family suppers, as well as other habits which undermined the formal court etiquette, it resulted in an exodus of the old court nobility in opposition to the queen's reforms, which gathered in the salon of the Mesdames. They entertained extensively at Bellevue as well as Versailles; their salon was reportedly regularly frequented by minister Maurepas, whom Adelaide had elevated to power, by the prince of Condé and the prince of Conti, both members of the Anti-Austrian party, as well as Beaumarchais, who read aloud his satires of Austria and its power figures. The Austrian Ambassador Mercy reported that their salon was a center of intrigues against Marie Antoinette, where the Mesdames tolerated poems satirizing the queen. The Mesdames gathered the extreme conservative Dévots party of the nobility opposed to the philosophers, the encyclopedists and the economists. When Marie Antoinette, referring to the rising opposition of the monarchy, remarked to Adelaide of the behavior of the "shocking French people", Adelaide replied "I think you mean shocked", insinuating that Marie Antoinette's behavior was shocking. In May 1787 she was visited by Henry Swinburne, who described her and their meeting: "To Bellevue with Mrs S., were Madame Adelaide received us, and was extremely civil. We dined there. The Princess is thin and wizened; she walks about the gardens in a dress made like a riding-habit, and a man's round hat." Madame Adélaïde, reportedly, did not regard the Assembly of the States General as a prelude to a revolution, only as a grand state occasion. Revolution and later life Madame Adélaïde and her sister were present at Versailles during the Parisian women's march to Versailles on 6 October 1789, and belonged to those gathered in the king's apartment the night on the attack on Marie Antoinette's bedroom. They participated in the wagon train leaving the Palace of Versailles for Paris; however, their carriage separated from the rest of the procession on the way before they reached Paris, and they never took up residence at the Tuileries with the royal family, but preferred to retire to the Château de Bellevue at Meudon. Revolutionary laws against the Catholic Church caused them to apply for passports from their nephew the king to travel on pilgrimage to the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome, and Louis XVI signed their passports and notified the Cardinal de Bernis, the French Ambassador to Rome, of their arrival. On 3 February 1791,