 By the middle of the 19th century, age had eroded La Païva's physical charms, with Count Viel-Castel noting in 1857 that "she is at least forty years old, she is painted and powdered like an old tightrope walker, [and] she has slept with everyone ..."

A decade later, the Goncourt brothers, diarists of the Second Empire, provided the fullest eyewitness portrait of La Païva, then close to 50 years of age.