On first arriving at Berlin I called upon the French Ambassador, General Bournonville, for I was at last beginning to consider a return to Paris. My friends, and particularly my brother, urgently suggested I should do so. They had easily had my name taken off the list of exiles, so that I was reestablished as a Frenchwoman, which, in spite of all, I had ever remained in my heart. Although General Bournonville was the first republican ambassador I visited, I had already seen others. Toward the end of my stay at St. Petersburg General Duroc and M. de Chateaugiron appeared at Alexander's court as envoys of Bonaparte, and I remember hearing the Empress Elisabeth saying to the Emperor, "When are we to receive the _citizens_?" M. de Chateaugiron called upon me. I was as polite as in me lay, but that tricoloured cockade affected me unspeakably. A few days later they both dined at Princess Galitzin's. At table I found myself next to General Duroc, who was said to have been one of Napoleon's intimates. He addressed not a single word to me, and I did likewise with him. The dinner I speak of gave rise to a rather amusing incident. The Princess's cook, wholly ignorant of the French Revolution, naturally took these gentlemen for ambassadors from the King of France. Wishing to honour them, after much reflection he bethought himself that the lily was the emblem of France, and accordingly arranged his truffles and fillets and sweetmeats in that pattern. This so took the guests aback that the Princess, fearing no doubt she was suspected of a bad joke, called up the cook, and asked him what all the lilies meant. Said the worthy soul with an air of proud satisfaction, "I wanted to show Your Excellency that I knew the proper thing to do on great occasions." A few days before I said farewell to Berlin the Director-General of the Academy of Painting most courteously came to me in person with my diploma as a member of said Academy. The many tokens of good-will heaped upon me at the Prussian capital and court would assuredly have kept me longer had my plans not been definitely fixed. Hence, being resolved to go, I bade good-by to that dear, kind, lovely young Queen, all unwitting, alas! how few years after I was to be shocked with the news of her death. [Illustration: WOMAN PAINTING.] At starting from Berlin I was threatened with the loss of everything I owned, and this is how it happened: