The characters in this novel are fictitious or are treated fictitiously. Streets and places are real except for Chateau Beaumont, Café Marcel, Café Odéon, and Hôtel Goncourt. I have moved Chateau Tanlay from Burgundy to the outskirts of Paris and, with minor alterations, transformed it into Chateau Debussy. I'm indebted to Ambassador Thomas Jefferson for information about the weather in Paris. He recorded it twice daily. The jasper bowl can be seen in the collection of the Grünes Gewölbe, Dresden. The Chanavas jewels are an ensemble of various historic Indian pieces.
Readers wishing to become better acquainted with the Paris of 1786 will find Howard C. Rice, Jr.,
Thomas Jefferson's Paris
, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976, convenient as well as helpful. For Abbé de l'Ãpée and the situation of the deaf, I recommend Harlan Lane,
When the Mind Hears: A History of the Deaf
, New York: Random House, 1984. For a good introduction to law enforcement in the eighteenth-century metropolis, read Alan Williams,
Police of Paris
, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1979. For a more technical, detailed analysis of eighteenth-century French criminal justice, consult Richard M. Andrews, Law, Magistracy, and Crime in Old Regime Paris, 1735-1789, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. See also E.J. Burford & Sandra Shulman, Of Bridles & Burnings: The Punishment of Women, New York: St. Martin's, 1992.
The Royal Highway Patrol [La Maréchaussée], precursor of the modern Gendarmerie Nationale, grew out of the royal army's military police. In the late eighteenth century its main function was to maintain order in the countryside and on the highways. It numbered almost 4,000 men, spread across France in small detachments. Their provosts were usually retired army colonels. Paul de Saint-Martin would have been an unusually young provost, especially for the region around Paris.
In 1786 there was no longer a theater within the palace of the Palais-Royal. The opera had burned down in 1781 and a temporary Théatre des Variétés Amusants had been built adjacent to the west side of the palace. In Mute Witness I have created a small palace theater on the site of the palace chapel. In 1787 the entire west wing of the palace, including the picture galleries and the chapel, was demolished to make way for the present Comédie Française, completed in 1791.
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