, but the wizard, taking her hand, seemed to study it carefully, and suddenly dropped it with a strange exclamation. “Speak,” said the Comtesse de Flahault. “Speak! Whatever my future is to be, let me know it. Tell “Have you then such a love of falsehood, Madame, that you must have it at any price? Poor woman! she has not the courage to say she believes and fears.” “Well, yes! I believe and am afraid. Will you speak now?” The sorcerer hesitated, and only after much persuasion said slowly and gravely— “Monsieur le Comte, your husband, will lose his head on the scaffold; you will leave France to live without resources in a foreign land; you will work for your living, but after long years of exile you will return to France. You will marry an ambassador, but you will have other vicissitudes.” Such prophecies in the height of their prosperity seemed so absurd that they laughed, gave the wizard a large fee, and returned home, thinking the whole adventure very amusing. However, the predictions were fulfilled. Mme. de Marigny, after many misfortunes, died young. The Comte de Flahault was guillotined during the Terror, and the Comtesse escaped with her son to England, where she lived in great poverty in a village near London, until a friend of hers, the Marquis ——, also an emigrÉ, suggested to her that she should write a novel. That same night she began “AdÈle de Senanges,” which she sold for £100 to a publisher in London, and after which she continued by her writing to support herself and FOOTNOTES:IN 1779 Mme. Le Brun painted for the first time the portrait of the Queen, then in the splendour of her youth and beauty. Madame VigÉe Le Brun MARIE ANTOINETTE, QUEEN OF FRANCE Marie Antoinette was tall, well-formed, with perfectly shaped arms, hands and feet, a brilliant complexion, bluish-grey eyes, delicate though not regular features, a charming expression and a most imposing air, which very much intimidated Mme. Le Brun during the first sitting. But the kindness and gentleness with which the Queen talked to the young artist soon set her at ease, and when the portrait, which was to be presented to the Emperor Joseph II., was finished, she was desired to make two copies of it; one to be sent to the Empress Catherine of Russia, the other to be placed in the royal apartments, either at Versailles or Fontainebleau. After these she painted several portraits of the Queen, one of which, in a straw hat, was, when exhibited in the Salon, 1786, declared by one of those malicious slanders then becoming frequent, to be the Queen en chemise. There was by this time a perfect rage to be painted by Mme. Le Brun. At a performance at the Vaudeville, called “La RÉunion des Arts,” Painting was represented by an actress made up into an exact copy of Mme. Le Brun, painting the portrait of the Queen. Mme. Le Brun was present, having been expressly invited to the box of some friends who wanted to surprise her, and was deeply gratified and touched when all the audience rose and turned towards her with enthusiastic applause. Her first child, the only one that lived, was born in February, 1780. Her extraordinary carelessness about everything but her painting, caused her to make no sort of preparations for this event; and even the day her child was born, although feeling ill and suffering at intervals, she persisted in going on working at a picture of Venus binding the wings of Love. Mme. de Verdun, an intimate friend of hers, came to see her in the morning, and regarding her with disapprobation, asked whether she had got everything ready that she would require; to which Lisette, still occupied with her picture, replied with a look of astonishment that she did not know what she would require. “There you are exactly!” cried her friend; “you are just like a boy. Well, I warn you that you will be confined this evening.” “No! No!” exclaimed Lisette, “I have a sitting to-morrow. I shan’t be confined to-day.” Mme. de Verdun said no more, but went away and sent the doctor. Lisette dismissed him, but he She had another daughter a year or two later that only lived a short time. Mme. Le Brun took the greatest pleasure in her intercourse with the Queen. Having heard that she had a good voice and was passionately fond of music, Marie Antoinette asked her to sing some of the duets of GrÉtry with her; and scarcely ever afterwards did a sitting take place without their playing and singing together. Besides all these portraits of the Queen, Mme. Le Brun painted the King, all the rest of the royal family except the Comte d’Artois; the Duke and Duchess of OrlÉans, the Princesse de Lamballe, the Duchesse de Polignac, and, in fact, almost everybody. Louis XVI., who liked talking to her about her pictures, said one day— “I know nothing about painting, but you make me like it.” The last time Marie Antoinette ever sat to her was at Trianon, when she painted her head for the great picture in which the Queen is represented with her children, the first Dauphin, After the death of her eldest boy, the sight of this picture so affected the Queen that she had it removed, taking care to explain to Mme. Le Brun that this was done only because she could not bear to see it, as it so vividly recalled the child whose loss was at that time such a terrible grief to her. The days were rapidly approaching when she would be thankful that an early death had saved him from the fate of his brother. In 1782 business took M. Le Brun to Flanders, and his wife, who had never travelled, was delighted to accompany him. They began by attending the sale of a magnificent collection of pictures at Brussels, and were received with great kindness and attention by the Princesse d’Aremberg, Prince de Ligne, and many of the most distinguished persons in society. The Prince de Ligne invited them to see his splendid gallery of pictures, chiefly Rubens and Vandyke; they also visited him at his beautiful country place, and after enjoying themselves in Brussels, which was extremely gay, they made a tour in Holland. Mme. Le Brun entered with enthusiasm into all she saw. The quiet, ancient towns of North Holland, with their quaint streets of red-roofed houses built along canals, with only such narrow pavements on each side that no carts or carriages could come there, traffic being carried on by the great barges and boats gliding down the The most important part of the tour to Mme. Le Brun was her visit to Antwerp, then a mediÆval city of extraordinary beauty and interest, which have only, in fact, of comparatively recent years been destroyed by the vandalism of its inhabitants. So striking was its appearance, with its walls, gates, and forest of towers rising from the broad Scheldt, that Napoleon, enchanted with its beauty, said it looked like an Arab city, and he gazed upon it with admiration. E. H. Bearne ANTWERP The walls and fortifications were demolished within the last fifty years, and before and since then many a beautiful historic tower and gateway, many a lovely old house and interesting bit of architecture has vanished before the destroying mania of a stupid town council devoid of either education to comprehend or taste to appreciate and preserve the characteristic beauty which, if they had carefully restored and maintained all that was possible of the old, and carried out the new buildings in harmony with them, would have made their city the pearl of Belgium, as Nuremberg is of Germany. But what to Mme. Le Brun was of great importance during her stay at Antwerp was a portrait by Rubens, the famous Chapeau de Paille, then in a private collection, where she saw and was fascinated by it. The effect of light and shade caused by the arrangement of the two different lights, the ordinary It had great success at the Salon, was engraved by MÜller, and was one of those amongst her works which decided Joseph Vernet, shortly after her return, to propose her as a member of the Royal Academy of Painting. She was duly elected, in spite of the opposition of M. Pierre, who was painter to the King, and a very bad painter too. The following lines were circulated by Mme. Le Brun’s friends upon the occasion: “Au salon ton art vainqueur Devrait Être en lumiÈre Pour te ravir cet honneur, Lise, il faut avoir le coeur De Pierre, de Pierre, de Pierre.” Mme. Le Brun now worked so hard that she made herself ill, often having three sittings a day, and she soon became so thin and out of health that her friends interfered, and by order of the doctor she henceforth, after working all the morning and dining in the middle of the day, took a siesta, which she found invaluable all her life. The evenings were always devoted to society. She still lived in the rue de ClÉry, where M. Le Brun had a large, richly furnished apartment, but as he used nearly the whole of it as a picture gallery, his wife had only two simply furnished rooms for herself, which, however, on her at-home nights Such brilliant assemblies are not to be seen in these days. Not only the great political and social personages, but all the celebrated literary and scientific men, poets, painters, composers, musicians, and actors, were to be found there, and the music was the best to be heard in Paris. Often the composers GrÉtry, Sacchini and Martini had portions of their operas performed there before their first representation at the theatre, the singers were Garat, AsvÉdo, Richer, Mme. Todi, and many well-known amateurs. Cramer and Hulmandel played the piano, Salentin the hautbois, Viotti, Jarnovick, Maestrino, and Prince Henry of Prussia the violin. In those days, as Mme. Le Brun remarks in one of her letters, “people had both time and inclination to amuse themselves,” and the love of music was just then so strong and so general that the disputes between the rival schools of GlÜck and Piccini sometimes even amounted to quarrels. She herself was a GlÜckist, but the Queen and many others preferred the Italian music to the German. The four women who were her most intimate friends, and were always to be found at her parties, were the Marquise de Grollier, Mme. de Verdun, the Marquise de Sabran, and Mme. le Couteux du Molay. Of the rest of her numerous acquaintances “No one can judge of what society in France was,” wrote Mme. Le Brun in her old age, “who has not seen the times when after the affairs of the day were finished, twelve or fifteen agreeable people would meet at the house of a friend to finish the evening there.” The ease and gentle gaiety which pervaded these light evening repasts gave them a charm which was never found in a dinner-party; there was a kind of intimacy and confidence amongst the guests, who, being perfectly well-bred people, knew how to dispense with all formality and restraint. Society was much smaller, people knew each other, or at any rate knew much more about each other, than could be the case after the revolution. The Comte d’Espinchal was the most extraordinary instance of this essentially social life. He passed his days and nights in going from one party or visit to another; he knew all about everything going One evening he was at the Opera ball, then frequented by people in good society. Masked or not, they were equally known to M. d’Espinchal, who as he walked through the rooms saw a man whom he actually did not know, wandering about with distracted looks. He went up to him, asking if he could be of any use, and was told by the perplexed stranger that he had just arrived from OrlÉans with his wife, who had insisted on coming to the Opera ball, that he had lost her in the crowd, and that she did not know the name of the hÔtel or street where they were. “Calm yourself,” said M. d’Espinchal, “Madame, your wife is sitting by the second window in the foyer. I will take you to her,” which he did. The husband overwhelmed him with thanks and asked how he could possibly have known her. “It is perfectly simple,” replied the Count. “Madame being the only woman at the ball whom I did not know, I concluded she had just arrived from the provinces.” Balls were not then the crushes they afterwards became. The company was not nearly so numerous; there was plenty of room for those who were not And so the time passed, each day full of interest and pleasure, in the gayest and most delightful capital in the world; while the witty, charming, light-hearted society who sang and danced and acted and talked so brilliantly, felt, for the most part, no misgivings about the future, no doubt that this agreeable, satisfactory state of things would go on indefinitely, although they were now only a very few years from the fearful catastrophe towards which they were so rapidly advancing, and in which most of them would be overwhelmed. Death, ruin, exile, horrible prisons, hardships, and dangers of all sorts were in store for them, and those who escaped by good fortune, by the devotion or kindness of others, and occasionally by their own courage, foresight, or presence of mind, met each other again years afterwards as if they had indeed passed through the valley of the shadow of death. Amongst the latter was the singer DÉsaugiers, a friend of GrÉtry, well known for his quick and “It is true! I have not my cocarde! No doubt I must have forgotten it and left it on my night-cap.” Most of the rabid mob believed him to be so fanatical a republican that he wore the tricolour by night as well as by day; a few, who guessed the truth, admired his presence of mind and let him escape. Poppo, the celebrated violinist, was also seized and dragged before the bloodthirsty comitÉ de salut public. “Votre nom?” “Poppo.” “Votre profession?” “Je joue du violon.” “Que faisiez-vous au temps du tyran?” “Je jouais du violon.” “Que faites vous maintenant?” “Je joue du violon.” “Et que ferez-vous pour la nation?” “Je jouerai du violon.” Wonderful to say, he was acquitted. It was only to be expected that her brilliant success, both professional and social, would expose Lisette to a considerable amount of gossip, scandal, and jealousy, the usual penalty of distinction of any kind; and she was constantly being annoyed by some false accusation or preposterous story being circulated about her. Amongst other absurd inventions it was reported that she had given a supper in the Greek style which had cost twenty thousand francs. This story had been repeated first at Versailles, then at Rome, Vienna, and St. Petersburg, by which time the sum mentioned had risen to eighty thousand francs. The truth was that this famous supper, which did take place, cost about fifteen francs, and consisted of a chicken and a dish of eels, both dressed after Greek recipes, taken from the “Voyages d’Anacharsis,” which Louis VigÉe had been reading to his sister; two dishes of vegetables, a cake made of honey and little currants, and some old Cyprus wine, which was a present to her. The idea was suddenly suggested to the brother and sister by the book they were reading, and as she expected several people to supper, she arranged the rooms with draperies after the ancient Greek fashion, borrowed from the Comte de Parois, who lived in the house and had a collection of Greek things, all the vases, pitchers, pots, and cups she wanted, arranged the table in the same style, and as her friends arrived, proceeded to dress them one after another in Greek costumes, which she took from the mass of costumes and draperies in her studio. The poet Le Brun-Pindare, dressed in a long purple cloak, represented Anacreon. The other guests were M. and Mme. VigÉe, her brother, M. de RiviÈre, Mme. Chalgrin, daughter of Joseph and sister of Charles Vernet, Mme. de Bonneuil and her pretty child, afterwards Mme. Regnault de Saint-Jean d’Angely, the Marquis de CubiÈres, the Comte de Vaudreuil, M. Boutin, M. GinguÉnÉ, and the famous sculptor Chaudet. Mme. Le Brun was asked by several persons of importance to repeat this supper, but always declined. That the Marquis de CubiÈres was present proved to be fortunate, as the King, vexed by the reports he heard of the enormous expense of this supper, spoke to him about it and was promptly undeceived. However, in the earlier days of Marie Antoinette, especially while she was still Dauphine, the play that went on at court, and in which she took a conspicuous part, was high enough to give rise to grave scandal. The Queen was in the habit of playing pharaon every evening, and on one occasion she noticed that M. de Chalabre, who kept the bank, whilst he was picking up the money of those who had lost, took advantage of a moment when he thought nobody was looking, to put a rouleau of fifty louis into his pocket. When every one was leaving she signed to him to remain, and when they were alone said to him— “Monsieur de Chalabre, I wish to know why you took from the game to-night a rouleau of fifty louis?” “A rouleau, Madame!” “Yes, Monsieur; you put it into the right-hand pocket of your coat.” “Since your Majesty saw me, I must inform the Queen that I removed that rouleau of gold because it is false.” “False! Your proof, Monsieur?” Taking the rouleau out of his pocket, he tore the envelope and showed that it was lead skilfully worked. The Queen turned pale. “Did you notice who put it on the table?” she asked. M. de Chalabre at first denied, but on the Queen’s insisting confessed that it was the young Comte de ——, whose father was an ambassador, and was then abroad. The Queen desired him to keep the affair secret, and the next evening when the young Count approached the tables she said, smiling— “Monsieur le Comte, I promised Madame, your mother, to take you under my guardianship during The lad understood, blushed crimson, and retired, profoundly grateful for being let off so easily. Neither was the lesson lost upon him; after this he played no more. FOOTNOTES:
THE theatre was a passion with Mme. Le Brun, and all the more interesting to her from her friendships with some of the chief actors and actresses, and her acquaintance with most of them, from the great geniuses such as Talma, Mlle. Mars, and Mlle. Clairon to the dÉbutantes like Mlle. Rancourt, whose career she watched with sympathetic interest. For Mme. Dugazon, sister of Mme. Vestris and aunt of the famous dancer Vestris, she had an unmixed admiration; she was a gifted artist and a Royalist heart and soul. One evening when Mme. Dugazon was playing a soubrette, in which part came a duet with a valet, who sang: “J’aime mon maÎtre tendrement,” to which she had to answer: “Ah, comme j’aime ma maÎtresse;” as she sang these words she laid her hand upon It was impossible to spare much time to be absent from Paris, but Mme. Le Brun often spent two or three days at the magnificent chÂteaux to which she was invited, either to paint a portrait or simply as a guest. For the former reason she spent some time at Raincy, Another place at which she liked staying was Gennevilliers, which belonged to the Comte de Vaudreuil, a great friend of hers, and one of the subjects of malicious gossip about her. Gennevilliers was not so picturesque as the other places, but there was an excellent private theatre. The Comte d’Artois and all his society always came to the representations there. The last at which Mme. Le Brun was present was the Mariage de Figaro, played by the actors of the ComÉdie FranÇaise; but, as she observes in one of her letters, Beaumarchais Shortly after this he called upon the Comte de Vaudreuil at Versailles one morning just after he was up, and confided to him a financial scheme by which he expected enormous profit, ending by offering M. de Vaudreuil a large sum of money if he would undertake to make it succeed. The Count listened quietly to all he said, and then replied— “Monsieur de Beaumarchais, you could not have come at a more favourable moment; for I have had a very good night, I have a good digestion, and I never felt better than I do to-day. If you had made me such a proposal yesterday I should have had you thrown out of the window.” Another of the people declared to be in love with Mme. Le Brun, and about whom there was so much gossip as to cause her serious annoyance, was M. de Calonne, the brilliant, extravagant, fascinating Finance Minister of Louis XVI. What made this all the more provoking was that M. de Calonne was not even, like M. de Vaudreuil, All sorts of preposterous stories were circulated about it and about them. Some said M. de Calonne had given Mme. Le Brun a number of bonbons, called papillottes, wrapped up in bank-notes; others that she had received in a pasty a sum of money large enough to ruin the treasury: the truth being that he had sent her, as the price of his portrait, four thousand francs in notes in a box worth about twenty louis, and this was considered by no means a high price for the picture. M. de Beaujon had given her eight thousand francs for a portrait of the same size a short time before, without anybody finding the least fault. The character of Calonne was such that no woman who cared about her reputation would wish her name to be connected with his. The first step in his rapid rise he is said to have owed to having left about some compromising papers of his friend Chalotais on a bureau, where they were found, and the disclosure of their contents caused the ruin and imprisonment of Chalotais and others, about the year 1763. After this he continued to prosper financially, politically, and Madame VigÉe Le Brun CHARLES ALEXANDRE DE CALONNE He was deeply in love with Mme. d’Harvelay, whose husband was the banker and intimate friend of M. de Vergennes, then Foreign Minister. Mme. d’Harvelay, who returned his passion and carried on a secret liaison with him, used her influence with her husband to induce M. de Vergennes to push him on. The husband, who was fascinated by Calonne and did not know or suspect what was going on, was persuaded by his wife one day to write a confidential letter to Vergennes on the subject of the general alarm then beginning to be felt about the disastrous state of the finances and the peril threatening the Monarchy itself, in which he declared Calonne to be the only man who could save the situation. The Court was then at Fontainebleau, and it was contrived that this letter should be shown to the King in the evening, after he had retired to supper with his family. Next day the destinies of France were in the hands of Calonne. Dissipated, unscrupulous, with no money and owing 200,000 Écus, the new ContrÔleur-gÉnÉral des Finances found an empty treasury, an enormous mass of debt, alarm and perplexity in the Government, and gathering fury and suspicion amongst the populace. As to the plans he proposed to meet this grave state of affairs, Louis Blanc declares that his frivolity was only upon the surface, However that might be, he spent enormous sums, lavished money upon the Princes and the Queen, for whom Saint Cloud was bought, and to whom he said upon one occasion— “Madame, si c’est possible c’est fait; si c’est impossible, cela ce fera.” He and Vergennes were said to have wasted the revenues of France, but at any rate he spent money like a gentleman, and when, in 1787, he was dismissed from office, he did not possess an Écu. He was one of the earliest to emigrate, and at Coblentz he met his old love, Mme. de Harvelay, now a rich widow and willing to marry him. He spent her fortune, and later on tried to get employment under Napoleon, who would have nothing to do with him, and he died in comparative obscurity. The royalist sympathies and associations of Mme. Le Brun made her particularly obnoxious to the Radical party, to whom lies and calumnies were all welcome as weapons to be used against political opponents. She was therefore assailed by shoals of libels, accusing her of a liaison with M. de Calonne, by people who were absolutely unknown to her. One Gorsas, a violent Radical whom she had never seen or heard of, was especially violent in the atrocities he poured forth against her for no reason whatever. He was a political writer and afterwards a Jacobin, but met with his due reward, for he was M. Le Brun was just then building a house in the rue Gros-Chenet, and one of the reports spread was that M. de Calonne paid for it, although both M. and Mme. Le Brun were making money enough to afford themselves much greater expenditure than that. Lisette complained bitterly to her husband, who only told her to let them talk, and treated the matter with indignant contempt. But Lisette fretted and made herself unhappy, especially when a deliberate attempt was made to destroy her reputation by a certain Mme. S——, who lived in the rue Gros-Chenet, to which she herself had not yet removed. Mme. S—— was carrying on a liaison with Calonne, who was very much in love with her and very often at her house; she was also sitting for her portrait to Mme. Le Brun, who looked upon her as a pretty, gentle, attractive woman, but thought the expression of her face rather false. One day, while she was sitting to Mme. Le Brun, Mme. S—— asked her to lend her carriage to her that evening to go to the theatre. Mme. Le Brun consented, but when she ordered the carriage next morning at eleven o’clock she was told that neither carriage, horses, nor coachman had come back. She sent at once to Mme. S——, who had passed the night at the hÔtel des Finances and had not yet returned. It was not for some days that Mme. Le Brun made this discovery by means of her coachman, who had been bribed to keep silent, but It was, of course, obvious that this was done in order that the carriage and servants of Mme. Le Brun being seen at night at the hÔtel des Finances, the scandal might be diverted from Mme. S—— to the innocent owner of the carriage. Whether this dastardly trick was done out of mere spite and envy, or only in order to save the reputation of the guilty woman at the expense of the innocent one, Mme. Le Brun never knew, and of course had no more communication with the person in question. Mme. VigÉe, or rather Mme. le SÈvre, had certainly, by her obstinate folly, succeeded in ruining first her own life, then her daughter’s; for the two deplorable marriages she had arranged, both of them entirely for mercenary reasons, had turned out as badly as possible. Her own was the worst, as the husband she had chosen was the more odious of the two men, and she had no means of escaping from him; but Lisette’s was disastrous enough. M. le Brun, though neither disagreeable nor ill-tempered, was impossible on account of the dissipated life he led. Always running after other women, always gambling and in debt, spending not only his own money but all his wife’s earnings, another woman would have left him or led a miserable life. Not so Lisette. She lived in his house on friendly terms with him, though their marriage had long been one only in name. She cared so little for money, and her dress, her Besides the immense number of her friends and acquaintance of later years, she kept up faithfully those of her early days. Her old fellow student, Mlle. Boquet, had given up the profession in which she was getting on so well, and married a M. Filleul, whom the Queen had made her concierge de la Muette. With the Vernet family, too, she was on intimate terms. The landscape painter, Joseph Vernet, was always a kind friend to her. His son Charles, or Carle, as he was called, was also an artist, and his daughter Émilie, the wife of M. Chalgrin, was constantly at her house. The Vernet Carle was a captain in the garde nationale, and lodged with his family in the Louvre when, on the 10th of August, 1792, the mob attacked the Tuileries. As the windows began to break and the shots to rattle round them it was evident that they were all in great danger. Carle caught up in his arms his youngest child, Horace, As he rode across the Carrousel Carle was a conspicuous mark for the mob, who took him for one of the Swiss guards, as he had unfortunately taken off his uniform, and not having time to put it on, was wearing a white vest with a red collar. He was several times fired at, and wounded in the hand, but succeeded in reaching a place of safety with his wife and children. His sister Émilie was not so fortunate. Arrested upon some frivolous pretext, she was thrown into prison. In desperate anxiety Carle flew to David, who, though a terrorist himself, was a comrade and friend of his, and would surely use his influence to help them. David, however, either could or would do nothing; Mme. Chalgrin was dragged before the revolutionary tribunal, convicted of having corresponded with the princes, condemned, and executed. One of David’s most rising pupils before the Revolution was young Isabey, son of a peasant of Franche ComtÉ, who had made money and was rich. Old Isabey had a passion for art, and having two boys resolved to make one a painter, the other a musician; and as Louis, the elder one, was always scribbling upon walls and everywhere figures of all sorts, his father, regardless of the fact that the drawings were not at all good, assured his son that he would be a great artist, perhaps painter to the King; and as the younger boy, Jean-Baptiste, As the lads grew older, however, their talents developed in exactly opposite directions, so that their father found himself obliged to consent to a change of plans with regard to their education. Louis, in fact, became ultimately first violinist to the Emperor Alexander of Russia, while Jean-Baptiste, casting aside his noisy musical instruments, studied painting with enthusiasm, went to Paris in 1786, and with much difficulty succeeded in getting into the studio of David, from which he was shortly afterwards on the point of being expelled, because he made a picture of David as a wild boar, surrounded by his pupils in the form of little pigs; all excellent likenesses. Having no money young Isabey supported himself at Paris by making designs for snuff-boxes and buttons. The Comte d’Artois saw the buttons, which had become very much the fashion, admired them, and desired that Isabey should be presented to him. He was also presented to the Comtesse d’Artois, rapidly got commissions, painted portraits of different members of the royal family and court, and was becoming more and more prosperous when the Revolution broke out, and he was apparently ruined. One day he and other pupils of David had the fancy to spend an idle hour in listening to the debates in the AssemblÉe, where every one went in and out at their pleasure. But they were very little edified by what they Presently they observed a strange, ugly-looking man, who was watching them with a mocking smile. “What gives you the right to laugh at us, Monsieur?” asked one of them, with irritation. “Your youth, mes amis; and above all your naÏvetÉ. Laws are like sauces: you should never see them made.” He bowed and turned away; it was Mirabeau. The acquaintance thus begun was a fortunate one for Isabey. In despair at the disappearance of the court and apparently of his own chance of getting on with his profession, he was thinking of giving it up. Mirabeau advised him to stick to it and gave him the commission to paint his own portrait. He persevered accordingly, passed safely through the Revolution, and was a favourite court painter during the Empire and Restoration. One dark, gloomy day, during the height of the Terror, he was sitting in his studio early in the morning, busily making up the fire in his stove, for it was bitterly cold. There was a knock at the door, and a woman wrapped in a large cloak stood on the threshold, saying— “You are the painter, Isabey?” “Yes. What do you want of me?” “I want you to do my portrait at once.” “Diable! At once? You are in great haste,” said he, smiling. “It is not I who am in haste; it is the guillotine,” replied the stranger. “To-day I am on the suspected list, to-morrow I shall no doubt be condemned. I have children. I wish to leave them a remembrance of me, that is why I come to ask you to paint my portrait. Will you?” “I am ready, Madame,” he said, beginning at once to prepare his palette and brushes. “In what costume do you wish to be painted?” “In this,” she answered; and throwing off her hood and cloak, he saw a woman still young and pretty, her hair powdered and covered with a simple little cap, a grey silk dress, green apron, high-heeled shoes, and a carton in her hand. “I am Mme. Venotte,” she went on. “I had the honour to be marchande de dentelles to la sainte reine whom they have sent to God. I wish my children always to see me in the costume I used to wear when Marie Antoinette deigned to admit me to her presence.” Though he painted this portrait in haste, with tears in his eyes, it was one of the best ever done by Isabey. In 1786 Mme. Le Brun received an invitation to paint the portrait of Mme. Du Barry, the once lovely and all powerful favourite of Louis XV. With great curiosity she went down to the chÂteau of Louveciennes, given to his mistress by the late King, where she still lived in luxury but almost in solitude, for of the courtiers and acquaintances who Louveciennes The career of Jeanne Vaubernier, Comtesse Du Barry, was a most extraordinary one. Her father was a workman, and she, after being a milliner’s apprentice for some years, lived under the name of Mlle. Lange, in a house of bad fame, where she became the mistress of Count Jean Du Barry, who in 1769 presented her to Louis XV., who was deeply fascinated by her wonderful beauty, and over whom, after having gone through the form of marriage with the brother of Jean Du Barry, she reigned supreme during the remainder of his life. But her day of power and splendour was only a short one, for the King died five years afterwards (1774), when she was, of course, immediately obliged to leave the court and live in retirement; probably much sooner than she expected, for Louis XV. was only sixty-three when he fell a victim to small-pox. The twelve years had been spent in her chÂteau, where the Duc de Brissac took the place of his royal predecessor. Mme. Du Barry received Mme. Le Brun with the greatest politeness and attention; she was now about forty-two, and still extremely handsome. The brilliant beauty of her complexion had begun to fade, but her face was still charming, her features Her way of living was very simple; she walked about the park summer and winter, visited the poor, to whom she was most kind and generous, wore muslin or cambric dresses, and had very few visitors. The only two women who came much to see her were Mme. de Souza, the Portuguese Ambassadress, and the Marquise de Brunoy. M. de Monville, a pleasant, well-bred man, was frequently there, and one day the Ambassador of Tippoo Sahib arrived to visit her, bringing a present of a number of pieces of muslin richly embroidered with gold, one of which she gave to Mme. Le Brun. The Duc de Brissac was of course there also, but, though evidently established at the chÂteau, there was nothing either in his manner or that of Mme. Du Barry to indicate anything more than friendship between them. Yet Mme. Le Brun saw plainly enough the strong attachment which cost them both their lives. Under her own room, which looked out towards Marly, Mme. Le Brun discovered a gallery in which were huddled together all sorts of magnificent marbles, busts, vases, columns, and other costly works of art, the relics of former grandeur. Every day after dinner, they had their coffee in the splendid pavilion of Louis XV. It was decorated and furnished with the greatest luxury and magnificence, the chimney-piece, doors, and locks were precious works of art. The first time they entered it Mme. Du Barry said, “It was in this room that Louis XV. used to Mme. Le Brun generally spent the evening alone with Mme. Du Barry by the fireside. The latter would sometimes talk of Louis XV. and his court, always with respect and caution. But she avoided many details and did not seem to wish to talk about that phase of her life. Mme. Le Brun painted three portraits of her in 1786, 1787, and in September, 1789. The first was three-quarters length, in a peignoir with a straw hat; in the second, painted for the Duc de Brissac, she was represented in a white satin dress, leaning one arm on a pedestal and holding a crown in the other hand. This picture was afterwards bought by an old general, and when Mme. Le Brun saw it many years later, the head had been so injured and re-painted that she did not recognise it, though the rest of the picture was intact. Painted by herself MADAME LE BRUN ET SA FILLE The third portrait Mme. Le Brun retained in her own possession—for she had begun it in September, 1789, when the terrors of the Revolution were beginning. As she painted at Louveciennes they could hear the thunder of the cannonades, and the unfortunate Mme. Du Barry said to her— “If Louis XV. were alive all this would certainly not have happened.” When she had painted the head and sketched out the arms and figure, Mme. Le Brun was obliged to go to Paris. She intended to come back to finish her work, but she found the murder of Foulon and Berthier had just taken place, and the state of The fate of Mme. Du Barry is well known. She escaped to England where she was kindly received, and where the great value of her diamonds enabled her to live quite well herself, and also to help many of the emigrÉs, to whom she was most generous. But the Duc de Brissac had remained concealed at Louveciennes, and she insisted on going back to him. The friends she made in England pointed out the danger of doing so, and did all they could to dissuade her—they even unharnessed the horses of her travelling carriage. It was all useless, she would go. Soon after her return to Louveciennes the Duc de Brissac was seized and carried away from her to be taken to OrlÉans. On the way he and his companions were attacked and murdered by the mob and his head brought to Mme. Du Barry. Then she herself was betrayed and denounced by a little negro named Zamore, who was in her service, and had been loaded with benefits and kindness by Louis XV. and by herself. In consequence of the denunciation of this wretch she was thrown into prison, tried, and executed at the end of 1793. In all those terrible days she was the only woman whose courage failed at the last. She cried and entreated for help from the crowd around the scaffold, and that crowd began to be so moved by her terror and despair that the execution was hurried on lest they should interfere to prevent it. Mme. Le Brun, alluding to this circumstance, “I have always been persuaded,” she says in one of her letters, “that if the victims of that time of execrable memory had not had the noble pride to die with courage, the Terror would have ceased much sooner. Those whose intelligence is not developed have too little imagination to be touched by silent suffering, and it is much easier to arouse the compassion than the imagination of the populace.” FOOTNOTES:THE year 1788 was the last of the old rÉgime. Mme. Le Brun was now thirty-two and at the height of her fame and prosperity. She had more commissions than she could execute, more engagements than she could keep, more invitations than she could accept, but her mind was full of gloomy presentiments. She passed the summer as usual between Paris and the country houses where she stayed. As she drove with a friend down to Romainville to stay with the Comte de SÉgur, she noticed that the peasants they met in the roads did not take off their hats to them, but looked at them insolently, and sometimes shook their sticks threateningly at them. While she was at Romainville there was a most awful storm, the sky which had become deep yellow with black clouds of alarming appearance, seemed to open and pour forth flash after flash of lightning, accompanied by deafening thunder and enormous hailstones, which ravaged the country for forty leagues round Paris. Pale and trembling, Mme. de When the storm had subsided the peasants were crying and lamenting over the destruction of their crops, and all the large proprietors in the neighbourhood came most generously to their assistance. One rich man distributed forty thousand francs among them. The next year he was one of the first to be massacred. As time went on and affairs became more and more menacing, Mme. Le Brun began to consider the advisability of leaving the country, and placing herself and her child out of the reach of the dangers and calamities evidently not far distant. Early in 1789 she was dining at La Malmaison, which then belonged to the Comte de Moley, a rabid Radical; he and the AbbÉ de SieyÈs and several others were present, and so fierce and violent was their talk that even the AbbÉ de SieyÈs said after dinner— “Indeed, I think we shall go too far;” while the Comtesse du Moley and Mme. Le Brun were horror-stricken at the terrible prospects unfolded to them. After this, Mme. Le Brun went for a few days to Marly to stay with Mme. Auguier, sister of Mme. Campan, and attached like her to the Queen’s household. One day as they were looking out of a window into the courtyard which opened on to the road, they saw a man stagger in and fall down. Mme. Auguier sent her husband’s valet de chambre Mme. Auguier sent for the marÉchaussÉ, four of whom appeared, and took the fellow in charge; but the valet de chambre who followed them unperceived, saw them, as soon as they thought themselves out of sight, singing and dancing, arm in arm with their prisoner. Terror-stricken, they agreed that these papers must be shown to the Queen, and when, a day or two afterwards, Mme. Auguier was in waiting, she took them to Marie Antoinette, who read and returned them saying— “These things are impossible. I shall never believe they meditate such atrocities.” Mme. Auguier’s affection for the Queen cost her her life. In the fury of the Revolution, knowing her to be without money, she lent Marie Antoinette twenty-five louis. This became known, and a mob rushed to her house to take her to prison and execution. In a frenzy of terror Mme. Auguier threw herself out of the window, and was killed on the spot. The last time Mme. Le Brun saw the Queen was at the last ball given at Versailles, which took place in the theatre, and at which she looked on from one of the boxes. She observed with indignation the rudeness of some of the young Radical nobles; they refused to dance when requested to do so by the Queen, whose agitation and uneasiness were only too apparent. The demeanour of the populace was becoming every day more ferocious and alarming; the drives and streets were scarcely safe for any but the lower classes. At a concert given by Mme. Le Brun, most of the guests came in with looks of consternation. They had been driving earlier in the day to Longchamps, and as they passed the barriÈre de l’Étoile, a furious mob had surrounded and insulted everybody who passed in carriages. Villainous looking faces pressed close to them, horrible figures climbed on to the steps of the carriages, crying out, with infamous threats and brutal language, that next year they should be in the carriages and the owners behind them. The continual terror in which she now lived began to affect the health of Lisette. She knew perfectly well that she herself was looked upon with sinister eyes by the ruffians, whose bloodthirsty hands would soon hold supreme power in France. Her house in the rue Gros-Chenet, in which she had only lived for three months, was already marked; sulphur was thrown down the grating into the cellars; if she looked out of the windows she saw menacing figures of sans-culottes, shaking their fists at the house. If she had not got away in time there can be no Mme. Le Brun returned home, but dared not stay there, so she accepted the invitation of her brother’s father-in-law, M. de RiviÈre, in whose house she thought she would be safe, as he was a foreign minister. She stayed there a fortnight, treated as if she were a daughter of the house, but she had resolved to get out of France before it was too late. It would in fact have been folly to stay any longer; already the mob had set fire to the barriÈre at the end of the rue ChaussÉe-d’Antin, where M. de RiviÈre lived, and had begun to tear up the pavement and make barricades in the streets. Many people disapproved of emigrating, some from patriotic She had numbers of orders, and of portraits half finished, but she was too nervous and agitated to paint, and she had a hundred louis which some one had just paid for a picture—to herself fortunately, not to M. Le Brun, who generally took everything, sometimes never even telling her it had been paid, at other times saying he must have the whole sum for an investment, or to pay a bill owing. This hundred louis would take her to Rome with her child and nurse, and she began in haste to pack up and prepare for the journey. It was the evening before the day fixed for their departure, the passport was ready, her travelling carriage loaded with luggage, and she was resting herself in her drawing-room, when a dreadful noise was heard in the house, as of a crowd bursting in; trampling of feet on the stairs, rough voices; and as she remained petrified with fear the door of the room was flung open and a throng of ruffianly-looking gardes nationaux with guns in their hands, many of them drunk, forced their way in, and several of them approaching her, declared in coarse, insolent terms, that she should not go. In reply to her observation that she had a perfect right to go where she chose, they kept repeating— “Vous ne partisez pas, citoyenne, vous ne partisez pas.” At last they went away, but in a few moments two of them whose appearance was different from the rest returned and said— “Madame, we are your neighbours; we have come back to advise you to go, and to start as soon as possible. You cannot live here, you are so changed that we are sorry. But do not travel in your carriage; go by the diligence, it is safer.” Lisette thanked the friendly gardes with all her heart, and followed their advice. She sent to take three places in the diligence, but there were none to be had for a fortnight, as so many people who were emigrating travelled by it for greater safety. Those of her friends who were Radicals blamed Lisette for going, and tried to dissuade her. Mme. Filleul, formerly Mlle. Boquet, said to her— “You are quite wrong to go. I shall stay, for I believe in the happiness the Revolution will bring us.” She remained at La Muette until the Terror began. Mme. Chalgrin, of whom she was an intimate friend, came there to celebrate very quietly the marriage of her daughter. The day after it, both Mme. Chalgrin and Mme. Filleul were arrested by the revolutionists and guillotined a few days later, because they were said to have “burnt the candles of the nation.” Lisette paid no attention to the dissuasions of her friends; in spite of all they said she knew quite well that she was in danger. No one could be safe, however innocent, if any suspicion or grudge against “Although, thank Heaven, I have never done harm to anybody,” she said. “I agree with the man who said: ‘They accuse me of having stolen the towers of Notre Dame; they are still in their place, but I am going, for it is clear that they have a grudge against me.’” “What is the use of taking care of one’s health?” she would say when her friends were anxious about her. “What is the good of living?” It was not until the 5th of October that the places in the diligence could be had, and on the evening of the 4th Lisette went to say goodbye to her mother, whom she had not seen for three weeks, and who at first did not recognise her, so much had she changed in that short time and so ill did she look. They were to start at midnight, and it was quite time they did so. That very day the King, Queen, and royal family were brought from Versailles to Paris by the frantic, howling mob. Louis VigÉe, after witnessing their arrival at the HÔtel de Ville, came at ten o’clock to see his sister off, and give her the account of what had happened. “Never,” he said, “was the Queen more truly a Queen than to-day, when she made her entry with so calm and noble an air in the midst of those furies.” It was then she made her well-known answer to Bailly, “J’ai tout vu, tout su, et tout oubliÉ.” Half beside herself with anxiety and fear for the fate of the royal family and of all respectable people, Lisette, her child, and the nurse or nursery However, it happened on that night to be unusually quiet, for the inhabitants had been to Versailles after the King and Queen, and were so tired that they were asleep. At the barrier came the parting with those she was leaving in the midst of perils. When they would meet again, if they ever did at all, it was impossible to guess. The journey was insupportable. In the diligence with them was a dirty, evil-looking man, who openly confessed that he was a robber, boasting of the watches, &c., that he had stolen, and speaking of many persons he wished to murder À la lanterne, amongst whom were a number of the acquaintances of Mme. Le Brun. The little girl, now five or six years old, was frightened out of her wits, and her mother took courage to ask the man not to talk about murders before the child. He stopped, and afterwards began to play with her; but another Jacobin from Grenoble, also a passenger, gave vent to all kinds of infamous and murderous threats and opinions, haranguing the people who collected round the diligence whenever they stopped for dinner or supper; whilst every now and then men rode up to the diligence, They did not know her at first, for besides her altered looks she was dressed as an ouvriÈre, having just exhibited in the Salon her portrait which she had painted with her child in her arms, and fearing she might be recognised. They spent three days in the Artaut family, thankful for the rest, the quietness and the kindness they received. M. Artaut engaged a man he knew to take them on their journey, telling him that they were relations of his, and recommending them to his care. They set off accordingly, and, this journey was indeed a contrast to the last. Their driver took the greatest care of them, and they arrived in safety at the bridge of Beauvoisin, the frontier of France. Never, would Mme. Le Brun say in after years, could she forget or describe the feelings with which she drove across that bridge to find herself at the other side—safe, free, and out of France. Henceforth the journey was a pleasure, and with “Madame should take a mule,” said a postillion coming up to her, as she walked slowly up the precipitous mountain path. “It is much too tiring for a lady like Madame to go up on foot.” “I am an ouvriÈre,” she replied, “and am accustomed to walk.” The man laughed. “Ah!” he said, “Madame is no ouvriÈre; it is very well known who she is.” “Well, who am I, then?” “You are Mme. Le Brun, who paints with such perfection, and we are all very glad to know that you are far away from those wicked people.” “I could never guess,” said Lisette, “how the man knew me. But this proved the number of spies the Jacobins had everywhere. However, I was not afraid of them now; I was out of their execrable power. If I had no longer my own country, I was going to live where art flourished and urbanity reigned—I was going to Rome, Naples, Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg.” FOOTNOTE:PASSING through ChambÉry, the little party arrived at Turin in pouring rain, and were deposited late at night in a bad inn, where they could get nothing to eat; but the next day the celebrated engraver, Porporati, insisted on their removing to his house, where they spent five or six days. At the Opera they saw the Duc de Bourbon and his son, the unfortunate Duc d’Enghien, whose murder was the blackest stain upon the fame of Napoleon. The Duc de Bourbon looked more like the brother than the father of his son; he was only sixteen when the Duc d’Enghien was born. Taking leave of the excellent Signor Porporati and his daughter, they proceeded to Parma, where the Comte de Flavigny, Minister of Louis XVI., at once called upon Mme. Le Brun, and in his society and that of the Countess she saw everything at Parma. It was her first experience of an ancient, But the pictures and churches filled Lisette with delight, especially the masterpieces of Correggio, the glory of Parma. In the huge mediÆval palace the Infanta, sister of Marie Antoinette, held her court, and to her Mme. Le Brun was presented by M. de Flavigny. Much older than the unfortunate Queen of France, and possessing neither her beauty nor charm, Mme. Le Brun did not take a fancy to her, although she received her very well. She was a strange person, with masculine manners and habits; her great pleasure apparently was riding. Very pale and thin, wearing deep mourning for her brother, the Emperor Joseph II., even her rooms being hung with black, she gave the impression almost of a spectre or a shadow. After a few days at Parma, Lisette went on to Modena, Bologna, and Florence, under the escort of the Vicomte de LespigniÈre, a friend of M. de Flavigny, whose carriage kept close behind her own. As M. de LespigniÈre was going all the way to Rome—a journey not very safe for a woman with only a governess and child—this was an excellent arrangement; and they journeyed on pleasantly enough through Italy; the calm, sunny days, the enchanting scenes through which they passed, the treasures of art continually lavished around them, the light-hearted courtesy of the lower classes, the careless enjoyment and security of their present surroundings, contrasting strangely with the insolence and discomfort, the They lingered for a while at Florence, unable to tear themselves away from that enchanting city, with its marvellous wealth of art and that beauty of its own, of walls and towers and palaces and ancient streets then undestroyed. The long galleries of pictures and statues, the lovely churches filled with gems of art, the stately palaces and gardens, the cypress-crowned heights of San Miniato, and the whole life there, were enchanting to Lisette. She had been made a member of the Academy at Bologna; she was received with great honour at Florence, where she was asked to present her portrait to the city. She painted it in Rome, and it now hangs in the Sala of the great artists in the Uffizi. In the evening she drove along the banks of the Arno—the fashionable promenade, with the Marchesa Venturi, a Frenchwoman married to an Italian, whose acquaintance she had made. Had it not been for her anxiety about what was going on in France she would have been perfectly happy, for Italy had been the dream of her life, which was now being realised. E. H. Bearne IL PONTE VECCHIO, FLORENCE With reluctance she left Florence, but after all her supreme desire was Rome, and when at length in the distance across the plain over which they were travelling, the dome of St. Peter’s rose before them, she could hardly believe she was not dreaming, and that Rome lay there. Through the Porta del Popolo, across the piazza, down the Corso, and up to the entrance of the French Academy they drove, and the long journey was finished. M. MÉnageot, the Director, came out to the carriage, offered her a little apartment for herself, her child, and governess, and lent her ten louis, for she had not enough left to pay her travelling expenses. Then having installed her in her rooms, he went with her to St. Peter’s. The next day, just as she was starting for the Vatican Museum, the students of the Academy came to visit her, bringing her the palette of Drouais, a talented young painter whom she had known in Paris, and who had lately died. He had dined with her the evening before he started for Rome, and she was much touched at the recollection of him and at the request of the lads that she would give them some old brushes she had used. It was necessary in the next place to look for a permanent abode, and this seemed to be difficult. The apartment in the French Academy was too small, though every one who knows Rome will understand what a temptation its magnificent situation must have been to stay there. So she took rooms in the Piazza di Spagna, which is, of course, one of the most convenient and animated situations in Rome; but the noise, which never seems to inconvenience Italians, was insupportable to her. Carriages and carts, groups of people singing choruses, lovely in themselves, but distracting when they went on all night, made sleep impossible, and drove her to another dwelling, a small house in a quiet street which took her fancy. The whole house was so charming that, with her usual carelessness about money, she hastened to pay At last, in spite of her being unlucky or fanciful, or both, she succeeded in finding a dwelling-place, and as directly she arrived, visits and commissions began to pour upon her, she soon had plenty of money and plenty of society. One of her first portraits was that of the Polish Countess Potocka who came with the Count, and directly he had gone away said to Mme. Le Brun: “That is my third husband, but I think I am going to take the first back again; he suits me better, though he is a drunkard.” Lisette now settled down into that Roman life She had only to choose amongst the great personages who wanted their portraits painted; and she spent the time when she was not working in wandering amid the scenes to visit which had been the dream of her life. Ruins of temples, baths, acqueducts, tombs, and monuments of the vanished Empire, gorgeous churches and palaces of the Renaissance, huge never-ending galleries of statues and pictures, the glories of Greek and of mediÆval art; Phidias and Praxiteles, Raffaelle, Michael Angelo, and Leonardo; the picturesque beauty of Rome, as it was then, the delicious gardens, since swept away by the greedy vandalism of their owners; the mighty Colosseum; the solemn desolate Campagna; all filled her mind and imagination and distracted her thoughts from France and the horrors going on there. At Rome in those days there certainly seemed to be everything that could be wished for to make life a paradise upon earth. Besides the natural beauty, the historical and archÆological interest, and the treasures of art, the magnificence of the ecclesiastical functions, church services, stately processions, and entrancing music were a perpetual delight to her. “There is no city in the world,” she wrote to a Among the new friends she found most interesting was Angelica Kaufmann, who lived in Rome, and whose acquaintance she had long desired to make. That distinguished artist was then about fifty years old; her health had suffered from the troubles caused by her unfortunate marriage with an adventurer who had ruined her earlier years. She was now the wife of an architect, whom Lisette pronounced to be like her homme d’affaires. Sympathetic, gentle, and highly cultivated, Lisette found her conversation extremely interesting, although the calmness and absence of enthusiasm in her character contrasted strongly with her own ardent, imaginative nature. She showed her several both of her finished pictures and sketches, of which Lisette preferred the latter, the colour being richer and more forcible. Mme. Le Brun painted the portraits and went to the parties of the chief Roman families, but did not form many intimate friendships amongst them, for most of her spare time was spent with the unfortunate refugees from France, of whom there were numbers in Rome during the years she lived there. Many of them were her friends who had, like herself, managed to escape. Amongst these were the Duke and Duchess de Fitz-James and their son, also the Polignac family, with whom Mme. Le Brun refrained out of prudence from being too much seen, lest reports should reach France that she was plotting with them against However they were none of them in the same danger that she would have been had she remained at Paris. None of them were at all conspicuous, and as far as any one could be said to be tolerably safe in France under the new reign of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, they might be supposed to be so. Amongst others who arrived were the Duchesse de Fleury and Princesse Joseph de Monaco. The latter was a gentle, charming woman, whose devotion to her children was the cause of her death. After having escaped from France and arrived safely in Rome, she was actually foolish enough to go back to Paris with the idea of saving the remains of her fortune for her children. The Terror was in full force; she was arrested and condemned. Those who wished to save her entreated her to declare herself enceinte, by which many women had been spared. She would anyhow have gained a reprieve, and as it happened her life would have been saved, as the ninth Thermidor was rapidly approaching. But her husband was far away, and she indignantly refused, preferring death to such an alternative. Quite another sort of woman was the Duchesse de Fleury, with whom Lisette formed an intimate friendship. The Duchess, nÉe AimÉe de Coigny, was a true type of the women of a certain set at the old French court, and her history was one Beautiful, both in face and form, imaginative, brilliant, and fascinating; with charming manners and lax morality, her passionate love of art and natural beauty attracted her to Lisette, who found in her the companion she had long wished for. They spent their evenings at the Maltese embassy, where the soirÉes of the Ambassador, Prince Camilla de Rohan, Grand Commander of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, were frequented by all the most intellectual and distinguished people in Rome. They made excursions to all the enchanting places within reach—Tivoli, Tusculum, Monte Mario, the Villa Adriano, and many another ancient palace or imposing ruin; and when the hot weather made Rome insupportable, they took a house together at Gensano, and spent the rest of the summer in those delicious woods. They hired three donkeys to make excursions, and took possession with delight of the ancient villa which had belonged to Carlo Maratta, some of whose sketches might still be seen on the walls of one of its great halls. All that country, Frascati, L’Ariccia, Castel Gandolfo, Albano, Gensano, is a dream of beauty and romance. Lakes, mountains, and forests, picturesque towns and villages perched high upon the steep sides of precipices, rocks crowned with ruined towers or convents, ancient villas like huge palaces, with colonnades, fountains, and loggie, buried among deep woods of ilex and chestnut, in whose cool shade they could spend the bright, hot, glowing days. In the evenings they rode or walked, watching the gorgeous sunset and afterglow; and in those radiant Italian nights, when the whole country lay white and brilliant under the light of the southern moon, they would wander through the woods glittering with glow-worms and fireflies, or perhaps by the shores of Lake Nemi, buried deep amongst wooded cliffs, a temple of Diana rising out of its waters. The Duchesse de Fleury, who had attached herself with such enthusiastic affection to Mme. Le Brun, was scarcely sixteen, although in mind, character, and experience she was far older than her years. Her mother having died in her early life, she was brought up by her father, the Comte de Coigny, at his chÂteau at Mareuil, an enormous place built by the celebrated Duchesse d’AngoulÊme (whose husband was the last of the Valois, though with the bend sinister), who died in 1713, and yet was the daughter-in-law of Charles IX., who died 1574. Married when a mere child to the Duc de Fleury, great-nephew of the Cardinal, there was no sort of affection between her husband and herself, each went their own way, and they were scarcely ever in each other’s society. He had also emigrated, but he was not in Rome, and Mme. Le Brun, who was very fond of her, foresaw with anxiety and It is difficult to understand how anybody who had escaped from France at that time should have chosen to go back there, except to save or help somebody dear to them. As Mme. Le Brun remarked in her own case: “It is no longer a question of fortune or success, it is only a question of saving one’s life,” but many people were rash enough to think and act otherwise, and frequently paid dearly for their folly. Mme. de Fleury returned to Paris while, or just before, the Terror was raging, and availed herself of the revolutionary law, by which a husband or wife who had emigrated might be divorced. But soon after she had dissolved her marriage and resumed the name of Coigny she was arrested and sent to St. Lazare, one of the most terrible of the prisons of the Revolution, then crowded with people of all ages, ranks, and opinions. AimÉe de Coigny was no saint or heroine, like the Noailles, La Rochejaquelein, and countless others, whose ardent faith and steadfast devotion raised them above the horrors of their surroundings, and carried them triumphantly through danger, Neither had she the anxiety and care for others which made heroes and heroines of so many in those awful times. She had no children, and the only person belonging to her—her father—had emigrated. She was simply a girl of eighteen suddenly snatched from a life of luxury and enjoyment, and shrinking with terror from the horrors around and the fate before her. Amongst her fellow-prisoners was AndrÉ ChÉnier, the republican poet, who was soon to suffer death at the hands of those in whom his fantastic dreams had seen the regenerators of mankind. He expressed his love and admiration for her in a poem called “La jeune Captive,” of which the following are the first lines:— “Est-ce À moi de mourir? Tranquille je m’endors, Et tranquille je veille, et ma veille aux remords, Ni mon sommeil ne sont en proie. Ma bienvenue au jour me rit dans tous les yeux; Sur des fronts abattus, mon aspect dans ces lieux RamÈne presque de la joie.” Mon beau voyage encore est si loin de sa fin; Je pars, et des ormeaux qui bordent le chemin, J’ai passÉ les premiers À peine. Au banquet de la vie À peine commencÉ Un instant seulement mes lÈvres ont pressÉ La coupe en mes mains encore pleine. Je ne suis qu’au printemps, je veux voir la moisson; Et comme le soleil, de saison en saison, Je veux achever mon annÉe. Brilliante sur ma tige, et honneur du jardin, Je n’ai vu luire encor que les feux du matin; Je veux achever ma journÉe.” * * * * * Another of her fellow-prisoners, equally fascinated by her and able to render her more practical service, was M. de Montrond, a witty, light-hearted sceptic, a friend of Talleyrand. It having come to his knowledge that a plot was preparing for another massacre in the prisons on pretence of conspiracy among the prisoners, whose names and lives were at the mercy of the spies within and the police and gaolers without, he contrived by paying a hundred louis to get his own and Mme. de Coigny’s liberation, and after the Terror was over they married and went to England for their honeymoon. At the end of two months they were tired of each other, came back to Paris and were divorced, and the Baronne de Montrond again resumed the name of Coigny. When the Restoration took place and her father returned she devoted herself to him during the rest of his life; and as her first husband returned too and had an appointment in the household of Louis XVIII., she was always liable to meet him as well as her second husband in society. In spite of all her social success hers was not a disposition to be happy. She was too excitable, emotional, and unreasonable. A liaison with a brother of Garat brought her much unhappiness, “Aimez vous toujours les hommes?” To which she replied— “Oui, Sire, quand ils sont polis.” Her last and only constant love affair was with the poet Lemercier, whose devotion never changed until her death in 1820, when she was forty-two years of age. FOOTNOTE:IN the autumn of 1790 Lisette went to Naples, with which she was enchanted. She took a house on the Chiaja, looking across the bay to Capri and close to the Russian Embassy. The Ambassador, Count Scawronski, called immediately and begged her to breakfast and dine always at his house, where, although not accepting this invitation, she spent nearly all her evenings. She painted his wife, and, after her, Emma Harte, then the mistress of Sir William Hamilton, as a bacchante, lying on the sea-shore with her splendid chestnut hair falling loosely about her in masses sufficient to cover her. Sir William Hamilton, who was exceedingly avaricious, paid her a hundred louis for the picture, and afterwards sold it in London for three hundred guineas. Later on, Mme. Le Brun, having painted her as a Sybil for the Duc de Brissac after she became Lady Hamilton, copied the head and gave it to Sir William, who sold that also! Another time she made a charcoal sketch of two heads on the door of a summer-house by the sea, lent to her by Sir William Hamilton. Years afterwards to her astonishment she saw them in England. He had cut them out of the door and sold them to Lord Warwick! Mme. Le Brun found Lady Hamilton, as she became shortly afterwards—though extraordinarily beautiful—ignorant, ill-dressed, without esprit or conversation, ill-natured, and spiteful in her way of talking about other people, the only topic she seemed capable of discussing. She herself enjoyed Naples, as she did every other pleasant episode in her delightful life. From the loggia opening out of her bedroom she looked down into an orange garden; from her windows she could see constantly some picturesque or beautiful scene. The costumes of the washerwomen who gathered round the fountain, peasant girls dancing the tarantella, the fiery torches of the fishermen scattered over the bay at night, all the life and colour and incident of southern life spread like a panorama before her; and often she would go out in a boat by moonlight or starlight upon the calm sea, looking back upon the town rising like an amphitheatre from the water’s edge. She found as usual plenty of friends, the Princesse Joseph de Monaco and Duchesse de Fleury amongst others, and the Baron de Talleyrand, then French Ambassador. They made excursions to Vesuvius, Pompei, Capri, Ischia, and all the lovely places in the neighbourhood. One day the Baron de Talleyrand announced that Lisette liked the Queen of Naples much better than her elder sister, the Infanta of Parma. Though less beautiful than her younger sister, Marie Antoinette, yet she bore a strong resemblance to her, and had the remains of great beauty. Mme. Le Brun describes her as affectionate, simple, and royally generous. Hearing that the French Ambassador to Venice, M. de Bombelle, was the only one who refused to sign the Constitution, thereby reducing himself and his family to poverty; she wrote to him that all sovereigns owed a debt of gratitude to faithful subjects, and gave him a pension of twelve thousand francs. Two of his sons became Austrian ministers at Turin and Berne, another was Grand-Master of the household of Marie Louise. The most infamous calumnies were circulated about Marie Caroline when Napoleon wanted her kingdom for Caroline Murat; but she had a brave, strong character and plenty of brains. The government was carried on by her, for the King could or would do nothing but loiter about at Caserta. Lisette painted the two Princesses and the Prince Royal before returning to Rome, where she had no sooner arrived than she had to go back to Naples to paint the Queen. She had had great success in the number of important pictures she painted at Naples; and her E. H. Bearne ROME Mesdames de France, the two last remaining daughters of Louis XV., arrived in Rome and at once sent for Mme. Le Brun, who was delighted to see them again. They had with great difficulty succeeded in getting away, and had been most anxious to take their niece, Madame Elizabeth, with them. In vain they entreated her to come, she persisted in staying with the King and Queen, and sacrificed her life in so doing. Mesdames AdÉlaÏde and Victoire set off early in 1791. Their whole journey was a perpetual danger. After getting their passports signed with difficulty by the Commune, they were denounced at SÈvres by a maid-servant, stopped by the Jacobins and accused of being concerned in plots and of taking money out of the country, and detained for a fortnight, when they managed to get permission to go on, and left at 10 o’clock on a Saturday night, arriving on Sunday morning at Fontainebleau, where they were again stopped and threatened by the mob, who were just going to be joined by the gardes nationaux when a hundred Chasseurs de Lorraine, luckily quartered there, charged the mob, opened the gates, and passed the carriages on. At Arnay-le-Duc they were detained for eleven days, and only allowed to proceed when the Comte de Narbonne appeared with a permission extorted by They hurried away just in time, crossed the Mont Cenis, which was covered with snow, and at the foot of which they were met by their nephew, the Comte d’Artois. The King of Sardinia, husband of their niece, The disgraceful proceedings and cowardly, preposterous fear of two old ladies, which had made the radical government contemptible and ridiculous, caused the following absurd story to be published in a French newspaper:— “Les chemises de Marat, ou l’arrestation de Mesdames, tantes du Roi À Arnay-le-Duc. “Marat avait dit dans un journal que les chemises de Mesdames lui appartenaient. Les patriotes de province crurent de bonne foi que Mesdames avaient emportÉ les chemises de Marat, et les habitants d’Arnay-ci-devant-le-duc sachant qu’elles devaient passer par lÀ, decidÈrent qu’il fallait les arrÊter pour leur, faire rendre les chemises qu’elles avaient voleÉs.... On les fait descendre de voiture et les officiers municipales avec leurs habits noirs, leur gravitÉ, leurs Écharpes, leur civism et leurs perruques, disent À Mesdames: “(Air: ‘Rendez-moi mon Écuelle de bois.’) “Donnez-nous les chemises À Marat, Donnez-nous les chemises; Nous savons À n’en douter pas Que vous les avez prises. “Mme. AdÉlaÏde, ÉtonnÉe d’un tel propos rÉpond sur le mÊme air: “Je n’ai point les chemises De Marat, Je n’ai point les chemises; Cherchez, Messieurs les magistrats Cherchez dans nos valises. “Mme. Victoire dit À son tour: “Avait-il des chemises, Marat? Avait il des chemises? Moi, je crois qu’il n’en avait pas, OÙ les aurait-il prises? “MM. les magistrats, connaissant de rÉputation les chemises de l’Écrivain, rÉpondent avec une gravitÉ toute municipale: “Il en avait trois grises Marat, Il en avait trois grises, Avec l’argent de son fatras Sur le Pont Neuf acquises. “La municipalitÉ se met alors en devoir de fouiller dans les malles de Mesdames, en disant: “Cherchons bien les chemises À Marat Cherchons bien les chemises C’est pour vous un fort vilain cas Si vous les avez prises. “Enfin, ne pouvant pas distinguer, parmi tant de chemises lesquelles appartenaient À Marat, et les tantes du roi persistant À nier qu’elles eussent, derobÉ celles du grand homme, la municipalitÉ d’Arnay-ci-devant-le-duc, accorda À Mesdames la permission de continuer leur voyage aprÈs les avoir retenues prisonniÈres l’espace de dix jours.” Mme. Le Brun painted the portrait first of Madame AdÉlaÏde, then of Madame Victoire. The latter, during her last sitting, said to her— “I have received some news which fills me with joy; I hear the King has escaped from France, and I have just written to him, only addressing—To His Majesty the King of France. They will know very well where to find him,” she added smiling. Mme. Le Brun returned home and told the good news to her daughter’s governess. But while they were rejoicing over it they, in the evening, heard one of their servants singing below, a sullen, gloomy fellow who never used to sing, and whom they knew to be a revolutionist. Looking at each other in terror they exclaimed— “Some misfortune has happened to the King.” Next morning they heard of the arrest of the royal family at Varennes. Most of the servants were bribed by the Jacobins to spy upon their masters, and knew much better than they what was going on in France. Many of How she could have entertained so mad an idea seems inexplicable; but in fact, bad as the French news was, she was far from understanding the frightful state of the country. In those days news travelled slowly, important events only became partially known long after they had taken place; and as to private letters, people dared not put in them anything which might endanger either themselves or their friends. Her mother, brother, and sister-in-law, to all of whom she was strongly attached, were in France, and she was anxious to see them; so, with deep regret and many tears, she left Rome and turned her steps northward, of course with her child and governess. They left Rome late in April, 1792, and travelled slowly along by Perugia, Florence, Siena, Parma, and Mantova to Venice, where they arrived the eve of the Ascension, and saw the splendid ceremony of the marriage of the Doge and the Adriatic. There was a magnificent fÊte in the evening, the battle of the gondoliers and illumination of the Piazza di San Marco; where a fair as well as the illumination went on for a fortnight. Venice was crowded with foreigners, amongst whom was one of the English princes; and Lisette’s friend, the Princesse Joseph de Monaco, whom she saw for the last time, she also being on her way to France, where she met her death. She also met an acquaintance, M. Denon, who introduced her to the Comtesse Marini, of whom he was then the cavaliÈre servente; and who at once invited her to go that evening to a cafÉ. Lisette, to whom such an invitation was unfamiliar, accepted however; and the Countess then said— “Have you no friend to accompany you?” “I have no one with me,” replied she, “but my daughter and her governess.” “Oh, well!” said the Countess, “you must anyhow appear to have somebody; I will lend you M. Denon all the time you are here; he will give you his arm, I will take somebody else’s arm, and people will think I have quarrelled with him, for you can’t go about here without un ami.” E. H. Bearne VENICE The arrangement proved entirely satisfactory. Lisette went about all day with M. Denon, in gondolas, and to see everything—churches, pictures, palaces; every one who knows Venice even now, knows it as a place of enchantment, unlike anything else on earth; and in those days the Doge still reigned, modern desecrations and eyesores were not, and the beauty of the life and surroundings of the Queen of the Adriatic was supreme. Lisette frequented chiefly the society of the Spanish Ambassadress, with whom she went to the Opera at the far-famed Fenice, and finally left Venice and went by Padova, Vicenza, and Verona to Turin, where she had letters of introduction from Mesdames to the Queen, whose portrait they wished her to paint for them. In former years, before the marriage of the Queen, She would not have her portrait done, saying that she was very sorry to refuse her aunts, but as she had renounced the world she could not have her picture taken. She had cut her hair short and her dress was very simple. The King looked nearly as pale and thin. They received Mme. Le Brun very kindly, and she next went to see the Comtesse de Provence, for the second and third brothers, the Counts of Provence and Artois, had taken refuge at their sister’s court. The Comtesse de Provence was delighted to see Mme. Le Brun again, and arranged various excursions, which they made together into the mountains, in spite of the intense heat, for the summer was at its height. After spending some time in Turin, Signor Porporati offered to lend Mme. Le Brun a farm in the country, where he had a few rooms furnished for himself, and where he used often to go in hot weather. This exactly suited her, for the heat was overpowering, her little girl was made quite ill by it; and with joyful haste, she, with the governess, child, and servants, established themselves amongst the meadows, woods, and streams which surrounded the farm house. There she rested, spending the days out of doors in the cool green country, and looking forward to her approaching return to France; when one evening a letter was brought her from M. de RiviÈre, the brother of her sister-in-law, which told her of the horrible events of the 10th of August, the attack on the Tuileries, the imprisonment of the Royal Family, the massacres and horrors of all kinds still going on. Overcome with grief at this terrible news, and filled with self-reproach for the peaceful happiness of her own life, the solitude of the place became insupportable, and she at once returned to Turin. Had not this been sufficient to put a stop to all idea of going to France, the sights which met them as the little party entered Turin would have done so. The streets and squares were thronged with French refugees, who had fled, and were still flying, from France. They arrived by thousands, men, women, and children of all ranks and ages, most of them without luggage, money, or even food; having had no time to take anything with them or think of anything but saving their lives. The old Duchesse de Villeroi had been supported on the journey by her maid, who had enough money to get food for ten sous a day. Women, who had never been in carts before, were prematurely confined on the road, owing to the jolting; children were crying for food, it was a heartrending spectacle. The King gave orders that food and lodging should be found for them, but there was not room to put them all in; the Comtesse de Provence was having Seeing a handsome, noble-looking old officer, wearing the Cross of St. Louis, leaning against the corner of a street, with despair in his face, asking for nothing, but evidently faint with hunger, they went up and gave him what little money they had left, which he took, thanking them with a voice broken by sobs. The next morning he and several others were lodged in the King’s palace, no other rooms being forthcoming. The weeks following were terrible for Lisette, the anxiety and agitation she was in being increased by the non-appearance of M. de RiviÈre, who had told her to expect him at Turin. At last, a fortnight later than the day fixed, he arrived, so dreadfully changed that she hardly recognised him. As he crossed the bridge of Beauvoisin he had seen the priests being massacred, and that and all the other atrocities he had witnessed had thrown him into a fever, which had detained him for some time at ChambÉry. With fear and trembling Lisette inquired for her relations, but was assured that her mother was well, and never left Neuilly, that M. Le Brun was all right at Paris, and that her brother and his wife and child were safe in hiding. Having decided to stop at Turin and wait for further news, she took a little house in a vineyard near the town. M. de RiviÈre lodged with her, and gradually recovered amongst the peaceful surroundings. After a time she went to Milan, where she was received with great honour. The first evening she was serenaded by all the young men of the chief Milanese families, but, not knowing that all this music was on her account, she sat listening and enjoying it with composure, until her landlady came and explained. She made an excursion to the lakes, and on her return to Milan decided to go to Vienna, seeing that France would be out of the question for an indefinite time. At a concert in Milan she made the acquaintance of the Countess Bistri, a beautiful Pole, who was also going to Vienna with her husband. They arranged to travel together, and this was the beginning of a long and intimate friendship. The Count and Countess were kind, excellent people, who had just brought with them a poor old emigrant priest, and another younger one, whom they had picked up on the road after he had escaped from the massacre of the bridge of Beauvoisin. They had only a carriage with two places, but they had put the old man between them and the young one behind the carriage, and had taken the greatest care of them. They travelled from Milan to Vienna through the magnificent scenery of Tyrol and Styria, and arrived safely at the Austrian capital, where Mme. Le Brun spent two years and a half happily and prosperously. Every one was eager to invite her to their houses, and the numerous portraits she painted made her sojourn in Austria as profitable as it was pleasant. She brought, of course, many letters of introduction, of which the first she availed herself was to the Countess von Thoum, at whose soirÉes she met all the most important personages in Vienna, and also many French emigrÉs amongst whom, to her great joy, was her old friend the Comte de Vaudreuil. Never, she afterwards remarked, had she seen so many pretty women together as in the salon of Mme. de Thoum; but what surprised her was that most of them did needlework sitting round a large table all the evening. They would also knit in their boxes at the opera; but it was explained that this was for charity. In other respects she found society at Vienna very much the same as at Paris before the advent of the Revolution. Another of her introductions was to Prince von Kaunitz, the great Minister of Maria Theresa, whose power and influence had been such that he was called le cocher de l’Europe; “But that man is your declared enemy.” “Madame,” he replied, “that man is the friend of the State, which is the only thing that ought to be considered.” Kaunitz was now eighty-three years old, tall, thin, and upright. His great intellect, taste, and judgment seemed unimpaired, and he prided himself on his perfect seat on horseback. In costume and appearance he resembled the splendid cavaliers of the court of Louis XIV. His life at Vienna was that of a grand seigneur of the most illustrious order, and on New Year’s day and on his fÊte, the crowd that flocked to his house to congratulate him was so enormous that he might have been supposed to be the Emperor himself. He was extremely kind to Mme. Le Brun, whom he always called “ma bonne amie”; she was often at his house, though she did not care for the great dinners of never less than thirty people, which were always at seven o’clock—in those days considered a late hour. Lisette, in fact, liked to paint all the morning, dine by herself at half-past two, then take a siesta, and devote the latter part of the day and evening to social engagements. Prince von Kaunitz desired that her picture of the Sibyl should be exhibited for a fortnight in his salon, where all the court and town came to see it. Mme. Le Brun made also the acquaintance of the celebrated painter of battles, Casanova. One evening at a dinner-party of Prince von Kaunitz, when the conversation turned upon painting, some one was speaking of Rubens being appointed ambassador. An old German baroness exclaimed— “What? A painter ambassador? Doubtless it must have been an ambassador who amused himself by painting.” “No, Madame,” replied Casanova, “he was a painter who amused himself by being ambassador.” One of her new friends was the Countess Kinska, who, as she observed, was “neither maid, wife, nor widow,” for she and her husband had been married according to their parents’ arrangement, without ever having seen each other, and after the ceremony Count Kinska, turning to her, said— “Madame, we have obeyed our parents. I leave you with regret, but I cannot conceal from you that for a long time I have been devoted to another woman. I cannot live without her, and I am going back to her.” So saying, he got into the carriage that was waiting at the church door, and she saw no more of him. The Countess was extremely pretty, attractive, and amiable. One day while she was sitting for her portrait, Mme. Le Brun had occasion to send for Mme. Charot, her nursery-governess, who came in looking so pleased that she asked what had happened. “I have just had a letter from my husband,” she said; “he tells me that they have put me on the list of emigrÉs. I shall lose my eight hundred francs de rente, but I console myself for that, as there I am on the list of respectable people.” A few minutes later the Countess said that Mme. Le Brun’s painting blouse was so convenient she wished she had one like it; and in reply to her offer M. de RiviÈre was also at Vienna, and took part in all the private theatricals and diversions going on. Mme. Le Brun painted a remarkable portrait of Mlle. Fries, the great banker’s daughter, as Sappho, she being an excellent musician. Also of the Baron and Baroness Strogonoff with whom she became very intimate. At a State ball she first saw again the Empress, Marie ThÉrÈse, daughter of the Queen of Naples, whom she found much changed in appearance. She had painted her portrait in 1792. She also was overjoyed to meet the Comtesse de Brionne, Princesse de Lorraine, one of the earliest friends who had shown her unvarying kindness at the beginning of her career—and she resumed her old habit of going often to supper with her. The Polignac, too, had a place near Vienna, in fact, wherever she went Lisette met numbers of her unfortunate countrymen and acquaintance driven into exile, watching in despair the course of events in France. She scarcely dared read the newspapers, since one day on opening one she had seen in the death list the names of nine persons of her acquaintance; and all her Austrian friends tried to prevent her from hearing or knowing what was going on. A letter from her brother, however, brought her the fatal news of the murder of the King and Queen. She was as happy at Vienna as she could be Here she finished the portrait of the young Princess von Lichtenstein, as Iris. As she was represented with bare feet, her husband told Mme. Le Brun that when it was hung in his gallery, and the heads of the family came to see it, they were all extremely scandalised, so he had placed a pair of little shoes on the ground under it, and told the grand-parents they had dropped off. FOOTNOTES:TWO years and a half had passed and Mme. Le Brun had no desire to leave Vienna, when the Russian Ambassador and several of his compatriots urged her strongly to go to St. Petersburg, where they said the Empress Catherine II. would be extremely pleased to have her. She had a great wish to see this Empress, whose strange and commanding personality impressed her, besides which she was convinced that in Russia she would soon gain enough to complete the fortune she had resolved to make before returning to France. On Sunday, April 19, 1795, therefore, she left Vienna and went by Prague to Dresden, where she was of course enraptured with the world-famed gallery, and above all with the chef d’oeuvre of Raffaelle, the Madonna di San Sisto—that vision of beauty before which every other seems dim and pale. She spent five days at Berlin, stayed a few But she had not been more than twenty-four hours in the Russian capital when the French Ambassador was announced; his visit was succeeded by others, and that evening the Empress sent to say that she would receive Mme. Le Brun at Czarskoiesolo The French Ambassador, Count d’Esterhazy, said that he would come at ten and take her to dÉjeuner with his wife, who was just then living at Czarskoiesolo. For the first time during her wandering life from court to court, Lisette felt intimidated, and trembled. This was so different from any of her former experiences. At every other court she had been en pays de connaissance. Austrian society was very like Parisian, Rome was the centre of Christendom, the sovereigns of the lesser Italian states were the near relations of her own King and Queen, their religion was the same. But here, in this half-barbarous country, at an immense distance from everywhere she had ever been before, with a different church, a language incomprehensible to her and a sovereign mysterious, powerful, autocratic, whose reputation was sinister, and to whose private character were attached the darkest suspicions, an additional uneasiness was Accustomed all her life to be surrounded by friends, to be made much of and allowed to do as she liked wherever she went, she had followed her own fashion of wearing a certain style of dress, artistic, characteristic, but inexpensive. Nobody had objected to the simple toilettes of soft muslin, gracefully arranged, nor to the scarves and handkerchiefs she twisted in her hair. But she became suddenly conscious that they were by no means suitable to appear before the formidable personage, whom she pictured to herself as tall, dark, gloomy, and terrible, moreover the Countess Esterhazy looked at her in astonishment, and with much hesitation said— “Madame, have you not brought any other dress?” With much confusion she replied that she had not had time to have a proper dress made, but she was aware of the impossibility of explaining why, coming straight from Vienna, she had not brought one with her; and the dissatisfied looks of the Ambassadress increased her alarm when it was time to go to the Empress. The Ambassador gave her his arm, told her to be sure to kiss the hand of the Empress, and they walked across the park to the palace, where, through a window on the ground floor, they saw a girl of about seventeen watering a pot of pinks. Slight and delicate, with an oval face, regular features, It was the Grand-Duchess Elizabeth, wife of Alexander, eldest grandson of Catherine II., and as Mme. Le Brun muttered, “It is Psyche!” she came to meet her, and with the most charming courtesy said that she had so longed to see her that she had even dreamed of her, and detained her talking for some time. A few moments afterwards Lisette found herself alone with the Empress Catherine. CATHERINE II., EMPRESS OF RUSSIA The Semiramis of the North, as she was called, received her so graciously, that all her fears and embarrassments disappeared. She took no notice of her toilette, expressed her deep satisfaction at her arrival in Russia, hoped she would be happy and stay there a long time, and ordered an apartment in the palace to be prepared for her during the rest of the summer. This, however, was not done, owing to some palace intrigue, and greatly to the relief of Mme. Le Brun, who much preferred to live by herself in her own way. The Empress was not in the least like what she had imagined. Short and stout, though exceedingly dignified, her white hair was raised high above her forehead, her face, still handsome, expressed the power and genius which characterised her commanding personality, her eyes and her voice were gentle, and her hands extremely beautiful. She had taken off one of her gloves, expecting the usual Whatever might be her private character, Catherine II. was a great sovereign, a wise ruler, and beloved by the Russian people. In her reign Tartary, Lithuania, the Caucasus, Courland, and part of Poland were added to the vast Muscovite Empire; the Russian share of Poland alone added six millions to her subjects. Every branch of the service, every corner of the empire, canals, mines, agriculture, commerce, received her consideration and supervision; art and literature were encouraged and advanced; the progress made by Russia under her rule was enormous. Catherine was the daughter of Prince Christian of Anhalt-Zerbst, and was sixteen years old when she was brought from the old castle among the lakes and forests of Germany to be married to Peter, son of Charles Frederic, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, and Anne, eldest daughter of Peter the Great; Peter of Holstein-Gottorp was seventeen; and He carried on an open liaison with the Countess Woronsoff, while Catherine, who regarded him with dislike and repugnance, consoled herself with Prince Soltikoff, the hero of Russia from his victory over Frederic the Great, King of Prussia, and then with Prince Stanislas Poniatowski. The Empress Elizabeth, whose own life was a constant succession of love intrigues, disapproved nevertheless of this open and public scandal, particularly when her nephew was reported to be about to divorce his wife in order to marry his mistress. She sent the Countess Woronsoff to her father’s estates in the country, dismissed Poniatowski from St. Petersburg, and tried to reconcile the ill-matched couple; but in vain. She died soon afterwards, and Peter III., a German at heart, proceeded on his accession to make himself hated in Russia by his infatuation for everything Prussian; Prussia being the nation of all others disliked by his subjects. He discarded the French and Austrian alliance, attached himself to Frederic, King of Prussia, and besides all the unpopular changes he made in his own army, accepted the rank of an officer in that of Prussia, wore the Prussian uniform, and declared that he preferred the title of a Prussian Major-General to any other he possessed! He quarrelled with the clergy and the nobles, and tried to re-model everything after the German fashion. Even such changes as were beneficial he carried out in a manner so intolerable that very soon a powerful party was formed against him, of which Catherine was the head. For she was as much loved as he was detested. German though she was she identified herself with the nation whose crown she wore, she carried on the traditions of Peter the Great and Elizabeth; made friends of the church, the army, and the nobles, and yet had prudence enough to avoid by any open defiance hastening the vengeance of Peter, who, in spite of the warnings of the King of Prussia, despised his enemies, disbelieved in his unpopularity, and occupied himself with projects for adopting as his heir the unfortunate Ivan VI., whom Elizabeth had dethroned and imprisoned, disowning his son, divorcing his wife, and marrying the Countess Woronsoff. Whilst he loitered away his time with the latter at Oranienbaum, the conspiracy broke forth; headed by the brothers Orloff, five men of gigantic stature, powerful and capable in mind and body. They were all in the Guards, and succeeded in bringing over that and six other regiments. Catherine and one of her ladies left the palace in a cart disguised as peasants, then, changing into officers’ uniforms, arrived at the barracks, where Catherine was hailed with enthusiasm by soldiers, clergy, and people as Catherine II., Empress of all the Russias. The troops marched to Oranienbaum, the Emperor fled and proposed to abdicate and retire to Holstein with the Countess Woronsoff, but he was persuaded to go to Peterhoff in order to make arrangements, was seized by the conspirators, thrown into prison, where six days afterwards he was murdered by the Orloff, who held the supreme power in their hands. Gregory Orloff became her all-powerful favourite, and although she would never agree to his preposterous ambition and allow him to be married to her and crowned Emperor, she loaded the Orloff family with riches and honours, which they retained after other favourites had succeeded the gigantic guardsman in her affections. Of all of them the greatest was Potemkin, a Polish officer, to whom it was rumoured that she was secretly married, and whom she made Generalissimo of the Armies of Russia, Grand Admiral of the Fleet, and supreme Hetman of the Cossacks. Potemkin cannot be judged as a commonplace favourite, exalted or destroyed by a caprice; he represented the ambition of Russia in the eighteenth century; after his death Catherine could never replace that splendid and supple intelligence. He had been dead about four years when Mme. Le Brun arrived in Russia, but was still talked of as a sort of magician. His niece, the Countess Scawronska, said to her— “If my uncle had known you, he would have overwhelmed you with honours and riches.” Amongst Lisette’s new Russian friends was the beautiful Princesse Dolgorouki, with whom Count Cobentzel was hopelessly in love; but as Lisette observed, her indifference was not to be wondered at, for Cobentzel was fifty and very ugly; and Potemkin had been in love with her. Besides all his other gifts he was extremely handsome and charming, and his generosity and magnificence were unparalleled. When on the fÊte Sainte Catherine he gave a great banquet supposed to be in honour of the Empress, crystal cups full of diamonds were brought in at dessert, the diamonds being served in spoonsful to the ladies. The Princess remarking on this extravagance, he said in a low voice— “Puisque c’est vous que je fÊte, comment vous Étonnez-vous de quelque chose?” For her name also was Catherine. Another time, hearing that the Princess wanted some shoes for a ball, he sent an express which travelled night and day to Paris to get them. And it was well-known that he had ordered the assault upon the fortress of Otshakoff to be prematurely made because she wished to see it. The lavish, almost barbaric hospitality of the Mme. Le Brun found society at the Russian capital extremely amusing, and was, if possible, received with even more enthusiasm than in the other countries in which she had sojourned. She went to balls, dinners, suppers, or theatricals every night, and when she could manage to spare the time from the numerous portraits she painted, she went to stay in the country houses and palaces near, where in addition to other festivities they had fÊtes on the Neva by night, in gorgeously fitted up boats with crimson and gold curtains, accompanied by musicians. Financially, in spite of the large sums she gained, Lisette was at first unfortunate. She placed 45,000 francs in a bank which broke immediately afterwards. Returning at one o’clock one morning from some theatricals at the Princess Menzikoff, she was met by Mme. Charot in consternation announcing that she had been robbed by her German servant of 35,000 francs, that the lad had tried to throw suspicion upon a Russian, but the money having been found upon him he had been arrested by the police, who had taken all the money as a proof, having first counted the gold pieces. Mme. Le Brun blamed her for having let the gold go, and just as she said, she never got its value again, for although the same number of pieces were To her joy she met her old friend Doyen, the painter. He had emigrated two years after her, and arrived at St. Petersburg with no money. The Empress came to his assistance and offered him the directorship of the Academy of Arts. He settled in the Russian capital, where he got plenty of employment, painting both pictures and ceilings for the Empress, who liked him, and for the Russian nobles. The Empress gave him a place near her own box at the theatre, and used often to talk to him. While she was still in Vienna, Lisette had been told by the Baronne de Strogonoff of the Greek supper at Paris, which she said she knew cost 80,000 francs. “You astonish me!” said the Baronne, when the affair was explained to her; “for at St. Petersburg we were told about it by one of your countrymen, M. L——, who said he knew you very well, and was present at the supper.” To which Lisette replied that she did not know M. L—— at all except by name; and the matter ended. A few days after her arrival at St. Petersburg, where M. L—— did not suppose she would ever come, Mme. Le Brun went to see Mme. de Strogonoff, and as she was not well, went into her bedroom and sat down by the bed. Presently M. L—— was announced, and Mme. Le Brun having hidden herself behind the curtains, Mme. de Strogonoff ordered him to be shown in, and said to him— “Well, you must be very glad, for Mme. Le Brun has just arrived.” M. L—— began to hesitate and stammer, while his hostess continued to question him; and Mme. Le Brun, coming out from behind the curtain, said— “Then you know Mme. Le Brun very well, Monsieur?” “Yes,” he replied. “Well, that is very strange,” she observed; “because I am Mme. Le Brun, whom you have calumniated, and I now see you for the first time in my life.” At this he rose, his legs seeming to tremble under him, and taking his hat he left the room and was seen no more, for in consequence of this he was excluded from all the best houses. When the Empress returned from Czarskoiesolo she desired Mme. Le Brun to paint the portraits of the Grand Duchesses Alexandrine and Helena, daughters of the Tsarevitch, then fourteen and thirteen years old, and afterwards that of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, wife of Alexander, eldest grandson of the Empress, the young girl she had The Imperial family, with whom she soon became well acquainted, consisted of the Tsarevitch, afterwards Paul I., his wife, Marie of Wurtemburg, a tall, fair, noble-looking woman, whom every one liked and respected, their sons, the wives of the two elder ones, and their daughters. They were all entirely under the domination of the Empress, against whose will nobody dared to rebel, though Paul as a child used to ask his tutor why his father had been killed and why his mother wore the crown which ought to have been his. He was the only one of the Imperial family Lisette was at all afraid of, for the Empress was unceasingly good to her, and the princes and princesses were all very young. Alexander, afterwards Alexander I., resembled his mother in beauty and charm of character; but Constantine was like his father, whose eccentric, gloomy disposition seemed to foreshadow the fate which lay before him. His strange, unbalanced nature alternated between good and evil; capricious and violent, he was yet capable of kindness and generosity. Constantine, although very young, was married to the Princess Anne of Coburg, of whom Mme. Le Brun remarked that without being so lovely as the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, she was still very pretty, very lively, and only sixteen years old. She was not happy with Constantine, from whom she separated after a time and went back to her own family. Neither of the young wives were altogether fortunate, for some years later two beautiful Polish girls, whose father had been killed in the Polish war, were brought by their mother to the Russian court. The eldest and prettiest was only sixteen, and was married to Prince Narischkin, but the overpowering passion which she inspired in the Emperor Alexander is well known; whilst her sister captivated the terrible Constantine. Mme. Le Brun saw Mme. de Narischkin and her sister before she left Russia, for though she only intended to be there for a short time, she remained for six years, making an immense number of friends, and apparently no enemy but Zuboff, the last favourite of the Empress Catherine, an arrogant, conceited young man of two-and-twenty, whom she supposed she had offended by not paying court to him; and therefore he tried all he could to injure her with the Empress. She lived opposite the palace, and could see the Empress open a window and throw food to flocks of crows that always came for it; and in the evenings when the salons were lighted up she could watch her playing hide-and-seek and other games with her grandchildren and some of the court. For she adored her grandchildren, whom she kept entirely under her own control, allowing their parents to have no voice in their education, which she certainly directed with great care and wisdom. Every one crowded to the studio of Mme. Le Brun on Sundays to see the portraits of the Grand Duchesses. Zuboff, seeing the crowd of “See Madame, people go also to pay their court to Mme. Le Brun. They must certainly be rendezvous which they have at her house.” But his insinuations made no impression upon the Empress. She liked Mme. Le Brun and paid no attention to him. The climate of Russia Lisette became gradually accustomed to. The absence of spring and autumn, the short, hot summer, not beginning until June and ending in August, were at first very strange to her. The first May she spent there the half-melted snow was on the ground and the windows still closed up, while enormous blocks of ice came crashing down the Neva with a noise like thunder. The splendid ceremony of the benediction of the Neva by the Archimandrite, in the presence of the Empress, the Imperial family, and all the great dignitaries, deeply impressed her. One day at the end of May when she and her daughter were walking in the summer gardens, they noticed that all the shrubs were covered only with buds. Taking a long walk round the gardens and returning to the same place, they found all the buds had burst into leaf. The cold of the long winters she found, as every one says, much more supportable than in other countries whilst indoors, the heating of the houses being so perfect. And sledging parties were added to the other amusements of her life. The hot weather she used to spend at some house One Sunday in October, 1796, Lisette went, after mass, to the palace to present the portrait she had just finished of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth. After expressing her satisfaction, the Empress said— “They are absolutely resolved that you shall do my portrait. I am very old, but still, as they all wish it, I will give you the first sitting this day week.” The following Thursday morning the Empress did not ring as usual at nine o’clock. They waited till after ten, and then the first femme de chambre went in and found her lying on the floor struck by apoplexy. Lisette was at home with her daughter, who was just recovering from an illness, when the news was brought to her. Filled with alarm and sorrow, she hurried to the Princess Dolgorouki, where Count Cobentzel brought them constant news from the palace, where desperate but fruitless efforts were being made to revive the Empress. Everywhere was nothing but consternation, grief, and alarm; for all ranks and classes not only adored Catherine, but were terrified at the advent of Paul. In the evening Catherine II. died and Paul arrived. Lisette hardly dared leave the Princess Dolgorouki’s, to go home, as every one was saying there would be a revolution against Paul. The streets were filled with people, but there was no For six weeks she lay in state in a great room in the palace, which was illuminated day and night. The Emperor had his father, Peter III., brought from the convent where he was buried to be taken at the same time as Catherine to the fortress where all the Russian monarchs are interred. He obliged the assassins of his father to carry the corners of the funeral pall, and himself, bareheaded, with the Empress and all the ladies of the court, with long trains and veils, walked through the snow and fearful cold in the procession from the palace to the fortress. FOOTNOTES:FROM Catherine II. to Paul I. was indeed a fearful change. The sudden accession to supreme power after a life of repression increased the malady which was gaining ground upon him. It was evident that his brain was affected, and the capricious violence and cruelty which he was now free to exercise as he pleased left nobody in peace or safety. PAUL, EMPEROR OF RUSSIA Nobody could feel sure when they got up in the morning that they would go safely to bed at night; the slightest offence given to the Emperor meant imprisonment or Siberia, and his orders were so preposterous that it was difficult not to offend him. He commanded every one to salute his palace, even when he was not there. He forbade round hats, and sent police about with long sticks to knock off any they met. There were spies everywhere; people never dared mention him, and began to be afraid to receive their friends at all, or if they did, carefully closed the shutters; if a ball took place, the carriages were sent away for fear of attracting attention. The order was given for every one to wear powder, but as Mme. Le Brun did not like it in portraits, and was painting that of Prince Bariatinski, she begged him to come without it. One day he arrived in her studio pale and trembling. “What is the matter?” she exclaimed. “Ah!” cried he. “I have just met the Emperor as I came to you. I had only time to rush under a portico and am dreadfully afraid he recognized me.” One night, at a masked ball, a young man accidentally in a crowd pushed against a woman, who cried out. Paul turned to one of his aides-de-camp, saying— “Take that gentleman to the fortress and come back and tell me when he is safely shut up there.” The aide-de-camp returned, saying that he had executed the order, but adding— “Your Majesty must know that that young man is extremely shortsighted; here is the proof.” And he held out his spectacles, which he had brought. The Emperor tried them on and exclaimed hastily— “Run quick and fetch him and take him to his parents. I shall not go to bed till you tell me he is safe at home.” Lisette was dreadfully afraid of him, for although He gave orders that every one, women as well as men, should get out of their sledges or carriages when he passed. It was dreadfully cold, with deep snow, and he was always driving about, often almost without escort, so that he was not at once recognised; but it was dangerous to disobey. One day Lisette was driving, and seeing him coming when her coachman did not, she called out— “Stop! Stop! It is the Emperor!” But as she was getting out, he descended from his sledge and hastened to prevent her, saying with a most gracious air that his orders did not apply to foreigners, above all, not to Mme. Le Brun. He continued the kindness of Catherine II. to Doyen, who was now very old, and lived prosperous and happy, and, as Mme. Le Brun said, if her father’s old friend was satisfied with his lot at St. Petersburg, she was not less so. She now painted the whole day except when on Sundays she received in her studio the numbers of people, from the Imperial family downwards, who came to see her portraits; to which she had added a new and great attraction, for she had caused to be sent from Paris her great picture of Marie Antoinette in a blue velvet dress, which excited the deepest interest. The Prince de CondÉ, when he came to see it, could not speak, but looked at it and burst into tears. Society was so full of French refugees that The Emperor desired her to paint the portrait of the Empress, whom she represented standing in full court dress, with a crown of diamonds. Lisette used to declare that she was like a woman out of the Gospel, and that she was the only woman she knew whom no calumny ever attacked. One day she brought her two youngest sons to the sitting, the Grand Dukes Nicolas and Michael, then children. Of the Grand Duke Nicolas, afterwards Emperor, Mme. Le Brun declared that she had never seen a more beautiful child, and that she could paint from memory his face, which had all the characteristic beauty of Greece. But amidst all this professional and social prosperity Mme. Le Brun was now to experience two severe domestic sorrows, one of which was the loss of her mother, of whose death her brother sent her the news from France. The other, related to her daughter, was entirely owing to her own infatuated folly, and was not at all surprising. For Mme. Le Brun had so brought up the girl that it would have been a miracle if she had not turned out, as she did, utterly selfish, vain, and heartless. Jeanne Le Brun was, according to her mother, pretty, clever, extremely well-educated, charming in manner, and universally admired. Allowing for her infatuation, it was probable that her daughter was attractive. She was now seventeen, and went into society with her mother, whose foolish admiration and flattery encouraged all her faults. Mme. Le Brun allowed her to have her own way In vain Mme. Le Brun tried to dissuade her from this deplorable marriage, the spoilt young girl, accustomed to have everything she chose, would not give way; the Czernicheff and other objectionable friends she had made supported her against her mother, the worst of all being her governess, Mme. Charot, who had betrayed the confidence of Mme. Le Brun by giving her daughter books to read of which she disapproved, filling her head with folly, and assisting her secretly in this fatal love-affair. After being tormented and persecuted for some time, Mme. Le Brun yielded, gave her consent, obtained that of M. Le Brun, and provided a handsome dot, trousseau, and jewels for the intolerable girl, who did not show the slightest gratitude or affection to her mother, but behaved throughout in the most insolent, heartless manner. A fortnight after the marriage she no longer cared about her husband, and soon afterwards she caught the small-pox. Mme. Le Brun nursed her through it with a devotion she did not deserve, and then ill, exhausted, and out of spirits, set off for Moscow, where she arrived after a long journey full of hardships, bad roads, and thick fogs. The sight of Moscow, the ancient splendid capital, before it was devastated by the fire and sword of the invader, with its huge palaces and thousands of domes surmounted with gold crosses, filled her with admiration and delight. She was received with the hospitality and distinction she always experienced, met many old acquaintances, and passed several months very pleasantly. Society was much larger here than at St. Petersburg, where it seemed almost to form one family, every one being related to each other. It was with difficulty that she tore herself away when, in March, 1801, she wished to return to St. Petersburg, and it was upon her journey thither that she heard of the assassination of Paul I. She had stopped to change horses and found that she could get none, as they were being sent all over the country to convey the news. She was consequently obliged to remain all night in her carriage, which was drawn up by the roadside close to a river, from which blew a bitterly cold wind. When at length she arrived in St. Petersburg she found the city in a frenzy of delight. They danced in the streets, embracing each other, and exclaiming— “What a deliverance!” Indeed, many houses had been illuminated, such For some time the character of Paul had become more and more gloomy and menacing; his mind was filled with the darkest suspicions, even to the extent of believing that the Empress and his children were conspiring against his life; which was all the more terrible for the Empress Marie, as they had for many years, as long as the Empress Catherine lived, been very happy together, and in spite of everything she still remained deeply attached to him. This was all the more inexplicable as he not only suspected and accused her of conspiracy, but made no pretence of being faithful to her, and had taken away Mme. Chevalier, the mistress of his devoted valet de chambre, Koutaivoff. The doors between his own apartments and those of the Empress he had caused to be double-locked, thereby preventing his own escape when the conspirators forced their way into his room, headed by Zuboff, whom he had first exiled, then loaded with favours. They had systematically augmented his suspicions till they induced him to sign an order for the arrest of the Empress, the Tsarevitch, and the Grand Duke Constantine, and this document they showed the Tsarevitch, saying: “You see that your father is mad, and you will all be lost unless we prevent it by shutting him up instead.” Alexander, seeing the fearful danger hanging over his mother, his brother, and himself, was silent; and Pahlen, who was the director of the plot, took care that it should go much further than restraint. When Alexander heard of the assassination of his father his grief and horror left no doubt of his ignorance of what had been intended and carried out; and when, on presenting himself to his mother she cried out, “Go away! Go away! I see you stained with your father’s blood!” he replied with tears— “I call God to witness, mother, that I did not order this dreadful crime!” When the affair was fully explained to her she threw herself at his feet, exclaiming— “Then I salute my Emperor.” The strong affection between Alexander I. and his mother lasted as long as she lived. The young Emperor and Empress showed the same kindness and friendship to Mme. Le Brun as their parents and grandmother, but the time had come when she was resolved to return to France, and in spite of the entreaties of the Emperor and Empress, of her friends, and of her own regret at leaving a country to which she had become attached, she started in September, 1801, for Paris, leaving her ungrateful daughter, her unsatisfactory son-in-law, and her treacherous governess behind. She was received with delight at her house in the rue du Gros-Chenet, by M. Le Brun, her brother, her sister-in-law, and their only child, the niece who was to fill her daughter’s place. The house was beautifully furnished and filled with flowers, and that same evening a grand concert in her honour was given in the large salon of a house in a garden adjoining, which also belonged to M. Le Brun, who told her that he had during the The applause with which she was welcomed on entering the salon so overcame her that she burst into tears. Next day those of her friends who had survived the Revolution began to flock to see her. Her old friend, Mme. Bonneuil, was among the first, and invited her to a ball the following night given by her daughter, now the celebrated beauty, Mme. Regnault de Saint-Jean-d’Angely, to which she went in a dress made of the gold-embroidered India muslin given her by the unfortunate Mme. Du Barry. There she met many old friends, and saw many new beauties, amongst others Signora Visconti, the mistress of Berthier, and another by whom she was so attracted that she involuntarily exclaimed— “Ah, Madame! Comme vous Étes belle!” It was Mme. Jouberthon, afterwards the wife of Lucien Buonaparte. Macdonald, Marmont, and other generals were pointed out during the evening; it was a new world to her. Madame Buonaparte came to see her, recalled the balls at which they had met before the Revolution, and asked her to come some day to breakfast with the First Consul. But Mme. Le Brun did not like the family or surroundings of the Buonaparte, differing so entirely as they did from the society in which she had always lived, and did not receive with much enthusiasm this invitation which was never repeated. The Louvre, then filled with works of art—the Still, there was at first much to attract her. The friends who had survived were delighted to have her again amongst them. Many of her foreign friends arrived in Paris; she began again to give suppers which were as popular as ever. She even gave a ball at which the celebrated dancers, M. de TrÉnis, Mme. Hamelin, and Mme. Demidoff, excited general admiration. She also gave private theatricals in her large gallery. The peace of Amiens had just been signed, society was beginning to be reorganised. The Princess Dolgorouki who, to Lisette’s great joy, The brothers of Napoleon came to see the pictures of Mme. Le Brun, which Lucien especially greatly admired. The Princess Dolgorouki came to see her after being presented to Napoleon, and on her asking how she liked his court, replied, “It is not a court at all; it is a power.” The scarcity of women at that time and the enormous number of soldiers of all ranks gave that impression to one used to the brilliant Russian court. But the changed aspect of Paris, the loss of so many she loved, and perhaps most of all the ungrateful conduct of her daughter, depressed Mme. Le Brun so that she lost her spirits, had a perpetual craving to be alone, and for this purpose took a After a few months, however, finding that she did not become accustomed or reconciled to her surroundings, she resolved to go abroad again, and as she had never seen England she chose that country for her next wanderings, and set off in April, 1802, accompanied by a companion she had taken to live with her, named AdÉlaÏde, who soon became a dear and indispensable friend. She intended to spend only a few months in England, but as usual, when she arrived there, she soon made so much money and so many friends that she remained for three years, dividing her time between London and the country houses, where she was always welcome. Society in London she found triste after the splendour of St. Petersburg and the brilliant gaiety of Paris and Vienna, declaring that what struck her most was the want of conversation, and that a favourite form of social entertainment was what was called a “rout,” at which no sort of amusement or real social intercourse was offered or expected, the function merely consisting of an enormous crowd of people walking up and down the rooms, the men generally separate from the women. However, she had plenty of interests, and made many English friends besides the numerous French emigrÉs she found there. She painted the portraits of the Prince of Wales, Lord Byron, the Comtesse de Polastron, adored by the Comte d’Artois, who was The Duc de Berri, second son of the Comte d’Artois, was often at her house, and she met also the sons of Philippe-ÉgalitÉ, the eldest of whom was afterwards Louis-Philippe, King of France. She was in London when the news came of the murder of the Duc d’Enghien, and witnessed the outburst of horror and indignation it called forth. His father, the Duc de Bourbon, came to see her a month later, so changed by grief that she was shocked. He sat down without speaking, and then covering his face with his hands to conceal his tears, he said, “No! I shall never get over it.” Mme. Le Brun went to all the chief watering-places—Bath, Brighton, Tunbridge Wells, Matlock, &c.—she found English life monotonous, as it certainly was in those days, and hated the climate of London; but she had gathered round her a congenial society, with whom she amused herself very well, and whom she left with regret when she decided to return to France, partly because her ungrateful daughter had arrived there, and was being introduced by her father to many undesirable people. She embarked with AdÉlaÏde for Rotterdam, and on arriving at Paris found her daughter, who had neither lost her good looks nor her social attractions, but was otherwise as unsatisfactory as ever. For her husband she had long ceased to care at However, Mme. Le Brun was overjoyed to see Jeanne, and to keep her in Paris, although she refused to live with her, because the people with whom she persisted in associating were so objectionable that her mother would not meet them. Mme. Le Brun was now virtually separated from her husband, with whom it would have been impossible for her to live unless she were prepared to allow him to spend her fortune, and reduce her to beggary. She soon collected round her a large society of friends, and resumed the soirÉes at which they amused themselves as far as possible after their old fashion, acting tableaux vivants, &c. Madame VigÉe Le Brun COMTESSE D’ANDLAU Catalani, then young and beautiful, was one of her new friends, and used to sing at her parties. She painted her portrait, and kept it as a pendant to the one she had done of Grassini in London. Grassini had sung at her London parties, and comparing these two great singers and actresses—both young, beautiful, and celebrated—Mme. Le Brun found that although the voice of Catalani was in its beauty and compass one of the most extraordinary ever known, Grassini had more expression. Amongst other old friends whom she now frequented was the Comtesse de SÉgur, who equally disliked the alterations in social matters. “You wouldn’t believe,” she said to Lisette, who came to see her at eight o’clock one evening, and found her alone, “that I have had twenty people to She observed also that it was now usual for all the men to stand at one side of the room, leaving the women at the other, as if they were enemies. The Comte de SÉgur was made Master of the Ceremonies by Napoleon when he became Emperor, after which his brother used to put on his cards, “SÉgur sans cÉrÉmonies.” Most of the great painters were to be found at the house in the rue du Gros-Chenet, where the suppers were as gay and pleasant as of old. Vien, who had been first painter to the King; GÉrard, Gros, and Girodet, the great portrait painters (all pupils of David), and her old friend Robert, were constant guests. With David she was not on friendly terms; his crimes and cruelties during the Revolution caused her to regard him with horror. He had caused Robert to be arrested, and had done all he could to increase the horrors of his imprisonment. He had also tried to circulate the malicious reports about Calonne and Mme. Le Brun, of whom he was jealous, though his real love for his art made him acknowledge the excellence of her work. One day Lisette met him at the house of Isabey, who, having been his pupil, kept friends with him out of gratitude, although his principles and actions were abhorrent to him. It happened that she was his partner at cards, and being rather distraite, made various mistakes, which irritated David, who was always rude and ill-tempered, and exclaimed angrily, “But you made me lose by these stupid mistakes. “Why?” answered she contemptuously; “because I know to what fate you condemn kings!” David turned pale, made his escape, and for a long time would not go to the house for fear of meeting her. “I have painted real princesses and they have never tormented or kept me waiting.” In 1808 and 1809 Mme. Le Brun travelled in Switzerland, with which she was enraptured; after which she bought a country house at Louveciennes, The pavilion of Mme. Du Barry had been sacked by the Revolutionists, only the walls were standing, while the palaces of Marly, Sceaux, and Bellevue had entirely disappeared. But the woods, the meadows, the Seine, and the general beauty of the landscape delighted Mme. Le Brun, who, after all her wanderings, began to have a longing for rest, became more and more attached to her home as the years passed, and spent more and more of her time there. The decline and fall of the Empire were no calamity to her, and she witnessed with heartfelt joy the return of the King, although she was seriously inconvenienced by the arrival of the Allies at Louveciennes in 1814. Although it was only March, she had already established herself there, and on the 31st at about eleven o’clock she had just gone to bed when the village was filled with Prussian soldiers, who pillaged the houses, and three of whom forced their way into her bedroom, accompanied by her Swiss servant Joseph, entreating and remonstrating in vain. They stole her gold snuff-box and many other things, and it was four hours before they could be got out of the house. Next morning she escaped to St. Germain, and then to Paris, leaving Joseph to take what care he could of her property, but the wine was all drunk out of the cellar, the garden and courtyard ravaged, and the house ransacked. To all remonstrances the Prussians replied that the French had With tears of joy Lisette witnessed the entry into Paris of the Comte d’Artois on April 12th and of Louis XVIII. shortly afterwards. By his side sat the Duchesse d’AngoulÊme, whose smiles mingled with sadness amidst the shouts of “Vive le Roi”; recalled the remembrance that she was traversing the route by which her mother had passed to the scaffold. By the King and royal family Mme. Le Brun was received with especial favour and kindness, most of the returned emigrÉs were her friends, and Paris was now again all that she wished. From the horrors of the Revolution she had fled in time; with the Empire and its worshippers she had never had any sympathy; the episode of the Hundred Days was a new calamity, but when it was past and the King again restored her joy was complete. The great picture of Marie Antoinette and her three children, which under Napoleon had been hidden away in a corner at Versailles, was taken out and exhibited at the Salon, where every one crowded to look at it. Again she painted the portraits of the royal family, contrasting the simple, gracious politeness of the Duchesse de Berri, of whom she did two portraits, with the vulgar, pretentious airs of Caroline Murat. Her favourite picture, the Sibyl, was bought by the Duc de Berri, to whom she parted with it rather reluctantly. In 1813 M. Le Brun died. His death was rather a melancholy regret than But that of her daughter, who still lived in Paris, and who in 1819 was seized with a sudden illness which terminated fatally, was a terrible grief to her at the time; though in fact that selfish, heartless woman had for many years caused her nothing but vexation and sorrow, and it seems probable that after the first grief had subsided her life was happier without her, for the place she ought to have occupied had long been filled by the two nieces who were looked upon by her and by themselves as her daughters—her brother’s only child, Mme. de RiviÈre, and EugÉnie Le Brun, afterwards Mme. Tripier Le Franc. By their affectionate and devoted love the rest of her life was made happy, even after the far greater loss in 1820 of the brother to whom she had always been deeply attached. Louis VigÉe was a charming and excellent man, well known in literary circles. He had been imprisoned for a time in Port Libre, but afterwards released. After his death, in order to distract her mind from the sorrow of it, she made a tour to OrlÉans, Blois, Tours, Bordeaux, &c., accompanied by her faithful AdÉlaÏde; after which she returned home and resumed her usual life, a happy and prosperous one, continually occupied by her beloved painting, surrounded by numbers of friends and adored by the two nieces, her adopted children. EugÉnie Le Brun was like herself, a portrait painter, and although not, of course, of world-wide fame like Her winters were spent at Paris, where her house was still the resort of all the most distinguished, the most intellectual, and the pleasantest people, French and foreign; the summers at her beloved country home at Louveciennes. Thus happily and peacefully the rest of her life flowed on; her interest in all political and social matters—art, science, and literature—remaining undiminished, her affection for old friends unaltered, while new ones were constantly added to the number, until on May 29, 1842, she died at the age of eighty-seven. She had painted 662 portraits, 15 pictures, 200 landscapes, many of them in Switzerland, and many pastels. FOOTNOTE: |
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