Those favored with invitations to this select entertainment took their places to the music of the golden lyre, and the classic air composed by Gluck,
“Le Dieu de Paphos et de Gnide,”
while the Pindar of the evening sang Anacreontic odes.
Among the delicacies that covered the board were eels and birds dressed with Greek sauces and garnished with honey-cakes; figs, and olives, and grapes of Corinth. Two beautiful slaves—Mademoiselle de Bonneuil and Mademoiselle Le Brun—served the guests with Cyprian wine, in cups brought from buried Herculaneum.
Two guests arrived late—the Comte de Vaudreuil and the financier Boutin—who had not been prepared for the surprise. They stood still, dumb with amazement, at the threshold, and seemed to think themselves transported to Athens in her day of intellectual glory!
The next day the classic banquet given by Madame Le Brun was the talk of all Paris. She was entreated to repeat the entertainment, but with proper tact declined. Some of her acquaintances took offense at the refusal and at their own exclusion, and revenged the slight (as she says) by slandering her to the king. It was averred the supper had cost twenty thousand francs, and Cubières had much ado to undeceive his majesty.
The story and the fame of the banquet traveled over the Continent; by the time it had reached Rome the cost had swelled to forty thousand; and in Vienna, the Baroness Strogonoff assured Madame Le Brun, it was reported she had spent sixty thousand. In St. Petersburg it was naturally as much as eighty thousand. “The fact is,” says Madame Le Brun, “the little affair cost me only fifteen francs.” She may be relied on as to her share of the expense, although the cost to others may have been somewhat greater.
Such exaggerated rumors, and the gossip growing out of them, caused some disagreement in the general estimation of Madame Le Brun’s talents and character. The homage she had received and continued to receive from the nobility, with her appointment as painter-in-ordinary to the queen, and the favors heaped on her by the court, helped to render her obnoxious to a people among whom attachment to royalty and aristocratic forms began to be regarded as a crime.
France was on the eve of that Revolution which was destined to uproot the existing order of things, and the woman whom Marie Antoinette had made her companion was not likely to escape without opprobrium. Besides, had she not, in 1774, before her marriage, published a work entitled “Amour des Français pour leur roi?”
When the Revolution broke out, Madame Le Brun perceived that she could no longer remain in France. The law protecting artists, and permitting them to travel in their vocation, was available for her departure.