From that inauspicious beginning, my journey was not to improve. For the better part of it, the heat was intolerable. My maid and I baked like breads in an oven. To open the windows only drew in clouds of dust and insects, which swirled about and coated our damp faces in a fine brown powder. By evening, grey rumbling clouds pinched out the light before throwing torrents of rain upon us. The coarse road was pounded into a stew through which six sets of horses’ hooves sucked and spat. La Buffon’s liveried coachman and footman appeared as drowned as sailors, the very curls of their wigs unfurling in the gale.

On account of the poor weather, we lost several hours, so that by the time we stopped to change horses at an inn at Combles, it was near to midnight. It was here we were felled completely, as one of Madame’s horses had injured its hoof. Greatly fatigued, we had no choice but to remain where fortune had deposited us, amid the inhospitable walls of the Fleur-de-Lys. After an execrable meal of eggs and stinking rabbit, Lucy and I were made to pass the night in one bed, which we discovered the following day had been home to a good many fleas.

Morning had ripened into early afternoon before a suitable replacement for the mare could be found. As you might imagine, I observed the sun rise in the sky with increasing agitation. Although I had dispatched a note to Madame de Buffon explaining our delay, this did not quell my anxiety. My fear of offending a woman who I suspected bore a natural antipathy towards me increased with each hour. As we joined the road to Valenciennes once more, I could think of nothing but her wrath, her face contorted with vengeance at my failure to appear. I supposed La Buffon would conclude I had played her some trick, that Mrs Elliot had connived with me to humiliate her. Worse still, I conjured a scene in my head where I would be forced to concede to my friend that I had not only failed to gain an introduction to Orléans, but succeeded in insulting him as well.

By the time we neared La Volière, the hour approached four o’clock. It was then well past dinner and I was overcome with dread. Quite without thinking, I took Lucy’s hand for comfort as we passed through the gates of the château. It glowered at me at the end of a perfectly straight drive, a squat, wide building of rose and buff stone, with a low, sloping roof.

We were greeted by the appearance of Madame’s intendant, a tall, droop-eyed servant, who assisted me from her coach.

The pallid hue of my countenance must have struck him for he immediately offered an apology for the state of the roads and the inconvenience of my journey.