As soon as spring came I took a little house in a village near Vienna and went to settle there. This village, called Huitzing, was adjacent to the park of Schoenbrunn. I took with me to Huitzing the large portrait I was then doing of the Princess Lichtenstein, to finish it. This young Princess was very well built; her pretty face had a sweet, angelic expression, which gave me the idea of representing her as Iris. I painted her standing, as if about to fly into the air. She had about her a fluttering, rainbow-coloured scarf. Of course I painted her with naked feet, but when the picture was hung in her husband's gallery the heads of the family were greatly scandalised at seeing the Princess exhibited without shoes, and the Prince told me that he had had a pair of nice, little slippers placed under the portrait, which slippers, so he had informed the grandparents, had slipped off her feet and fallen on the ground. At Vienna I was as happy as any one possibly could be away from her kin and country. In the winter the city offered one of the most agreeable and brilliant societies of Europe, and when the fine weather returned I delightedly sought my little country retreat. Not thinking of leaving Austria before I could safely return to France, the Russian Ambassador and some of his compatriots urged me strongly to go to St. Petersburg, where, they assured me, the Empress would be pleased to see me. Everything that the Prince de Ligne had told me about Catherine II. inspired me with an irrepressible desire to get a glance at that potentate. Moreover I reasoned correctly that even a short stay in Russia would complete the fortune I had decided to make before resuming residence in Paris. So I made up my mind to go. [Illustration: QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE.]