Louise Marie Madeleine Fontaine

Marie Dancourt was already married since 4 November 1702 at Paris[2] in the parish of Saint-Sulpice with Jean-Louis-Guillaume de Fontaine, commissioner and controller of the Navy and War departments in Flanders and Picardy.

According to the columnist Barthélémy Mouffle d'Angerville in 1721 Claude Dupin helped the eldest daughter of the family, Jeanne-Marie-Thérèse de Fontaine, when she passed through Berry.

Once his guest was recovered, Dupin was persuaded to accompanied her to Paris,[7] where he met Samuel Bernard, who impressed by his kindness, offered him the hand of Louise, aged only sixteen.

In his forties, a widower and father of a six-year-old son Louis-Claude (who became in the grandfather of the novelist George Sand), this move was unexpected and he readily agreed, because with this proposal came the appointment of Receiver General of finances in Metz and Alsace.

On 12 April 1732 Claude Dupin, jointly with his mother-in-law Manon Dancourt, bought the prestigious Hôtel Lambert in the Île Saint-Louis for the sum of 140,000 livres.

Starting in April 1741, Louise, with her husband, son and stepson, remained in the Hôtel de Vins, located in the Parisian Plâtrière street[14] and from 1752 they also owned a house in Clichy-sur-Seine where they spent the summer months.

[18] Samuel Bernard died on 18 January 1739 and according to the succession of his estate, Claude Dupin was forced to abandon the Hôtel Lambert the following 31 March.

In the Hôtel Lambert, Chenonceau or in the Hôtel de Vins, she held a literary and scientific salon: among her notable guests were Voltaire, the Abbot of Saint-Pierre, Fontenelle, Marivaux, Montesquieu, Buffon, Marmontel, Mably, Condillac, Grimm, Bernis and Rousseau; in addition, she received a great number of the French nobility, like the Princess of Rohan, the Countess of Forcalquier, the Duchess of Lévis-Mirepoix, the Baroness Hervey and the Princess of Monaco.

Madame du Deffand was also received, although perhaps she was the only one who spoke unfavorably about Louise Dupin; this probably was because of a typical case of jealousy: the authoritarian hostess of the salon in the Saint-Dominique street found it difficult to accept that her guests attended other circles.

He was received by Madame Dupin in Plâtrière street in March 1743 thanks to a letter of recommendation, with the purpose to present a comedy called Narcisse and one Musical notation.

But Madame Dupin was hardly spiteful and some months after these incidents, takes Rousseau in her service and put him in charge of the education of her son Jacques-Armand for eight days pending for a new tutor.

His job was to take notes and research for the book projected by Madame Dupin, namely the defense of women in the 18th century are discussed in minor ... until they died.

Madame Dupin provides financial support to his wife, Marie-Thérèse Levasseur, who gave birth to five children abandoned by Rousseau to the Foundling Hospital.

Claude Dupin was forced to obtain a Lettre de cachet, which led to Jacques-Armand being imprisoned in the fortress of Pierre Encise under the pretext of madness.

Before embarking on the Count of Artois, a merchant ship of the French East India Company, Jacques-Armand reportedly revealed to his mother the existence of an illegitimate daughter of his, called Marie-Thérèse Adam,[a] whose origins, however, remained mysterious.

She could have emigrated after the Storming of the Bastille in 1789, as per the advice of her friends, but chose to stay in France and retire in Touraine when the first Reign of Terror swept the country.

On 12 March 1794, Louise's step grandson-in-law and nephew Pierre-Armand Vallet de Villeneuve,[39] committed suicide in prison in the Conciergerie, aged 62.

On 25 November 1793, Marie-Aurore de Saxe, second wife of Louise's late stepson Louis-Claude, was incarcerated firstly at Port-Royal Abbey and later in the English convent at Fossés-Saint-Victor Street.

In 1796, one of the farmers of Madame Dupin in the Château de Rochefort in the Indre department, was tortured by burning his feet; the criminals, nicknamed the Chauffeurs, were a plague in the region.

He later evokes it:[40] The following year (1798), Louise Dupin received a young man with a promising future, Pierre Bretonneau, student of medicine.

On 20 November 1799 at five o'clock in the morning,[41] Madame Dupin died aged 93, in her room of the now called Apartments of Francis I in the west facade of the Château.

[42][43] Her last wishes (indicating a fear of being buried alive by mistake) were respected:[44] The place that Madame Dupin chose was located on the left bank of the Cher river, in the shade of large trees in the park of Francueil.