His reputation as an authority on Female Elegance lay in tatters, and the whole of Paris would now assume that he had never seen a duchess unfastening her corset in his psychologist’s boudoir! Moistening his lips grown dry with fear, he acknowledged his mistake and contritely attributed it to a moment of unthinking improvisation.

‘It does indeed strike a completely false note. How could it possibly have escaped my notice, I mean a black corset, it really is absurd! At the very most – as a reflection of the duchess’ state of mind – it could have been lilac or possibly the very palest of yellows, with just a touch of old Malines lace. I can’t understand how I could have made such a blunder! I have my notebook of interviews, all carefully annotated and documented!’

In his distress, he ended up begging Marizac to broadcast his confession everywhere, at the club and in all the salons. It had been purely and simply an artistic lapse, for true artists, of course, are always working at such a fever pitch of inspiration, lost in the black depths of the souls they are probing! He hadn’t even noticed the corset or its colour. Arms outstretched, he declared to the editor of Le Boulevard:

‘I am ready, dear friend, to give an interview and to make a full and frank declaration to my public! Send me one of your reporters. Tomorrow at ten o’clock! Yes, we will hold an interview and decide there and then what should be the correct colour – which, naturally, should be lilac. Yes, send me one of your men, dear friend! It would also give me an opportunity to list, out loud, the many services Le Boulevard has done for the psychological sciences and for feminism!’

With his back pressed against the spines of the Holy Fathers on the shelves, he continued in this supplicant vein. I hurried off to the far end of the Library, where Jacinto was engaged in a heated discussion with two men.

They were Madame de Trèves’ ‘two men’ – her husband the Count de Trèves, a descendant of the kings of Candia, and her lover, the formidable Jewish banker, David Efraim. And so earnestly were they arguing with my Prince that they failed even to recognise me, both offering me a vague, limp handshake and addressing me as ‘dear Count’! As I rummaged around on the lemonwood table for a box of cigars, I realised at once that they were talking about the Burma Emerald Company, a forbidding enterprise that glittered with potential millions and to which these two confederates of bourse and bed had been trying, since the beginning of the year, to recruit Jacinto’s name, influence and money. Bored with business and distrustful of those emeralds buried in some obscure valley in Asia, Jacinto had so far resisted. The Count de Trèves, a very tall, thin man with a gaunt, bristly, sparsely-bearded face and a domed yellow head like a melon, was bent on assuring my poor Prince that, as the current prospectus made clear in setting out the sheer scope of the endeavour, it would outshine the Thousand and One Nights. More important still, any truly cultivated mind would see in the excavation of those emeralds a powerful civilising force. It would bring a whole stream of Western ideas flowing into Burma and thereby educate the country. He himself had taken on the directorship of the company for purely patriotic reasons.

‘Besides, a business involving gems, art and progress should only be carried out by the very cream of society, among friends.’

And on Jacinto’s other side, the formidable Efraim smoothed his beautiful beard – a beard curlier and blacker than that of any Assyrian king – with one small, plump hand and declared that, given the powerful forces backing it – Nagaiers, Bolsans, Saccart – the success of the enterprise was guaranteed.

Jacinto, weakening, wrinkled his nose.

‘You have, I presume, at least carried out the necessary studies? It has been shown that there are emeralds to be found?’

Efraim found such naïveté exasperating.

‘Emeralds? Of course there are emeralds! Wherever there are shareholders to be had there are emeralds!’

And I was still admiring the boldness of this maxim, when one of No. 202’s regular visitors arrived, out of breath and unfurling a highly perfumed handkerchief. This was Todelle – Antoine de Todelle – a young man prematurely bald, but a man of many talents, for he could lead a quadrille, imitate the singers at the café-concerts, concoct unusual salad dressings, and tell you all the latest Paris gossip.

‘Is he here? Has the Grand Duke arrived yet?’

No, His Highness had not arrived. And where was Madame de Todelle?

‘She can’t come … can’t leave the sofa … grazed her leg.’

‘Oh, dear!’

‘Oh, it’s nothing really. She fell off her velocipede!’

Jacinto was immediately all ears.

‘Madame de Todelle rides a velocipede?!’

‘Well, she’s learning to. She doesn’t actually own one herself, but during Lent, she’s been practising on one belonging to Father Ernesto, the priest at St Joseph’s. However, yesterday, in the Bois, crash, over she went! Grazed her leg. Just here.’

And with his finger he indicated on his own leg the exact location of the graze. Efraim said rather coarsely, but very seriously: ‘The best place, dammit!’ But Todelle did not even hear him, for he was already scuttling over to the editor of Le Boulevard, who was approaching, slow and paunchy, wearing his black monocle like an eyepatch.