Esther Lachmann (French: [ɛstɛʁ laʃman]; better known as La Païva (French: [la paiva]); 7 May 1819 – 21 January 1884) was the most famous of the 19th-century French courtesans. A notable investor and architecture patron, and a collector of jewels, she had a personality so hard-bitten that she was described as the "one great courtesan who appears to have had no redeeming feature". Count Horace de Viel-Castel, a society chronicler, called her "the queen of kept women, the sovereign of her race".