“Your Majesty must know that that young man is extremely shortsighted; here is the proof.” And he held out his spectacles, which he had brought.
The Emperor tried them on and exclaimed hastily—
“Run quick and fetch him and take him to his parents. I shall not go to bed till you tell me he is safe at home.”
Lisette was dreadfully afraid of him, for although he liked her, and was always extremely polite and pleasant to her, she never felt that she could trust him.
He gave orders that every one, women as well as men, should get out of their sledges or carriages when he passed. It was dreadfully cold, with deep snow, and he was always driving about, often almost without escort, so that he was not at once recognised; but it was dangerous to disobey.
One day Lisette was driving, and seeing him coming when her coachman did not, she called out—
“Stop! Stop! It is the Emperor!” But as she was getting out, he descended from his sledge and hastened to prevent her, saying with a most gracious air that his orders did not apply to foreigners, above all, not to Mme. Le Brun.
He continued the kindness of Catherine II. to Doyen, who was now very old, and lived prosperous and happy, and, as Mme. Le Brun said, if her father’s old friend was satisfied with his lot at St. Petersburg, she was not less so.
She now painted the whole day except when on Sundays she received in her studio the numbers of people, from the Imperial family downwards, who came to see her portraits; to which she had added a new and great attraction, for she had caused to be sent from Paris her great picture of Marie Antoinette in a blue velvet dress, which excited the deepest interest. The Prince de Condé, when he came to see it, could not speak, but looked at it and burst into tears.
Society was so full of French refugees that Lisette remarked she could almost fancy herself in Paris.