Thanks are due to Professor Sarah Maza, for helping me with some details of eighteenth-century domestic life, and especially to Professor Alan J. Williams, for his kind patience in reading the manuscript and answering my questions about the prerevolutionary Paris police (as well as directing me to the right parts of his excellent book on the subject).
I owe thanks, also, to Katie Gilligan, Crist?na Concepcion, Pamela Thrasher, and-as always-Berenice McDayter, for their ever-valuable comments and criticism. To Erika Vause, for hospitality in Paris. And to K. A. Corlett, for the precious book!