The Duke consented and took his place at the front of our train. Accordingly, La Buffon insisted that we travel at the end of it, before a small group of National Guardsmen. The gate was then heaved wide and our considerable parade, headed by the commander and his men, was permitted ingress.

We progressed at a cautious pace along the roads. Neither I nor Madame uttered so much as a syllable as her chariot rolled us along the thoroughfares. Our eyes were rapt by the scenes beyond the windows. I had not inhabited Paris for more than a handful of months, and yet I understood what constituted the city’s regular pulse: a steady movement of cabriolets and carthorses, children spilling into the streets and shopkeepers reclining in their doorways making idle chat with their passing neighbours. All this was absent. Doors were barred and shutters pulled across nearly every set of windows we passed. Here and there, blue-uniformed guards pounded upon them, demanding entry. But for this racket, nothing stirred. It seemed every street held its breath.

Deeper into the desolate city we penetrated, the acrid scent of smoke filling and then choking the air. It rolled like a fog in dark sooty clouds through the narrow streets. ‘They are burning the palace,’ La Buffon muttered. I was uncertain if it was wonderment or horror that she expressed. Without thinking, she wrapped her arms about her belly. As we neared the boulevard Cerutti men in sagging bonnets rouges, citizens it seemed, some with rifles and others with knives and brickbats, began to appear along the thoroughfares. They rested against doorways and beneath arches, halting their conversations and removing their pipes as they studied our procession with narrow, menacing eyes. Never have I been more reassured by the presence of soldiers than I was upon that occasion, for otherwise I was certain they would have fallen upon us like feral dogs.

Alarm would not permit me to remove my gaze from the window, lest some attack or accident befell us. I felt my heart thud heavily in my breast with each revolution of the wheels. Indeed, we seemed to move with such trying slowness. I imagined what relief I should feel to enter the courtyard of the Palais-Royal and observe the gates shut behind us. I studied intently each figure along our route: men in brown fustian coats, others in a better make of blue or grey, some simply in waistcoats, some stained with blood. Then there were the two who lay in the road.