267. [Comtesse de Castiglione]. Set of approximately 140 aut - Lot 267

267. [Comtesse de Castiglione]. Set of approximately 140 autograph letters from Paul de Cassagnac to the Comtesse de Castiglione. This is lot 48 of the sale of the archives of the Comtesse de Castiglione that took place at Ader in Paris in 1951. It contains the love correspondence between Paul de Cassagnac (1842-1904), a journalist and politician known for his conservative and monarchist views, and Virginia Oldoïni, Comtesse de Castiglione (1854-1899), an Italian aristocrat famous for her exceptional beauty and her role as a spy during the French Second Empire. In 1855, at the age of 18 and already married, the Countess was sent to Paris by her cousin, the Piedmontese minister Cavour, with a secret mission: to seduce Emperor Napoleon III in order to plead the cause of Italian unification. She did indeed have an affair with the Emperor, lasting about a year and a half, until 1857. Paul de Cassagnac signed some of her letters with his own name, but more often used pseudonyms such as Marie or Soeur Anne to send the Countess an abundance of correspondence. In 1951, this lot was sold with 3 letters from the Countess, which we no longer have.