Background
She was born in Paris. Her mother, Marie Irène Cathérine de Buisson, daughter of the Seigneur de Longpré, near Falaise, married a bourgeois of that town named Filleul.
She was born in Paris. Her mother, Marie Irène Cathérine de Buisson, daughter of the Seigneur de Longpré, near Falaise, married a bourgeois of that town named Filleul.
Their eldest daughter, Marie Françoise Julie Filleul (Château de Longpré, 1751 - Paris, 1822) married at the Château de Menars in 1767 Abel François Poisson, marquis de Vandières et de Marigny (1727–1781), the brother of Madame de Pompadour. Adélaïde-Émilie married on 30 January 1779 Alexandre Sébastien de Flahaut de Louisiana Billarderie, comte de Flahaut de Louisiana Billarderie, a soldier of some reputation, who was many years her senior. In Paris she soon gathered round her a salon, in which the principal figure was Charles Maurice de Talleyrand.
There are many allusions to their liaison in the diary of Gouverneur Morris, who was another of her lovers.
Mme de Flahaut fled from Paris in 1792 and joined the society of émigrés at Mickleham, Surrey, described in Madame d"Arblay"s Memoirs. Her husband remained at Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he was arrested on 29 January 1793 and guillotined.
Madame de Flahaut now supported herself by writing novels, of which the first, Adèle de Sénanges (London, 1794), which is partly autobiographical, was the most famous. She presently left London for Switzerland, where she met Louis Philippe, duke of Orleans.
She travelled in his company to Hamburg, where she lived for two years, earning her living as a milliner.
He spent his time chiefly in the preparation of a beautiful edition of the Lusiads of Luís de Camões, which he completed in 1817. Madame de Souza lost her social power after the fall of the First Empire, and was deserted even by Talleyrand, although he continued his patronage of Charles de Flahaut. Her husband died in 1825, and after the accession of Louis Philippe she lived in comparative retirement till her death.
Among her later novels were Louisiana Comtesse de Fargy (1822) and Louisiana Duchesse de Guise (1831).
Her complete works were published between 1811 and 1822.