hter repeat a lesson. My heart was beating violently, for I
knew that I was in the wrong. But the Queen looked up at me and said
most amiably, "I was waiting for you all the morning yesterday; what
happened to you?"

"I am sorry to say, Your Majesty," I replied, "I was so ill that I was
unable to comply with Your Majesty's commands. I am here to receive
more now, and then I will immediately retire."

"No, no! Do not go!" exclaimed the Queen. "I do not want you to have
made your journey for nothing!" She revoked the order for her carriage
and gave me a sitting. I remember that, in my confusion and my
eagerness to make a fitting response to her kind words, I opened my
paint-box so excitedly that I spilled my brushes on the floor. I
stooped down to pick them up. "Never mind, never mind," said the
Queen, and, for aught I could say, she insisted on gathering them all
up herself.

When the Queen went for the last time to Fontainebleau, where the
court, according to custom, was to appear in full gala, I repaired
there to enjoy that spectacle. I saw the Queen in her grandest dress;
she was covered with diamonds, and as the brilliant sunshine fell upon
her she seemed to me nothing short of dazzling. Her head, erect on her
beautiful Greek neck, lent her as she walked such an imposing, such a
majestic air, that one seemed to see a goddess in the midst of her
nymphs. During the first sitting I had with Her Majesty after this
occasion I took the liberty of mentioning the impression she had made
upon me, and of saying to the Queen how the carriage of her head added
to the nobility of her bearing. She answered in a jesting tone, "If I
were not Queen they would say I looked insolent, would they not?"

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF MARIE ANTOINETTE AND HER CHILDREN

Known as "The Royal Family." Exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1788, the
Year Before the Outbreak of the Revolution.]

The Queen neglected nothing to impart to her children the courteous
and gracious manners which endeared her so to all her surroundings. I
once saw her make her six-year-old daughter dine with a little peasant
girl and attend to her wants. The Queen saw to it that the little
visitor was served first, saying to her daughter, "You must do the
honours."

The last sitting I had with Her Majesty was given me at Trianon, where
I did her hair for the large picture in which she appeared with her
children. After doing the Queen's hair, as well as separate studies o