At Vienna the Baroness de Strogonoff informed me that I had
spent sixty thousand francs on my Greek supper. At St. Petersburg the
sum fixed upon was eighty thousand francs. In reality, the supper had
occasioned an outlay of nearly fifteen francs!

Although, as I am sure, I was the most harmless creature who ever drew
breath, I had enemies. A few years before the Revolution I did the
portrait of M. de Calonne, which I exhibited at the Salon of 1785. I
painted that minister in a sitting position and as far as the knees,
which caused Mlle. Arnould to say, when she looked at it: "Mme. Lebrun
cut off his legs, so that he should not get away." Unfortunately, this
little witticism was not the only one my picture evoked; I was made
the butt of calumnies of the most odious description. There were a
thousand stories circulated as to the payment of the portrait, some
asserting that the minister had given me a quantity of sweetmeats
wrapped in bank-notes, others that I had received in a pasty a sum
large enough to ruin the treasury. The fact is, that M. de Calonne had
sent me four thousand francs in a box worth twenty louis. Some of the
people who were with me when the box arrived can certify this. They
were even surprised at the smallness of the amount, for not long
before, M. de Beaujon, whom I had painted in the same style, had sent
me eight thousand francs, without any one considering this fee too
large.

I cared so little about money that I scarcely knew the value of it.
The Countess de la Guiche, who is still alive, can affirm that, upon
coming to me to have her portrait painted and telling me that she
could afford no more than a thousand francs, I answered that M. Lebrun
wished me to do none for less than two thousand. My closest friends
all know that M. Lebrun took all the money I earned, on the plea of
investing it in his business. I often had no more than six francs in
my pocket and in the world. When in 1788 I painted the picture of the
handsome Prince Lubomirskia, who was then grown up, his aunt, the
Princess Lubomirska, remitted twelve thousand francs to me, out of
which I begged M. Lebrun to let me keep forty; but he would not let me
have even that, alleging that he needed the whole sum to liquidate a
promissory note.

My indifference to money no doubt proceeded from the fact that wealth
was not necessary to me. Since that which made my house pleasant
required no extravagance, I always lived very economically. I sp