Marie-Noémi Cadiot (French: [kadjo]; 12 December 1828, [1] [2] Paris – 10 April 1888, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat), also known as Noémi (or Noémie) Constant and her literary pseudonyms Claude Vignon and H. Morel, was a French sculptor, journalist and writer of the 19th century.
In 1846, while still a minor, Cadiot eloped with Alphonse Louis Constant, better known as occultist Eliphas Levi; her father, a government official, forced Constant to marry her. They had stillborn twins and a daughter, Mary, who died in 1854 at the age of seven years. Cadiot left Constant in the early 1850s for Marquis Alexandre de Montferrier, brother-in-law of Messianist philosopher Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński, [3] and had the marriage annulled in 1865.
In the late 1850s she had a liaison with architect Hector Lefuel, from which a son was born in 1859 whom she called Louis Vignon. [2]
She remarried with politician Maurice Rouvier on 3 September 1872. [4]
She died on 10 April 1888 in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and was buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. [5]
Cadiot studied sculpture in the workshop of James Pradier. [2] Her creations includes the decoration of the monumental staircase now known as the escalier Lefuel in Napoleon III's Louvre expansion, completed in 1859; [6] and decorative reliefs added in 1862 or 1863 to the Fontaine Saint-Michel in Paris. [7] [8]
She attended the Mrs Niboyet's Women's Club, and wrote in the Le Tintamarre and Le Moniteur du Soir soaps under the literary pseudonym of Claude Vignon (a character from a novel by Honoré de Balzac), which was formalised in 1866. She also published under the literary pseudonym of H. Morel. [9]
Cadiot published Contes à faire peur in 1857, Un drame en province - La statue d'Apollon in 1863, [10] Révoltée!, [11] Un naufrage parisien in 1869, [12] Château-Gaillard in 1874, [13] and Victoire Normand in 1862. [14]