Mme. Le Brun found Rome delightful and declared that if she could forget France she should be the happiest of women.  She writes of her fellow artist:  “I have been to see Angelica Kauffman, whom I greatly desired to know.  I found her very interesting, apart from her fine talent, on account of her mind and her general culture....  She has talked much with me during the two evenings I have passed at her house.  Her manner is gentle; she is prodigiously learned, but has no enthusiasm, which, considering my ignorance, has not electrified me....  I have seen several of her works; her sketches please me more than her pictures, because they are of a Titianesque color.”

Mme. Le Brun received more commissions for portraits than she could find time to paint in the three years she lived in Italy.  She tells us:  “Not only did I find great pleasure in painting surrounded by so many masterpieces, but it was also necessary for me to make another fortune.  I had not a hundred francs of income.  Happily I had only to choose among the grandest people the portraits which it pleased me to paint.”  Her account of her experiences in Italy is very entertaining, but at last the restlessness of the exile overcame her and impelled her to seek other scenes.  She went to Vienna and there remained three other years, making many friends and painting industriously until the spirit of unrest drove her to seek new diversions, and she went to Russia.

She was there received with great cordiality and remained six years—­years crowded with kindness, labor, honor, attainment, joy, and sorrow.  Her daughter was the one all-absorbing passion—­at once the joy and the grief of her life.  She was so charming and so gifted as to satisfy the critical requirements of her mother’s desires.  In Petersburg, where the daughter was greatly admired and caressed, the artist found herself a thousand times more happy than she had ever been in her own triumphs.

Mme. Le Brun was so constantly occupied and the need of earning was so great with her, that she was forced to confide her daughter to the care of others when she made her debut in society.  Thus it happened that the young girl met M. Nigris, whom she afterward married.  Personally he was not agreeable to Mme. Le Brun and his position was not satisfactory to her.  We can imagine her chagrin in accepting a son-in-law who even asked her for money with which to go to church on his wedding-day!  The whole affair was most distasteful, and the marriage occurred at the time of the death of Mme. Le Brun’s mother.  She speaks of it as a “time devoted to tears.”

Her health suffered so much from this sadness that she tried the benefit of change of scene, and went to Moscow.  Returning to Petersburg, she determined—­in spite of the remonstrances of her friends, and the inducements offered her to remain—­to go to France.  She several times interrupted her journey in order to paint portraits of persons who had heard of her fame, and desired to have her pictures.