Noble Blood - The Contradictions and Controversies of Marc de Montifaud

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

In the late 19th century, French writer Marc de Montifaud was sentenced to prison for indecency in his work. But rather than being sent to the rather cushy location for literary criminals, he was sentenced to forced labor... as a woman. Born Marie, but ultimately living as Marc, the Comtesse de Montifaud remains one of the most interesting and enigmatic figures in literary history, a trans man who defied social conventions to live and work as he pleased. Support Noble Blood: — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon — Merch! — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel, 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. This Financial Literacy Month, we are talking about the one investment most people ignore, building a business around the life you actually want. It was just us, making happen whatever he said was going to happen, and then it happened. On Those Amigos, entrepreneurs like America Sam and Joe Huff, get real about money, taking risk, and while your dream might be the smartest move. At the end of my life, what am I really going to care about?

And the conclusion I came to is what I did to make the world a better place in whatever way. Listen to those amigos on the I-HartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. For those who never attended Sunday school or maybe just slept through those lessons, or for those like me who didn't get these lessons at all in Hebrew school, I'd like to start by briefly recapping the story of Mary Magiard.

According to the most common narratives, Magdalene was one of Jesus' followers, present not only throughout his travels, but by his side at both his crucifixion and resurrection. In a number of denominations of Christianity, including Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, she is considered a saint. Somewhere along the way, though, Magdalene's identity in the cultural consciousness shifted. Nowhere in the four Gospels of the New Testament is it mentioned that this woman was a prostitute or a sinner, but that is the image likely conjured in your mind when I first said her name. According to the BBC, it was actually in the 6th century that Mary Magdalene became confused with two other women in the Bible, Mary of Bethany and another unnamed sinner from Luke's Gospel.

Both these women washed Jesus' feet with their hair. I imagine hoping that one day Lady Gaga would sing about them. In 591, Pope Gregory I first gave an Easter sermon conflating all three female figures into one, and thus Mary Magdalene, as we now know her, was born. In 1969, the Catholic Church declared that Mary Magdalene was not the sinner nor the prostitute in question, but after 14 centuries, it's hard to walk back a mistake like that in the minds of the public. In the 19th century, only a little less than 100 years before the Catholic Church would set the record straight, one writer would, quote, earn the fate of a prostitute,

unquote, for publishing works about Magdalene, among other indecent pieces of literature. Mark DeMontifaux originally published the history of Mary Magdalene with the title The Cortisans of Antiquity, and the book quickly came under scrutiny by an increasingly authoritative Catholic Church for being an erotic history of a religious figure who was, lest we fail to acknowledge the irony, erroneously eroticized by the Catholic Church in the first place. The censorship of the author de Montefo didn't start and stop with that title change. Continuing to publish provocative work over the next few years would land the writer on trial

and eventually sentenced to eight days in San Lizar Prison, a forced labor camp for prostitutes and violent female criminals. De Montefo was indignant at this ruling for a number of reasons, one being that he was a member of the nobility, He said, quote, they dared to carry out such infamy on my person. Another arguably more important reason is that De Montefo's colleagues who were charged with similar transgressions were sent to Saint-Pelage prison, a comparatively lenient facility for artists and writers primarily. De Montefo was affronted because he was being sentenced not as a writer, but as a woman. Born Marie-Amalie Chattrell de Montefoe,

Mark Montefo began writing under his professional and often personal chosen name at only 16 years old. But it was more than just a nom de plume. He began to wear men's clothing more regularly as he got older and was wearing them full-time by 1880. In portraiture, we see Mark's look evolve from the kind of loose-fitting androgynous style, similar to masculine dandies of the era, to close-cropped hair and well-fitted suits in fashion with French men at the turn of the century. For reference as to when the concept of transgender identity as we know it first entered the French lexicon, de Montefo's last works were published in 1900, and it was only five years before that that something close to, quote, transgender,

made it into the French language in a translation of Psychopathia Sexualis and its chapter on, quote, Androgeny and Guy-Andry. It was a groundbreaking work at the time as one of the first psychological works on homosexuality, but as you can probably guess from the name with psychopathia in the title, it proposed that homosexuality was a mental illness. The nature of transgender identities are a complex project when discussing historical figures whose relationship with gender was, well, complex. De Montefo lived in France during a period in which gender was highly policed. Starting in 1800, it was, in fact, illegal for French women to wear pants without obtaining a permit. More on that later. But Mark's expression of identity went beyond dressing in masculine clothes.

In professional and many personal settings, Mark preferred to be addressed with masculine language and addressed by his names, Mark de Montefo, and later his pen name Paul Erasmay. Throughout his life, he alternated between signing his personal letters with Mark and with Marie, and an 1880 letter from his mother uses both Monsher Enfant, the masculine and Macherie Infant, the feminine, within. in the same page to address her, quote, dear child. Because in public, in regards to his work, and often in his personal life, De Montefo preferred to be referred to in the masculine, I'll be using he-him pronouns for the writer as we discuss his life and career in the spotlight. But this,

of course, isn't just a story about De Montefo's gender identity. It's a story about telling stories about censorship and about someone who wouldn't and couldn't stop telling stories no matter the consequences. I'm Dana Schwartz and this is Noble Blood. Mark the Montefo was born in Paris in 1845 and the education that would one day serve his writing began early. His mother was Catholic and taught him the principles of the religion. His father, though, was a physician and and a free thinker during the Libri-Pence boom of the 19th century. French free thinkers of that time generally rejected a religious dogma and sought to define the world through observation and experience.

Mark, in his work, would incorporate both of his parents' lessons, but it was certainly his father who influenced his own outlook on life. As far as more formal education went, Mark found a talent for art, and he would study at a private studio, because women weren't permitted places at Paris's Le Calde de Beau Art until 1897. Writing would still prove to be his greater passion. In his youth, he published a few pieces in a travel magazine and had written an unpublished novel. But the young artist began publishing under the name Mark Demontifoe at around 18, or 19, his first piece appearing in the influential journal L'Artiste in 1865.

One year earlier, Mark had married Spanish noble Juan Francis Leon de Quivenon, the Comte de Luna, making Mark a countess. Leon was over a decade older than Mark and he had been previously married, but the two found common ground with a shared passion for the arts. The Comte had been living in Paris for several years. years by 1864, working as the personal secretary to the famed writer Arsene Hussé. Husset is an incredibly minor character in this story, but indulge me just a moment to review the headline of his 1896 New York Times obituary. It's just extraordinary. Arson Hussay dead, last of the romanticists

and most faithful of the idealists, a prince charming of the empire, was one of the most attractive personalities of Paris, and his work is an artist. May we all hope to be remembered half as glowingly. Anyway, this Prince Charming of the Empire was, more importantly, the editor of L'Artiste, and under his leadership, it became the most influential, cultural journal in France. It's likely that it was Leon who connected Mark and Lartiste, and we know the Comte, supported and encouraged Mark's writing throughout his career quite literally. A husband's permission was needed at the time for a wife to publish. We don't know exactly how Leon and Mark met or whether or not the marriage was arranged,

but it's possible that Mark's father ran in similar intellectual circles, as Hussay. The couple would eventually have one son, also called Mark, born in 1874. Mark was still presenting socially as a woman at this time, but in a surprisingly modern arrangement, Mark and Leon combined their last names, both going by the surname Kivon de Montefo. This was arranged at the request of Mark's father,

who was disappointed that he didn't have a son, to carry on the family name. Leon would even eventually take to signing his name, Leon de Montefo professionally, which made both Mark and his husband professionally known as Monsieur de Montefo. Contemporaries, like Husset, eventually referred to Mark as Mr. Mark de Montefo to differentiate him from his husband. The young Monsieur de Montefo got his first major story in May of 1865 when he was asked to review the salon, not to be confused with very very important. salons hosted by intellectuals, the capital S salon was the art event of the city. Each year,

thousands of artists submitted their work hoping to be selected by the committee for a spot on the floor-to-ceiling displays. The salon could be career-making or career-breaking, hosting many of French arts most famous names at different points of its history. 1865, saw, for example, the controversial nude portrait of a prostitute Olympia by Manet, despite tensions between the traditional salon and the progressive impressionists. Perhaps surprisingly, based on his future work, Mark dismissed this painting as an immature eccentricity. If only the painter had a, quote, healthier mind, he noted, he might have produced some real art. Years later, Mark would review the 1874 salon lamenting, quote,

if there's anything we regret, it's seeing studies of the nude abandoned for landscapes. So perhaps his issue was with Manet more specifically, or perhaps he just came around on the idea of nude paintings. Mark didn't shy away from referencing sex himself within that same 1865 essay. He argued that seeing too many paintings in one day was over-stimulating, writing that what he needed was, quote, the visual virginity that is the true guiding light of the painter and the critic. The casual reference to a taboo subject like virginity was decidedly masculine for the time. Readers would have had no incentive to question whether or not this Mark de Montefo they were reading was the stereotypical man they were no doubt picturing. Mark would continue to review the

salon for years to come, his essays commenting not only on the art itself, but his general thoughts on the state of the culture in which they were produced. Speaking to the mood at the turn of the century, he reflected in his 1868 essay that the French needed, quote, a renewal in their organs, sight and perception of things, and quote, as he sensed an encroaching on we. Mark was searching for, as summarized by the scholar Vendelin Gutner, an expression of imagination and inspiration, rather than just tactile sensation. Mark would have to spark that inspiration himself, and he attempted to do so a few short years later, in 1870 with the publication of the cortisorice of the cortisorice of antiquity, later titled The History of Mary Magdalene.

In her book Before Trans, three gender stories from 19th century France, which contains the most detailed English-language biography of Mark, historian Rachel Mesh writes that the book was the first of, quote, many efforts by Montefo to recover the history of sexuality in order to demonstrate two seemingly opposing facts. that Eros had long been part of the French Catholic tradition, and that sexual mores were more arbitrary products of culture determined by time and place, end quote. You can also imagine Mark reconciling those two seemingly opposing schools of thought

that he was raised by, himself the fruit of a marriage between a traditional Catholic woman and a free-thinking man. The history of men, of Mary Magdalene was more literally a study of the visual and literary representations of Mary Magdalene throughout history, with language that was decidedly erotic. When it was published, Husset printed excerpts in Lartiste, paired with an introduction that may or may not have been written by Mark himself. Calling it a bold and curious work, this unattributed writer, who again

might be the author, goes on to note that readers sometimes found De Montefo's art criticism too eloquent, but now, quote, Mr. Mark Demontifoe has stripped off that fancy dress. He has understood that truth is all the more beautiful when it marches fully nude. It is a big old wink to those in the know, again, possibly written by Mark, possibly written by someone close to him. Based on the surviving photography we have, we know Mark was still presenting feminine at this point in his life. But he had, in a more metaphorical sense, stripped off that fancy dress a long time ago publicly presenting as male through his writing, using Mark exclusively as his nom de plume. However, as Mesh theorizes, it's also possible that he was wearing men's clothes to attend the salons he reviewed and passing publicly. His entry ticket to the salon was for a Monsieur de Montefoe, and it would likely have raised many questions if he had showed up in a dress.

Back to Mary Magdalene, though, Lartiste was perhaps leaning into the age-old tactic of outrage, marketing, also describing the book as a, quote, danger and audacious act, practically sacrilege. As you know, from the top of this episode, outrage there was. The work was highly successful for a while, reprinted four times before the Franco-Pression war. But in the war's aftermath, the Catholic Church was reasserting their power in the country, and writers and journalists increasingly ended up on trial.

The controversy with Magdalene put Mark on the church's radar, but he wouldn't be officially charged with offense to public decency, until 1876 when he published a re-edition of a late 17th century text that was already controversial in its own time. Yes, Mark was sentenced to jail for a work-a-old. that wasn't even his. I thought if we were going to eliminate him from memory, Mark said, of that writer he republished during his trial, we could put him in a library instead.

Mark also spent his time on the stand mocking his accusers, the quote, narrow-minded men whose hair, for good reason, could hardly stand on end in horror. When he heard the guilty verdict, he ran to the prefect's office, and asked how a publishing infraction could land him, a comtesse, no less, in the notorious San Lazare. It wasn't at all to inflict personal injury upon you, the police prefect told him, but because the administration would not put a woman in Saint-Pelage. Mark was furious. He wrote that he was being treated, quote, like a woman who had blatantly acted against all social structures, instead of the, quote,

Archaeologist, bibliographer, and critic, he considered himself to be above all else. Quote, I admit that despite my enormous efforts, he reflected, my mind can simply not accept the logic of this sentence, and I doubt that the reader can either. Summed up most efficiently, he would write, quote, What I found unnatural and perhaps unfair is the fact that offense to decency can be purged, for all writers in San Palagie and for me alone in jail. As a free thinker, Mark was taught to question, to reject convention. What the administration accepted as fair was ludicrous to him.

He once later described himself as inhabiting the skin of an artist overcome with male literary spasms. It gives us a lot of insight into his sense of self. The artist has no gender associations, but the compulsions he had to write are masculine. Based on the other quotes, Mark clearly believes the identity of artist, archaeologist, and bibliographer and critic are more important than any notions of gender, but he still felt compelled to write publicly as a man. Mark was then asked if he would like to request a pardon, which he rejected, as that would mean

admitting wrongdoing. And instead, he decided to flee to Brussels. From there, he negotiated with the authorities to serve his sentence instead in Maison-Dubois, a mental institution. The stint did little to change his ways. The very next year, he published The Vestal Virgins of the Church, another erotic history. And so back to Mésonne Dubois, he went. Mark eventually stopped writing these histories when he found himself unable to obtain reference materials from the library, the librarians having been convinced not to help him. That was fine, he would just turn to writing fiction. You won't be surprised at this point to hear that 11 passages of his first novel, Madame de Quasse, were condemned as indecent. Once again, back to Messon de Bois. The story goes

that this time a worker warned him that the doctors had put arsenic into his acne medication. He pulled the classic move of pretending to swallow while secretly dumping the medicine into the garden, successfully avoiding a threat on his life. Outside of his very vocal and apparently murderous detractors, Mark was also growing a sizable fan base. The controversy surrounding his novel, was, as it often still is, a great marketing tool, and the novel was highly in demand. There was also, however, a new faction of critics who felt betrayed that Mark de Montefo was not

who they thought he was. Reporting from one of his trials revealed that the, quote, book lover was, in fact, a young, blonde woman, tall and frail with listless blue eyes, and a charmingly bold attitude. While another noted, she always had that same look of a woman dressed as a man. It's unclear at what point readers at large learned the, quote-unquote,

truth of his perceived past as a, quote, woman, wife, and mother, but the public began to look into his life so scrutinously that it became a matter of his safety. Isn't it high time that public modesty return, one critic raved, that it cuts short the grotesque ravings of these women? Could they be wives and mothers, these madwomen, these crazies, these hysterics? He then went on to suggest that Mark and, quote, women like him, should be locked in mental

institutions, subjected to special showers. There was, on another hand, also a new erotic interest in Mark, a fetishization, with one journalist noting his angelic eyes and the sharp groans issued from his mouth in court. He would write two more novels, The Perverts and Sabine, both of which managed to escape scrutiny, but Mark was ironically still forced to flee to Belgium again, this time to avoid legal fees. In 1880, he returned to Paris, published a collection, and a collection of of droll stories, described by Mesh as erotic rabelaisian tales in which young damsels stumble accidentally onto the pleasures of the flesh, and was forced to flee back to Belgium,

this time with his husband and son. Mark described this period as, quote, one of the most painful of my life. Rumors began to spread that he and Leon were in fact not married, and rather living in sin with children born out of wedlock. Friends withdrew from his life. A soiree he hosted was apparently infiltrated by a Marquise attempting to seduce him in order to prove that Montefo was secretly harboring passions for women. As to the legitimacy of that claim, Mark often invoked the words of Sappho in his work. And while there is no evidence of affairs with women, He certainly had fixations with a number of female friends and even rivals, but more on that in the epilogue.

Shortly after the family returned to Paris in 1882, Mark was publicly humiliated with the publication of a short story called Madame de Sade in the French paper La Figuero. The tale is about a young woman who is sentenced to prison for pornographic publications, with the twist being that she was actually put up to writing them by her husband, who knew that her jail time would be great for sales. The woman in the story doesn't mind prison, however, rather seeing it as an escape from her abusive husband who had taken advantage of her troubled mind.

There was a clear line between the oft-legally troubled, Monsieur de Montefo, and the story's protagonist, and he was livid. He denounced the author as a small earthworm and a miserable runt who had ejaculated his garbage upon the paper. Mark and Leon went to their friend, the editor of rival paper, Le Voltaire, to ask for help. I have a child, Mark told him, my dear little Mark, whom you know, and I owe him an honorable name. Yet they pass off my husband the most loyal of men as the most wretched of them all. Their friend agreed to ask Francis Menard, the editor of Figaro, for a retraction. But this was refused.

Any similarities to persons living or dead or actual events was purely coincidental. So Mark took matters into his own hands, literally. The next day, the couple purchased tickets to the premiere night of the Comédie de Francaise, knowing Magnaard would be there. Mark showed up in a tailcoat and white tie for a night at the theater, and he and his husband waited for their target, the editor of the Figaro, to leave his box at the end of the third act. When he finally exited, Leon approached with the intent to slap him,

but another man noticed and held him back. It was Mark then who got in Menard's face. You are a coward and a wretch, he shouted, alerting the other patrons. In the name of my revolted conscience, I have come to say this to your face. He then produced the newspaper with the story in question and used it to slap the editor hard,

right against the nose. As a writer and a person, its clear Mark understood a number of things very well, including both dramatic and comedic timing. As Mesh points out in the book Before Trans, it's possible that Menard did not even even recognized the person who had just whacked him with a copy of his own magazine. I mentioned the traditionally masculine tailcoat and white tie, but this was also the first time

Mark had appeared in public with cropped hair. Newspaper reporting on the incident the day after shared that Montefo, the author of several smuddy stories for which she was condemned by the police, was, quote, wearing men's clothing since her return from Brussels and And no one knows why. Another noted that, quote, in fact, it would be impossible to know that she was a member of the fairer sex if you had seen him that night.

Mark would continue wearing masculine clothing for the rest of his life. But perhaps surprisingly, he didn't write much about that in his personal accounts. It didn't seem like this was a big, public transition. It seemed like this was just the point that he began dressing the way he had always envisioned himself all along. Writing to a friend after The Slap incident, and I will not make

an Oscars joke, Mark wrote of his clothing, quote, I had already been wearing in several circumstances when I had ventured to far-off neighborhoods to study behaviors, men's clothing. He does not specify what behaviors he was studying, but we can perhaps infer he was gathering material for writing. He also the rights that he realized he was, quote, perfectly incognito dressed as a man in Paris. And so when he was in exile in Belgium, he often used men's clothing to pass as his son's tutor instead of his mother to, quote, watch over my child in full security. He then goes on to explain, I adopted the suit that I still wear, meaning that he simply adjusted to dressing as a man full time. The white tie formal wear at the theater,

was explained as well. It wasn't in order to slap a wretch that I put on a tuxedo and white necktie. Rather, he adhered to, quote, all the clothing etiquette necessitated by the places where I went. In other words, he didn't choose to dress like a man to go to the theater as a statement. He simply dressed as a man in the clothes that a man would wear going to the theater. As I mentioned at the top of the episode, it was in fact illegal for women. and in Mark's case, those French society considered women legally to wear pants anytime except during carnival. A special pants permit was required and could only be obtained with a doctor's approval for medical reasons. You can imagine that gender affirming care was not on the list at the time,

but for the record, what did constitute as a valid medical reason has not been documented. It's also worth noting that while effectively obsolete, the law wasn't officially repealed until 2013. Yes, 2013. For Mark's surviving archives, we see correspondence in which he seeks information about obtaining a pants permit. But we know he never actually got one. Instead, he likely had an oral agreement with those necessary bureaucrats. There are four accessible photographic portraits of Mark, and in three of the four of them he is wearing pants.

One such photograph dated around 1880 was later gifted from Mark Jr. to one of Mark Sr.'s friends, inscribed by him as the, quote, last feminine portrait of the man who was his mother. This picture captures the androgynous dandy-esque look I described earlier. Mark's look can be interpreted in this photograph as that of a particularly rebellious young French woman or a young French man in Oscar Wilde circle. As time goes on and Mark matures, his style shifts further. His mid-length hair becomes a close-cropped, decidedly masculine style, and he trades his loose-fitting pants that both men and women might have worn for well-tailored suit. But let's return to that incident at the theater. Now it was public knowledge that Mark was not only back in town, but guilty of assault.

He would have to return to, you guessed it, Brussels. He had no regrets, writing, What woman who loved her husband, upon seeing him treated this way, would not have acted as I did? The authorities attempted to make a public spectacle of Mark's arrest, by sending two free theater tickets to the couple's home, but the sting operation was a failure when Leon showed up with the young Mark

for some father-son bonding time. In 1884, Mark would finally return to Paris for good and begin publishing yet again. He would continue publishing, chiefly his droll stories, which often found young women in humorously compromising situations thanks to their confusion surrounding gender and sexuality. One story follows a young provincial woman on her first trip to Paris. She goes to buy a lamp, Un Suspension, but accidentally asks for Un Suspensior, a jockstrap.

Later, she sees the word hermaphrodite and asks her aunt what it means. Her aunt, panicking, tells her it's a kind of fish, which our young protagonist, of course goes on to try to order at a restaurant. Mark would also publish more historical work, one in particular focused on Francois-Timolion, Abbey de Choiset, a 17th-18th-century French writer, who was known for both his historical and religious works, and also known for his cross-dressing. Thus lived and died Francois-Timon-Timolien de Choiset, Mark wrote, the one who had been exiled repeatedly as a girl and who was later celebrated as a hero.

It's not hard to imagine that Mark felt a kindred spirit. Later in his life, Mark began to publish under a new name, Paul Orasme, likely to avoid the scandal surrounding the name Mark de Montefoe. My life as a writer is so connected to my private life, he once wrote, that it would be impossible to separate them in two. Paul, like Mark before him, was easily accepted by readers as a man, and Mark would continue writing under that name for years. Upon Mark's death in 1912, a condolence letter to the young Mark, his son, read, quote,

believe, dear friend, that the great soul of Paul Erasmay will manage to survive all events and will conserve the precious and imperishable memory of the Contest de Montefoe. Contest de Montefo, Paul Erasmé, Monsieur de Montefo, Mark, Marie, all of these are the same fascinating soul. In his lifetime, he would refer to himself as a man, as a woman, as a wife, which of course makes writing about him a little tricky, but perhaps it's best to put it in Mark's own words. I am myself, myself alone, Mark once wrote, ultimately I am a lot. me. That's the story of Mark DeMontifo, but keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit about Mark's lovers. I'm Iris Palmer and my new podcast is called Against All Od, and that's exactly

what the show is about, doing whatever it takes to be the odds. Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers as they share stories about defying expectations, overcoming barriers and breaking generational patterns. I'm talking to people like award-winning actress, producer, and director, Eva Langoria. I think I had like $200 in my savings account and my mom goes, what are you going to do? And I was like, I'll figure it out. We got a one-bedroom apartment for like $400 a month and we all could not afford. Like, I was like, how am I going to make $100 a month?

I'm opening up like I've never before. For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media, get ready to see a whole new side of me. Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Iris Palmer, and my new podcast is called Against All Od, and that's exactly what the show is about, doing whatever it takes to be thoughts.

Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers as they share stories about defying expectations, overcoming barriers, and breaking generational patterns. I'm talking to people like award-winning actress, producer, and director, Eva Langoria. I think I had like 200. in my savings account. And my mom goes, what are you going to do? And I was like, I'll figure it out.

We got a one-bedroom apartment for like $400 a month, and we all could not afford. Like, I was like, how am I going to make $100 a month? I'm opening up like I've never before. For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media, get ready to see a whole new side of me. Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

We know that the marriage between Mark and Leon was full of mutual support. After all, Mark did slap a man to defend his husband's honor. But Mark was not without his extramarital affairs. The affair we know about was between him and Villiers del Adam, a fellow writer and a friend of both Mark and Leon. Villiers ultimately ended it, not wanting to betray either his friend Leon any further, or, as he saw it,

not wanting to betray his future wife. Listen, he wrote to Mark in a letter, I have loved enough. I am incapable of caprices, and if I love again, I only want to love my wife. It's pretty romantic for a breakup letter, even if it's a slightly more poetic version of, I'm sorry, I can't, don't hate me.

Then there was the affair that Mesh speculates about, but we can't prove. A limp Adirad was a writer, around 20 years Montefo's senior. The two were friends until Montefo became a public enemy and alleged his friend attempted to send her doctor to spy on him. If you remember the indecently condemned novel Madame de Quasse, Mesh argues the character, Teresa, is a stand-in for a limp.

In the novel, Terese is a woman who, despite being depicted as much older than the novel's protagonist, Raymond, is a known beauty. Even women felt unexpected raptures, Montefo writes as the female protagonist upon seeing her friend naked, when faced with the physical perfection which offered itself willingly during a friendly visit to the touch of men. Could the friends to enemies potentially have been friends to lovers to enemies? We'll never know. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me, Dana Schwartz,

with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noamie Griffin and Rima Il-Ka Ali, with supervising producer Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

This financial literacy month, we are talking about the one investment most people ignore, building a business around the life you actually want. It was just us, making happen whatever he said was going to happen, and then it happened. On those amigos, entrepreneurs like America Sam and Joe Huff get real about money, taking risk, and while your dream might be the smartest move. At the end of my life, what am I really going to care about?

And the conclusion I came to is what I did to make the world a better place in whatever way. Listen to those amigos on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHart podcast. Guaranteed human.