"THE EMPRESS... GAVE OUT THE CARDS... AND REMAINED CHATTING - Lot 252

Lot 252
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Result : 585EUR
"THE EMPRESS... GAVE OUT THE CARDS... AND REMAINED CHATTING - Lot 252
"THE EMPRESS... GAVE OUT THE CARDS... AND REMAINED CHATTING WITH CHARMING GRACE..." REGNAUD DE SAINT-JEAN D'ANGÉLY (Michel-Louis-Étienne). Autograph letter signed with his initial to his wife Laure de Bonneuil. S.l., "Thursday" [late September 1813]. One p. in-4. "Yesterday I had an audience in which I paid for the previous two weeks which lasted until nearly five o'clock. I dined alone and went to St-Cloud. The Empress was charming - appointed to play with her with c[om]te Ghéheneuc Mr de Cadore [François-Scholastique Guéheneuc, father-in-law of Marshal Lannes, and Jean-Baptiste Nompère de Champagny]. She gave away the cards, without us having played a single move; and she remained chatting with charming grace until a quarter to eleven. Poor woman, I pitied her and loved her, so much I found her unhappy with resignation, sorrow and courage, with tears in her accent and freedom of spirit in her words. On the 25th, she received news of the Emperor, who is still full of hope, and of Bert[h]ier, who is fortified in health after a few bouts of fever. The viceroy [Eugène de Beauharnais] is supporting himself towards Layback [in Carniola, currently Ljubljana in Slovenia]; it seems that they want to strike on Bernadotte's side... You won't have all the Canclauxs, but Ouvrard will come [general Jean-Baptiste Camille de Canclaux with his wife, and financier Gabriel-Julien Ouvrard, then in disgrace]. Tonight I'll send you the chickens you've been asking for...". One of the "Merveilleuses" of the Revolution, Laure Guesnon de Bonneuil was a great beauty: her portrait by her friend the painter Gérard is a vivid testimony to this. In her Histoire des salons de Paris, the Duchesse d'Abrantès, who was close to Laure, writes that "she is a woman to be sought after, who pleases and is loved when you get to know her". In fact, Laure, who ran a popular salon under the Consulate and Empire, had a turbulent love life at first. Born Augustine-Françoise-Éléonore, but known as Laure, she was the daughter of Nicolas Guesnon de Bonneuil, maître d'hôtel to the Countess of Artois and first valet to Monsieur, Count of Provence, and Michelle de Sentuary, a Creole whose ravishing beauty was the glory of Parisian salons at the end of the Ancien Régime, collected lovers, was one of financier Beaujon's "lullabies", and was loved by poet André Chénier, who sang her under the name Camille. A friend of the painter Vigée-Lebrun, Michelle Sentuary played a role in the escape attempts of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, and worked as a royalist agent in Europe during the Revolution and Empire. Laure, for her part, had married a staunch Bonapartist, and remained loyal to the Empire despite Napoleon I's aversion to her. Troubled during the Restoration, she was bailed out by her mother, who was well-connected with Louis XVIII's court.
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