inner corridors of the palace, followed by one of her women with a black
domino; she assisted him to put it on, and they went alone to the chapel
court, where a carriage waited for them, with the captain of the Guard of
the quarter, and a lady of the palace. The King was but little amused,
spoke only to two or three persons, who knew him immediately, and found
nothing to admire at the masquerade but Punches and Harlequins, which
served as a joke against him for the royal family, who often amused
themselves with laughing at him about it.

An event, simple in itself, brought dire suspicion upon the Queen. She
was going out one evening with the Duchesse de Lupnes, lady of the palace,
when her carriage broke down at the entrance into Paris; she was obliged
to alight; the Duchess led her into a shop, while a footman called a
'fiacre'. As they were masked, if they had but known how to keep silence,
the event would never have been known; but to ride in a fiacre is so
unusual an adventure for a queen that she had hardly entered the
Opera-house when she could not help saying to some persons whom she met
there: "That I should be in a fiacre! Is it not droll?"

From that moment all Paris was informed of the adventure of the fiacre. It
was said that everything connected with it was mysterious; that the Queen
had kept an assignation in a private house with the Duc de Coigny. He was
indeed very well received at Court, but equally so by the King and Queen.
These accusations of gallantry once set afloat, there were no longer any
bounds to the calumnies circulated at Paris. If, during the chase or at
cards, the Queen spoke to Lord Edward Dillon, De Lambertye, or others,
they were so many favoured lovers. The people of Paris did not know that
none of those young persons were admitted into the Queen's private circle
of friends; the Queen went about Paris in disguise, and had made use of a
fiacre; and a single instance of levity gives room for the suspicion of