Yet he continued to fence daily in the various salles of Paris. There he met Domenico and son Henry Angelo, fencing masters from London; the mysterious Chevalier d'Éon; and the teenage Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, all of whom would play a role in his future. Later life During his time at the opera and before the revolution, Saint-Georges became the darling of many women in the salons and drawing rooms of Paris society. As was often said, 'he loved and was loved.' One potential suitor of his was the esteemed dancer Marie-Madeleine Guimard, whose advances he declined. Having been spurned, and with great influence in the Queen's court, La Guimard would come to play a pivotal role in the petition that would deny Joseph's ambition to become the director of the Paris Opera from ever coming to fruition. Arguably, the love of his life was Marie-Josephine de Montalembert, a talented society actress. The wife of a much older general of military engineering in the Queen's Court (Marc René, marquis de Montalembert), Marie-Josephine was drawn to the young composer. The affair was later discovered and consequently upended, but not before she bore him a child. The infant was taken from Marie-Josephine and sent by her husband to a nearby village to essentially die; the disgrace that was brought to the marquis was then hidden away. According to noted biographer Gabriel Banat, "Saint-Georges mourned the loss of one who was most likely his greatest love and the death of the son he never saw". St. Georges assaulted On 22 April 1779, around midnight, Saint-Georges was attacked in the streets of Paris as he was returning home with one of his friends. Malicious spirits claimed that this punitive expedition had been decided by the monarch's secret services. It is interesting to know that this attack is reported differently by several memoirs of the time and later by the knight's biographers, examples among many others of the fragility of testimonies, even if they were written by contemporaries. In one of the thirty-six volumes of his Secret Memoirs, Louis Petit de Bachaumont mentions that the attack took place on the night of 1 May 1779. This date is incorrect and, moreover, he reports that Saint-Georges was attacked by six men. He and his friend would have valiantly defended themselves and were providentially saved by the watch and its men-at-arms: →« 1 May 1779.