Mme. Le Brun was so constantly occupied and the need of earning was so great with her, that she was forced to confide her daughter to the care of others when she made her début in society. Thus it happened that the young girl met M. Nigris, whom she afterward married. Personally he was not agreeable to Mme. Le Brun and his position was not satisfactory to her. We can imagine her chagrin in accepting a son-in-law who even asked her for money with which to go to church on his wedding-day! The whole affair was most distasteful, and the marriage occurred at the time of the death of Mme. Le Brun's mother. She speaks of it as a "time devoted to tears."
Her health suffered so much from this sadness that she tried the benefit of change of scene, and went to Moscow. Returning to Petersburg, she determined—in spite of the remonstrances of her friends, and the inducements offered her to remain—to go to France. She several times interrupted her journey in order to paint portraits of persons who had heard of her fame, and desired to have her pictures.
She reached Paris in 1801 and writes thus of her return: "I shall not attempt to express my emotions when
I was again upon the soil of France, from which I had been absent twelve years. Fright, grief, joy possessed me, each in turn, for all these entered into the thousand varying sentiments which swept over my soul. I wept for the friends whom I had lost upon the scaffold, but I was about to see again those who remained. This France to which I returned had been the scene of atrocious crimes; but this France was my Native Land!"
