Source note

CINQ-CYGNE (Laurence, Comtesse, afterwards Marquise de), born in 1781. Left an orphan at the age of twelve, she lived, at the last of the eighteenth and the first of the nineteenth century, with her kinsman and tutor M. d'Hauteserre at Cinq-Cygne, Aube. She was loved by both her cousins, Paul-Marie and Marie-Paul de Simeuse, and also by the younger of her tutor's two sons, Adrien d'Hauteserre, whom she married in 1813. Laurence de Cinq-Cygne struggled valiantly against a cunning and redoubtable police-agency, the soul of which was Corentin. The King of France approved the charter of the Count of Champagne, by virtue of which, in the family of Cinq-Cygne, a woman might "ennoble and succeed"; therefore the husband of Laurence took the name and the arms of his wife. Although an ardent Royalist she went to seek the Emperor as far as the battlefield of Jena, in 1806, to ask pardon for the two Simeuses and the two Hauteserres involved in a political trial and condemned to hard labor, despite their innocence. Her bold move succeeded. The Marquise de Cinq-Cygne gave her husband two children, Paul and Berthe. This family passed the winter season at Paris in a magnificent mansion on Faubourg du Roule. [The Gondreville Mystery.] In 1832 Mme. de Cinq-Cygne, at the instance of the Archbishop of Paris, consented to call on the Princesse de Cadignan who had reformed. [The Secrets of a Princess.] In 1836 Mme. de Cinq-Cygne was intimate with Mme. de la Chanterie. [The Seamy Side of History.] Under the Restoration, and principally during Charles X.'s reign, Mme. de Cinq-Cygne exercised a sort of sovereignty over the Department of the Aube which the Comte de Gondreville counterbalanced in a measure by his family connections and through the generosity of the department. Some time after the death of Louis XVIII. she brought about the election of Francois Michu as president of the Arcis Court. [The Member for Arcis.]