Napoleon Tries To Mock A Redhead !

I came across the following little anecdote about Napoleon. I'll share it in full as it has a soap opera style charm to it. The mentioned Madame de Chevreuse making a star of herself in a single paragraph. It's from an 1845 work tilted The Fall of Napoleon: An Historical Memoir, by Lieut.-col. J. Mitchell.

"Nothing can better illustrate this statement than Napoleon's treatment of Madame de Chevreuse. This lady, one of the ladies of the palace - Dame du Palais - was young, lively, and handsome; and, as pretty women occasionally presume on such advantages, a little addicted to raillery. She had, however, very red hair; and the Emperor, wishing to punish her for some witty remark, and thinking that the obnoxious colour of her ringlets might be a sore point, called attention to it at a party, saying, "What shocking red hair you have, Madame de Chevreuse." The lady courtesied deeply, and answered with great quickness, - "I may very possibly have red hair, but your Majesty is the first gentleman who ever told me so." The speech was too good to escape attention, and Madame de Chevreuse was banished to the distance of forty leagues from Paris!"

I had to look up the word raillery. I thought it meant something else for a moment. Apparently it means to tease or engage in banter. From the French raillerie (fittingly), meaning mockery.

We've included Napoleon in our list of famous redheads before. If he's mocking a redhead so publicly his own can't have been that red (assuming the anecdote is true).

https://redheadsinhistory.blogspot.com/2018/07/359-napoleon-bonaparte.html

From the descriptions we've found it would appear he had hair of a dark reddish-blond or chestnut colour. So a borderline red it seems. I much prefer the Madame he tries to mock.