Source note

FARRABESCHE (Madame), born Catherine Curieux, about 1798; daughter of the tenants of Mme. Brezac, at Vizay, an important mart of La Correze; mistress of Farrabesche in the last years of the Empire. She bore him a son, at the age of seventeen, and was soon separated from her lover on his imprisonment in the galleys. She returned to Paris and hired out. In her last place she worked for an old lady whom she tended devotedly, but who died leaving her nothing. In 1833 she came back to the country; she was just out of a hospital, cured of a disease caused by fatigue, but still very feeble. Shortly after she married her former lover. Catherine Curieux was rather large, well-made, pale, gentle and refined by her visit to Paris, though she could neither read nor write. She had three married sisters, one at Aubusson, one at Limoges, and one at Saint-Leonard. [The Country Parson.]