‘Everyone wants to know what happened: “Is he there?” “Was he scalded?” The whole of Paris is worried sick, Senhor Fernandes!’

The telephone was, indeed, insatiably ringing and ringing. And when I came down to lunch, the table cloth was buried beneath a mound of telegrams, which my Prince was ripping open with a knife, frowning and fulminating against this ‘unnecessary nuisance’. His face only brightened when he read one of these small blue pieces of paper and flung it down on my plate with the same gratified smile that Cricket and I had exchanged that morning.

‘It’s from the Grand Duke Casimiro, the dear fellow, the poor soul!’

Over my eggs, I savoured each word of His Highness’ telegram.

What! My Jacinto flooded out! Very chic and in the Champs-Elysées too! The next time I visit No. 202 I’ll bring a life buoy! Condolences, Casimiro.

I deferentially echoed Jacinto’s words: ‘The dear man, the poor soul!’ Then, slowly turning over the pile of telegrams that extended as far as my glass, I asked:

‘By the way, Jacinto, who is this Diana who’s always writing to you, telephoning you, sending you telegrams, and …’

‘Diana? Oh, you mean Diana de Lorge. She’s a cocotte, une grande cocotte!’

‘And she’s yours?’

‘Mine? No, I only have a piece of her.’

And when I lamented the fact that even a rich, fine, proud gentleman like my Prince could not afford his own trough, but had to wallow around in the public one, he merely shrugged and speared a prawn with his fork.

‘You’re from the country, Zé Fernandes, you wouldn’t understand, but a city like Paris needs courtesans of great style and luxury, and to set up a cocotte in this ridiculously expensive city of Paris and furnish her with the requisite clothes, diamonds, horses, lackeys, boxes at the theatre, parties, house, publicity and insolence, you have to combine several large fortunes and form a syndicate! There are seven of us in the Club. I pay my part, but only out of a sense of civic duty, in order to bestow upon the city a cocotte on the grand scale. Otherwise, I don’t wallow at all. Poor Diana! I wouldn’t know if, from the shoulders down, her skin was the colour of snow or the colour of lemons.’

I looked at him, amused.

‘That’s from the shoulders down, but from the shoulders up?’

‘Oh, from the shoulders up, she’s pure powder! But she really is a terrible pest. Always writing me notes, telephoning and sending telegrams. And she costs me three thousand francs a month, and that’s not counting the flowers I have to buy for her. Dreadful!’

And as he bent over his salad, the two lines on either side of my Prince’s sharp nose were like two sad valleys at evening.

We had just finished lunch, when the valet, in a discreet murmur, announced Madame d’Oriol. Jacinto calmly put down his cigar, and I almost choked on a hasty sip of coffee. Dressed all in black – the smooth, austere black of Holy Week – she appeared through the strawberry damask door curtains, indicating to us prettily with her muff that we must not disturb ourselves on her account. Then, in sweet, voluble, trilling tones, she said:

‘I won’t stop. Don’t get up. I was just passing on my way to La Madeleine, and I couldn’t help myself, I simply had to see the damage. A flood in Paris, in the Champs-Elysées! Such a thing could only happen to Jacinto. It even appeared in Le Figaro. I was so worried when I telephoned. Imagine! Boiling water, like the lava out of Vesuvius. It’s quite thrilling. And then, of course, the ruined fabrics, the carpets … I’m simply dying to have a peek at the scene of devastation!’

Jacinto, who seemed neither touched by nor grateful for her interest, smilingly took up his cigar again.

‘Everything is dry now, my dear lady, quite dry. The best part was yesterday, with all that steaming, roaring water.