When Caroline and her retinue set out from Milan for Tuscany it was in the wake of Pergami, who had ridden ahead to discharge his duties as avant courier; but before Rome was reached his intimacy and familiarity with his mistress were already the subject of whispered comments and shrugged shoulders.  At a ball given in her honour at Rome by the banker Tortonia, the Princess shocked even the least prudish by the abandon of her dancing and the tenuity of her costume, which, we are told, consisted of “a single embroidered garment, fastened beneath the bosom, without the shadow of a corset and without sleeves.”  And at Naples, where King Joachim Murat gave her a regal reception, with a sequel of fetes and gala-performances in honour of the wife of the Regent of England, she attended a rout, at the Teatro San Carlo, so lightly attired “that many who saw her at her first entrance looked her up and down, and, not recognising her, or pretending not to recognise her, began to mutter disapprobation to such an extent that she was compelled to withdraw....  The English residents soon let her understand, by ceasing to frequent her palace, that even at Naples there were certain laws of dress which could not be trampled underfoot in this hoydenish manner.”

While Caroline was thus defying convention and even decency, watchful eyes were following her everywhere.  A body of secret police, whose headquarters were at Milan, was noting every indiscretion; and every week brought fresh and damaging reports to England, where they were eagerly welcomed by the Regent and his satellites.  And while the Princess was thus playing unconsciously, or recklessly, into the hands of the enemy, Pergami was daily making his footing in her favour more secure.  Before Caroline left Naples he had been promoted from courier to equerry, and in this more exalted and privileged role was always at her side.  So marked, in fact, was the intimacy even at this early stage, that the Princess’s retinue, one after another, and on one flimsy pretext or another, deserted her in disgust, each vacancy, as it occurred, being filled by one of Pergami’s relatives—­his brother, his daughter, his sister-in-law (the Countess Oidi), and others, until Caroline was soon surrounded by members of the ex-courier’s family.

From Naples she wandered to Genoa, and from Genoa to Milan and Venice, received regally everywhere by the Italians and shunned by the English residents.  From Venice she drifted to Lake Como, with whose beauties she was so charmed that she decided to make her home there, purchasing the Villa del Garrovo for one hundred and fifty thousand francs, and setting the builders to work to make it a still more splendid home for a future Queen of England.  But even to the lonely isolation of the Italian lakes the eyes of her husband’s secret agents pursued her, spying on her every movement—­“uncertain shadows gliding in the twilight along the paths and between the hedges, and even in the cellars and attics of the villa”—­until the shadowy presences filled her with such terror and unrest that she sought to escape them by a long tour in the East.