LATE 19TH CENTURY, AFTER JEAN ANTOINE HOUDON

Françoise-Eléonore de Manville (1749-1827) married the Comte Elzéar Joseph de Sabran in 1769. He was fifty years her senior, and died five years later leaving her a young widow with two children. Three years after his death she became the mistress of Stanislas Jean, Marquis de Boufflers (1738-1815). He was a poet, military officer and knight of the order of Malta. During the Revolution, they emigrated to Brandenburg in northern Germany and lived at the Schloss Rheinsberg as guests of their old friend, Prince Heinrich of Prussia, brother of Frederick the Great. In 1797, after Boufflers had renounced his vows as a knight of Malta, he and the Comtesse de Sabran were married.