Thus it was that in November, 1815, the Princess and her Pergami household set forth on their journey to Sicily, Tunis, Athens, the cities of the East and Jerusalem, the strange story of which was to be unfolded to the world five years later.  How intimate the Princess and her handsome, stalwart courier had by this time become was illustrated by the Attorney-General in his opening speech at her memorable trial.  “One day, after dinner, when the Princess’s servants had withdrawn, a waiter at the hotel, Gran Brettagna, saw the Princess put a golden necklace round Pergami’s neck.  Pergami took it off again and put it jestingly on the neck of the Princess, who in her turn once more removed it and put it again round Pergami’s neck.”

As early as August in this year Pergami had his appointed place at the Princess’s table, and his room communicating with hers, and on the various voyages of the Eastern tour there was abundant evidence to prove “the habit which the Princess had of sleeping under one and the same awning with Pergami.”

But it is as impossible in the limits of space to follow Caroline and her handsome cavalier through every stage of these Eastern wanderings, as it is unnecessary to describe in detail the evidence of intimacy so lavishly provided by the witnesses for the prosecution at the trial—­evidence much of which was doubtless as false as it was venal.  That the Princess, however, was infatuated by her cavalier, and that she was in the highest degree indiscreet in her relations with him, seems abundantly clear, whatever the precise degree of actual guilt may have been.

Pergami had now been promoted from equerry to Grand Chamberlain to Her Royal Highness, and as further evidence of her favour, she bought for him in Sicily an estate which conferred on its owner the title of Baron della Francina.  At Malta she procured for him a knighthood of that island’s famous order; at Jerusalem she secured his nomination as Knight of the Holy Sepulchre; and, to crown her favours, she herself instituted the Order of St Caroline, with Pergami for Grand Master.  Behold now our ex-courier and adventurer in all his new glory as Grand Chamberlain and lover of a future Queen of England, as Baron della Francina, Knight of two Orders and Grand Master of a third, while every post of profit in that vagrant Court was held by some member of his family!

The Eastern tour ended, which had ranged from Algiers and Egypt to Constantinople and Jerusalem, and throughout which she had progressed and been received as a Queen, Caroline settled down for a time in her now restored villa on Lake Como, celebrating her return by lavish charities to her poor neighbours, and by popular fetes and balls, in one of which “she danced as Columbine, wearing her lover’s ear-rings, whilst Pergami, dressed as harlequin and wearing her ear-rings, supported her.”