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Marie Gouze was born on 7 May 1748 in Montauban, Quercy (in the present-day department of Tarn-et-Garonne), in southwestern France.cite-ref-kuiper-note-2-0[2] Her mother, Anne Olympe Mouisset Gouze, was the daughter of a bourgeois family.cite-ref-mousset9-3-0[3] The identity of her father is ambiguous. Her father may have been her mother's husband, Pierre Gouze, or she may have been the illegitimate daughter of Jean-Jacques Lefranc, Marquis de Pompignan.cite-ref-kuiper-note-2-1[2] Marie Gouze encouraged rumours that Pompignan was her father, and their relationship is considered plausible but "historically unverifiable."cite-ref-0-4-0[4] Other rumours in the eighteenth century also suggested that her father might be Louis XV, but this identification is not considered credible.cite-ref-kuiper-note-2-2[2]

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