Tight-Lipped

He could scarcely quiz Carine Dufour in the middle of the street and hope to go unnoticed. He led her towards the rue des Petits Champs and veered left into the colonnaded northern entrance to the Palais Royal. Here they could hope for a little privacy. Although a public park, the Palais Royal, hidden away in the heart of the first arrondissement, seemed to impose a form of decorum on those who frequented it. It had not always been thus. Built by Richelieu, it soon fell into the hands of the turbulent Orléans branch of the royal family who transformed it into a hub of worldly distraction where all the cardinal sins could be indulged, particularly those of the flesh. Only with advent of the staid and sober Third Republic in 1870, which installed the Conseil Constitutional and the Conseil d’Etat within its walls, did its gardens become a quiet backwater, a place of discreet affluence and well-mannered leisure.