Paul Petit did not know when his family had first come to the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, but they were certainly there by the time of the French Revolution. And on the great day when the Faubourg Saint-Antoine arose, and marched up the long eastern thoroughfare to storm the Bastille, the Petits marched with them. They had supported every republican uprising since.

Though his wife went to Mass, which he considered a harmless women’s foible, Paul Petit despised all priests. “They are monarchists and bloodsuckers,” he would declare. But that did not mean that his children could ignore the last six of the Ten Commandments, and woe betide them if they did. Paul Petit came from a family of twelve children. He had eight of his own. Like his father before him, he was a hardworking craftsman. There was enough money to put food on the table, and clothe all the children decently. But not more. One slip, and the family would descend into chaos. That was all it would take. “The gutter,” he would warn his children, “lies just outside the door.” If he was stern, therefore, it was to ensure the family’s survival.

And when he had to be, Paul Petit was hard. Very hard. He was about to cast his daughter out of his house. He had to, if only as an example to her sisters.

As he set off to walk to see Jules Blanchard, he was still shaking. It wasn’t only Corinne’s crime that was tearing him apart. It was the fact that she had lied to him. And not just once, but coolly and calmly over many weeks. It enraged him, and it hurt him.

He remembered the start of it so well. She’d taken a message from him to a customer near the Parc Monceau and taken a long time to return. But when she’d explained her long absence, he’d been rather pleased.

“Father, I met Monsieur Blanchard in the street, and he made me return with him to see his wife. She needs extra help in the house two afternoons a week, and wondered if you could spare me.”

The Blanchards were highly respectable, as well as valued customers. If Corinne could earn a little extra money in this way, her parents had no objection at all.

The arrangement had lasted three weeks when Corinne told them that Gérard, their recently married son, and his wife could use her for a third afternoon. Weeks had passed, Corinne had brought home some modest wages from this work, and it had never occurred to her parents to question the business.

Once, just once, he might have detected something, when he remarked that he wondered if there were any store fittings that Monsieur Blanchard might need at Joséphine, and whether he might call upon him. He’d noticed Corinne suddenly go a little pale. But his wife had promptly remarked: “I’m sure he has you in mind, Paul, with his kindness to Corinne, and her being in his house every week. I don’t think you should go calling on him for other favors. He might feel it was too much.”