Soft, silky and confidential, her voice never rages like Piaf's nor goes Gitane-blue like Jacques Brel's, her patron. Her songs stroke the brow and disturb the unconscious. Like Mahler and Freud, she quotes a hint of nursery rhyme to evoke innocence and its corruption. Yet she is never harsh or cruel. Her greatest love — "ma plus belle histoire d'amour," she would assure adoring audiences — "c'est vous," her voice breaking on the last monosyllable. For Barbara, music was the element that bonds the lonely to the whole.

She never lacked for lovers and, on the whole, treated them well. The penniless Georges Moustaki was encouraged to write a song, "La Dame Brune", and perform it with her on tour. For Gérard Depardieu she wrote a stage play, Lily Passion, the one flop of her life. In Göttingen, she flirted with the sons of men who, 20 years earlier, would have killed her for duty's sake. "The children," she chanted, "are just the same; in Paris, as in Göttingen."

This was the only song of hers that got airplay abroad. She spoke no language but French and, when Mikhail Baryshnikov brought her to New York for him to dance to her songs, the audience was meagre and uncomprehending.

But in Paris, Barbara was — is — a legend. If she was sick, restaurateurs  would send round her favourite dishes. President Mitterrand used to call of an evening and ask her over to see a movie in his private cinema at the Elysée (she never went alone). One of his ministers wrote her a lyric. Her website maintainer, whom I met in her cabaret den, turned out to be secretary-general of the prime minister's office — effectively cabinet secretary. When Aids ravaged her musician friends, she was the first to sing out loud about the plague and demand political action. In the dead of night, like Princess Diana, she would visit dying men in hospitals and prisons.