Life
She was the daughter of Count Charles Camille de Sainte-Aldegonde and Adelaïde Joséphine de Bourlon de Chavagne. On 8 October 1839 she married Alexandre Edmond de Talleyrand-Périgord, son of Edmond de Talleyrand-Périgord and Princess Dorothea of Courland, at the Château de Beauregard at Cellettes (Loir-et-Cher), her mother's property.
Valentine de Sainte-Aldegonde's passionate admirer, Anatole Demidov, attended her wedding and even helped assist the event. He offered her a diamond ornament whose magnificence caused the bridegroom worry. The next year, in 1840, Demidov briefly broke off their liaison due to financial problems, but later that same year married Mathilde Bonaparte and resumed his affair with Valentine on his first stay in Paris after his wedding. In 1845, he arranged for Valentine to settle with him in Florence and stayed by her side, even though her husband took umbrage. At a costume ball, Valentine was insulted by her rival, Mathilde, and in response Demidov slapped his wife twice in public, which signalled their final separation soon thereafter.
Read more about this topic: Valentine De Sainte-Aldegonde
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The city is loveliest when the sweet death racket begins. Her own life lived in defiance of nature, her electricity, her frigidaires, her soundproof walls, the glint of lacquered nails, the plumes that wave across the corrugated sky. Here in the coffin depths grow the everlasting flowers sent by telegraph.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“The new man is born too old to tolerate the new world. The present conditions of life have not yet erased the traces of the past. We run too fast, but we still do not move enough.... He looks but he does not contemplate, he sees but he does not think. He runs away from time, which is made of thought, and yet all he can feel is his own time, the present.”
—Eugenio Montale (1896–1981)
“Is it not enough to make me come back to life out of spite, to have someone who spat in my face while I existed come and rub my feet when I am beginning to exist no longer?”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)