them with their masks off, and with all their allure of
femininity. This sneer of convention is a two-edged sword.

In the year that they found Boucher dead, seated at his easel before an
unfinished canvas of Venus, this girl of fifteen discovered herself
celebrated; saw her studio invaded by the flower of the world of
fashion; the women of the nobility at the French Court visiting her;
the exclusive doors of the Faubourg St. Germain thrown open to her;
princesses, duchesses, countesses, celebrities of the day and strangers
of distinction her friends. She was in close touch with the leading
artists of her day--Le Moyne, blunt Quentin de La Tour, and the rest.

The girl, in spite of her astounding industry, was soon wholly unable
to carry out the orders for portraits which rained in upon her; her
charm of manner and her increasing beauty added to the pressure of the
siege of her admirers.

A little while before her fifteenth birthday her mother married again a
young jeweller, of the name of Le Sevre, a miserly fellow, who, under
the pretext of taking them into the country, hired a little house at
Chaillot, where they went with the girl for their Sundays; the thrifty
stepfather planting its garden with the gay blossoms of the useful
haricot-bean and the nasturtium. He had a frugal mind.

The petty tyrannies of the thrifty jeweller, his mean outlook on life,
and his sordid aims, made of the habits and atmosphere of his class an
even more uncongenial world for this brilliant girl to live in.
Happily the pursuit of her art, and the friendship of that circle into
which that art and her gifts and charming personality raised her,
mitigated the tyranny of this sordid relationship. And, to add to her
relief, Madame Suzanne, wife of the sculptor, and a friend of her
mother, would carry off the girl with her into the country; and it was
during one of their walks at Marly that she met for the first time
Marie Antoinette.

On the 10th of May 1774, a month before Elizabeth Vigee's nineteenth
birthday, King Louis the Fifteenth died of the small-pox--died without
a friend, for he had dismissed the Du Barry in tears a short while
before. His body was hastily thrust into a coffin, and hurried at the
trot through the darkness to St. Denis, for fear of attack from the
sullen crowds that gathered to do it dishonour; so was he huddled away
amongst the bones of the ancient kings of his race, unattended by the
Court, and amidst the c