the Salon of 1787, in her thirty-second year, is record of a picture
of "Marie Antoinette and her Children"; and of herself with her girl;
and, amongst others, those of Mademoiselle Dugazon and of Madame
Mole-Raymond. 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 character with
more consummate skill than here; never set down action with more vivid
brush, catching movement flying; she never stated life more truly nor
with more exquisite tact than in this bright vision of a dainty woman
of the theatre.

Affairs in France were now in such a huddle that the State could not
pay interest on the public loans. Calonne could no longer disguise the
serious business from himself or the king. There was nothing for it
but to call the Assembly of Notables. They met at Versailles on the
22nd of February 1787. Calonne fell, to give place to his enemy the
turbulent and stupid Cardinal de Brienne. The Court was completely
foul of the people when De Brienne threw up office in the midst of
riots in Paris and throughout the country, and, in panic, fled to
Italy, leaving the Government in dire confusion and distress.

The king took a wise course; he recalled Neckar. The convoking of the
States-General now became a certainty. Paris rang with the hoarse cry
for the Third Estate. The wrangle as to the constitution of the
States-General became every day more dangerous.

The last portrait that Vigee Le Brun painted of the doomed queen was
the canvas that hangs at Versailles known as "Marie Antoinette and her
Children," in which the queen is seen seated beside a cradle with the
baby Duke of Normandy on her knee, the little Madame Royale at her
side, and the small Dauphin pointing into the cradle. When the doors
of the Salon of 1788 were thrown open the painting was not quite
finished; and for some days the frame reserved for it remained empty.
It was on the eve of what was to become the Revolution, and the country
was speaking now in no hushed whispers of the public deficit in the
nation's treasury, and gazing bewildered at the bankruptcy that
threatened the land. The empty frame drew forth the bitter