We proceeded through the Petits Appartements, our shoes tapping out a march against the polished floors. La Buffon’s hand, cold and damp, still grasped mine. When we arrived at the breakfast room, that intimate wood-panelled salon which presented the illusion of bourgeois simplicity to which Orléans so aspired, we found the gentlemen already at their meal. The English, who had no true understanding of the manners of Frenchmen, stood and made their greetings to us. Orléans preferred to remain seated, lounging with as much indifference as a fat caliph at his court. However, upon spying us, he swiftly rubbed a look of polite pleasure across his sober countenance.

No one in that room sat with as much awkwardness as did the immaculately attired Mr Kerly and Mr Boyd in their buff and yellow coats, their hair perfectly frizzed for the occasion. The former clutched the rim of his small dish of coffee as if his fingers had cramped upon it, while the latter picked at a single roll upon his plate. Not a soul at that table could ignore the events of that terrible day, and yet we set about enacting that charade. This was rendered especially difficult in the face of the chanting and singing from passage de Valois below, which swelled and died away in waves. The bankers shifted anxiously in their chairs as the bloody lyrics filled the pauses in our conversation.

‘Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira

Aristocrats to the lamp-post!

Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira

The aristocrats, we will hang them!

If we do not hang them, we will break them

If we do not break them, we will burn them . . .’

We listened, but did not remark. Why, it was as if we sat amicably in a box at the play while the performance continued below.

‘I recall very well, monseigneur, that fine mare we examined at your stables last winter. She ran like no other I have had the pleasure of observing,’ began Mr Kerly from between his set teeth.

‘Calliope, I believe she was called,’ interjected Mr Boyd.

‘Yes, Calliope,’ his associate continued. ‘Have you bred her, monseigneur?’

‘I regret to say that she has been sold, along with most of the beasts in my stables at Raincy, messieurs,’ Orléans answered tersely.

Gradually, the noise from outside the windows began to increase in volume. It seemed as if further voices had been added to this angry choir. Jeers and cries of ‘Vive la nation’ battled with the dissonant strains of song. I could sense from Orléans’s tight expression that he was growing ever more agitated.

‘Orléans!’ came a shout from below. ‘Orléans!’ called out another.