“We are at the beck and call of our customers,” she told The Times. “We do whatever they want so they don’t have anything to worry about when they get home.”

Meet the modern French maid — a profession given a new lease of life by a government attempt to create a service economy. With France’s diminishing industrial base certain to shrink farther during the economic crisis, ministers said this weekend that they were banking on the €15 billion (£12.5 billion) domestic sector in the fight against unemployment.

Laurent Wauquiez, the Employment Minister, said that fiscal incentives would help 130,000 people to find work as cleaners, gardeners, nannies, home-helps and other services à la personne — a third of all jobs created this year. He was speaking at a trade fair in Paris where domestic services firms such as Axeo and O2 listed the domestic employees — from DIY experts to cooks — who have been made tax deductible. Among them is the maid, a role that had almost disappeared and which is staging a comeback.