In the shadow of the high towers of the Saint-Sulpice church, Madame reigns. Strict suit, white blouse, brooch adorned with small diamonds... she almost looks like she's just come from eleven o'clock mass. Like a mother superior, she watches over her flock. An education at the Couvent des Oiseaux helps when running one of the most curious "houses" in Paris. Especially when Monseigneur comes specially to hear a confession of a particular kind, or to receive a just punishment. Madame Blandine runs the Abbey, as her establishment is called, with the iron fist of an outstanding "abbess."

And she wrote, Madame Blandine, after the houses closed in 1946, when she retired to the Coast. She recounted everything, in her chaste way of a model resident. Entire notebooks of memories that she left to a curator of the Mondaine...