Madame de Thèbes, whose real name was Anne Victorine Savigny, was a famous French fortune-teller and palm reader during the Belle Époque. Active in Paris around the turn of the 20th century, she gained considerable renown through her predictions and advice to high society. Her prophecies concerning certain major world events made her a prominent figure in the social occultism of her time. In an era fascinated by spiritualism and esotericism, Madame de Thèbes established herself as one of the most prominent fortune-tellers, attracting both the curious and the powerful. A portrait.
Early Life and Beginnings
Anne Victorine Savigny was born in 1845 and grew up in Paris. Before adopting her famous pseudonym, she led a modest life and held various jobs. In her youth, she worked notably as a cashier, then became a governess in a bourgeois family around 1877, reflecting a certain education and ambition. Attracted to the arts, Anne then began a career on the stage: in the 1880s, she performed at the theater under the name Mademoiselle Dhalyle, trying her luck as an actress. Although this stage experience did not make her famous, it allowed her to move among artistic circles, where she would later establish valuable contacts. It was during the 1890s that Anne Savigny turned toward divinatory arts. She studied cartomancy (card reading) and, above all, palmistry (the reading of the lines of the hand) under the renowned master Adolphe Desbarrolles, then regarded as the “father of modern palmistry.” As Desbarrolles’s student, she acquired a thorough command of the art of palm reading and began offering fortune-telling consultations. These discreet beginnings in divination would gradually lead her to the forefront of the Parisian scene.
Toward Fame
Anne Savigny’s encounter with literary circles proved decisive for her reputation. She met the writer Alexandre Dumas fils, a respected author who was highly connected in high society. Impressed by the young fortune-teller’s emerging talents, Dumas suggested that she adopt an evocative pseudonym: Madame de Thèbes. The name was inspired by his play La Route de Thèbes (which he had begun but never finished), featuring a mysterious woman. Anne Victorine Savigny thus became “Madame de Thèbes,” a stage name with esoteric and ancient resonances that would help shape her legend.
Dumas fils did more than suggest a pseudonym to the fortune-teller: he actively launched her into the public eye. Around 1894, he organized a spectacular demonstration for her before his prestigious colleagues at the Académie française. At a dinner, he challenged Madame de Thèbes to reveal the character traits of a dozen academicians simply by examining their hands, without even seeing their faces—the academicians were standing behind a curtain. The palm reader rose brilliantly to the challenge: the psychological portraits she produced, finger by finger, of each academician proved astonishingly precise and convincing. This blind-reading session, staged as a society spectacle, caused a sensation. Success was immediate: Madame de Thèbes’s performance brought her sudden recognition, first throughout Paris and then beyond France’s borders. Overnight, the press seized upon the story of this modern “prophetess,” and the fortune-teller from Avenue de Wagram acquired national and even European fame.
Buoyed by this unexpected publicity, Madame de Thèbes saw a prestigious clientele flock to her. Leading figures from Parisian high society now came to consult this enigmatic-looking woman about their futures. Writers, aristocrats, and politicians frequented her salon. Among her regular clients were Marcel Proust, then a little-known young author from good society, and even a crowned exile, Queen Natalie of Serbia. The fact that a former sovereign and a future great novelist entrusted themselves to her advice illustrates how fashionable Madame de Thèbes had become. Introduced into elite circles by Dumas and his allies, she now embodied the official fortune-teller of Parisian high society.
Prophecies and Activities in Her Salon
At the beginning of the 20th century, Madame de Thèbes was at the height of her career as a card reader. She received clients in her own fortune-telling salon, located at 29 Avenue de Wagram in Paris. This salon, at the heart of an affluent neighborhood (just a short distance from the Arc de Triomphe), became a fashionable destination where the curious and the anxious crowded in search of revelations. In the hushed atmosphere of this antechamber of mystery, the fortune-teller examined hands, laid out cards, and delivered predictions or advice with great seriousness. Each visit was as much a social ritual as an esoteric consultation. Madame de Thèbes carefully cultivated her image as a “Parisian pythoness”: she received clients in a carefully designed setting, sometimes dressed in Orientalist attire, and fostered an air of secrecy around herself to maintain the aura of mystery behind her success.
Madame de Thèbes’s fame quickly spread thanks to a clever idea: the annual publication of her prophecies. Beginning in 1903, she published an Almanac of Madame de Thèbes every Christmas, recording her predictions for the coming year. Sold in bookstores and relayed by the press, the almanac reached a wide audience and circulated far beyond Paris. It was published without interruption until 1917. In an engaging format, it combined advice for living happily with announcements of future events. These booklets became highly popular, making Madame de Thèbes a true celebrity of esoteric publishing. The fortune-teller also published more elaborate works: in 1901 came L’Énigme de la main, a treatise in which she set out her palmistry doctrine. Dedicated to her friend and mentor Alexandre Dumas fils, the book presented itself as a serious guide to studying the lines of the hand. A few years later, in 1908, she published L’Énigme du rêve : explication des songes, a work in which she shared her experience of oneiromancy (the art of interpreting dreams). Through these publications, Madame de Thèbes sought to establish her credibility by giving her intuitions a quasi-scientific foundation—not hesitating to claim that palmistry was a genuine science, with verifiable laws that deserved serious study.
Madame de Thèbes’s fame rested above all on the sensational predictions attributed to her. Over the years, a number of major events seemed to have been announced in her consultations or almanacs. She was credited with predicting the Second Boer War in South Africa (1899–1902) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), two distant conflicts whose outbreak she was said to have anticipated. More impressively, she allegedly announced, before 1914, the imminent outbreak of a worldwide conflict in Europe. In her almanac, for example, the fortune-teller wrote that “the future of Belgium is extraordinarily sad” and that this small country “will set all of Europe on fire”—words published as early as 1903 that would sound prophetic when Belgium was invaded in 1914 at the beginning of the First World War. Similarly, in 1913, Madame de Thèbes warned that “Germany threatens Europe in general and France in particular” and predicted the imminent fall of the German emperor and his empire. When the Great War broke out, many people remembered these grim predictions from her Almanac. In addition to wars, Madame de Thèbes was also said to have predicted several tragic deaths that made headlines. She allegedly announced the violent death of General Georges Boulanger, a leading figure in Boulangism (a popular protest movement) who died by suicide in 1891, as well as the tragic end of the poet Catulle Mendès, who died accidentally in 1909. She was also credited with predicting the death of the British journalist William T. Stead, a famous spiritualist who perished in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, and the political and judicial scandal of the Caillaux affair in 1914, involving a French minister. These successes fueled Madame de Thèbes’s legend. In the eyes of the general public, the fortune-teller from Avenue de Wagram appeared to be a prophetess who had learned to read the future of the world in her cards and stars.
The Elephant as an Emblem
At the heart of her social life, the elephant took center stage. From 1906 onward, Madame de Thèbes belonged to the Friends of the Elephant society, and her name remained visible on its membership lists until 1916. In Belle Époque Paris, dinners and conferences were held around this totem animal. She brought together scientists, colonial administrators, parliamentarians, journalists, and artists around a clear objective: protecting the elephant, regulating hunting and the ivory trade, and promoting its domestication in the colonies. The prestigious National Museum of Natural History carried considerable influence within its leadership: Edmond Perrier served as president, with Adolphe Brisson as vice president. The society organized meetings followed by heavily publicized dinners (notably at Café Cardinal) and acted as a pressure group with public authorities. On December 1, 1906, it had 92 members; Madame de Thèbes’s admission was approved on April 4, 1906.
Madame de Thèbes. Source
This affiliation established the elephant motif within her public image and anchored her in a clearly identifiable society milieu. It appeared on her letterhead alongside the motto “I do not deceive; I warn.” Her signature also appeared beneath a text titled “The White Elephant” in the magazine Femina, and the press eagerly highlighted this choice. The animal served both as a good-luck charm and as a pledge of honesty: a promise to warn without deceiving, in keeping with the image she projected from Avenue de Wagram.
Over the years, two sources converged to reinforce this distinctive symbol: the banner of a friendly society and a personal aesthetic. The association between her name and the elephant became established in the public mind; echoes of it can be found in correspondence, on cards bearing her letterhead, and in press portraits. Hence the recurring presence of the elephant whenever one follows Madame de Thèbes’s trail through the documents and images of her time.
Controversies and Skepticism
Despite her popularity, Madame de Thèbes did not escape criticism or doubts about the sincerity of her gifts. The press, so quick to relay her successes, was also often ironic toward her. One of the most debated episodes concerned her alleged prediction of the death of President of the Republic Félix Faure. In February 1899, President Faure died suddenly from a violent seizure. The fortune-teller then claimed to have foreseen his death and invoked it before certain journalists. But columnist Jacques Mauprat, writing in Le Progrès Illustré, pointed out that Madame de Thèbes’s “announcement” came the day after Félix Faure’s death, seriously undermining her credibility. In plain terms, she had predicted nothing at all and had merely claimed afterward to have made an imaginary prophecy. Publicly caught out in this sleight of hand, Madame de Thèbes attempted to fight back: she declared that she would soon predict other accidental or tragic deaths during the year, while carefully refraining from revealing any names. This cautious maneuver—announcing misfortunes without verifiable details—was met with skepticism by commentators. The episode of Félix Faure’s posthumous “omen” cast doubt on the fortune-teller’s infallibility and provided arguments for rationalists denouncing the “prophets” of the salon. In general, while Madame de Thèbes had fervent supporters, she also had her share of detractors, who regarded her at best as a perceptive illusionist and at worst as a fraud. Some satirical newspapers did not hesitate to ridicule her sometimes nebulous statements. Nevertheless, these controversies did not seriously damage her commercial success: respectable society continued to consult her, if only for amusement or superstition, and her almanacs continued to sell well. Madame de Thèbes thus navigated between admiration and mockery, aware that mystery and controversy also contributed to her fame. And ultimately, like anyone else, she could make mistakes or be overly ambitious, which did not make her any less gifted.
Later Years and Legacy
When the First World War broke out in 1914, Parisian life was upended and fortune-telling activities took a back seat. About 70 years old, Madame de Thèbes then partially withdrew from public life. She left the wartime capital to take refuge in a family property in Meung-sur-Loire, in the Loiret département, not far from Orléans. Settled on this country farm, the famous prophetess led a more discreet existence, far from the turmoil of Paris. She nevertheless continued to follow current events and publish her annual predictions, which took on particular significance amid the tragedy of the global conflict. A witty note published in Le Cri de Paris in 1916—and humorously reprinted by London’s Fortnightly Review—reported that Mme de Thèbes, now a farmer, sent eggs, butter, and chickens to her nephews who remained in Paris, but that “strange to say, she who can announce the fall of empires and the death of kings twelve months in advance is incapable of predicting from one week to the next whether the price of eggs will rise or fall!” The press mischievously highlighted this paradox: the fortune-teller capable of predicting war could not predict the market, bringing her back to a more prosaic reality.
Madame de Thèbes died a few months before the end of the Great War. In December 1916, weakened by age, she died at her retreat in Clan, a hamlet of Meung-sur-Loire, at the age of 71. Her remains were subsequently returned to Paris, where she was buried in the famous Père-Lachaise Cemetery. The death of the woman whom the press often called the “sibyl of Avenue de Wagram” was marked in newspapers by obituaries that oscillated between respectful tribute and polite skepticism. With Madame de Thèbes, an era came to an end: that of the fortune-tellers of the Belle Époque, figures on the boundary between society and mystery, whose influence would decline during the interwar period in the face of the progress of rationalism.
Yet Madame de Thèbes’s legacy endured in a certain way. Her very name became synonymous with a female prophet. In the 1930s, the journalist Geneviève Tabouis, famous for her columns anticipating international crises, would be nicknamed “Madame de Thèbes” by her contemporaries, in reference to the prewar fortune-teller. A sign of the mark she left on the collective imagination, Madame de Thèbes’s life also inspired a work of fiction during her lifetime. In 1915, Swedish filmmaker Mauritz Stiller made a silent film entitled Madame de Thèbes, whose plot was partly inspired by the biography of the famous fortune-teller. This feature film, rediscovered in the 21st century, testifies to the fascination exerted by the Parisian prophetess far beyond France’s borders.
Within a few decades, Madame de Thèbes went from being an unknown woman to the capital’s most prominent fortune-teller, single-handedly embodying the vogue for occultism in the elegant society of the Belle Époque. Her career illustrates the curiosity of an era hungry for the supernatural and revelation. Madame de Thèbes remains an emblematic figure in the French esoteric imagination, a symbol of a time when, during a consultation, one could see destiny revealed in a deck of cards.
Sources:
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Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), authority record: “Savigny, Anne Victorine, known as Madame de Thèbes (1845–1916).”
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CTHS – La France savante, prosopographical profile “Madame de Thèbes” (biography, bibliography, and press references).
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Davies, Owen, A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination, and Faith during the First World War, Oxford University Press, 2018 (chapters devoted to Madame de Thèbes: youth, Dumas, almanacs, 1914–1916).
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Gallica (BnF): L’Énigme de la main (Félix Juven, 1901); L’Énigme du rêve. Explication des songes (Félix Juven, 1908); Almanach de Mme A. de Thèbes (1903–1917 editions).
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Bulletin et Annuaire de la Société astronomique de France (late 19th–early 20th century), mentioning “Mme A. de Thèbes, 29 Avenue de Wagram, Paris.”
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Belle Époque and Great War press archives: Le Figaro, Le Cri de Paris, Fortnightly Review, Parisian and international publications (announcements, reports, obituaries, 1893–1916).
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Svenska Filminstitutet film database (Swedish Film Database): Madame de Thèbes by Mauritz Stiller, 1915.
