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 sheltered life of the gifted child in her father’s house. The days were full of delight as she sat absorbed in the work which was a passion to her in the studio of the father she idolised. The evenings were full of pleasure, interest, and variety, as she listened to the brilliant conversation, artistic, intellectual, and political, of her father and the friends of many different ideas and opinions with whom he associated.
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 new terror to illness, did not exist at that time in France; under the circumstances, nevertheless, more than one operation was considered necessary; in spite of, or perhaps because of which, although the most skilful surgeon was employed, and was a personal friend who bestowed devoted and incessant care and attention upon the invalid, it soon became apparent that he had not long to live. Heartbroken, Lisette stood by her father’s bedside with her mother and brother to receive his last blessing and farewell, and an hour afterwards he breathed his last.
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 chiefly with another young girl about a year older than herself, Mlle. Boquet, whose father kept a curiosity shop in the rue Saint Denis where he lived, and where Lisette used to go in the evenings to draw from casts by candlelight with her friend.
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.