The Man in a Hurry

NOTES

1 The École Nationale des Chartes is one of France’s prestigious grandes écoles. It provides training for librarians and archivists.

2 A mocking reference to Madame de Sévigné and the tone of her letters to her daughter, who married the Comte de Grignan.

3 A pioneer of French aviation (1901–36) whose plane crashed mysteriously off the coast of Dakar.

4 The best-known auction house in Paris.

5 A graduate of the prestigious École Polytechnique.

6 ‘Silent cloisters, monastery vaults/ It is you, dark caverns, you, who know how to love.’ (Alfred de Musset.)

7 An allusion to the typically southern hero of Alphonse Daudet’s burlesque novel, Tartarin de Tarascon and its sequels.

8 Precursors of the Guides Michelin, the Guides Joanne were a series of guidebooks named after their creator, Adolphe Joanne. After 1919 they became known as the Guides bleus.

9 Untranslatable pun. In French à l’arrêt means “stationary”, whereas être aux arrêts means “to be under arrest”.

10 In French the word coureur can mean “runner”, but also “womanizer”.