HEROINES OF FRENCH SOCIETY

Frontispiece
MADAME LE BRUN
Painted by herself. Uffizi, Florence

HEROINES OF
FRENCH SOCIETY

IN THE COURT, THE REVOLUTION
THE EMPIRE, AND THE RESTORATION

By
Mrs. Bearne
Author of “A Queen of Napoleon’s Court,”
“Early Valois Queens,” etc., etc.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET
MCMVII

(All rights reserved.)

THIS BOOK
IS DEDICATED
TO
ANNA AND KATE

PREFACE

IN the histories of the four women whose lives are here related, I have tried, as far as is possible in the limited space, to give an idea of the various ways in which the Revolutionary tempest at the close of the eighteenth century and the eventful years which preceded and followed it, affected, and were regarded by, persons of the different parties and classes to which they belonged.

The characters of the four heroines form as strong a contrast as their circumstances, principles, and surroundings.

In Mme. Le Brun, the most gifted of all, we see a beauty, a genius, and a woman unusually charming and attractive, thrown, before she was sixteen, into the society of the magnificent, licentious court of Louis XV. Married to a dissipated, bourgeois spendthrift, for whom she had never cared; sought after, flattered, and worshipped in all the great courts of Europe; courted by fascinating, unscrupulous men of the highest rank, without the protection of family connections and an assured position; yet her religious principles, exalted character, and passionate devotion to her art, carried her unscathed and honoured through a life of extraordinary dangers and temptations.

She emigrated early, and far from being, as in most cases, a time of poverty and hardship, her exile was one long, triumphant career of prosperity.

Owing to her brilliant success, to the affection and friendship which surrounded her wherever she went, to her absorbing interest in her art, the delightful places and society in which she spent her time, and also to her own sunny, light-hearted nature, her long life, in spite of certain serious domestic drawbacks and sorrows, was a very happy one. Her wonderful capacity for enjoyment, her appreciation of beauty in nature and art, the great interest she took in matters intellectual and political, her pleasure in the society of her numerous friends, and her ardent devotion to the religious and royalist principles of her youth, continued undiminished through the peaceful old age which terminated her brilliant career.

With the same religious and political principles, the conditions of life which surrounded the Marquise de Montagu were totally different. A contrast indeed to the simple, artistic household, the early grief, poverty, and hard work, the odious step-father, the foolish mother, the worthless husband and daughter, the thousand difficulties and disadvantages which beset Mme. Le Brun, were the state and luxury, the sheltered life, the watchful care, and powerful protection bestowed upon the daughter of the house of Noailles; her mother, the saintly, heroic Duchesse d’Ayen, her husband the gallant, devoted Marquis de Montagu.

She also was thrown very early into society; but she entered it as a member of one of the greatest families in France, surrounded by an immense number of relations of the highest character and position.

Neither a genius nor yet possessed of any great artistic or intellectual talent, without worldly ambition, little attracted by the amusements of society, she was a sort of mixture of a grande dame and a saint.

The lofty asceticism of her theories and practice was perhaps almost too severe for ordinary mortals living in the world, and in some respects better adapted for a monastic than a secular life; her emigration, so long delayed, was no time of success and happiness: long years of terror, danger, poverty, fearful trials, and sorrows endured with heroic fortitude and angelic patience, passed before she was restored to France and to the ancient castle which was the home and refuge of her later life.

In Mme. Tallien we have a woman exactly opposite to the other two in character, principles, and conduct. Differing from both of them in birth and circumstances—for she was the daughter of a Spanish banker of large fortune—with extraordinary beauty, the hot, passionate blood of the south, a nature, habits, and principles undisciplined by authority and unrestrained by religion, she was early imbued with the creed of the revolutionists, and carried their theories of atheism and licence to the logical consequences.

Yet the generosity and kindness of her heart, and the number of victims she saved, outweighed, though without effacing, the disorders of her earlier life, [1] during the latter part of which, as the wife of a Catholic, royalist prince, whose love she returned and to whose opinions she was converted, she deeply regretted the errors of Notre Dame de Thermidor.

In Mme. de Genlis we have a fourth and more complex type, a character in which good and evil were so mingled that it was often hard to say which predominated. With less beauty than the other three but singularly attractive, with extraordinary gifts and talents, with noble blood and scarcely any fortune, she spent a childhood of comparative poverty at her father’s château, where she was only half educated, and at seventeen married the young Comte de Genlis, who had no money but was related to most of the great families of the kingdom.

From this time began her brilliant career. Essentially a woman of the world, delighting in society and amusement, though always praising the pleasures of solitude and retirement, she entered the household of the Duchesse d’Orléans, wife of the infamous Philippe-Égalité, and while constantly declaiming against ambition managed to get all her relations lucrative posts at the Palais Royal, and married one if not both her daughters to rich men of rank with notoriously bad reputations.

Perpetually proclaiming her religious principles and loyalty to the throne, she was suspected of being concerned in the disgraceful libels and attacks upon the Queen, was on terms of friendship with some of the worst of the revolutionists, rejoiced in the earliest outbreaks of the beginning of the Revolution, and while she educated the Orléans children with a pompous parade of virtue and strictness, was generally and probably rightly looked upon as the mistress of their father.

She was a strange character, full of artificial sentiment, affectation, and self-deception, and, unlike the first three heroines of this book, the mystery and doubts which hung over her have never been cleared up.

Against the saintly Marquise de Montagu no breath of scandal could ever be spoken. Such calumnies as were spread against Mme. Le Brun, the work of the revolutionists, who hated her only for her religion and loyalty, never believed by those whose opinion would be worthy of consideration, soon vanished and were forgotten.

The liaisons of Mme. Tallien had nothing doubtful about them.

But the stories against Mme. de Genlis have never been cleared up. Much that was said about her was undoubtedly false, but there remain serious accusations which can neither be proved nor disproved; and that a long, intimate friendship between a prince of the character of Philippe-Égalité and a young, attractive woman who was governess to his children should have been no more than a platonic one, passes the bounds of credibility.

The history of Mme. de Genlis in the emigration differs from the other two, for having contrived to make herself obnoxious both to royalists and republicans her position was far worse than theirs.

But the deep affection she and her pupils displayed for each other, the devotion and kindness she showed them during their misfortunes, the courage and cheerfulness with which she bore the hardships and dangers of her lot, and the remorse and self-reproach which, in spite of the excellent opinion she usually entertained of herself, do occasionally appear in her memoirs, prove that many good qualities existed amongst so much that was faulty.

As to her writings, then so much in vogue, they were mostly works intended either to explain, assist, or illustrate the system of education which was the hobby of her life and which, if one may judge by “Adèle et Théodore,” one of the most important of her tales, can only be called preposterous.

That the false sentiment, the absurd rules of life, the irksome, unnecessary restrictions, the cramping and stifling of all the natural affections and feelings of youth here inculcated should have been regarded with approval, even by the sourest and most solemn of puritans, seems difficult to believe; but that in the society of Paris at that time they should have been popular and admired is only another example of the inconsistency of human nature. She had a passion for children, but kindness to animals does not seem to have been one of the virtues she taught her pupils. We may hope that the fearful little prigs described as the result of her system never did or could exist.

I have endeavoured to be accurate in all the dates and incidents, and have derived my information from many sources, including the “Mémoires de Louis XVIII., recueillis par le Duc de D——,” Mémoires de la Comtesse d’Adhémar, de Mme. Campan, MM. de Besenval, de Ségur, &c., also the works of the Duchesse d’Abrantès, Comtesse de Bassanville, Mme. de Créquy, Mme. de Genlis, Mme. Le Brun, MM. Arsène Houssaye, de Lamartine, Turquan, Dauban, Bouquet, and various others, besides two stories never yet published, one of which was given me by a member of the family to which it happened; the other was told me in the presence of the old man who was the hero of it.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Tallien, on hearing of her proposed marriage with the Prince de Chimay, remarked, “Elle a beau faire, elle sera toujours Madame Tallien.”

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

I

MADAME VIGÉE LE BRUN

CHAPTER I

The ancien régime—Close of the reign of Louis XIV.—The Regent Orléans—The court of Louis XV.—The philosophers—The artists—M. Vigée.

WHEN Elisabeth Louise Vigée was born at Paris, April, 1755, the French court and monarchy were still at the height of their splendour and power.

Only a few years since, the chronicler Barbier had remarked, “It is very apparent that we make all Europe move to carry out our plans, and that we lay down the law everywhere.” [2]

Louis XV. was upon the throne; the manners and customs of the ancien régime were in full force, though mitigated and softened by the growing enlightenment and liberalism which were spreading not only in the literary and professional circles, but amongst the younger generation in all classes.

Middle-aged men and women had seen Louis XIV., Louis le Grand, “le Roi Soleil,” as an old man; old people could remember him in the prime of his life, the most magnificent King with the most stately court in Christendom. The Cardinal de Luynes, the Maréchal de Croz, the Duc de Richelieu and other grands seigneurs who preserved the manners and traditions of that time, were looked upon as models of courtly manners and high-breeding by those who complained that in the reaction and licence of the regency and court of Louis XV., vice and corruption were far more unrestrained, more scandalous, less disguised and altogether more indecorous than under the ceremonious and stately rule of his great-grandfather. [3]

The Queen, Marie Leczinska, daughter of Stanislaus, ex-King of Poland, was a harmless, uninteresting woman, who had no ambition, no talent, no influence, and a great many children.

The King had been married to her when he was fifteen and she two-and-twenty; and after the first few years had lived in an open immorality which was very general at his court, and for a long time did not much affect his popularity with the nation, though every now and then caricatures and epigrams more witty than prudent appeared; as, for instance, the following, written upon the base of the pedestal of an equestrian statue of him, around which were grouped the figures of Strength, Prudence, Justice, and Peace:

“Grotesque monument, infâme piédestal.

Les vertus sont à pied, le vice est à cheval.”

And a few days afterwards upon the same monument:

“Il est ici comme à Versailles

Il est sans cœur et sans entrailles.” [4]

Louis, however, was more selfish and indifferent than cruel. He was by no means like Frederic William of Prussia, a savage to his family and his subjects, or like three out of the four Georges of England, who were not only outrageously immoral themselves, but brutal tyrants to their wives [5] and bitter enemies of their parents and children.

His court was the most splendid, the most extravagant, and the most licentious in Europe; the cruelty and oppression of many of the great nobles and especially the princes of the blood, were notorious; the laws were harsh and unjust to a frightful extent, but they were not of his making. He neglected the Queen, but did not ill-treat her; he was fond of his children and indulgent to them; while, far from being disliked by his subjects, he was called Louis le Bien-aimé.

Barbier, writing in December, 1758, gives another sarcastic verse going about in society, which, as it was directed against the King’s all-powerful mistress, the Marquise de Pompadour, attracted general attention, irritated the King, and caused the author, who was discovered to be an officer of the guards, to be sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, after which to be banished to Malta, as he belonged to the order of St. John of Jerusalem.

The lines are as follows, and refer to a château then being built by Louis for the Marquise de Pompadour, whose original name was Jeanne Antoinette Poisson:

“Fille d’une sangsue, et sangsue elle-même

Poisson d’une arrogance extrême,

Étale en ce château sans crainte et sans effroi

La substance du peuple et la honte du Roi.”

Barbier, a lawyer and man of the world, whose journal of eight volumes gives a vivid impression of the life of that time, after remarking that the sentence was a very lenient one, [6] that the château was not so large as that of many a fermier général, and that the building thereof gave employment to many poor people, goes on to say, “As for ‘shame,’ ... if it is because the King has a mistress, why who has not? except M. le duc d’Orléans. [7]... The Comte de Clermont, Abbé de Saint-Germain-des-Près, openly keeps Mlle. le Duc, who was an opera dancer; she spends three-quarters of the year at Berny, the Abbé’s country house, where she does the honours. She has a fine house in the rue de Richelieu, where the Prince often spends a week. The fathers of the abbey who have business with him go to him there in the morning, for he does not lodge in the palace of the abbey. This goes on in sight of every one, and nobody says a word about it.

“For more than twenty years M. le Comte de Charolois has detained in captivity, against her will, Mme. de Conchamp, wife of a Maître-des-Requêtes, whom he carried off, and who would have been much happier in her own house. Fifteen out of twenty men at the court do not live with their wives but have mistresses, and even amongst private people at Paris, nothing is more frequent; therefore it is ridiculous to expect the King, who is absolutely the master, to be in a worse position than his subjects and all the kings his predecessors.”

There had, in fact, been a strong reaction against the restraint and dullness of the last few years of the reign of Louis XIV., when the magnificent, pleasure-loving King, whose victorious armies had devastated Europe, who had made princes of his illegitimate children, lavished the riches of the country upon his mistresses, and yet in his stately beauty and fascination been the idol of France; had changed into a melancholy old man, depressed and disillusioned, looking with uneasiness upon the past, with fear upon the future; while the brilliant beauties and splendid festivities of bygone days had given place to virtue, strict propriety, and Mme. de Maintenon.

When Louis XIV. died, people were very tired of this altered state of things. For some time they had been extremely dull and were eager for change and amusement.

With a King of five years old, and such a Regent as the Duke of Orléans, they were tolerably sure of both. The reign of pleasure, luxury, and licence began with enthusiasm. Never, during the life of Louis le Grand, had the atmosphere of the Court been what it became under the regency, and under his great-grandson.

The Regent Orléans was not, like the Princes of Condé, Conti, Charolois, and others of the blood royal, cruel, haughty, or vindictive; on the contrary, he was good-natured, easy, and indulgent; but he was dissipated, extravagant, and licentious to such a degree that he himself, the court, and his family were the scandal of Europe. The same frenzied pursuit of enjoyment, the same lavish, sensual, reckless, luxurious life, characterised the whole of the reign of Louis XV.

In reading the memoirs and chronicles of that time one scarcely realises the existence of the many families and households, especially among the noblesse de province [8] or country gentlemen, and the middle classes, amongst whom the principles of order and religion were observed; and of an increasing circle of literary and philosophic persons who inveighed against the crimes, vices, and abuses of the age.

Those whose ideas of France in the eighteenth century are derived only from such books as Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities,” or even from a casual acquaintance with a few of the histories and chronicles of the time, are apt vaguely to picture to themselves a nation composed partly of oppressed, starving peasants, and partly of their oppressors, a race of well-bred ruffians and frivolous, heartless women; all splendidly dressed, graceful, polite, and charming in their manners amongst themselves; but arrogant, cruel, and pitiless to those beneath them.

Rigaud
LOUIS XV.

Many such undoubtedly there were; the laws were terribly oppressive, the privileges of the favoured classes outrageously unjust; while as for public opinion, Barbier himself remarks that the public is a fool, and must always be unworthy of the consideration of any man.

But still, in all ages human nature is the same, and has to be reckoned with under all circumstances, and that people in general are much better than the laws which govern them is evident.

If the cruel, unjust marriage laws of England, which until a few years ago were in force, had been universally and fully carried out, making the husband an almost irresponsible tyrant and the wife a helpless, hopeless slave, domestic life would have been hell upon earth. But as the great majority of men had no wish to ill-treat their wives, confiscate their money, deprive them of their children or commit any of the atrocities sanctioned by the laws of their country, families upon the whole went on in harmony and affection. It was only now and then, when a man did wish to avail himself of the arbitrary power placed in his hands, that the results of such iniquitous laws were brought before the public. At the same time, however, the knowledge of their existence and the tone of thought, prejudices, and customs which consequently prevailed, had an influence upon men who were not the least tyrannically inclined, but merely acted in accordance with the ideas and opinions of every one around them.

And amidst all the oppression, vice, and evil of which we hear so often in France of the eighteenth century, there was also much good of which we hear little or nothing. The reason is obvious. Good people are, unfortunately, seldom so amusing to write or read about as bad ones. Has any one ever met with a child who wanted to be told a story about a good little girl or boy? And is it not true, though lamentable, that there are many persons who would rather read a book about a bushranger than a bishop?

The noblesse d’epée was the highest, most brilliant, and most scandalous in France; but in its ranks were to be found heroic examples and saintly characters; while far away in the convents and châteaux scattered over the country and in quiet bourgeois families in the towns lives were led of earnest faith, devotion, and self-denial.

Many an abbess, many a châtelaine spent time and money amongst the rich and poor; and there were seigneurs who helped and protected the peasants on their estates and were regarded by them with loyalty and affection. To some extent under the influence of the ideas and prejudices amongst which they had been born and educated, yet they lived upright, honourable, religious lives, surrounded by a mass of oppression, licence, and corruption in the destruction of which they also were overwhelmed.

Amongst the philosophic set, the “encyclopædists,” so-called from the encyclopædia which had been started by Diderot, and to which Grimm, d’Alembert, Buffon, Marmontel, and many other well-known men were contributors, there was a spirit of passionate revolt against the cruelties and abuses of the time, an ardent thirst for liberty, much generous sympathy with the poor and oppressed, and desire to alleviate the sufferings of humanity.

They were, as usual, men of all sorts, shades, and aims. Many, inspired with lofty but unpractical enthusiasm, dreamed of an impossible republic founded upon that of Plato; the ideal of others was a constitutional monarchy and free parliament such as existed in England; there were also, of course, numbers who desired to upset the present order of things so that they might usurp the power and seize the property of everybody for themselves.

But besides their hostility to religion, the private characters of these philosophers did not, in many cases, by any means correspond with their writings and professions.

Rousseau, notwithstanding his assumption of superior virtue, his pretence of being a leader and teacher thereof, his especial exhortations and instructions to parents about the care and education of their children, and his theories on friendship and love, was absolutely without gratitude for the help and kindness of his friends, ill-tempered, conceited, and quarrelsome; saw no degradation in his liaison with a low, uneducated woman, and abandoned all his children in their infancy at the gate of the enfants trouvés.

Freethinkers, deists, or open atheists most of them were, delighting in blasphemous assaults and attacks, not only upon the Church and religion in general, but upon God himself; and so outrageous and scurrilous was their habitual language upon such subjects that they found it necessary to disguise, by a sort of private slang known only to each other, their conversation in public places where it might be not only offensive to their hearers, but dangerous to themselves.

The salon of the famous Mme. Geoffrin was the great resort of philosophers, literary men of different kinds, painters, musicians, and celebrities of various countries, people distinguished in the political world, or belonging to the court and the great noblesse, French and foreign.

In art, as in everything else, it was still the age of the artificial. The great wigs and flowing drapery of the last reign had given place to powder and paint, ribbons and pompons, pink roses, and pale blue satin or velvet, à la Pompadour.

When people in Parisian society thought of the country, they thought of lambs with ribbons round their necks, shepherdesses in fanciful costumes with long crooks, or a “rosière” kneeling before the family and friends of the seigneur to be crowned with flowers and presented with a rose as the reward of virtue, in the presence of an admiring crowd of villagers; of conventional gardens, clipped trees, and artificial ruins; but wild, picturesque mountain scenery was their abhorrence.

The taste of the day was expressed in the pictures of the favourite artists, Watteau and Greuze, who painted the graceful groups and landscapes every one admired: charming women sitting in beautiful gardens dressed in costumes suitable for a ball or court festivity, or anything on earth but being out of doors in the country.

Fragonard, the Provençal, had more depth and dramatic feeling, the passion of the south and the love of nature in his work gave a stronger, truer, more impressive tone to his pictures; but Boucher, the favourite painter of Louis XV., the Marquise de Pompadour, and the court would seem from his pictures to have looked upon everything in life as if it were a scene in a carnival or fête. His goddesses and saints, even the holy Virgin herself, were painted from models from the theatre, and looked as if they were; his gardens, roses, silks, satins, nymphs, fountains, and garlands were the supreme fashion; every one wanted him to paint their portrait; he had more commissions than he could execute, and his head was turned by the flattery lavished upon him.

David, Chardin, the celebrated genre painter, Van Loo, Gérard, La Tour, Joseph Vernet, and many others were flourishing. Louis Vigée was also an artist. He painted portraits in pastel, of which his daughter says that they were extremely good, many of them worthy of the famous La Tour; also charming scenes after the style of Watteau, in oil.

Although not a great painter he was absolutely devoted to his art, in which he would become so absorbed as to forget everything else. On one occasion he was going out to dinner and had already left the house, when he remembered something he wanted to do to a picture upon which he was working. He therefore went back, took off the wig he was wearing, put on a night-cap, and began to retouch the picture. Presently he got up, went out again, forgetting all about the night-cap which he still had on, and which formed a singular contrast to his coat trimmed with gold braid, and the sword at his side; and would certainly have presented himself at the party to which he was going in this costume had he not fortunately met a neighbour, who stopped him and pointed out the strangeness of his appearance.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Journal de Barbier, “Chronique de la Régence,” 1741.

[3] Louis XV. was five years old when he succeeded this great-grandfather, Louis XIV. (1715).

[4] “Chronique de la Régence” (Barbier, 1748).

[5] George II., although in other respects much resembling the first and fourth Georges, did not ill-treat his wife.

[6] It was afterwards changed into twenty years’ imprisonment, and then banishment (d’Argenson).

[7] Son of the late Regent.

[8] It is, however, true that such of the noblesse de province as were inclined to be tyrannical were worse than the great nobles who belonged to the court; and their oppression was more felt.

CHAPTER II

The childhood of Lisette—Extraordinary talent—The convent—The household of an artist—Death of M. Vigée—Despair of Lisette—Begins her career—Re-marriage of her mother—The Dauphine.

THE early years of the childhood of Elisabeth Vigée were peaceful and happy enough, and already at a tender age the genius which was to determine and characterise her future life began to appear. According to the usual custom she was placed in a convent to be educated, and though only six years old when she was sent there, she had then and during the five years of her convent life, the habit of drawing and scribbling perpetually and upon everything she could lay her hands on, much to the displeasure of the good Sisters and of her companions.

For nothing was safe from her pencil: her books, her copy-books, even those of her schoolfellows, the walls of the dormitory, every available space was covered with heads, figures, and landscapes in crayon or charcoal, and when out in the playground she drew with a stick upon the sand.

Little did the other children who made complaints that their books were “spoiled,” or the nuns who gave reproofs and decreed punishments, imagine what valuable possessions these scribbled, spoilt books and papers would have become in future years if they had taken care of them, for the artistic genius was in them even then. One evening, when she was seven or eight years old, the child drew the head of a man with a beard which she showed to her father. Transported with delight, he exclaimed:

“Tu seras peintre, mon enfant, ou jamais il n’en sera.” [9]

She always kept this drawing, her foretaste of the brilliant success that began so early and never forsook her.

Lise, or Lisette, as she was generally called, was a delicate child, and her parents, who were devotedly fond of her and very anxious about her, frequently came and took her home for a few days, greatly to her delight. With them and her brother Louis, their only child besides herself, she was perfectly happy. Louis was three years younger, and did not possess her genius for painting, but the brother and sister were always deeply attached to one another.

Her mother was extremely beautiful, of rather an austere character, and very religious. With her the children attended High Mass and the other offices of the Church, especially during Lent; and upon the sensitive, impressionable girl the solemn beauty of the music, and especially the deep notes of the organ, produced an almost overpowering effect. Often as she sat or knelt by her mother the rich, melodious tones echoing through choir and nave in the dim, religious gloom would throw her into a kind of rapture, and end in a passion of tears which she could not always conceal. This intense feeling for music, especially religious music, lasted all her life.

But her greatest love was for her father; it was almost adoration. Louis Vigée was exactly opposite in disposition to his wife, to whom he was, however, devoted. Kindly, affectionate, light-hearted, and thoughtless, his love for her did not interfere with his admiration for other women; a pretty grisette was quite able to turn his head, and on New Year’s day he would amuse himself by walking about Paris, saluting the prettiest young girls he met, on pretence of wishing them a happy new year.

Among his friends he was universally popular; every evening at his house were to be found some of the artists, poets, and other literary men who formed the society in which he delighted, and came to the suppers the gaiety and pleasantness of which were quite appreciated by the child who was always allowed to be of the party, but not to sit up after the dessert was upon the table. She would lie awake in her room, listening to the laughter and songs which she enjoyed without understanding, long after she was in bed.

The days were as happy as the evenings, for they were spent in her father’s studio, where he allowed her to paint heads in pastel and to draw all day long with his crayons.

At eleven years old Lisette was taken from the convent to live at home, after having made her first Communion. She had so outgrown her strength that she stooped from weakness, and her features gave at present little promise of the well-known beauty of her after-life. Her brother, on the contrary, was remarkably handsome, full of life and spirits, distinguished at his college by his talents and intelligence, and the favourite of his mother, while the father’s preference was for the daughter whose genius was his pride and delight, and to whom his indulgence and tenderness made up for the strictness or inequality she observed in the dealings of her mother with her brother and herself. Speaking in her “Souvenirs” [10] of her deep affection for her father, she declares that not a word he ever said before her had she forgotten.

Amongst the friends who frequented their house her surprising talent naturally excited much attention and interest. One of those she liked best was the historical painter, Doyen, [11] a man full of culture, information, and good sense, whose remarks upon persons and things, as well as upon painting, she found very useful.

Poinsinet, the author, was a man of very different calibre. That he had plenty of ability was proved by the fact that on the same evening he obtained three dramatic successes, i.e., Ernelinde at the Opera, Le Cercle at the Français, and Tom Jones at the Opéra-Comique. But his absurd credulity made him the object of continual practical jokes, or mystifications as they were called.

On one occasion his friends made him believe that there existed the post of “fire-screen to the King,” and that it might possibly be given to him. In order to qualify himself, they persuaded him to stand frequently before the fire until his legs were quite scorched, assuring him when he wished to move away that if he did not persevere he would never be able to fill that post.

Yet his delineation of the society of the day was so true that somebody remarked about his play, Le Cercle, that Poinsinet must have been listening at the doors. He was drowned in Spain while crossing the Guadalquivir.

Caresne was a painter and poet whose poems and pictures were bad, but his conversation amusing. He wrote the following verses to Lisette, whose rapid progress and intelligence made her seem to be already passing out of childhood into girlhood:

Plus n’est le temps, où de mes seuls couplets

Ma Lise aimait à se voir célébrée.

Plus n’est le temps où de mes seuls bouquets

Je la voyais toujours parée.

Les vers que l’amour me dictait

Ne répétaient que le nom de Lisette,

Et Lisette les écoutait.

Plus d’un baiser payait ma chansonette,

Au même prix qui n’eût été poëte?

He gave Lisette lessons in oil-painting for which his wife used to come and fetch her. They were so poor that on one occasion when she wished to finish a head she was painting, and accepted their invitation to stay and dine, she found the dinner consisted only of soup and potatoes.

Time passed only too quickly in the happy sheltered life of the gifted child in her father’s house. The days were full of delight as she sat absorbed in the work which was a passion to her in the studio of the father she idolised. The evenings were full of pleasure, interest, and variety, as she listened to the brilliant conversation, artistic, intellectual, and political, of her father and the friends of many different ideas and opinions with whom he associated.

Louis Vigée was neither in principles nor tastes at all in sympathy with the new philosophic party; on the contrary, he looked with disapproval and uneasiness upon the future, from which they were so eagerly expecting their millenium.

Returning home one day after dinner with Diderot, d’Alembert, Helvetius, and others of their set, he seemed to be so out of spirits that his wife asked if anything were the matter.

“Ma chère amie,” he replied, “all that I have been hearing makes me think that the world will very soon be upside down.”

He was not, however, to live to see the realisation of his fears. Not much more than a year after Lisette’s return from her convent, a terrible calamity befell her in the loss of the father whose love and protection had made the sunshine of her life, and by whose death her lot was entirely changed and her happiness ruined.

The illness of Louis Vigée was caused by a fish-bone which he had swallowed, and which had become fixed in the stomach. Although the mania for operations amongst English doctors of the twentieth century, which in this country adds a new terror to illness, did not exist at that time in France; under the circumstances, nevertheless, more than one operation was considered necessary; in spite of, or perhaps because of which, although the most skilful surgeon was employed, and was a personal friend who bestowed devoted and incessant care and attention upon the invalid, it soon became apparent that he had not long to live. Heartbroken, Lisette stood by her father’s bedside with her mother and brother to receive his last blessing and farewell, and an hour afterwards he breathed his last.

With her father’s death vanished for ever the bright, unclouded happiness of her childhood; her life henceforth was chequered with brilliant success, artistic and social, and acute sorrows in her domestic life; like a picture in which the brightness of the lights seem to deepen the gloom of the shadows. They were very badly off, for Louis Vigée had left scarcely any provision for his family, and Lisette for some time was so stunned with the shock and grief that she seemed to be sunk in despair, taking no interest in anything, and giving up even the painting which had been her passion. Doyen, amongst other friends of Vigée, used to come to see them; his visits were the greatest consolation to them all, especially to the young girl, who appreciated the affection he had always shown for her father, and by him she was persuaded to resume the studies and work which alone had power to divert her mind in some degree from her sorrow. She began to paint from nature, and did several portraits both in oil and in pastel, working chiefly with another young girl about a year older than herself, Mlle. Boquet, whose father kept a curiosity shop in the rue Saint Denis where he lived, and where Lisette used to go in the evenings to draw from casts by candlelight with her friend.

Very often in the mornings the two girls went together to the artist Briard, who had a studio in the Louvre, and who, though an indifferent painter, drew well, and had several other young girls as pupils.

Lisette and her friend used to stay there all day, taking their dinner in a basket, and had an especial weakness for certain slices of excellent bœuf à la mode which they bought of the concierge of one of the doors of the Louvre. Lisette always declared in after life that she could never get any so good.

Lisette was now rapidly becoming very pretty, to the great satisfaction of her mother, who, seeing that in spite of her busy life and deep interest in her work, her spirits still suffered from the loss of her father, tried to give her all the distraction possible. She would take her to walk in the Tuileries gardens, where the beauty of both mother and daughter attracted much attention; and what pleased her most, to see all the picture galleries possible. They often went to the Luxembourg, in the galleries of which were then the Rubens and many others of the old masters now in the Louvre; besides which they saw all the good private collections. By far the best at that time was the gallery of the Palais Royal, collected by the Regent, Duc d’Orléans. These pictures were sold in the Revolution. Many of them were bought by Lord Stafford.

Besides her delight in wandering through these galleries where she would stand before her favourite pictures, never tired of studying them, absorbed in their beauty, she copied heads from Rubens, Rembrandt, Vandyke, Greuze, and others, and although she was only fourteen years old, the portraits she painted were not only becoming known, but were the principal support of the family, besides paying for the school expenses, books, and clothes of her brother.

But however hard she worked, the family finances did not become sufficiently flourishing to satisfy Mme. Vigée, who, driven to desperation by their poverty, and of course anxious about the future, everything depending upon the work of a delicate girl of fourteen, resolved to marry again, and unfortunately selected a rich jeweller of her acquaintance, to whose house in the rue St. Honoré she removed with her children after the marriage.

She had far better have remained in her old home, poor and free; for directly they were married she discovered the real character of her second husband: an ill-tempered, avaricious man, who refused his wife and step-children even the necessaries of life, although Lisette was foolish enough to give him all she earned by her portraits. She hated him still more because he had taken possession of her father’s clothes, which he wore, to her grief and indignation. Joseph Vernet, who, like many of her old friends, still interested himself in her, was furious at all this, and represented to her that she ought to pay a certain pension to her odious step-father and keep the rest of the money herself; but she feared such a suggestion might make matters worse for her mother, and therefore went on allowing herself to be robbed.

She really cared very little for the money she so easily made, all her love was for her art, which alone had the power to raise her above the petty miseries and troubles of her present life.

Her step-father was continually doing something or other to annoy and distress them. Their new home was immediately opposite the gardens of the Palais Royal, which in those days were not only very extensive but extremely beautiful, with great forest-trees whose deep shade the sun could not penetrate.

The great avenue was a fashionable promenade on Sundays and fêtes, and to Lisette and her friend Mlle. Boquet, both of whom grew prettier every year, it was a great amusement to walk there with the mother and step-father of the former. The Grand-Opéra being close by, when the performance was over, which then was at half-past eight, it was the fashion, on summer nights, for every one to come out and walk about these gardens, where sometimes until two o’clock in the morning it was a scene of enchantment. People belonging to the court and society, bourgeois, actors, musicians, the demi-monde all went there. Every well-dressed woman in the evening carried a large bouquet of flowers, the scent of which filled the air, groups of people scattered about sang or played the harp, violin, or guitar, especially on moonlight nights; amateurs and artistes too, the delicious music of Saint Georges, Alsoredo and Garat often attracted crowds of listeners.

The demi-monde at that time kept themselves apart from the rest of the company; Frenchmen of good position and manners did not appear with them in public. If they were with them at the theatre it was in a closed box; though in her “Souvenirs” Mme. Le Brun declares that the fortunes made by them and the men ruined by their extravagance far surpassed anything of the kind after the Revolution.

The beautiful and notorious Mlle. Duthé was often to be seen, amongst others, attended by an Englishman who was not so scrupulous about appearances, and whom Mme. Le Brun saw again with the same person eighteen years afterwards at a theatre in London.

Besides the gardens of the Tuileries, Luxembourg, and Palais Royal, there were plenty of other places to which the Parisians resorted for amusement.

There was the Colysée, an immense place in the Champs-Elysées, with a lake on which were held regattas and round which were walks with seats placed about; also a large concert-room with excellent music, as the orchestra was a fine one and many of the best singers were to be heard there.

A flight of steps led up to the portico which was the entrance to this concert hall, and was the favourite lounge of the idle, dissipated young men of fashion, who would stand there in groups, making insolent remarks upon the women who came in and out. One evening as Lisette was coming down the steps with her mother, the Duke of Orléans, afterwards the infamous Philippe-Égalité, stood there with the Marquis de Genlis, both making outrageous remarks to annoy whoever passed them. To the relief of Lisette, however, the Duke, as he pointed her out to his friend, only remarked in a loud voice:

“Ah! there is nothing to be said against that one.”

A fashionable promenade was the boulevard du Temple, where every day, especially Thursdays, hundreds of carriages were to be seen driving up and down or standing under the shade of trees now replaced by houses, shops, and cafés. Young men rode in and out amongst them, notorious members of the demi-monde tried to surpass every one in the splendour of their dress and carriages. A certain Mlle. Renard had her carriage drawn by four horses, their harness studded with imitation jewels. It was not an age of imitation. In those days as a rule lace was real lace, jewels were real jewels, and if tawdry imitations and finery were worn it was by women of this class. Respectable people would never have dreamed of bedizening themselves with the sort of cheap rubbish with which the modern women of the lower classes delight to disfigure their houses and their dress.

On one side of the boulevard were rows of chairs on which sat many old ladies of fashion, highly rouged, according to the privilege of their class. For only women of a certain rank were allowed to wear it. There was also a garden with seats raised one above the other, from which people could see the fireworks in the evenings.

The odious step-father, whose name by the by, was Jacques François Le Sèvre, was annoyed at the universal admiration excited by the beauty of his wife and step-daughter. At one time he tried to put a stop to their walks, and told them he had hired a country place where they would go from Saturday till Monday during the summer.

Lisette rejoiced at this announcement, for she fancied she would like to live in the country, at any rate for a part of the year.

But when they saw the place, which was at Chaillot, it was a miserable little house in a still more miserable little garden, without a tree or any shelter from the sun except a deplorable looking arbour against which nothing would grow properly, while in the next plots of ground were shop boys shooting at birds according to the odious fashion one still sees in the south.

Lisette was in despair when she saw it, but fortunately some friends of her mother’s came one Sunday to dine there with them, and were so shocked that they used often to fetch her away and take her out with them on long excursions to all the parks, châteaux, and delightful places in the neighbourhood.

The one she liked best was Marly-le-Roi, a royal palace entirely destroyed in the Revolution. It was then an abode of enchantment, and she always spoke with rapture of the château with its six pavilions, its trellised walks covered with jasmin and honeysuckle, its fountains, cascades, canal, and pools upon which floated tame swans, its lawns shaded by enormous trees, its terraces and statues, everything recalling Louis XIV. Here for the first time she saw Marie Antoinette, then Dauphine, walking in the gardens with several of her ladies, all dressed in white.

Lisette and her mother were turning back, but the Dauphine stopped them, and speaking in the kindest manner to them begged them to continue their walk wherever they liked.

In 1802 Mme. Le Brun revisited this enchanting place, or rather the ground where it used to be. It was entirely swept away; only a stone marked the spot where had been the centre of the salon.

When the summer came to an end they gave up their visits to the horrible little villa, to the infinite joy of Lisette and her mother.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] “Thou wilt be a painter, my child, or never will there be one.”

[10] “Souvenirs de Mme. Vigée Le Brun,” t. 1, p. 8.

[11] Gabriel François Doyen, b. 1726, d. 1806. Painted “La Mort de Virginie,” “Sainte-Geneviève des Ardente,” “La Mort de Saint-Louis,” &c.

CHAPTER III

Brilliant success of Lisette—Love of her art—The Vernet—Life in Paris before the Revolution—Mme. Geoffrin—Marriage of Lisette to M. Le Brun—A terrible prediction.

IN after life Mme. Le Brun used to say that her girlhood had not been like that of other young girls. And indeed it was not. By the time she was fifteen she was already not only a celebrated portrait painter, but very much sought after in society. A portrait of her mother, which she painted when she was not yet fifteen, excited so much admiration that the Duchesse de Chartres, who had often looked at her with interest from the gardens of the Palais Royal, opposite which she lived, sent for her to paint her portrait, and was so delighted with the pretty, gentle girl whose talents were so extraordinary that she spoke of her to all her friends.

The beautiful Comtesse de Brionne and her daughter, the Princesse de Lorraine, who was also very pretty, then came to call on her, and their visit was followed by those of all the court and faubourg Saint Germain. She also knew all the great artists and literary people, and had more invitations than she could accept.

In her brilliant career, although the odious step-father was still a great disadvantage and annoyance, it was impossible that he could inflict much of his company upon her, full and absorbed as her life now was with her professional work and social engagements. The most celebrated foreign visitors to Paris generally came to see her, amongst the first of whom were Count Orloff, one of the assassins of Peter III., whose colossal height and the enormous diamond in his ring seem to have made a great impression upon her; and Count Schouvaloff, Grand Chamberlain, who had been one of the lovers of the Empress Elizabeth II., but was now a man of sixty, extremely courteous, pleasant, and a great favourite in French society.

Her first great dinner-party was at the house of the sculptor Le Moine, where she met chiefly artists and literary people. It was the custom to sing at dessert, a terrible ordeal for young girls, whose alarm often spoilt their song, but who were obliged to sing all the same.

Joseph Vernet had a little son of whose talent for drawing he was very proud; and one day at a party where his friends joked him on his infatuation, he sent for the child, gave him a pencil and paper, and told him to draw.

He began at once to draw a horse so well and so boldly that murmurs arose.

“Well! Very well! But he has begun too low down, he will have no room for the legs.”

The boy, however, drew on with unconcern, finished the body of the horse, drew the upper portion of the legs, and then with a few strokes of the pencil indicated water at the bottom of the sheet, and gave the impression of a horse bathing his legs and feet. [12]

But as dinner-parties then took place in the day-time, often as early as two o’clock, Lisette soon found it impossible to spare the time to go to them. What finally decided her to give them up was an absurd contretemps that happened one day when she was going to dine with the Princesse de Rohan-Rochefort. Just as she was dressed in a white satin dress she was wearing for the first time, and ready to get into the carriage, she, like her father in former days, remembered that she wished to look again at a picture she was painting, and going into her studio sat down upon a chair which stood before her easel without noticing that her palette was upon it. The consequences were of course far more disastrous than what had befallen her father; it was impossible to go to the party, and after this she declined as a rule all except evening invitations, of which she had even more than enough.

These evening parties were usually delightful; those of the Princesse de Rohan-Rochefort were especially so. The intimate friends of the Princess, the Comtesse de Brionne, Princesse de Lorraine, Duc de Choiseul, Duc de Lauzun, Cardinal de Rohan, and M. de Rulhières, a distinguished literary man, were always present, and other pleasant and interesting people were to be met there.

The evenings were spent in brilliant conversation and music, supper was at half-past ten, ten or twelve guests being the usual number at the table.

It speaks well for Lisette that her head was not the least turned and her reputation blameless, considering that at an age when girls in our own day are at their lessons in the schoolroom, she, young, pretty, attractive, and celebrated, was constantly thrown into a society the most corrupt and the most fascinating that has perhaps ever existed.

But although fully enjoying the amusement and admiration that fell to her lot, she passed unscathed through the temptations and dangers around her. The strength and devotion of her religious principles, the deep love of her art, which was the ruling passion of her life, her affection for her mother, who was always with her, and to whom she confided all her affairs, were her only safeguards.

She was constantly surrounded by perils and temptations which to many would have been irresistible. Admiring eyes followed her at the theatre, people crowded round her in the gardens and places of entertainment, men of rank who wanted an opportunity of making love to her had their portraits painted by her for that purpose; but she treated them all with indifference, and when she noticed that their looks and glances were too expressive she would coolly remark: “I am painting your eyes now,” or would insist on the portrait being done with the eyes looking in another direction.

The Marquis de Choiseul had just married a very pretty American of sixteen years old, which did not prevent his entertaining a violent passion for Lisette, and trying to make love to her on all possible occasions, but greatly increased her indignation at his doing so.

In fact she had given her whole heart to her work. She thought and dreamed of nothing but painting, her career as an artist was her life, and her affection for her mother, her brother, and her friends sufficed for her domestic happiness; she wanted neither love intrigues nor even marriage to disturb the state of things she found so entirely satisfactory.

So little did the idea of love enter into her life that until after her marriage she had never read a single novel. Then she read “Clarissa Harlowe,” by way of a beginning, and found it intensely interesting. Before, she only read Lives of the Saints, and various religious or instructive books.

It is difficult for those who are accustomed to think of Paris only as it is now, to picture to themselves at all what it was like in the eighteenth century; for until years after the Revolution it was, to all intents and purposes, a mediæval city.

Paris without the wide streets of enormous houses, the broad, shady boulevards, the magnificent shops and crowded pavements, the glare and wealth and luxury of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; Paris of old France, of the Monarchy, with its ancient towers and buildings, its great hôtels and convents with vast gardens above whose high walls rose stately trees; its narrow, crooked, ill-paved streets, mostly unsafe to walk in after dusk, through which troops of cavalry clattered in gay uniforms, scattering the foot-passengers right and left, and magnificent coaches drawn by four, six, or eight horses lumbered heavily along.

The fêtes and pageants of the Church and court were most gorgeous and impressive. Even to see the King, royal family and court set off for Versailles, Fontainebleau, or any other of the country palaces was a splendid spectacle, the immense number of state coaches which conveyed the King, [13] the Dauphin, [14] Mesdames de France, [15] their numerous households and those of the other Princes of the blood, made a procession which seemed interminable. It was the custom that on these occasions the court should be in full dress, and Mme. Le Brun, in her “Souvenirs,” mentions that a few years later, after her marriage, she went to see the last of these departures in state for Fontainebleau, and observes that the Queen, the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, covered with diamonds which flashed in the sunshine, and with her regal air and majestic beauty, looked like a goddess surrounded by her nymphs. [16]

The Parisians delighted in any shows or festivities, and the royal family were received with acclamations whenever they appeared from the mob, which twenty years later was yelling and howling with savage fury for their destruction.

Arnault, in his memoirs, relates that he was brought up at Versailles, where he was at school from 1772 to 1776, and often saw Louis XV. pass in his carriage. The King had a calm, noble face and very thick eyebrows. He took not the slightest notice of the shouts of Vive le roi from the boys drawn up in a line, or from the people; neither did Louis XVI. when he succeeded him.

A post in one of the royal households was an object of general ambition. Duruflé, though a poet and well-known literary man who had received a prize from the Academy, applied for and obtained the appointment of valet e chambre to the young Comte de Provence, second grandson of the King, afterwards Louis XVIII., and was in consequence obliged to put on his stockings, in doing which he accidentally hurt him.

“How stupid you are!” cried the young prince, angrily.

“I did not know, Monsieur,” replied he, “that one was stupid because one did not put on a stocking well.”

“People are stupid,” answered the prince, “who have not the sense to do properly what they undertake to do.”

Duruflé, who did not like this sort of thing, hastened to sell the post he had been so anxious to get. [17]

Most people at that time, like those before the flood, had no idea of the possibility of the coming destruction.

Only the encyclopædists and such persons of advanced opinions had any presentiments of the overwhelming changes at hand, and they were far from anticipating the horrible calamities and crimes they were helping to bring about.

Their great stronghold was the salon of Mme. Geoffrin, where all the radical, atheist, and philosophic parties congregated. D’Alembert, Condorcet, Turgot, Diderot, Morellet, Marmontel, and many other celebrated names were amongst the intimate friends of the singular woman, who although possessing neither rank, beauty, talent, nor any particular gift, had yet succeeded in establishing a salon celebrated not only in France but all over Europe. Owing to her want of rank she could not be presented at court, and yet amongst her guests were many of the greatest names in France, members of the royal family, strangers of rank and distinction. She knew nothing of art or literature, but her Monday dinners and evenings were the resort of all the first artists of the day, and her Wednesdays of the literary and political world.

Her salon had been famous from 1750, before Lisette was born, and now, as an old woman, she came to visit the young girl of whose artistic genius she had heard enough to excite her curiosity. She arrived in the morning and expressed great admiration for the beauty and talent of her young hostess.

To Lisette she seemed to be about a hundred years of age, though she was not really very old, but her costume, a dark grey dress and a cap over which she wore a large hood tied under her chin, and her bent figure, increased the appearance of age.

Mme. Geoffrin [18] was born 1699: her father a valet de chambre of the Dauphin. He and her mother died young and left her and her brother to the guardianship of their grandmother, a certain Mme. Chemineau, a woman of strong, upright character, and a devout Catholic, but narrow and without much education. She brought up her grandchildren with care and affection, and married the girl when about fourteen to M. Geoffrin, a rich and worthy commercial man of forty-eight. With him Thérèse lived in tranquil obscurity until she was about thirty, when she became acquainted with the celebrated Mlle. Tencin, sister of the Cardinal, over whose house and salon she presided, and who, like Mme. Geoffrin, lived in the rue St. Honoré.

M. Geoffrin did not altogether approve of his wife’s perpetual presence at the hôtel Tencin, which had by no means a good reputation; and when she also began to receive in her own house a few of the literary men whom she met there, philosophers, freethinkers, and various persons upon whom he looked with suspicion, he at first strongly objected. But it was useless. His wife had found the sixteen years of her married life remarkably dull; she had at length, by good fortune, discovered the means of transforming her monotonous existence into one full of interest, and the obscurity which had hitherto been her lot into an increasing celebrity. She turned a deaf ear to his remonstrances, and after a good deal of dissension and quarrelling the husband gave way and contented himself with looking after the household and being a silent guest at the famous dinners given by his wife, until at length, on some one asking her what had become of the old gentleman who was always there and never spoke, she replied—

“It was my husband; he is dead.”

Although stupid, M. Geoffrin was harmless, good, and charitable. Their only child, the Marquise de la Ferté Imbault, adored her father, whom she preferred to her mother. She was a pretty, high-spirited girl, an ardent Catholic, hated her mother’s atheist friends, and always declared that she had forced her into her marriage, which, although a great one, was not a happy one.

When Lisette was about twenty, her step-father retired from business and took an apartment in the rue de Cléry in a large house called hôtel Lubert, which had recently been bought by the well-known picture dealer, M. Le Brun.

Lisette was enchanted at this, as she knew that M. Le Brun had rooms full of the most splendid pictures of all the different schools, to which she would thus have constant access. And her anticipations were more than realised, for M. Le Brun was completely fascinated by her, and only too delighted not only to show her the pictures, but to lend her any she liked to copy.

For six months she worked with enthusiasm, perfectly happy and engrossed with her painting, never noticing that her landlord, who was a good-looking, pleasant, but exceedingly dissipated man, was paying her great attention, having fallen violently in love with her.

It was therefore a surprise, and not altogether an agreeable one, when at the end of the six months he asked for her mother’s consent to marry her.

Lisette at first wished to refuse this offer. She did not at all dislike M. Le Brun, but she was by no means in love with him, and as she could make plenty of money by her profession, she had no anxiety about the future and no occasion to make a mariage de convenance. But her mother, who seems to have had the talent for doing always the wrong thing, and who fancied that M. Le Brun was very rich, did not cease to persecute her by constant representations and entreaties not to refuse such an excellent parti, and she was still more influenced by the desire to escape from her step-father, who, now that he had no occupation, was more at home and more intolerable than ever.

So after much hesitation she consented, but so reluctantly, that even on her way to the church where the marriage was to be celebrated, [19] she still doubted and said to herself, “Shall I say Yes or No?” The wedding, however, took place, and she even agreed to its being a private one, and being kept secret for some time, because M. Le Brun was engaged to the daughter of a Dutchman with whom he had considerable dealings in pictures, and whom he continued to deceive in this matter until their business affairs were finished.

The dishonourable nature of this transaction does not seem to have occurred either to her mother or to Lisette herself. She was rather glad to keep her own name a little longer, but not at all pleased when, it being rumoured that she was engaged to M. Le Brun, everybody began to warn her on no account to marry him.

M. Auber, jeweller to the Crown, said: “You had better fasten a stone to your neck and throw yourself into the river than marry Le Brun.”

The Duchesse d’Aremberg, Mme. de Canillac, and Mme. de Souza, then Ambassadress to Portugal, all young and pretty, all friends of Lisette’s, came to warn her not to marry the man whose wife she had already been for a fortnight.

“In Heaven’s name don’t marry him,” cried the Duchess. “You will be miserable.”

And they proceeded to tell her a number of stories, many of which she did not believe, until she found out to her cost that they were true; but which, nevertheless, filled her mind with uneasy suspicions; while her mother sat by with tears in her eyes, repenting of the new folly by which she had again ruined the happiness of her child.

However, there was no help for it. The marriage was shortly acknowledged, and Lisette, whose mind was full of her painting, did not allow her spirits to be depressed; more especially as M. Le Brun, although he gambled and ran after other women, was not disagreeable or ill-tempered like her step-father, from whose odious presence she was now set free. Her husband spent all the money she made, and even persuaded her to take pupils, but she did not much mind. She never cared about money, and she made great friends with her pupils, many of whom were older than herself. They put up a swing, fastened to the beams in the roof of the studio, with which they amused themselves at intervals during the lesson.

During the March that followed the marriage a kind of mission or religious revival went on at Paris; a sort of wave of religious devotion seemed to have arisen in opposition to the atheism and irreligion of the day. Notre Dame and most of the other churches were thronged during the frequent services, religious processions passed through the streets amidst excited crowds, friars preached and people knelt around them regardless of the bitterly cold weather. Strange to say, one of those who fell victims to their imprudence was Mme. Geoffrin, who, in spite of her infidel friends and surroundings, had never really abandoned her belief in God, or the practice of her religious duties, but had always gone secretly to mass, retained a seat in the Church of the Capucines, and an apartment in a convent to which she occasionally retired to spend a retreat. A chill she got at this mission brought on an attack of apoplexy, and she remained partly paralysed during the remaining year of her life. Her daughter, the Marquise de la Ferté Imbault, took devoted care of her, refusing to allow any of her infidel friends to visit her, and only admitting those whose opinions were not irreligious.

There was at this same time a perfect rage for fortune-telling, second sight, and every sort of occult knowledge and experiences.

The Comtesses de Flahault and de Marigny, two sisters, both young, thoughtless, and eager for adventures, were anxious to see and consult a certain wizard, then very much the fashion, about whom their curiosity was greatly aroused by the stories told of him.

It was not altogether easy in those days for two women of their age and class to go out unattended and unseen, and if they had been discovered it would have caused gossip and scandal. So one dark night they disguised themselves as grisettes, put on large cloaks with hoods and let themselves out through a side door in the garden of the hôtel. After a long walk they arrived, very tired and rather frightened, at a dirty house in a bad quarter, on the fifth floor of which the wizard lived. They rang a dirty-looking bell, a dingy servant appeared with a smoky lamp, and led them into a dimly-lighted room adorned with deaths’ heads and other weird-looking symbols. As they looked round them with misgiving a concealed door suddenly opened and the wizard stood before them dressed in a long flame-coloured robe, with a black mask, and began to make passes in the air with an ivory wand, using strange words they could not understand, while blue sulphur flames played around him.

The two sisters clung to each other in terror, but the man, who saw quite well that they were no grisettes, came forward respectfully, saying to Mme. de Marigny, “Alas! Mme. la Comtesse, why consult destiny? It is pitiless. Nothing will succeed with you; you will die young.”

With a cry of alarm she tried to draw her sister away, but the wizard, taking her hand, seemed to study it carefully, and suddenly dropped it with a strange exclamation.

“Speak,” said the Comtesse de Flahault. “Speak! Whatever my future is to be, let me know it. Tell me. I have strength and courage to hear. Besides, who can assure me that what you say is true?”

“Have you then such a love of falsehood, Madame, that you must have it at any price? Poor woman! she has not the courage to say she believes and fears.”

“Well, yes! I believe and am afraid. Will you speak now?”

The sorcerer hesitated, and only after much persuasion said slowly and gravely—

“Monsieur le Comte, your husband, will lose his head on the scaffold; you will leave France to live without resources in a foreign land; you will work for your living, but after long years of exile you will return to France. You will marry an ambassador, but you will have other vicissitudes.”

Such prophecies in the height of their prosperity seemed so absurd that they laughed, gave the wizard a large fee, and returned home, thinking the whole adventure very amusing.

However, the predictions were fulfilled. Mme. de Marigny, after many misfortunes, died young. The Comte de Flahault was guillotined during the Terror, and the Comtesse escaped with her son to England, where she lived in great poverty in a village near London, until a friend of hers, the Marquis ——, also an emigré, suggested to her that she should write a novel. That same night she began “Adèle de Senanges,” which she sold for £100 to a publisher in London, and after which she continued by her writing to support herself and educate her boy at a good English school. When she returned to France she lived at a small hôtel in an out-of-the-way part of Paris until she married M. de Souza, the Portuguese Ambassador.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] “Carle” or Charles Vernet, son of the landscape and marine painter Joseph, was a figure painter and father of Horace Vernet the battle painter.

[13] The Queen, Marie Leczinska, died 1768.

[14] Grandson of Louis XV., afterwards Louis XVI. His father the Dauphin, died 1765.

[15] Daughters of Louis XV.

[16] “Souvenirs de Mme. Vigée Le Brun,” t. 1, p. 48.

[17] “Souvenirs d’un Sexagenaire” (Arnault).

[18] Marie Thérèse Rodet.

[19] January 11, 1776.

CHAPTER IV

Marie Antoinette—Birth of Mme. Le Brun’s daughter—The Royal Family—Brussels—Antwerp—The charms of French society—The Opera ball—An incident in the Terror—A Greek supper—Le jeu de la Reine.

IN 1779 Mme. Le Brun painted for the first time the portrait of the Queen, then in the splendour of her youth and beauty.

Madame Vigée Le Brun
MARIE ANTOINETTE, QUEEN OF FRANCE

Marie Antoinette was tall, well-formed, with perfectly shaped arms, hands and feet, a brilliant complexion, bluish-grey eyes, delicate though not regular features, a charming expression and a most imposing air, which very much intimidated Mme. Le Brun during the first sitting. But the kindness and gentleness with which the Queen talked to the young artist soon set her at ease, and when the portrait, which was to be presented to the Emperor Joseph II., was finished, she was desired to make two copies of it; one to be sent to the Empress Catherine of Russia, the other to be placed in the royal apartments, either at Versailles or Fontainebleau. After these she painted several portraits of the Queen, one of which, in a straw hat, was, when exhibited in the Salon, 1786, declared by one of those malicious slanders then becoming frequent, to be the Queen en chemise.

There was by this time a perfect rage to be painted by Mme. Le Brun. At a performance at the Vaudeville, called “La Réunion des Arts,” Painting was represented by an actress made up into an exact copy of Mme. Le Brun, painting the portrait of the Queen.

Mme. Le Brun was present, having been expressly invited to the box of some friends who wanted to surprise her, and was deeply gratified and touched when all the audience rose and turned towards her with enthusiastic applause.

Her first child, the only one that lived, was born in February, 1780.

Her extraordinary carelessness about everything but her painting, caused her to make no sort of preparations for this event; and even the day her child was born, although feeling ill and suffering at intervals, she persisted in going on working at a picture of Venus binding the wings of Love.

Mme. de Verdun, an intimate friend of hers, came to see her in the morning, and regarding her with disapprobation, asked whether she had got everything ready that she would require; to which Lisette, still occupied with her picture, replied with a look of astonishment that she did not know what she would require.

“There you are exactly!” cried her friend; “you are just like a boy. Well, I warn you that you will be confined this evening.”

“No! No!” exclaimed Lisette, “I have a sitting to-morrow. I shan’t be confined to-day.”

Mme. de Verdun said no more, but went away and sent the doctor. Lisette dismissed him, but he remained concealed in the house until night. The child was born about ten o’clock, and Lisette was at once passionately fond of it, and as unfortunately foolish in her management of it as she was in the way she conducted all her affairs except her painting. She indulged and spoilt it in so deplorable a manner that she ruined her daughter’s disposition and her own comfort and happiness.

She had another daughter a year or two later that only lived a short time.

Mme. Le Brun took the greatest pleasure in her intercourse with the Queen. Having heard that she had a good voice and was passionately fond of music, Marie Antoinette asked her to sing some of the duets of Grétry with her; and scarcely ever afterwards did a sitting take place without their playing and singing together.

Besides all these portraits of the Queen, Mme. Le Brun painted the King, all the rest of the royal family except the Comte d’Artois; the Duke and Duchess of Orléans, the Princesse de Lamballe, the Duchesse de Polignac, and, in fact, almost everybody.

Louis XVI., who liked talking to her about her pictures, said one day—

“I know nothing about painting, but you make me like it.”

The last time Marie Antoinette ever sat to her was at Trianon, when she painted her head for the great picture in which the Queen is represented with her children, the first Dauphin, [20] Madame Royale, [21] and the Duc de Normandie, [22] which was hung in the Salon of 1788, and excited universal admiration. It was afterwards taken to Versailles and hung in one of the salons through which the Queen always passed on her way to mass.

After the death of her eldest boy, the sight of this picture so affected the Queen that she had it removed, taking care to explain to Mme. Le Brun that this was done only because she could not bear to see it, as it so vividly recalled the child whose loss was at that time such a terrible grief to her.

The days were rapidly approaching when she would be thankful that an early death had saved him from the fate of his brother.

In 1782 business took M. Le Brun to Flanders, and his wife, who had never travelled, was delighted to accompany him.