A Place of Greater Safety: A Novel

PART ONE

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