Flicit and her mother took refuge in an apartment lent them by a friend in a Carmelite convent in the rue Cassette, where they received the visits of different friends in the parloir. Amongst the most assiduous was the Baron dAndlau, a friend of the late M. de Saint-Aubin, a man of sixty, very rich and of a distinguished family. He wished to marry Flicit, who refused him, but so great were the advantages of such an alliance that her mother desired her to reconsider the matter. As she still declined, he turned his attentions to her mother, and married her at the end of a year and a half.
THREE:Besides the gardens of the Tuileries, Luxembourg, and Palais Royal, there were plenty of other places to which the Parisians resorted for amusement.
The acquaintance thus begun was a fortunate one for Isabey. In despair at the disappearance of the court and apparently of his own chance of getting on with his profession, he was thinking of giving it up. Mirabeau advised him to stick to it and gave him the commission to paint his own portrait.She was constantly surrounded by perils and temptations which to many would have been irresistible. Admiring eyes followed her at the theatre, people crowded round her in the gardens and places of entertainment, men of rank who wanted an opportunity of making love to her had their portraits painted by her for that purpose; but she treated them all with indifference, and when she noticed that their looks and glances were too expressive she would coolly remark: I am painting your eyes now, or would insist on the portrait being done with the eyes looking in another direction.
