During the winter the Queen attended the Opera balls with a single lady of the palace, and always found there Monsieur and the Comte d’Artois.  Her people concealed their liveries under gray cloth greatcoats.  She never thought she was recognized, while all the time she was known to the whole assembly, from the first moment she entered the theatre; they pretended, however, not to recognise her, and some masquerade manoeuvre was always adopted to give her the pleasure of fancying herself incognito.

Louis XVI. determined once to accompany the Queen to a masked ball; it was agreed that the King should hold not only the grand but the petit coucher, as if actually going to bed.  The Queen went to his apartment through the 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 others.