In October we find the Princess entering Milan, with her retinue of ladies-in-waiting, chamberlains, equerry, page, courier, and coachman, and with William Austin for companion—­a boy, now about thirteen, whom she treated as her son, and who was believed by many to be the child of her imprudence at Blackheath, although the Commission of the “Delicate Investigation” had pronounced that he was son of a poor woman at Deptford.  At Milan, as indeed wherever she wandered in Italy, the “vagabond Princess” was received as a Queen.  Count di Bellegarde, the Austrian Governor, was the first to pay homage to her; at the Scala Theatre, the same evening, her entry was greeted with thunders of applause, and whenever she appeared in the Milan streets it was to an accompaniment of doffed hats and cheers.

One of her first visits was to the studio of Giuseppe Bossi, the famous and handsome artist, whom she requested to paint her portrait.  “On Thursday,” Bossi records, “I sketched her successfully in the character of a Muse; then on Friday she came to show me her arms, of which she was, not without reason, decidedly vain—­she is a gay and whimsical woman, she seems to have a good heart; at times she is ennuyee through lack of occupation.”  On one occasion when she met in the studio some French ladies, two of whom had been mistresses of the King of Westphalia, the poor artist was driven to distraction by the chatter, the singing, and dancing, in which the Princess especially displayed her agility, until, as he pathetically says, “the house seemed possessed of the devil, and you can imagine with what kind of ease it was possible for me to work.”

Before leaving Milan the Princess gave a grand banquet to Bellegarde and a number of the principal men of the city—­a feast which was to have very important and serious consequences, for it was at this banquet that General Pino, one of her guests, introduced to Caroline a new courier, a man who, though she little dreamt it at the time, was destined to play a very baleful part in her life.

This new courier was a tall and strikingly handsome man, who had seen service in the Italian army, until a duel, in which he killed a superior officer, compelled him to leave it in disgrace.  At the time he entered the Princess’s service he was a needy adventurer, whose scheming brain and utter lack of principle were in the market for the highest bidder.  “He is,” said Baron Ompteda, “a sort of Apollo, of a superb and commanding appearance, more than six feet high; his physical beauty attracts all eyes.  This man is called Pergami; he belongs to Milan, and has entered the Princess’s service.  The Princess,” he significantly adds, “is shunned by all the English people of rank; her behaviour has created the most marked scandal.”

Such was the man with whose life that of the Princess of Wales was to be so intimately and disastrously linked, and whose relations with her were to be displayed to a shocked world but a few years later.  It was indeed an evil fate that brought this “superb Apollo” of the crafty brain and conscienceless ambition into the life of the Princess at the high tide of her revolt against the world and its conventions.