DEATH OF A PARISIAN CELEBRITY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 7008, 3 May 1884, Page 3 (Supplement)

DEATH OF A PARISIAN CELEBRITY.

A SOBSIEB Parisian celebrity has recently died at her chateau in Silesia. This was the once famous Mme. de Paiva, at the time of her death, by her marriage with a German, nobleman, Countess von Henckel Oonneamark. Despite her colossal wealth and her aristocratic husband, this lady was simply s dcmi-mondaine of great beauty and fascinanation. She was a Russian by birth, and when she first came to Paris she was the widow of a tailor. ' She need to sell bouquets about the streets, and the story goes that a charitable passer-by, having given her a gold louis while she was crouching, half dead with cold and hunger, in a sheltered corner on the. Champs Elysees one bitter winter's night, she made a vow to build a hotel on that very spot. We know nothing about the vow, bat the hotel exists. It is famed for the gorgeousnese of its interior decorations, the staircase being composed of precious etones, such aa onyx, lapis-laznli, - blood-stone,' cornelian, and agate, each step being formed of a slab of some one of these costly materials. She showed this staircase on its completion to Theophile Gaufcier, who olv served' with more wit than pohtenes*, " Madame, I see that the successive ataps of vioe are far more dazzling than are those of virtue." One of her earliest conquests was the pianist Henri Herz. for some yeara she bore his name, and it was generally thought ■that he had married her, bnt in poi>t of fact her husband, the tailor, was at the time still living. However, she used to go into society with M. Herz, and once carried her effrontery so far as to present herself at a reception at the Tuileries. This was daring the reign of Louis Philippe, when the peculiarities of her, position did not meet with-the same condonation that they wonld have done under the Empire. In fact, she had hardly crossed the threshold of the reception room when as' usher oaroe to her, and saying politely, " Madame, yon have made a mistake in the door," he opened another and bowed her out. The result of this misadventure was a quarrel with the pianist, and the lady went off to London, where she led a very' faat and decidedly eoandalous life. Iα 18IV1 she married a Portuguese gentleman, the Marquis de Paiva, and aet up as a society leader. Her dinners soon became celebrated, and, more fortunate than moat of her prototype, ahe succeeded in drawing around her many of the noted men of Paris—artists, authors, critics, &c. Her husband committed Buioide, bat that changed nothing in' her position. She was still the Marquise de Paiva. ' She was already an old woman when she married her third husband, Count Von fienqkel of Donnesmark. The war of 1870 broke op her circle and drove her temporarily from Paris. She never returned to reside there permanently. She was seventy-two yeara old when she died. For many years her remarkable beauty had departed, and only its painted shadow remained. She used to spend from five to six bonrs daily at her toilet, and it used to be said of her maliciously that she understood the art of painting better than any member of the Institute. "Why 18 it that there are so few fine female artists ?' she once asked of' a noted painter. "Madame," he said, bowing, "I see before me one who is certainly one of the first aquarellists of the day." Yet, though they made witticisms respecting her, all these , brilliant Parisians rushed to see her hdrisa I and her pictures, and to eat her dinners.