18 These are curious allusions for the conservative Monsieur de Rênal: In the last years of the ancien régime, the Duke d' Orléans (1747–93) and his Paris residence, the Palais-Royal, were centers of political opposition. The duke was a cousin of Louis XVI, First Prince of the Blood Royal, and was an ambitious and thoroughly unprincipled man. Hungry for power, he attempted to put himself at the head of the Revolution, abandoning his name (but not his inheritance) and calling himself Philippe Égalité. In spite of this ostentatious radicalism, he ended up being guillotined during the Terror.
Chapter 23