Marie-Antoinette Adele Duchatel
Countess of the Empire
Pronunciation:
Wife of Charles Jacques Nicolas Duchâtel, a senior civil servant thirty years her senior, Marie-Antoinette Adèle Duchâtel (née Papin, July 4, 1782 in Aire-sur-Adour), Joséphine's lady of the palace, became Napoleon's mistress in 1804
Their rendezvous, facilitated by Joachim Murat, who posed as the young woman's lover to divert the Empress's suspicions, took place at the marshal's home in Villiers. During one of these meetings, during which Geraud-Christophe Duroc happened to be on the lookout, the Emperor, thinking himself surprised, jumped over the wall of the pavilion, nearly injuring himself.
Joséphine put an end to the affair when she learned of it.
Countess Duchâtel then devoted herself to raising her children, and after the Restoration, to developing the Château de Mirambeau in Saintonge, which her husband had acquired in 1813.
She died on May 20, 1860 in Paris, and is buried in the family vault adjoining the church in Mirambeau, Charente-Maritime.
"Marie-Antoinette Adèle Duchatel", by Guillaume Guillon Lethière (Sainte-Anne, Guadeloupe 1760 - Paris 1832).
Madame Duchatel appears to have been sincere and unselfish. When Napoleon offered her his diamond-encrusted portrait, she kept the image and returned the frame. In 1815, after the battle of Waterloo, she went to Malmaison to bid farewell to the Emperor.
Her second son, Napoléon Joseph Léon Duchâtel (1804-1884), has sometimes been included - apparently erroneously - in the list of the Emperor's natural children...