Adelaide Filleul, Marquise de Souza-Botelho

Adélaïde-Emilie (sometimes Émilie-Adélaïde) Filleul, Marquise de Souza-Botelho (14 May 1761 – 19 April 1836) was a French writer.

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. It was reported, though no proof is forthcoming, that Mme. Filleul had been the mistress of Louis XV and most royal genealogists give hers as his daughters, although never recognized. Her husband became one of the king's secretaries, and Mme. Filleul made many friends, among them Jean-François Marmontel. 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 La Billarderie, comte de Flahaut de La 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. In 1785 was born her son Charles Joseph, comte de Flahaut, who was generally known to be Talleyrand's son. Mme de Flahaut fled from Paris in 1792 and joined the society of émigrés at Mickleham, Surrey, described in Mme. d'Arblay's Memoirs. Her husband remained at Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he was arrested on 29 January 1793 and guillotined. Mme. 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.

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