1. It was submitted to Louis XV on 30 November 1761.
2. Victoire de France (1733–1799), the second daughter of Louis XV and Maria Leszczyńska.
3. The names given to the two opposite sides of the auditorium where supporters of the French or Italian styles of opera gathered at the time of the ‘quarrel of the corners’.
4. The comic sequence of the opera Les Paladins that was strongly criticised at the time.
5. A tragic opera in five acts by Jean-Philippe Rameau, first performed on 5 December 1749, in which, amongst other innovations, the composer replaced the prologue with an overture.
6. This suggestion of Nicolas’s was in fact implemented by Sartine in 1764.
7. Lenoir, the Lieutenant General of Police, improved the lighting of Paris by introducing streetlamps to replace candle lanterns.
8. See The Châtelet Apprentice, Chapter I.
9. A fine, hard-grained limestone.
10. It was common practice at the time to send precautionary letters to the Lieutenant General of Police.
11. The morgue, situated in the cellars of the Châtelet (cf. The Châtelet Apprentice).
1. Saint-Florentin (1705–1777), Louis Phélypeaux, Comte, then Duc de la Villière, Minister of State in charge of the King’s Household, a department that included among its responsibilities the administration and the policing of the city of Paris.
2. Cf. The Châtelet Apprentice.
1. ‘Formerly in France, one who held lands from a bishop as his representative and defender in temporal matters’ (Oxford English Dictionary).
1. Literally ‘Pickpocket Street’ (Translator’s note).
1. ‘[T]he breadth of a plank used as a unit of vertical measurement in a ship’s side’ (Oxford English Dictionary).
1. Jacques Clément, a Dominican friar (1567–1589). A fanatical member of the Catholic League, he assassinated Henri III.
1. The author reminds readers that Truche de La Chaux is an historical figure. The circumstances of the fake attack in Versailles on 6 January 1762 are recounted by the memorialists of the time, Barbier and Bachaumont. He was indeed hanged after his trial.