MADAME DE SOUZA

MADAME DE SOUZA (1761-1836) (maiden name Adelaide Filleul), French novelist, born in Paris, and educated in a convent, on her leaving which she was married to the Comte de Flahaut, a man much older than herself, and with whom she lived unhappily; fled to Germany and then to England on the outbreak of the Revolution; afterwards returned to Paris, and as the wife of the Marquis de Souza-Botelho presided over one of the most charming of salons, in which the chief attraction was her own bright and gifted personality; her novels, "Eugène de Rothelin," "Eugénie et Mathilde," etc., breathe the spirit of the old régime, and are full of natural and vivacious pictures of French life.