She went amongst strangers with but eighty francs in her purse out of all the fortune she had made by her dogged industry; she was to find in exile, not only a gracious home, but at last an immunity from the shameless squandering of her earnings by the disreputable thief whom she had married.
At Turin, her first halting-place, she tarried but a short while. She found that her name and fame had gone before her. At Bologna no French citizen was allowed to stay for more than twenty-four hours; but for Vigée Le Brun permission was brought without her asking for it. She spent three days gazing at the masterpieces of the Bologna School; and was made a member of its Academy.
At Florence she was asked to paint her portrait for the celebrated collection of portraits of famous artists by their own hand at the Uffizi Gallery.
At Rome the same impressive welcome awaited her.
Here she was soon at work again, with palette and brushes, upon the portrait of herself, which she had promised to the Gallery at Florence, where it now hangs—one of the most exquisite heads she ever painted, sunny, smiling, happy, with youth come back to it.
After eight months in Rome she moved on to Naples. Here it was that she painted the portrait of Lady Hamilton, Nelson's Emma, reclining by the sea, holding a cup in her hand as a Bacchante. Vigée Le Brun also painted her as a Sibyl—that picture which she took with her wherever she went, from town to town, and which always drew a crowd to her studio; whilst, grimly enough, Nelson's Emma rose to be one of the famed lovers of romance, to sink into want, and so to death in loneliness and misery at Calais.
It was at Naples, too, that Vigée Le Brun painted that portrait of Paisiello which she sent to Paris to the Salon, where it was hung as pendant to a portrait by David, and led to his high tribute to her genius, when, after gazing upon it for a long while, he said to his pupils: "They will think that my canvas was painted by a woman, and the portrait of Paisiello by a man."
Vigée Le Brun was now painting without cease. The Queen of Naples, her two elder daughters, and the Prince Royal, all sat to her.
During the first year of her exile the news from France had not been greatly alarming, and danger seemed to have been lulled. But at Naples she was to hear tidings that caused her bitter grief. First Neckar, finding himself out of touch with the king and the people and the Parliament, retired to Switzerland. Then, unfortunately for the king, Mirabeau died in the April of 1791. The king thenceforth resolved on escape. The Royal Family made their ill-starred flight to Varennes; to be brought back to Paris as prisoners. The constitutional party in the Legislative Assembly, at first dominant, soon became subordinate to the more violent Girondists, with their extreme wing of Jacobins under Robespierre and of Cordeliers under Danton, Marat, Camille Desmoulins, and Fabre d'Eglantine. The Proscription of all emigrants quickly followed—and the name of Vigée Le Brun was written upon the lists. The queen's enmity to Lafayette baulked, and completed the ruin of, the Royalist hopes. He retired into exile, and sadly left the Royal cause to its fate. On the 20th of April 1792 France entered upon her supreme struggle with Europe by declaring war. On the night of the 9th of August the dread tocsin sounded the note of doom to the Royal cause—herald to the bloodshed of the 10th of August. Three days afterwards the king and the Royal Family were prisoners in the Temple. There followed the terrible September massacres.
The National Convention met for the first time on the 21st of September 1792; decreed the first year of the Republic; abolished royalty and titles of courtesy; decreed citoyen and citoyenne in their place, and tu and toi for vous. It also proved the enmity of the two wings of the now all-powerful Girondist party—the Girondists proper as against the Jacobins or Montagnards. The conflict began with the fierce quarrel as to whether the king could be tried.