The mist had begun to smother the last remaining afternoon light. Darkness spread rapidly before me and without Langlois’s Herculean figure at my side, I began to fear for my safety. After the barbarity to which I had been exposed, I had vowed I would never again venture forth upon the streets of Paris unaccompanied. I touched my shoulder, now with its red, tender scar hidden below my garments.

Was there no true kindness in the world? I recall thinking as I trod onward. Was there not one heart untouched by baseness or corrupted by venality? For the first time in a great while my mind alighted upon the memory of those conversations I had shared with Allenham, he who had believed with such passion in the gentleness of mankind. We were, all of us, rich or poor, high-born or low-, tabulae rasae. Our natural state was one of goodness, not evil, he had said to me. Did he still hold firm to those principles now, I wondered, or had the bloody spectacle of murder and the animal rages of those upon the streets turned him from them? Allenham, whom Mrs Elliot had kept from me. Allenham: how my heart wished to open once more to him, but pain had sealed it shut. Now I saw plainly the error of my ways. My heedless, strong-willed, foolish pride had driven me to Paris, rather than back to London as he had directed me. Mrs Elliot had been correct; in order to survive in this world, one must extinguish within oneself the urge to trust. Dear reader, if there was a single lesson I drew from my time in Paris, it was this. From that day forward, it was burned upon my heart like a brand from an iron, so that, like any thief, I might be reminded of my folly for the rest of my days. Never have I forgotten it since.

All about me, lamps were lit. Candles were placed beside small windows. The streets grew menacing. Malingering men in clogs sang and smoked and spat. Brash beggar children followed me with blackened open palms. Women called out between the windows, and threw showers of grey water on to my passage. The cobbles gave way under my feet. Cabriolets and barrels rolled in and out of my path. But still I walked, determined, my jaw set in angry dismay. My stockings and skirts grew ever more filthy as I traversed the seam of muck that ran through the road. The streets stank of foetid, putrid ruin, of excrement and, in places, of death.