Virgina, gravin de Castiglione. “Louis Napoleon’s love affair with the Countess de Castiglione, which began when [Empress] Eugénie was pregnant wit the Prince Imperial, was wrongly thought to have profound political and diplomatic significance. … she was still two months short of her nineteenth birthday when her cousin Cavour took both her and her husband [in 1856] with him to Paris in the hope that she would become the Emperor’s mistress and would persuade Louis Napoleon to pursue a pro-Italian policy at the Peace Congress [that ended the Crimean War]. … The Countess of Castiglione was not interested in politics … Not for the last time, Cavour’s Machiavellian schemes faied completely, and she did not exert the slightest influence over the Emperor’s policy at the Congress of Paris.” (Jasper Ridley, Napoleon III and Eugénie [Londen 1979], p. 402-404)