‘Monsieur Brissot has been here with Orléans,’ she said, slowly lowering her girth into a chair. ‘The counter-revolutionaries have attempted to break from the prisons. It is just as everyone warned. The people have gone to put down the rebellion, and they have succeeded, but . . . but . . . I have heard dreadful tales, Henriette.’ She rumpled her brow, as if her head could not make sense of what lay within it.

‘What have you heard, Agnès?’ I begged, now greatly anxious.

‘I know not what to believe, nor what to think, for I could never have imagined this . . .’

‘What?’

‘Monsieur Brissot called upon Orléans to inform him. It seems . . . it seems they have murdered all of the Queen’s women: Madame de Tourzel . . . Madame de Lamballe . . . Madame de Saint-Brice . . .’ My friend stopped upon that final name, as if it had stuck in her throat. She clapped her hands to her mouth. ‘Mon Dieu!’ she cried, her eyes filling with a sort of wild panic. She shook her head as tears began to stream forth. ‘I knew them! Madame de Lamballe was a friend . . . before . . . She was Orléans’s sister-in-law, you know. She was so innocent.’ La Buffon now fell into sobs. ‘And others are dead . . . so many others . . . Madame de Lamballe was no counter-revolutionary! The others, I cannot say, but it does not seem just . . .’ Madame searched my face, her expression imploring me to her side.

I moved to her and took her hands in mine, just as I had Lucy’s. I listened to her great wails against the quiet of the dressing room. The pain of loss and remorse which they contained was so brutal that I felt them reverberate within me too. Although I had not yet spied the scenes that Lucy had described or heard directly the accounts that La Buffon conveyed, I could not but conclude that a calamity greater than those events of August or indeed any of which I could conceive was transpiring beyond my walls. Such a chill passed through me, a dread the like of which I had never known, cold and sickening and smothering.

‘What does Orléans command us to do?’ I begged, my voice weak and frightened.

La Buffon steadied herself and sniffed, attempting to contain her tears. ‘He . . . would have us continue our day as if we are unconcerned by these events. They should not disturb our peace,’ she announced with resolve. ‘Those were his instructions to me, and they are wise.’

As she spoke, there was a rap upon the door and the tall figure of Romain entered. Upon seeing him, Madame rose and smoothed her gown over her belly. ‘Monsieur d’Orléans has bid us to join him at breakfast. He entertains Mr Boyd and Mr Kerly, his bankers from England. That had been my intention in calling upon you . . . before . . .’

‘Yes,’ I responded, taking her hand again.