ing,
"You will be a painter, child, if ever there was one!"

I mention these facts to show what an inborn passion for the art I
possessed. Nor has that passion ever diminished; it seems to me that
it has even gone on growing with time, for to-day I feel under the
spell of it as much as ever, and shall, I hope, until the hour of
death. It is, indeed, to this divine passion that I owe, not only my
fortune, but my felicity, because it has always been the means of
bringing me together with the most delightful and most distinguished
men and women in Europe. The recollection of all the notable people I
have known often cheers me in times of solitude.

As a schoolgirl my health was frail, and therefore my parents would
frequently come for me to take me to spend a few days with them. This,
of course, suited my taste exactly. My father, Louis Vigee, made very
good pastel drawings; he did some which would have been worthy of the
famous Latour. My father allowed me to do some heads in that style,
and, in fact, let me mess with his crayons all day. He was so wrapt up
in his art that he occasionally did queer things from sheer
absent-mindedness. I remember how, one day, after dressing for a
dinner in town, he went out and almost immediately came back, it
having occurred to him that he would like to touch up a picture
recently begun. He removed his wig, put on a nightcap, and went out
again in this headgear, with his gilt-frogged coat, his sword, etc.
Had not one of his neighbours stopped him, he would have exhibited
himself in this costume all through the town.

He was a very witty man. His natural good spirits infected every one,
and some came to be painted by him for the sake of his amusing
conversation. Once, when he was making a portrait of a rather pretty
woman, my father observed, while he worked at her mouth, that she made
all manner of grimaces in order to make that organ look smaller.
Falling out of patience with all this maneuvering, my father quietly
remarked:

"Please don't let me give you so much trouble. You have only to say
the word and I will paint you without a mouth."

My mother was an extremely handsome woman. This may be judged from the
pastel portrait made of her by my father, as well as from my own oil
painting of a much later date. She carried her goodness to austerity,
and my father worshipped her as though she had been divine. She was
very pious, and, in heart, I was so, too. We always heard high mass