She reached Paris in 1801 and writes thus of her return:  “I shall not attempt to express my emotions when I was again upon the soil of France, from which I had been absent twelve years.  Fright, grief, joy possessed me, each in turn, for all these entered into the thousand varying sentiments which swept over my soul.  I wept for the friends whom I had lost upon the scaffold, but I was about to see again those who remained.  This France to which I returned had been the scene of atrocious crimes; but this France was my Native Land!”

But the new regime was odious to the artist, and she found herself unable to be at home, even in Paris.  After a year she went to London, and remained in England three years.  She detested the climate and was not in love with the people, but she found a compensation in the society of many French families who had fled from France as she had done.

In 1804 Mme. Nigris was in Paris and her mother returned to see her.  The young woman was very beautiful and attractive, very fond of society, entirely indifferent to her husband, and not always wise in the choice of her companions.  Mme. Le Brun, always hard at work and always having great anxieties, at length found herself so broken in health, and so nervously fatigued that she longed to be alone with Nature, and in 1808 she went to Switzerland.  Her letters written to the Countess Potocka at this time are added to her “Souvenirs,” and reveal the very best of her nature.  Feeling the need of continued repose, she bought a house at Louveciennes, where she spent much time.  In 1818 M. Le Brun died, and six years later the deaths of her daughter and her brother left her with no near relative in the world.

For a time she sought distractions in new scenes and visited the Touraine and other parts of France, but though she still lived a score of years, she spent them in Paris and Louveciennes.  She had with her two nieces, who cared for her more tenderly than any one had done before.  One of these ladies was a portrait painter and profited much by the advice of Mme. Le Brun, who wrote of this period and these friends:  “They made me feel again the sentiments of a mother, and their tender devotion diffused a great charm over my life.  It is near these two dear ones and some friends who remain to me that I hope to terminate peacefully a life which has been wandering but calm, laborious but honorable.”

During the last years of her life the most distinguished society of Paris was wont to assemble about her—­artists, litterateurs, savants, and men of the fashionable world.  Here all essential differences of opinion were laid aside and all met on common ground.  Her “calm” seemed to have influenced all her life; only good feeling and equality found a place near her, and few women have the blessed fortune to be so sincerely mourned by a host of friends as was Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun, dying at the age of eighty-seven.