Eulalie Papavoine was unmarried and lived with Rémy Ernest Balthazar, a journeyman engraver, who was a corporal in the 135th battalion of the National Guard.

[2][3] Arrested after Bloody Week, Papavoine was imprisoned at Satory, identified as a probable ringleader alongside Louise Michel and Victorine Gorget, then taken with about forty other women to the Chantiers prison at Versailles.

[5] Papavoine was accused, alongside Léontine Suétens, of having stolen three handkerchiefs from a house on the Rue de Solférino.

She had no previous convictions, and denied participating in the fires in the neighbourhood, but admitted to having organized the first aid centre in the house on the Rue de Solférino.

While imprisoned, she was authorized to marry Rémy Balthazar, who was detained in the docks at Satory, to legitimize her son, who was four years old.

[3] Victor Hugo took up the defence, partly of Théophile Ferré and Louis Rossel, but also of three women: Léontine Suétens, Eulalie Papavoine, and Joséphine Marchais.

[8][9] I was delighted this morning by the story of Miss Papavoine, a pétroleuse, who serviced eighteen citizens in a single day in the middle of the barricades!

That's stiff.For academic Roger Bellet, Flaubert recalls a myth, developed after the French Revolution of 1848, of the iconic prostitute of the great revolutionary days, but diverts it.

Their physical portraits enhanced the moral indignity: "Rétiffe, Marchais, Bocquin, Suétens, Papavoine, are presented [...] with turned-up noses, vicious eyes, weasel-headed, with ribbons and dirty hair, and with faces ravaged by debauchery.