While many questioned her comportment, no one disputed her audacity. Nude servants gilded in gold leaf attended her. Bizarre wax mannequins sat as guests at her dining table. She bejeweled herself in live snakes and was infamous for her Lalique flask of absinthe that accompanied her evening constitutionals around the grounds, parading her beloved cheetahs on diamond-studded leashes, swathed in furs and nothing else, dubbing her thereafter the “naked sorceress.”