Her father's palace was pillaged by the Turks, and as a child of four years old she was sold to the comte de Ferriol, the French ambassador at Constantinople.
Her early years were clouded by the execution of the duc de Montmorency, her mother's only brother, for intriguing against Richelieu in 1631, and that of her mother's cousin the comte de Montmorency-Boutteville for duelling in 1635; but her parents made their peace with Richelieu, and being introduced into society in 1635 she soon became one of the stars of the Hotel Rambouillet, at that time the centre of all that was learned, witty and gay in France.
Having nominally become king in 1799, that prince created the estate of Ile-Jourdain a duchy, under the title of Avaray, in favour of the comte d'Avaray,, whom he termed his "liberator."
Some of his finest tragedies were written for her, but her repertoire was not confined to them, and many an indifferent play - like Thomas Corneille's Ariane and Comte d'Essex - owed its success to "her natural manner of acting, and her pathetic rendering of the hapless heroine."
The advent of Thiers, his attitude towards the petition of French bishops on behalf of the pope, the recall of Senard, the French minister at Florencewho had written to congratulate Victor Emmanuel on the capture of Romeand the instructions given to his successor, the comte de Choiseul, to absent himself from Italy at the moment of the kings official entry into the new capital (2nd July 1871), together with the haste displayed in appointing a French ambassador to the Holy See, rapidly cooled the cordiality of Franco-Italian relations, and reassured Bismarck on the score of any dangerous intimacy between the two governments.
