The Queen's Caprice: Stories

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For the publication in English of his Caprice de la reine, Jean Echenoz has made a few minor changes in the texts. These seven récits are his favorite occasional pieces, written on subjects that inspired the author to observe, improvise, invent — for although these stories sometimes spring from historical incident, they are in the end what Echenoz wished to create: “little literary objects.”

This tension between story and history depends in part on the ability of the reader to catch allusions and follow undercurrents of meaning that are reasonably clear to French readers but may pass completely unnoticed in English. I have therefore provided endnotes for some of these references and for a few other points of interest as well.

— Linda Coverdale

WINTER 1802, MANOR HOUSE in the English countryside, Admiral Nelson is coming to dinner. The other guests hurry over as soon as he appears in the drawing room among the candelabra, wall hangings, copper- and brassware, ancestral portraits, floral paintings, flowers. Although still battle-worn from the engagement at Copenhagen,1 he is admired; he does look tired, they reflect, but my he’s handsome think the ladies. Tired, of course, and rightly so, after all he’s been through.

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