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declined. “I read the newspapers. For months after the Russians stormed Paris, the valley between Belleville and Montmartre stank with half-buried corpses. I hope they may have cleaned it up by now.”
    Barbary had also read the newspapers, although her primary interest had been in tidbits concerning a certain lordship. “Mercy!” she said. “One indeed must hope.”
    Sadie shrugged her plump shoulders, which were swathed in a high-necked cambric traveling dress. “What a lark it must have been to see Louis the Gouty’s entrance into Paris. A fête was given in his honor, and he was presented with two of Henri IV’s teeth, and his mustache, and some of the linen that had been wrapped around his corpse. There were more than thirty orchestras in the Champs-Elysées, and jugglers and rope dancers and fireworks, and a man went up in a balloon. The fountains in the Champs-Élysees ran with wine.” She nudged her spouse. “But Sam here had certain matters of business to tend to, and so I missed the fun.” Barbary glanced at Tibble, who was listening to the conversation—as indeed was everyone in the diligence. His expression was appalled.
    Mr. Smith gestured with his pamphlet. “Alphabetically arranged,” he said. “Contains all the posts throughout France, the precise distance of every place, and the sums to be paid the post houses and drivers. Makes it impossible for the traveler to be cheated. You should get one for yourself, ma’am.”
    “Goose,” Mrs. Smith said fondly. “What would Miss here be wanting with such a thing? She’ll have caught herself a fine husband before you can say Jack Robinson, and then he can stand the reckoning!”
    Barbary did not confide her marital status to her traveling companions, nor her intention to have no further dealings with the opposite sex. “Thank you for your advice, sir,” she said gravely. “You are very kind.”
    “All the same, he’s right.” Mrs. Smith sounded as if this were a novel circumstance for her husband. “You have to keep an eye out for these Frenchies. They’ll cheat you every chance they get. Proper bloodthirsty lot they are, too, with their national razor. Executed a total of twenty-five hundred people in Paris in just nine months.”
    Barbary glanced again at Tibble, who appeared even unhappier. “I daresay the French are weary of war and eager for peace now.”
    “That don’t mean they’re eager for the Bourbons to be back at the Tuileries,” said Mr. Smith. “Pretending the Revolution and the Empire never happened. Right now the people are pleased enough to be rid of the trouble Buonaparte caused them, but they’re proud as can be of his military glory. The army remains Buonapartist to a man—aye, and also resentful of their return to peacetime footing, and the subsequent reduction in their pay. The manufacturers resent the tariff reductions that leave them open to foreign competition. And everyone watches uneasily as the returning noble émigrés try to again impose feudalism on the people Buonaparte had freed.”
    Barbary listened to Mr. Smith with growing unease. “Mercy! You don’t think—”
    “He don’t think, that’s the trouble!” Mrs. Smith interrupted with a stern glance at her spouse. “Now look what you’ve done with your prittle-prattle. You’ll have Miss here in a fret when the plain truth is that Buonaparte has no more chance of escaping Elba than a cat in hell without claws.”
    Mr. Smith looked stubborn. Before he could speak, the diligence gave a particularly sharp lurch, then stopped, causing Mrs. Smith to cease castigating her husband to instead mutter caustic comments about jumblegut lane.
    The door of the diligence was flung open, not by the conductor but a masked brigand. With a gesture of his evil-looking pistol he indicated that the passengers were to disembark. Mrs. Smith’s mouth dropped open. “Lawks!” she said. “We’re being robbed!”
    The passengers tumbled out of the diligence, to be