After dealing with Céleste for some time, her advocate Desmarest fell under her spell and they began an affair, with her reminding him, as she had Richard Maylam, that she would never care for another as much as she did Lionel. The lawyer, like those before him, would happily forgo any declaration of love if they could have regular sex. Bedding Mogador was hardly a national sport, but those who accomplished it would be hard-pressed not to boast of their achievement. Desmarest also sensed that her creative skills beyond the mattress might make her famous in another career. He did his best to help her to this end, acting as her literary adviser and editor, and in the process fell in love with her. Céleste paid him for his legal services in kind, which had him wanting to win the cases for her more than ever.
Some of the cases Desmarest worked on were against the powerful Chabrillan family. Desmarest found that he had inherited a more-than-competent, quick-learning, even brilliant assistant in Céleste. She had been on a self-education reading binge for seven years. Now she was studying legal books, attending trials and keeping track of legal procedures. She even began pointing out mistakes in the cases backed by the Chabrillans, particularly where they objected to Lionel’s decision to make Céleste his proxy when he sailed for Australia. The Chabrillans viewed this as a deliberate and wily attempt by Céleste to entangle her assets with Lionel’s. She was able to show this was a fabrication in the family’s sloppily researched and arrogant court declarations.
This helped Desmarest in the second of four cases brought against her, which concerned the cottage. The proceedings were pleaded in a Châteauroux courthouse and Céleste had to make the trip back to Poinçonnet, in Berry, again. She was shocked to find the cottage had been seized legally. It was guarded and she was not allowed to enter at first. A few days later five agents working for the plaintiffs forced their way into the cottage and sifted through Lionel’s papers in the hope of discovering that Céleste was not his proxy. They only found evidence that backed her claim.
Céleste complained to the public prosecutor. It ended with the Châteauroux court sentencing the bailiff, who had accompanied the plantiffs’ agents, to one month’s suspension and court costs.
This was more than simply a legal win for Céleste. It was a victory against the Chabrillans and the creditors. The strong-arm tactics and overbearing approach from the plaintiffs had proved counterproductive. Desmarest, who joined Céleste at Châteauroux, had shrewdly made sure that the case was contested where Count Lionel de Chabrillan was most popular with everyone.
The judge did not present his summary and verdict for several months, but when it came in June 1852 it was in Céleste’s favour and she was delighted. It was an even sweeter victory than the furniture at Rue Joubert. Céleste had shown the family she was no pushover. She was a fighter. She received 40,000 francs in compensation and all expenses, and another 45,000 for the furniture from the first case, which she sold. Desmarest warned her that the plaintiffs would appeal and choose a more propitious court for them at Bourges, the main city of the Berry region, where they had all the right connections.
But Céleste didn’t care. That would take months, perhaps more than a year to be heard. In the meantime she could afford to buy a more modest apartment on Avenue de Saint-Cloud. It had a garden for Solange to play in when she was brought for a visit. Céleste celebrated her victories in the courts with a party in March 1853. It was attended by many Paris celebrities, including Plon-Plon and another luminary of the demimonde, the lean, dark-haired and good-looking Thomas Couture, thirty-eight, whom she had met recently after one of her shows at the Théâtre des Variétés. He was a painter and history teacher, who instructed Édouard Manet, among others. He had offered to draw Céleste, like the sketches he had done of George Sand and Pierre-Jean de Béranger, a poet and writer of popular and patriotic songs. Couture followed through.
‘Because it is signed by a great artist,’ Céleste said of the drawing, ‘it is probably the only thing of me that will endure.’
Enchanted, and her vanity flattered by his artistic attention, she displayed the portrait drawing at the party. Couture received many compliments for it.
Another of her guests was young writer Alexandre Dumas Jr, so-called to distinguish him from his illustrious father. He impressed Céleste, who may have had an eye to making him a conquest, just for the sake of having had her only father-and-son combination.
‘He was distant and had a sceptical, discerning mind,’ she noted. ‘He could be mean, but if he paid you a compliment, you could believe it. He never gave them readily.’
Dumas Jr had been at the premiere of the Variétés stage show The 1852 Revue, in which Céleste starred. He remarked in a critique that ‘She sang, played and recited divinely; if she is willing to work, she will have a true talent.’1