urses of his people.

Louis the Sixteenth, son of Louis Fifteenth's only son, the dead
Dauphin, ascended the throne of France in his twentieth year, a
pure-minded, honourable young fellow, full of good intentions, and
sincerely anxious for the well-being of his people; but of a diffident
temper, timid, hesitating, and uncertain in decision, and under the
influence of his young consort, the beautiful Queen Marie Antoinette,
who had the imperious temper of her house, wedded to light and
frivolous manners; she brought to her counsels a deplorable lack of
judgment and a steadfast incompetence in knowledge of men.

The good qualities of this young pair had been very well in private
life; but France needed greater abilities for her guidance than the
simple virtues. It was a hideous part of the destiny of this young
couple that they came to rule over a France that was passionately
angered at the misdeeds of a king and his privileged class of nobles
and clergy who had gone before them--of a class that had come unscathed
through that reign, and were grown incapable of realising that they
could not come unscathed through another.

The Du Barry flown, and her precious trio of ministers with her, Louis
recalled the crafty old schemer Maurepas to power from the banishment
into which the Pompadour had sent him; but he otherwise began well by
making Turgot his minister of finance.

On the 25th of October in this 1774 that saw Louis Quinze and Marie
Antoinette come to the throne of France, Elizabeth Vigee was elected to
the Academy of St. Luke at nineteen years of age.

She brought to her early successes a charming modesty and an utter
absence of conceit or of pose that added greatly to her reputation, and
paved the way to further honours.

III

MARRIAGE AND MOTHERHOOD

But early success was not to be without black care stepping into the
triumphal car in her procession towards an early and wide fame of this
charming and accomplished young woman of twenty. Honours were easy.
But the devil was in the machinery.

Her family had lived in the Rue de Clery, opposite the hotel Lubert;
thence they had drifted to the Rue St. Honore hard by the Palais Royal;
they now returned to the Rue de Clery to the hotel Lubert itself. Here
it chanced that Le Brun, the expert, carried on a lucrative traffic in
pictures. His gallery attracted the pretty artist, who could study
there at leisure the works of the great masters that passed th