born in Guadeloupe about 1776, was the marvel of
the _Directoire_, and several times was sent on secret missions by
Napoleon. The role she played under the _Directoire_, the _Consulat_
and the Empire is not clear, but she was a confidential friend of
Chateaubriand, lived in the noted house called the _Madeleine_, near
the forest of Fontainebleau, and wrote about it as did Madame de
Sevigne about _Les Rochers_. While living there, she received her
Bonapartist friends as well as her Legitimist friends. Having lived in
a society where life means enjoyment, she had many anecdotes to
relate. She was a fine equestrienne, a most beautiful dancer,
apparently naturally graceful, and bore the sobriquet of _la jolie
laide_. Her marriage to the banker, M. Hamelin, together with her
accomplishments, secured her a place in the society of the
_Directoire_. Balzac, in a letter to Madame Hanska, refers to her as
_une vieille celebrite_, and states that she wept over the letter of
Madame de Mortsauf to Felix in _Le Lys dans la Vallee_. It is
interesting to note that he later built his famous house and breathed
his last in the rue Fortunee to which Madame Hamelin gave her
Christian name, since it was cut through her husband's property, the
former Beaujon Park, and that it became in 1851 the rue Balzac.

Delphine Gay, the beautiful and charming daughter of Madame Sophie
Gay, was called "the tenth muse" by her friends, who admired the
sonorous original verses which she recited as a young girl in her
mother's salon. She became, in June, 1831, the wife of Emile de
Girardin, the founder of the _Presse_. Possessing in her youth, a
_bellezza folgorante_, Madame de Girardin was then in all the splendor
of her beauty; her magnificent features, which might have been too
pronounced for a young girl, were admirably suited to the woman and
harmonized beautifully with her tall and statuesque figure. Sometimes,
in the poems of her youth, she spoke as an authority on the subject of
"the happiness of being beautiful." It was not coquetry with her, it
was the sentiment of harmony; her beautiful soul was happy in dwelling
in a beautiful body.

She held receptions for her friends after the opera, and Balzac was
one of the frequenters of her attractive salon. Of her literary
friends she was especially proud. According to Theophile Gautier, this
was her coquetry, her luxury. If in some salon, some one--as was not
unusual at that time--attacked one of her f