After night fell, Saint Luke Palace was brightly lit, with quite a few horse-drawn carts carrying building materials coming and going.
Its scale was actually no smaller than Versailles, but it was not as famous. After the French Revolution, the Palace of Versailles had become synonymous with corruption and decadence, and after being looted, it had been abandoned.
Saint Luke had also been looted, but as a palace still in use, it was now being rebuilt. Those construction materials were for repairs and decoration.
A troop of cavalry patrolled spiritedly, dressed in green coats trimmed in red, riding Arabian horses, Mamluk swords at their waists and bearskin hats on their heads, as if it were daytime rather than night.
These soldiers were the elite selected from the Chasseurs à Cheval, the future French Emperor's favored Imperial Guard.
If Versailles was like a dignified, proper matron, then Saint Luke Palace, a royal holiday retreat, lacked that solemn and majestic atmosphere. It seemed relaxed and alluring, a place well suited for a mistress to live in.
Yet this very place housed the Senate of the Directory, the Council of Five Hundred, and the Army General Staff. Located on the outskirts of Paris, it was unlike the Tuileries Palace, which only had a place for riding practice. There was ample space here, enough for infantry and cavalry to spread out in formation for drills.
Saint Luke Palace was both their camp and the place they protected. Even when the First Consul was absent, it remained the center for intelligence, battle plans, communications, and military mail.
Breaking into such a heavily guarded place was never easy, to say nothing of the secret police and the Scourers hired from America. They were mixed in among the soldiers, making them impossible to distinguish.
Severus took out