Duc de Montclair

The king's cousin is richer than the king and bored by nearly everything. He spent his youth at sea and at cards, and his inheritance on a gamble: he turned the gardens of his palace into a ring of shops, cafés and galleries and rented them out, arcade by arcade. In 1784 the first of them opened, and within a year all Paris came to walk there.

Because the gardens are his private property, the Watch may not enter without his leave, and he gives it rarely. Booksellers sell there what cannot be printed elsewhere, and men who will never be received at court are received at his table. He calls himself a friend of liberty. His enemies say he is a friend of anything that annoys his cousin.