COUNTRY VISITS

61

is shown, to the accompaniment of martial music ! But she was not at
Rainey to enjoy herself ; she was there on business, having been com-
missioned by the Duke to paint his own portrait and his wife’s. The artist
was at that time expecting the birth of her first-born, and was rather
scandalised one day, when she was painting Madame de Montesson’s
portrait, by the conduct of the old Princesse de Conti, who (having
called to see the artist) persisted in addressing her as “ Mademoiselle.”
That fashion of marking the inferiority of the wives of bourgeois and
“ roturiers ” to the great people who so addressed them—Moliere’s wife, for
instance, was commonly called “ Mademoiselle Moliere,”—had gone out
with the reign of Louis XV.
Maupertuis, the seat of the Marquis and Marquise de Montesquiou,
was one of the houses to which Madame Lebrun specially liked to be
invited. She first went there, it would seem, to paint the portraits of
her host and hostess and their daughter-in-law, a girl of fifteen, of whom
she made a charming picture. The Marquis, who was equerry to the King’s
brother, the Comte de Provence, lived in great state at Maupertuis, where
not only magnificence was regarded, but good order. From his own
wealth he was able to entertain large house-parties in great luxury, thirty
or forty guests being usually there whenever the family were at home,
and by his office at court he was able to make free use of the horses and
carriages of his royal master. In Paris, Madame Lebrun found the
Marquis de Montesquiou stiff and inclined to pick faults, but at Maupertuis
he was a different creature, agreeable both in what he said and in his way
of saying it. One may describe him as a pessimist in town and an optimist
in the country. One evening when he was at Maupertuis, there was, for
a change, only a small number of guests. The Marquis drew the
horoscope of each in turn. For Madame Lebrun he predicted long life,
and that she would be a pleasant old woman, “ because she was not a
coquette.”
A strong contrast to Maupertuis was afforded by Mortefontaine,
eighteen miles north-east of Paris, where, in the chateau surrounded by a
beautiful park (with a lake which was to form the subject of one of Corot’s
finest pictures), lived Monsieur Le Pelletier “of Morfontaine”—as the
name of his territory was usually pronounced, and as Madame Lebrun
followed a common practice in spelling it. Though he was fond of
improving his intelligent mind and his park, he kept his house very badly.
Indeed, Madame Lebrun could not remember that she had ever seen