I crossed the quiet gardens, strewn with flecks of grey ash. A lone fiddler played a solemn tune where usually a cacophony of sounds competed. At a corner, a man bellowed out before a small crowd his hellfire curses on all aristocrats, on all counter-revolutionaries, on all those Swiss who hid in the garrets.

‘We shall tear your limbs from you, we shall carry your heads about the streets for all to see and learn and know how Paris deals with those who fight to preserve tyranny . . .’

I strode briskly onward towards Orléans’s palace, towards this promised haven of safety.

Chapter 17

HERE, I FEEL obliged to say something of my position at the Palais-Royal. Do not mistake me, had the upheaval of the Revolution not prevailed and altered everything about the routine of existence within those walls, one with a name as humble as mine would never have been permitted to reside there. At the time when my belongings were carried into my rooms, the Palais-Royal was but a shadow of its former glory and a palace in name only. One might have likened it to a commodious St James’s townhouse occupied by a nobleman whose finances and character were in a state of decline. Curiously, this reduced mode of life seemed to suit Orléans’s ambitions to appear always the ‘Champion of the People’. Madame de Buffon too was quite content to live amongst its empty state rooms and preside, where appropriate, as its informal hostess. It was this, more than anything, which gave fuel to her detractors. How incensed were those friends of the former Duchesse d’Orléans to learn that La Buffon had situated herself in her lover’s wife’s rooms. To those royalists such as Madame de Flaghac and others of Mrs Elliot’s acquaintance, there were now few places so corrupted, so depraved and devoid of decency as the Petits Appartements of the Palais-Royal. It was here where I was invited to live.