‘How do you test for poverty?’

‘That, Monsieur, is usually pretty obvious! Besides which, they are required to provide a certificate of need from their local chief of police. I can’t tell you how gruesome it is when those sorts of people arrive. I’ve only actually been to that side of the building once, and I shan’t go back in a hurry, I can tell you. As a venue, so to speak, it’s as good as here, only perhaps not quite as elegant and comfortable. But the people! You should see what sort appear! Old men and women in rags who’ve come simply to finish off what they’ve been doing slowly for months on end, that’s to say, dying of poverty, existing on handouts, living a dog’s life on the margins of society; women come in, all skin and bone in tattered clothing, sick, paralysed some of them, with no chance in the world. They tell us their story, then they say more or less I can’t go on like this. I’m not good for anything any more, can’t even scrape a living. We had one woman who came to us aged eighty-seven. Lost all her children and grandchildren. She’d been sleeping rough for six weeks. I tell you it turned my stomach, that one. But all sorts come, as I say. Some, as soon as they come in, they don’t mince words. “Where is it?” they ask, and we take them there straight away and get it over with as soon as possible.’

I was feeling pretty nervous myself by this stage and heard myself say: ‘And … where is it, exactly?’

‘Here.’

He opened a door, saying: ‘Go in, do. This part is for the exclusive use of club members. It’s the one we use least frequently. So far, we’ve had only eleven extinctions here.’

‘Is that what you call them? Extinctions?’

‘That’s right, Monsieur, do go in.’

I hung back for a moment, then finally entered. The room was the most delightful kind of conservatory, with stained glass windows of the palest blue, the softest pink and a beautiful apple green. Between them hung tapestries showing pastoral scenes. All around the room were divans, superb potted palms, and flowers, mostly fragrant roses. There were books on occasional tables, copies of the Revue des Deux Mondes,10 boxes of excellent cigars and, most oddly of all to my mind, Vichy pastilles11 in a little bonbonnière.

As I expressed my surprise, my guide explained: ‘Oh yes, people come in here simply to talk,’ he said, adding, ‘And the public rooms are very similar, just a little more simply furnished.’

‘How does it work?’ I asked.

He pointed to a chaise-longue covered in cream crêpe-de-chine picked out with white embroidery. It was positioned under a large shrub, of a variety unknown to me, but which was underplanted with a circle of mignonette.