n under foot. The starving rabble of Paris knew it, by the next
day; and headed by a band of frantic women, set out for Versailles on
the morning of the 5th of October, under the leadership of the ruffian
Maillard who had distinguished himself at the capture of the Bastille.
They overran the palace. The king again showed superb nerve; and the
mob, abashed and admiring, calling "Long live the king!" withdrew to
the courtyards. The unfortunate brawl in the courtyard followed; and
the mishap of the night. The next day the Royal Family had to make
their humiliating journey with the rabble to Paris.

Small hope for Vigee Le Brun, unless she stole out of France, and at
once. She stood, indeed, in perilous plight. Her relations with the
Court, and with the nobility, made every hour that she stayed in Paris
a greater danger to her life. It was dangerous to go into the
streets--dangerous to leave Paris--but for Vigee Le Brun more dangerous
to stay. She was a marked woman. There was for her one sole way from
death, and it was flight. By delaying she risked also the life of her
child. Her friends begged her to be gone. She took the girl; searched
hurriedly for all the money she could lay hands on--her husband had
taken all but eighty francs (some three guineas)--and, leaving her
canvases where they stood unfinished, she passed out of the studio that
had been all the world to her; the place where she had spent the
happiest hours of her life. A few days before, she had had to refuse
to begin a portrait of the future Duchess de Noailles--to save her own
head, not to paint those of others, was now become her single aim.

On the 5th of October of this year of 1789, that fearsome day that saw
the rabble marching to Versailles, Vigee Le Brun took her seat in a
diligence with her little girl, seated between a thief and a jacobin;
the diligence rattled along the cobbles of her beloved city, and out of
the gates--in such fashion Vigee Le Brun left Paris and took the road
for Italy.

V

SWEET EXILE

As she rattled out of Paris between her grim companions, Vigee Le Brun
little thought that her exile would last a dozen years; but everywhere
she went she was destined to be welcomed with honour; and wheresoever
she roamed--and she ranged across the face of the land wellnigh from
end to end of it--she was to receive the same ovations, meet with the
same success, be rewarded with the highest honours.

She went amongst str