Pure

Начало книги

A young man, young but not very young, sits in an anteroom somewhere, some wing or other, in the Palace of Versailles. He is waiting. He has been waiting a long time.

There is no fire in the room, though it is the third week in October and cold as Candlemas. His legs and back are stiffening from it — the cold and three days of travelling through it, first with Cousin André from Bellême to Nogent, then the coach, overfull with raw-faced people in winter coats, baskets on their laps, parcels under their feet, some travelling with dogs, one old man with a cockerel under his coat. Thirty hours to Paris and the rue aux Ours, where they climbed down onto cobbles and horseshit, and shifted about outside the haulier’s office as if unsure of their legs. Then this morning, coming from the lodgings he had taken on the rue — the rue what? — an early start on a hired nag to reach Versailles and this, a day that may be the most important of his life, or may be nothing.

Читать дальше →