 Count Horace de Viel-Castel, a society chronicler, called her "the queen of kept women, the sovereign of her race".Rising from modest circumstances in her native Russia to becoming one of the most infamous women in mid-19th-century France to marrying one of Europe's richest men, Lachmann maintained a noted literary salon out of Hôtel de la Païva, her luxurious mansion at 25 avenue des Champs-Elysées in Paris.Completed in 1866, it exemplified the opulent taste of the Second Empire, and since 1904 it has been the headquarters of the Travellers Club.