La Païva

Esther Lachmann (French: [ɛstɛʁ laʃman]; better known as La Païva (French: [la paiva]); 7 May 1819 – 21 January 1884) was a French courtesan. She was also an investor, architecture patron and a jewel collector.

She rose from modest circumstances in her native Russia to become one of the more infamous women in mid-19th-century France and marry one of Europe's richest men, and maintained a noted literary salon out of Hôtel de la Païva, her luxurious mansion at 25 avenue des Champs-Elysées in Paris. Completed in 1866, it exemplified the opulent taste of the Second Empire and, since 1904, it has been the headquarters of the Travellers Club of Paris.

Lachmann also inspired the character of the promiscuous, traitorous spy Césarine ("a strange, morbid, monstrous creature") in Alexandre Dumas, fils's 1873 play La Femme de Claude.