A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

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Louis XV is named the Well-Beloved. Ten years pass. The same people believe the Well-Beloved takes baths of human blood … . Avoiding Paris, ever shut up at Versailles, he finds even there too many people, too much daylight. He wants a shadowy retreat … .

In a year of scarcity (they were not uncommon then) he was hunting as usual in the Forest of Sénart. He met a peasant carrying a bier and inquired, “Whither he was conveying it?” “To such a place.” “For a man or a woman?” “A man.” “What did he die of?” “Hunger.”

JULES MICHELET

CHAPTER 1

Life as a Battlefield

Now that the dust has settled, we can begin to look at our situation. Now that the last red tile has been laid on the roof of the New House, now that the marriage contract is four years old. The town smells of summer; not very pleasant, that is, but the same as last year, the same as the years to follow. The New House smells of resin and wax polish; it has the sulphurous odor of family quarrels brewing.

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