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:
[38] Charles de Valois, Duc d’Angoulême, Comte d’Auvergne et Ponthieu, son of Charles IX. and Marie Touchet, b. 1572, m. 1644 second wife, Françoise de Mareuil.—“Early Valois Queens,” p. 6 (Bearne). “Créquy Souvenirs.”
CHAPTER VIII
Naples—Lady Hamilton—Marie Caroline, Queen of Naples—Mesdames de France—Their escape—Les chemises de Marat—Rome—Terrible news from France—Venice—Turin—The Comtesse de Provence—The 10th August—The Refugees—Milan—Vienna—Delightful society—Prince von Kaunitz—Life at Vienna.
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!