The cab had deposited Jane and Julietta opposite the doors to a large draper’s shop named Boucicaut. Jane presumed they were going in there – to buy new gloves, perhaps, or new ribbons or petticoats – but Julietta gently took Jane’s arm and led her a little way down the street and in through a narrow door to an ancient-looking emporium named Tirard, Costumiers.

As soon as they entered Tirard, Jane felt her mood veer unexpectedly from happiness to obscure dread. So crammed was this airless place with racks of theatrical costumes that the garments themselves seemed to exhale a strong human odour, as if ancient living bodies still inhabited them. It was the smell of perfume and the passing years, the scent of splendour and decay.

Then, when Jane tilted her head upwards, to try to take a gasp of purer air, she saw that another row of dresses – these ones embellished with pearls, sequins and feathers – hung suspended from pulleys roped to the ceiling. Jane knew that only an imagination as febrile as hers would see these as encasing the emaciated forms of actresses, down on their luck and close to death, but still sporting their ragged finery, yet this was how the clothes appeared to her and she was overcome with sudden sorrow and wished they had not come in here.

She was almost on the point of asking Julietta if they could leave when a frock-coated monsieur, sporting elegantly twirled moustaches, and a waistcoat of gold brocade, appeared out of the darkness at the back of the premises and greeted Julietta like a long-lost friend.

‘Signóra Sims!’ said this finely self-exaggerated person. ‘Quelle bonheur de vous revoir! Toujours aussi belle, ma fois. Vous cherchez une costume pour une soirée musicale? Qu’est-ce qui va vous plaire aujourd’hui?’

‘Monsieur Tirard,’ said Julietta. ‘Vous allez bien?’

‘Oui, oui, très bien. Quelle ange vous êtes! Comment puis-je vous server ce matin?’

Jane had not understood every word of this, only that it was a gracious greeting. But Julietta now took Jane’s arm, introduced her to Monsieur Tirard and then whispered something in his ear, which Jane couldn’t catch. She saw a knowing smile pass over Tirard’s features. He turned towards her and looked her up and down, noting, of course, her great height and seemingly delighted enough by this to begin to caress his moustaches, as if in anticipation of something pleasurable.

‘Je vois, je vois,’ he said. ‘Je vois tout de suite! Venez avec moi.’

Julietta took Jane’s hand and they followed Tirard into the great gloomy darkness of the rear of the premises. Here, Tirard made elaborate show of lighting a gas lamp, and by this strange white light Jane saw that they were surrounded now by rows and rows of men’s costumes and shelves of assorted hats, boots and shoes and racks of canes.

‘Voilà!’ said Tirard. ‘Vous avez beaucoup de choix. Qu’est-ce qui va vous plaire, Mademoiselle? Capitaine des Dragons? Magicien? Matelot? Ou simple séducteur?’