The crammer’s school for the very rich was off the Basel to Zurich road, sufficiently close to Zurich for the lake to be visible from its expansive verandahs and stepped walkways. Here, after the struggle of prep schools, privileged children of ambitious parents were force-fed to make university entrance, just as, to the north at Strasbourg, geese had corn thrust down their throats to make pate de foie gras. The product of Strasbourg was frequently on the dining-room menu at the Ecole Gagner. Its students were frequently on the acceptance lists of Oxford and Cambridge and Harvard and the Sorbonne: only by sustaining maximum results could it remain the best and charge maximum fees.

The main building had been created in the seventeenth century in the style of a walled, turreted castle with crenellated battlements by a Frenchman who had pretensions to a military life without the stamina to make it possible. The high walls and the single drawbridged entrance to the dormitory area remained, giving the Ecole Gagner added attraction. They meant it was secure. Even so, bodyguards were an accepted feature in the school precincts. Six were assigned to a Kuwaiti prince. The son of a rancher who owned ten square miles in Paraguay had three. So, too, did Tewfik Azziz.

The regimentation at the Ecole Gagner would have pleased its military-minded architect. Everything had its order, from mealtimes to recreation to examination times. And vacation times. The longest holiday was in the summer, always starting on the Wednesday of the second week in June and not ending until the last Thursday in August: the principal considered the extended relaxation necessary after the workload imposed through winter and spring.

Most boarding schools have a travel officer. Reflecting the importance of its pupils, the Ecole Gagner had a department, staffed by four.