At first, Mlle. Raucourt took refuge in the Temple, the sanctuary of insolvent debtors, while some of the few friends still left to her negotiated with her creditors, with a view to obtaining a reprieve. Perhaps the creditors thought that, if time were given to her, the lady might contrive to secure some wealthy admirer, by whom their claims would be settled. Any way, they consented to accord her a few months’ grace, and, in the autumn, Mlle. Raucourt left the Temple and went to live with a Madame Souck, “a German woman of horribly depraved morals,” in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis. Madame Souck, it transpired, had introduced Mlle. Raucourt into the house in the temporary absence of the landlord, who, on his return, found her established in a vacant suite of apartments, which she firmly declined to vacate. When he ventured to remonstrate, Madame Souck’s servants threatened him with “_coups de bâton et autres violences_,” and also maltreated one of his tenants, who would appear to have taken the landlord’s part. So threatening, indeed, did the attitude of the two ladies and their domestics become that the poor landlord declared, in a complaint he lodged before a commissary of police, that he dared not even sleep in his own house, “for fear of accidents.”[114] Madame Souck’s finances, like those of her friend, were in a parlous state, and, in the following spring, a firm of silk-merchants of the Rue Saint-Honoré levied an execution upon her premises, and placed one Thomas Philippe Violet and another bailiff in possession. Madame Souck, however, was not a lady to submit tamely to such inconvenience, and, on March 27, we find Thomas Philippe Violet appearing before a commissary of the Châtelet to lodge a complaint and demand protection against the dame Souck, the demoiselle Raucourt, and other persons, “their accomplices, abettors, and adherents.” In this document, he declares that, on the night of the 25th to 26th inst., at two hours after midnight, the said dame Souck and the said demoiselle Raucourt, “both dressed in men’s clothes,” arrived, accompanied by the said accomplices, abettors, and adherents, and, after creating a terrible uproar and “swearing by the Holy Name of God,” proceeded with blows and kicks to force the doors, and ejected both him and his colleague into the street.[115]