FORE:Here she finished the portrait of the young Princess von Lichtenstein, as Iris. As she was represented with bare feet, her husband told Mme. Le Brun that when it was hung in his gallery, and the heads of the family came to see it, they were all extremely scandalised, so he had placed a pair of little shoes on the ground under it, and told the grand-parents they had dropped off.
Mme. Le Brun went to all the chief watering-placesBath, Brighton, Tunbridge Wells, Matlock, &c.she found English life monotonous, as it certainly was in those days, and hated the climate of London; but she had gathered round her a congenial society, with whom she amused herself very well, and whom she left with regret when she decided to return to France, partly because her ungrateful daughter had arrived there, and was being introduced by her father to many undesirable people.They were, as usual, men of all sorts, shades, and aims. Many, inspired with lofty but unpractical enthusiasm, dreamed of an impossible republic founded upon that of Plato; the ideal of others was a constitutional monarchy and free parliament such as existed in England; there were also, of course, numbers who desired to upset the present order of things so that they might usurp the power and seize the property of everybody for themselves.The alliances with the House of Savoy were much more popular with the court than that with the House of Austria and Lorraine, [86] and caused continual jealousies and disputes. Foreseeing that such would be the case, Louis XV., before the marriage of the Comte de Provence, thought it necessary to caution him on the subject. Louis XVIII. gives in his memoirs [87] the following account of the interview: