s of a
satirical jingle that went the round of the studios.

She was harassed also by the petty spites of enemies who did not
hesitate to try and have her studio seized under the charge that she
was painting without legal title since she had never been apprenticed
to a painter. And malignant tongues whispered it abroad that she never
would have been elected to the Academy had it not been done at the
command of the Court. They made her very friendship with the queen a
whip with which to lash at her. She was now painting many portraits of
the queen.

Vigee Le Brun spent her entire day at her easel, from the time she
arose in the morning, and she rose early, until the daylight went. She
gave up dining in the town, in order not to be drawn away from her
work; and the temptation must have been strong for a young and charming
woman so greatly in request. But at nightfall she went out to social
functions, and herself received the most brilliant and distinguished
members of society and art and letters at her own house, giving
concerts where Gretry, whose portrait she painted, and other celebrated
musicians played portions of their operas before they were seen or
heard upon the stage; whilst the grandees of the old noblesse and the
famous wits frequented her house.

Again, the report of her receptions got noised abroad; and envious
tongues were soon exaggerating the extravagance and luxury in which she
lived, descending to such childish tittle-tattle as that she lit her
fires with bank-notes, that the number of her guests was so great and
so distinguished that, for lack of seats, the marshals of France had to
sit upon the floor; gossip and babble that were to cost her dearer than
she thought, though she laughed it all away with a shrug of her pretty
shoulders at the time. It was concerning one of her six-o'clock
suppers that a slander was started which was to be a serious menace to
her in after years.

=====================================================================

PLATE VI.--PORTRAIT OF MADAME MOLE-RAYMOND

(In the Louvre)

This famous painting of Madame Mole-Raymond, the pretty actress of the
Comedie Francaise, is one of Vigee Le Brun's masterpieces. Her brush
is now at its most dexterous use; the laughing pretty woman is caught
like a live thing and fixed upon the canvas as at a stroke as she trips
across the vision, with muff upraised, smiling out upon us as she
passes. Vigee Le Brun never stated char