With tears of joy Lisette witnessed the entry into Paris of the Comte d’Artois on April 12th and of Louis XVIII. shortly afterwards. By his side sat the Duchesse d’Angoulême, whose smiles mingled with sadness amidst the shouts of “Vive le Roi”; recalled the remembrance that she was traversing the route by which her mother had passed to the scaffold.
By the King and royal family Mme. Le Brun was received with especial favour and kindness, most of the returned emigrés were her friends, and Paris was now again all that she wished.
From the horrors of the Revolution she had fled in time; with the Empire and its worshippers she had never had any sympathy; the episode of the Hundred Days was a new calamity, but when it was past and the King again restored her joy was complete.
The great picture of Marie Antoinette and her three children, which under Napoleon had been hidden away in a corner at Versailles, was taken out and exhibited at the Salon, where every one crowded to look at it. Again she painted the portraits of the royal family, contrasting the simple, gracious politeness of the Duchesse de Berri, of whom she did two portraits, with the vulgar, pretentious airs of Caroline Murat.
Her favourite picture, the Sibyl, was bought by the Duc de Berri, to whom she parted with it rather reluctantly. In 1813 M. Le Brun died. His death was rather a melancholy regret than a real sorrow to her, as they had long been separated by mutual consent.
But that of her daughter, who still lived in Paris, and who in 1819 was seized with a sudden illness which terminated fatally, was a terrible grief to her at the time; though in fact that selfish, heartless woman had for many years caused her nothing but vexation and sorrow, and it seems probable that after the first grief had subsided her life was happier without her, for the place she ought to have occupied had long been filled by the two nieces who were looked upon by her and by themselves as her daughters—her brother’s only child, Mme. de Rivière, and Eugénie Le Brun, afterwards Mme. Tripier Le Franc.
By their affectionate and devoted love the rest of her life was made happy, even after the far greater loss in 1820 of the brother to whom she had always been deeply attached.
Louis Vigée was a charming and excellent man, well known in literary circles. He had been imprisoned for a time in Port Libre, but afterwards released.
After his death, in order to distract her mind from the sorrow of it, she made a tour to Orléans, Blois, Tours, Bordeaux, &c., accompanied by her faithful Adélaïde; after which she returned home and resumed her usual life, a happy and prosperous one, continually occupied by her beloved painting, surrounded by numbers of friends and adored by the two nieces, her adopted children. Eugénie Le Brun was like herself, a portrait painter, and although not, of course, of world-wide fame like her aunt, she was nevertheless a good artist, and made a successful career, which gave an additional interest to the life of Mme. Le Brun.
Her winters were spent at Paris, where her house was still the resort of all the most distinguished, the most intellectual, and the pleasantest people, French and foreign; the summers at her beloved country home at Louveciennes.