write an ascii extended code to xterm

I can copy and paste text with extended codes into xterm (really xfce4-terminal), and they show up just fine. Piping extended characters to a hex editor shows them just fine for example: " Stéphane " in hex shows as: "53 74 c3 a9 70 68 61 6e 65 0a" -- the accented 'e' is hex: c3 and all's well. But I can't figure out how to write an extended code within the xterm. I've tried every variation on: " echo $'\xc3' " but nothing works.