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 had nevertheless told the story to several persons in the house.
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 entertainments and requirements were so simple, that she let him spend all she earned; whilst her occupations, professional and social, were so engrossing, and her life so full of interest, excitement, and enjoyment, that she was content to make the best of things and let her husband go his way, while she followed her own career among the friends and pursuits she loved.
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. [31]
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 [32] were staunch Royalists, and watched with horror and dread only too well justified the breaking out of the Revolution.