ABSTRACT
The extraordinary story of Charlotte Elisabeth Ai'sse (ca. 1694-1733) seems to have been written to inflame the eighteenth-century male imagination. Indeed, her biography seems lifted right out of a novel of the period.1 She was bom in the Caucasian Mountains and captured by the Turks,2 who sold her at the age of four to M. de Ferriol,3 then ambassador to Constantinople, for 1,500 pounds. Although slavery was never customary on French soil, there were in the eighteenth century a few famous examples of women who had been bought mainly as exotic sex objects.4 Ferriors relationship with his charge was never very clear.5 Although educated in France, Ai’sse referred to Ferriol as her “Aga,” that is, her master. She felt totally dependent on his generosity and was under his complete authority (see letter 29 below). He brought the child back to France, and left her to be brought up by his sister-in-law, Madame de FerO riol, along with her two sons, Pont-de-Veyle and d’Argental. He never felt the need to clarify her legal status, although he left her a generous inheritance.
