Interesting Women: La Païva.

Esther Lachmann, later Pauline Thérèse Lachmann, later Mme Villoing, later Mme la Marquise de Païva, later Countess Henckel von Donnersmarck, (b. Moscow, 7 May 1819 - d. Neudeck, 21 January 1884) was the most successful of 19th century French courtesans.

[excerpts from the Wiki article]

She returned to Paris, and from there to the spa at Baden, where she met a Portuguese marquis, Albino Francesco de Païva-Araujo. Her first husband had died of consumption, so she was free to marry the marquis on 5 June 1851, acquiring a fortune, a title, and her nickname, La Païva. The day following, Horace de Viel-Castel wrote, she told her husband, "You wanted to sleep with me, and you've done so, by making me your wife. You have given me your name, I acquitted myself last night. I have behaved like an honest woman, I wanted a position, and I've got it, but all you have is a prostitute for a wife. You can't take me anywhere, and you can't introduce me to anyone. We must therefore separate. You go back to Portugal. I shall stay here with your name, and remain a whore." And, indeed, the marquis returned to Portugal, leaving her behind. The marriage was not annulled until 16 August 1871, and the marquis shot himself in 1872.

Cornelia Otis Skinner wrote that one of La Païva's conquests was a banker of whom she demanded twenty banknotes of one thousand francs each - which, she stipulated, he must burn one by one during their lovemaking. The banker decided to substitute counterfeit banknotes. Even so, the sight of their incineration was so unnerving that he could not accomplish his part of the tryst.

She died at their castle in Neudeck on 21 January 1884, aged 64. Her naked body was preserved in a glass tank of alcohol, kept by her husband in an isolated room of the castle. Henckel visited her corpse regularly for a strange sort of contemplation that may be termed thanatophilia. It is said that when Henckel's second wife, Katharina, unexpectedly discovered the body of her predecessor, preserved in all its glory in alcohol, she suffered a mental breakdown.