I'm thinking that Flora may have had a French lover before she met the Minister.
Vincent and his French lover, who are with them, fall out and they decide to leave early.
If anyone saw them, everyone would remember the tale of the brazen girl who had emerged from the woods at dawn with her French lover.
"The French lover is doing his thing."
Ah, yes, the French lover, whose seductive skills have long seemed as much a birthright as a good Bordeaux.
But she added, with pain in her voice: "The French lover is disappearing.
I had quite a few French lovers, so every time I sing it I think about them.
"The French lover is dead," she said to herself, and on her return to France, determined to revive l'amour, she opened her school.
To hell with the Latin lovers and French lovers and English gentlemen, she thought.
Unknown to him, she had a French lover, and a child.