‘These boys are not your friends,’ says Nicolas. ‘I’m going downstairs right now to ring their parents.’

‘No, Papa, no!’ The boy howls inconsolably. ‘I’ll pay the money back!’

Another bitter recognition: like Nicolas, what Alexander fears most is losing face.

The aftermath is a series of pained phone calls and sulky personal apologies from the other boys. Nicolas pays back the money to their parents, but keeps a tally of what Alexander owes. He uses the debt as leverage to make his son drop talk of an army commission and accept a junior role in the family business. The boy is inevitably cold-shouldered by his so-called friends, but embraces his new reality with a kind of relief. Nicolas wonders whether things might have turned out for the best.

On his eighteenth birthday, Nicolas’s youngest son, David, announces that he’s going to Argentina to seek his fortune. His mother pleads with him not to go, but Nicolas recognises his own stubbornness in the boy and has a sneaking admiration for the plan: it’s clear that Argentina is poised to be the next economic superpower. ‘If I were eighteen again,’ he murmurs to his wife, ‘I’d do the same.’

As a concession to his mother, David remains in Paris long enough to attend his sister Hélène’s wedding to a widower called Xavier de Fronton, who has two infant children from his first marriage. From Nicolas’s point of view, Xavier’s previous offspring, rustic accent and plain face are demerits all offset by his particule, good nature, and profitable canning business in Marseilles.

A few days before the wedding, Nicolas receives a letter from Rachkovsky. It feels fat and the handwritten return address has an unguarded looseness. Nicolas rings the office and is put on hold. Rachkovsky comes on the line.

‘Nicolas.’

‘I received your letter.’

‘And?’

‘I haven’t opened it.’

‘Oh.’

This is the reason Nicolas called: if Rachkovsky needs a favour, he wants to hear him beg for it.

Rachkovsky clears his throat. ‘I was merely writing to ask if you would pass on a wedding gift to your daughter.’

Nicolas makes no reply. Is that the sound of Rachkovsky sighing, or the static electricity on the line?

‘I would like to help secure her financial future,’ Rachkovsky continues. It’s impossible to know his motives, but a streak of sentimental concern for his natural child is not beyond all probability; after all, Hélène’s a piece of him.

‘That’s neither necessary nor possible,’ says Nicolas. After years of being bested by Rachkovsky, this feels like a minor victory.

‘I didn’t think so. But I needed to ask. Goodbye, Nicolas.’

Nicolas hangs up the phone.

The wedding goes off well. They erect a marquee at Anya’s mother’s country place, hire a band, and send the newly-weds to Rome for their honeymoon. Dancing with his daughter, slightly tipsy after a successful speech and relishing the sense of a meaningful occasion, he looks at his surroundings in wonderment. This is plenty, he thinks, as the band play a selection of 1880s cover versions: ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song’, ‘Sweet Violets’ and ‘Is She Not Passing Fair?’ Nicolas is so thoroughly immersed in this role – proud father, successful businessman – he almost forgets that he once aspired to change the world.