From out in the courtyard, beyond the rear doors of the chapel, Eliza heard a muffled burst of feminine laughter: the Duchess of Arcachon and her friends. It was curious. A few paces in one direction, the most exalted persons in France were donning ribbons and perfume and swapping gossip, getting ready for a Duke’s birthday party. Beyond the confines of the Arcachon compound, France was getting ready for nine months’ starvation, as the harvest had been destroyed by frost. French and Irish garrisons were falling to the onslaught of Marlborough in chilly Ireland, and the Secretary of State for the Navy was being gnawed to death by cancer. Eliza decided that this dim, chilly, empty room, cluttered with gruesome effigies of our scourged and crucified and impaled Lord, was not such a bad place after all to have a meeting with Oyonnax. Certainly Oyonnax seemed more in her element here than in a gilded and ruffled drawing-room. She said: "I wonder if it is even necessary for you to kill Monsieur le duc. The King might do it for you."