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“It’s the only reason I force myself to wake up early on weekends: to get my brioche framboise in this pretty little pastry shop. It’s my dream in the morning. Between Robin Wright, my perfect woman, I think I choose the brioche! It’s the perfect place for petit déjeuner.”

He had wakened with the first ray of sunlight that set the birds to singing in the garden, and, Chitta’s fall of the previous evening having spilled his coffee and devastated his supplies, he was forced to go without a petit déjeuner.

Beautifully laid out on two trays that were just the right size for breakfast in bed, it was far superior to the standard coffee, baguette, butter and jam that passes for le petit déjeuner in so many hotel breakfast rooms in the Sixth Arrondissement.

Other records included the highest price paid for a Pierre Bonnard painting – Le Petit Déjeuner, Radiateur sold for £6.2m, beating the previous record of £4.5m – and an artist record for German impressionist Lovis Corinth: Walchensee, Rising Moon sold for £880,000.

Pierre Bonnard’s “Le Petit Déjeuner, Radiateur” set the third world auction record.