“Paris is very nice, but it’s only habitable in the good neighborhoods… In the others, there are too many poor people!” laments Marguerite Bellanger at the height of her glory. Once called Julie Leboeuf, a laundress by trade before coming to Paris and becoming a famous demi-mondaine, she hasn’t forgotten where she comes from: from the very bottom. Like all those who envelop the capital in an erotic atmosphere, the tall and blonde Marguerite treads the boards, intrigues, seduces at every turn, and lives a princely life until, in the 1860s, she becomes the mistress of Napoleon III. Madly in love with his “Margot” with a provocative charm who doesn’t hesitate to be photographed in men’s clothing and whose witty words are real “acrobatics,” they say, the emperor offers her houses and castles, carriages, jewels, and furs, until annoying the empress who will demand in no uncertain terms that she return her husband.