Читать книгу Three-Book Edition: A Place of Greater Safety; Beyond Black; The Giant O’Brien - Hilary Mantel - Страница 14

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