And yes, you may blame the French
Your eyes un-gum at cock’s crow, and there’s a bleary view of dawn through the dormer window: you may be a knight of the realm, but you’re a pretty damn lowly one, so your room is in the attic of the Le Grand Commun, the building the King has allocated to those nobility who, at his command — and dependent upon his sinecure — are permanently resident at court.It may be early, but you go straight from languor to ardour.
It’s a chunky little bound volume some 300 pages long — but with only 40-odd words on every page. Some of them are very odd — I mean, what possible interest could you have in reading Madame la Marquise Deshoulières’s letter in verse to Monsieur le Comte “LT”, on the vital subject of — I shit you not — worming her pet spaniel? There’s quite a bit of this sort of stuff — the rich and notorious showing off in its pages for each other’s benefit.