Émilie-Louise Delabigne, known as countess Valtesse de La Bigne (1848, in Paris – 29 July 1910, in Ville-d'Avray) was a French courtesan and demi-mondaine.

[1] Although born to a working-class family in Paris, she rose through the social ranks and was a supporter of painters, while creating a space for women to participate in the art world through her collecting and Salon.

One of six siblings, Émilie-Louise was the daughter of a violent alcoholic father and Émilie Delabigne, a laundry maid from Normandy who was also involved in sex work.

[3] Quickly moving onto rich clients, she trained at the Bal Mabille on Sundays and worked in a women's underwear shop on the Champ-de-Mars, frequented by high-ranking officers, enabling her to dream of social climbing.

Later, bitter at her loss of regular income in lieu of providing childcare, her mother assaulted de La Bigne's housekeeper Camille Meldola, a childhood friend, who also took her to court, but her case was thrown out.

[2] She became the composer's mistress and thus gained access to fashionable restaurants such as Bignon (the former 'Café Foy') and the Café Tortoni, where she met Zola, Flaubert, and Maupassant.

Even the starvation of the siege of Paris did not dampen her aspirations – in the tumult of the period, she refashioned herself into pseudo-aristocracy by altering her last name Delabigne to the Normandy-noble "de la Bigne" as well as adopting the title "Comtesse".

[2] Known among the Tout-Paris (elite, Jet set) for his scathing humour, the journalist and writer Aurélien Scholl wrote "During the siege of Paris, all the women ate dog.

"[3][5] At the end of the war, Valtesse quickly launched herself as a high-class courtesan, leaving Offenbach and shifting her attentions to Prince Lubomirski, who installed her in an apartment in rue Saint-Georges.

"Ego" had looked to the memoirs of Céleste de Chabrillan (published under the moniker Mogador) for inspiration: "The volume gave the courtesan a chance to respond to her public's perception of her.

When she read the novel, Valtesse was indignant to find such a description of her decor – "some traces of tender foolishness and gaudy splendour"[9] — and called the character of Nana (for which she was the inspiration) "a vulgar whore, stupid, rude!"

She also talked with writers like Octave Mirbeau, Arsène Houssaye, Pierre Louÿs, Théophile Gautier and Edmond de Goncourt, inspiring his Chérie.

Although a Bonapartist, she argued with him that France should keep Tonkin – she knew its geopolitics via a correspondence with a former lover Alexandre de Kergaradec, French consul in Hanoï, who had also sent her several gifts including a gigantic pagoda.

[12][13] She drove a car, built the villa of Les Aigles in Monte-Carlo, sold her hôtel particulier on boulevard Malesherbes, whereupon she mainly lived in Ville-d'Avray, where she trained young women to become courtesans.