er manner is
gentle; she is prodigiously learned, but has no enthusiasm, which,
considering my ignorance, has not electrified me.... I have seen several
of her works; her sketches please me more than her pictures, because they
are of a Titianesque color."

Mme. Le Brun received more commissions for portraits than she could find
time to paint in the three years she lived in Italy. She tells us: "Not
only did I find great pleasure in painting surrounded by so many
masterpieces, but it was also necessary for me to make another fortune. I
had not a hundred francs of income. Happily I had only to choose among
the grandest people the portraits which it pleased me to paint." Her
account of her experiences in Italy is very entertaining, but at last the
restlessness of the exile overcame her and impelled her to seek other
scenes. She went to Vienna and there remained three other years, making
many friends and painting industriously until the spirit of unrest drove
her to seek new diversions, and she went to Russia.

She was there received with great cordiality and remained six
years--years crowded with kindness, labor, honor, attainment, joy, and
sorrow. Her daughter was the one all-absorbing passion--at once the joy
and the grief of her life. She was so charming and so gifted as to
satisfy the critical requirements of her mother's desires. In Petersburg,
where the daughter was greatly admired and caressed, the artist found
herself a thousand times more happy than she had ever been in her own
triumphs.

Mme. Le Brun was so constantly occupied and the need of earning was so
great with her, that she was forced to confide her daughter to the care
of others when she made her debut in society. Thus it happened that the
young girl met M. Nigris, whom she afterward married. Personally he was
not agreeable to Mme. Le Brun and his position was not satisfactory to
her. We can imagine her chagrin in accepting a son-in-law who even asked
her for money with which to go to church on his wedding-day! The whole
affair was most distasteful, and the marriage occurred at the time of the
death of Mme. Le Brun's mother. She speaks of it as a "time devoted to
tears."

Her health suffered so much from this sadness that she tried the benefit
of change of scene, and went to Moscow. Returning to Petersburg, she
determined--in spite of the remonstrances of her friends, and the
inducements offered her to remain--to go to France. She several times
inte