Marie-Anne Detourbay (18 January 1837 – 21 January 1908) was a French demimonde and salon-holder. She was a famous courtesan during the Second Empire, and also hosted a literary salon which had some influence during the Second Empire and the Third Republic. She is also known for her relationship with Jules Lemaître. Biography Marie-Anne Detourbay, was born in rue Gambetta, Reims to a poor and large family. Her mother was a cloth burler and her father unknown. From age eight she was employed to rinse champagne bottles. She moved to Paris when she was 15, where under the name of Jeanne de Tourbey she was discovered in a brothel by Alexandre Dumas fils. She soon became part of the Parisian demimonde. Her first protector, Marc Fournier, was director of the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, who introduced her to Prince Napoleon, cousin of Napoleon III. Napoleon installed her in a beautiful flat in rue de l'Arcade, close to the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. She would host an exclusively male assembly of the Parisian men of letters: Ernest Renan, Sainte-Beuve, Théophile Gautier, Prévost-Paradol and Emile de Girardin. Through her best friend, actress Josephine Clemence Ennery, nicknamed "Gisette"(fr), she met Gustave Flaubert and Khalil-Bey, who fell in love with her. From Tunis, where he went to write Salammbô, Flaubert wrote: Around 1862, she met Ernest Baroche fr, son of senior Ministerial Civil Servant Jules Baroche fell in love with her. Ernest himself had been made another Minister of Napoleon III, Master of Petitions at the State Council and Director of Foreign Trade at the Ministry of Agriculture. They would have become engaged but, as Commander of the 12th mobile battalion of the Seine, he was killed in action at the Battle of Le Bourget on 30 October 1870 and left her a fortune of 800,000 gold francs (about 2.5 million Euros) and a sugar factory. The director of the factory was retired officer Count Victor Edgar de Loynes. In 1872, she married de Loynes,. This marriage gave her access to high society, but the Count soon left for America, where he disappeared. Although the marriage was only nominal, because her husband's family had opposed their union, she carried and kept the use of the name and title of Countess de Loynes. Her visitors became more prestigious; received every day between five and seven o'clock. The celebrities of the Second Empire give way to