[2] Described as beautiful with blonde hair, blue eyes, rose-pink complexion and possessed of a "vivacious wit", she was immortalised in verse by the poet Pierre de Ronsard.

[2] Her outstanding good looks caught the attention of the Queen Mother who invited her to join her elite "flying squadron" (L'escadron volant), a group of attractive and talented female spies who were recruited to seduce powerful men at Court, thereby extracting information which would then be passed on to Catherine and used as political leverage by the latter.

Catherine was keenly aware of the power and influence women were able to wield over men – knowledge she had acquired from observing her late husband, King Henry II, fall completely under the sway of his cultured mistress Diane de Poitiers.

[3] She set out establishing this select group of about eighty beautiful ladies-in-waiting whom she had dressed at all times "like goddesses in silk and gold cloth".

This led Queen Jeanne to later denounce Catherine's court in a letter to her son, the future Henry IV of France, "Here it is the women who make advances to the men, rather than the other way around".

[5] Despite his mother's warnings about the brazen women who frequented the French court, Henry himself would succumb to the sophisticated charms of Charlotte de Sauve, whom author Mark Strage described as having been "one of the most accomplished members of L'escadron volant.

[6] Much to Catherine's satisfaction, Condé fell passionately in love with Isabelle, whose beauty and sensuality so ensnared him that he neglected to attend Protestant religious services at court.

Although the ladies of her "flying squadron" were used for the specific purpose to act as spies by forming sexual relationships at court, they were required to be discreet and decorous in public and above all to avoid pregnancy at all costs.

He claimed that Limeuil felt persecuted by the prince, whom she alleged pressured his wife Philippes de Montespedon, who was the Première dame d'honneur responsible for the ladies-in-waiting, to control and oppress the ladies-in-waiting: "The said princess, at the behest of the said prince her husband, aside from the pains that she gave to all the maids of the Queen, seemed to have a particular animosity towards her and tried to verify whether she was pregnant, often tormenting her in front of the Queen on this matter and others.

She featured in Honoré de Balzac's satirical tale, La Chière nuictée d'amour in which her husband was the central character.