Neither of the young wives were altogether fortunate, for some years later two beautiful Polish girls, whose father had been killed in the Polish war, were brought by their mother to the Russian court. The eldest and prettiest was only sixteen, and was married to Prince Narischkin, but the overpowering passion which she inspired in the Emperor Alexander is well known; whilst her sister captivated the terrible Constantine.
Mme. Le Brun saw Mme. de Narischkin and her sister before she left Russia, for though she only intended to be there for a short time, she remained for six years, making an immense number of friends, and apparently no enemy but Zuboff, the last favourite of the Empress Catherine, an arrogant, conceited young man of two-and-twenty, whom she supposed she had offended by not paying court to him; and therefore he tried all he could to injure her with the Empress.
She lived opposite the palace, and could see the Empress open a window and throw food to flocks of crows that always came for it; and in the evenings when the salons were lighted up she could watch her playing hide-and-seek and other games with her grandchildren and some of the court.
For she adored her grandchildren, whom she kept entirely under her own control, allowing their parents to have no voice in their education, which she certainly directed with great care and wisdom.
Every one crowded to the studio of Mme. Le Brun on Sundays to see the portraits of the Grand Duchesses. Zuboff, seeing the crowd of carriages which, after leaving the palace, stopped before her house, remarked to the Empress—
“See Madame, people go also to pay their court to Mme. Le Brun. They must certainly be rendezvous which they have at her house.”
But his insinuations made no impression upon the Empress. She liked Mme. Le Brun and paid no attention to him.
The climate of Russia Lisette became gradually accustomed to. The absence of spring and autumn, the short, hot summer, not beginning until June and ending in August, were at first very strange to her. The first May she spent there the half-melted snow was on the ground and the windows still closed up, while enormous blocks of ice came crashing down the Neva with a noise like thunder.
The splendid ceremony of the benediction of the Neva by the Archimandrite, in the presence of the Empress, the Imperial family, and all the great dignitaries, deeply impressed her.