which may have been troubling you: why would I sleep with Étienne in the first place, when I had my pick of ten million horny Frenchmen? All three of these loose ends may be neatly tied up by a single piece of information. During my time at Versailles I got to know Bonaventure Rossignol, the King’s cryptanalyst. Rossignol, or Bon-bon as I like to call him (hello, Bon-bon!) was sent out to the Rhine front last autumn during the build-up to the invasion of the Palatinate.

