THREE:She had only to choose amongst the great personages who wanted their portraits painted; and she spent the time when she was not working in wandering amid the scenes to visit which had been the dream of her life. Ruins of temples, baths, acqueducts, tombs, and monuments of the vanished Empire, gorgeous churches and palaces of the Renaissance, huge never-ending galleries of statues and pictures, the glories of Greek and of medi?val art; Phidias and Praxiteles, Raffaelle, Michael Angelo, and Leonardo; the picturesque beauty of Rome, as it was then, the delicious gardens, since swept away by the greedy vandalism of their owners; the mighty Colosseum; the solemn desolate Campagna; all filled her mind and imagination and distracted her thoughts from France and the horrors going on there. At Rome in those days there certainly seemed to be everything that could be wished for to make life a paradise upon earth. Besides the natural beauty, the historical and arch?ological interest, and the treasures of art, the magnificence of the ecclesiastical functions, church services, stately processions, and entrancing music were a perpetual delight to her. “There is no city in the world,” she wrote to a [96] friend, “in which one could pass one’s time so deliciously as in Rome, even if one were deprived of all the resources of good society.”At this moment the gaoler returned, accompanied by the aide-de-camp for whom Tallien had sent.

THREE:

THREE:

THREE:Louis XVI., who liked talking to her about her pictures, said one day—A crowd began to gather, and he went on in a loud voice—

THREE:The first register in the little chapel was of the baptism of Alexandre de Montagu, whose godparents were the Duke de la Rochefoucauld-Dondeauville and Mme. Alexandrine de la Luzerne.