Since 1800, the Tuileries Palace and Malmaison Palace had served as the seat of the French government. Though the Coup of 18 Brumaire had turned the former elders' votes into a joke, those lawyers were skilled in the law and useful talents.
The deputies produced through improper elections were responsible for legislation. They worked in the Luxembourg Palace, and Napoleon occasionally worked there as well.
Napoleon would not make the same mistakes as Louis XVI. Pomona had once thought matters too simply, believing that if Marie Antoinette supported Louis XVI staying, France could become a constitutional monarchy like Britain.
Napoleon had bought Malmaison in the suburbs, first because it was spacious enough, and second because he would not have to worry about Paris's dense population. He would not stay in the Tuileries Palace for long. Besides Malmaison, he occasionally worked at Saint Luke Palace. Since the sixteenth century, it had been a royal holiday estate. Like the Palace of Versailles, it had been designed by Le Nôtre, and everything about it was filled with Baroque extravagance. It also had an enormous vineyard. But during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, it had been burned by the Prussians, reducing this palace, once as famous as the Louvre Museum and Versailles, to ruins.
Pomona was currently staying here. Looking at the map, going from the Luxembourg Palace through Saint Luke and then back to Malmaison meant taking a slight detour, but to a general who had conquered all of Europe, that distance was nothing.
If the gardens of the Tuileries Palace were full of intellectuals in tailcoats strolling politely with ladies, then nearly everyone appearing at Saint Luke wore military uniforms trimmed with gold fringe. In this enormous palace, without a maid to guide her, Pomona could easily stumble into a room where