au de
reception_, and chose Allegory, painting her "La Paix ramenant
l'Abondance," which, though a somewhat stilted affair such as Academies
demand, is full of charm--and is still to be seen at the Louvre.

[Illustration: Plate VIII.]

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But these years in Vienna must have gnawed at Vigee Le Brun's heart
like a fearful disease. In her France her much-loved Marie Antoinette
was going through terrible days. The king was being tried for his
life, and "Louis Capet" knew that he was a condemned man before he
faced his accusers with the rare dignity and courage that keep his
memory green. He was condemned to death,--Orleans, "Philip Egalite,"
voting with the majority amidst a murmur of universal horror even
amongst the men who condemned the king. Louis' head fell to the
guillotine on the 10th of January 1793. War with Europe followed; and
the deadly struggle between the Girondists and Jacobins for supreme
power. The 27th of May saw the appointment of the terrible Secret
Committee of Public Safety. By June the Girondists had fallen.
Charlotte Corday's stabbing Marat in his bath left the way clear to
Robespierre's ambition. The Jacobins in power, the year of the Reign
of Terror set in--from July 1793 to July 1794, with Robespierre as lord
of the hellish turmoil. The famous "Loi des suspects" soon filled the
prisons with some two hundred thousand miserable prisoners. The
scaffold reeked with blood. During the year of the Terror the
guillotine sheared the heads from fourteen hundred victims.

The unfortunate queen, Marie Antoinette, whose hair had gone white in a
night, was tried as "the widow Capet," going to the guillotine with
majestic serenity on the 16th of October 1793. The Girondist deputies
followed; also the despicable Egalite Orleans, who went to his doom as
the dandy he was, blotting out his many sins in a final dignity.
Amongst the many batches came the miserable Du Barry, shrieking with
terror, to her awful death, which she had brought upon herself by
foolishly advertising a reward for a robbery from her house of
Louveciennes.

Then came strife amongst the Jacobins themselves. Danton and
Robespierre fought the bloodthirsty villain Hebert for life, and
overthrew him; the Hebertists went to the guillotine like the curs they
were. Danton, with his appeals for cessation of the Terror, alone now
stood between Robespierre and supreme p