Zoe Victoire Du Cayla, countess, a favorite of Louis XVIII, born at Boullay-Thierry, near Dreux, Aug. 5, 1785, died at Saint-Ouen, near Paris, March 19, 1852. She was the daughter of the royalist advocate Antoine Omer Talon (1760-1811) and the countess Pestre, and was educated under the direction of Madame Cam-pan. She acquired celebrity by her beauty, grace, and accomplishments, and married in 1802 M. de Baschi, count du Cayla, who died in 1851. The union was unhappy, and they were formally separated after a protracted litigation. In 1807 she obtained the release of her father, who had been sentenced to transportation in 1804 as an agent of the Bourbon princes. After the restoration she gained considerable influence over Louis XVIII, though the relation was, according to most authorities, purely platonic. The clerical party turned her influence to account in furthering their designs. Lafayette asserts in his memoirs that, at the king's request, she destroyed papers relating to an important lawsuit in which her father had been engaged as one of the Bourbon advocates. The aged monarch endowed her with a fine palace at Saint-Ouen, and lavished other gifts and favors upon her; and she was believed to have increased her wealth by receiving bribes for securing appointments to public offices.

After her patron's death in 1824 she became chiefly known by industrial and agricultural enterprises. She founded the Savonnerie, a carpet manufactory (originally one of soap), which in 1826 was transferred to the Gobelins. Mehemet Ali having presented her with a long-haired Nubian ram, she raised by crossing with English sheep a new breed of these animals, to which her name has been given.