At that moment a great swell of music rose from below and extinguished their sparky banter. While the orchestra played the overture, I observed Madame de Flaghac survey the boxes. After a pause, she leaned towards Mrs Elliot.

‘I see the Bishop of Autun sits with Madame de Flahaut again, in plain sight. She is as shameless as her sister. And look, there is her husband.’ Madame de Flaghac gestured with her fan to the tier above. ‘If ever there was an old fool . . .’ She snorted. ‘And there, another fool . . . see the American ambassador? The fat one beside Monsieur de Narbonne and Madame de Staël? He will never succeed with her . . .’

I studied Madame examining the audience, her eyes picking through each box, like a huckster’s wife at a rag fair.

‘Orléans has now appeared,’ she muttered through the side of her mouth. There, in the box directly across but four, entered three shadowed figures, two men and a woman in a great peaked hat. The shortest gentleman I recognized to be the Duc de Lauzan, Biron’s heir, but the other two silhouettes I did not know.

We both turned our gazes to Mrs Elliot. She did not move.

‘She has seen them,’ whispered Madame de Flaghac. ‘And now her eyes are as sharp as bayonets upon Madame de Buffon.’

‘Madame de Buffon?’

‘Orléans’s mistress.’ The elderly lady regarded me with surprise, as if she could not fathom how I failed to recognize this name. ‘Has ma chère not confided in you?’

‘No.’

Madame moved her lips closer to my ear.

‘Now, I shall inform you of this, but you must not betray to Madame Elliot that you have heard it, and certainly not from me.’

I nodded.

‘There exists a great enmity between our Madame Elliot and La Buffon, and not without some justification. Before La Buffon’s grip on Orléans was secured, he loved Madame Elliot, though briefly. La Buffon would not countenance another mistress and has since sought to remove our dear friend from Orléans’s life entirely. Well, I shall tell you, mademoiselle, in this past year, La Buffon all but succeeded in her aims.’ Her nostrils flared.

I leaned nearer to her, greatly intrigued by this news.

‘You know Orléans and Madame Elliot are no more than friends?’

I nodded again.