Awfully witty and fun. Though I'll admit to sometimes getting lost and confused in descriptive passages, and that the thunderheads of the French Revolution are teetering between melodrama and the Donner Party. If Jacques is going to take down the nobility, then do it already. Quit with the gloomy, meaningful knitting, my good madame.


Frequently there are these wonderful strings of words that are undoubtedly Statistically Improbable Phrases. (Amazon's are the fairly unremarkable 'immovable close, eight great towers, wigged gentleman, honest tradesman.' Instead, I'd go for 'favoured napkin' (103) 'knitted register' (170), 'damp head-gear' (88), and of course "Spies! Yaha! Tst! Spies!' (153) which is what I really want to shout all the time now.)

Longer choice bits: "Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have died of two." (104)

"'Then you mean to tell me, Mr Lorry,' said Stryver, squaring his elbows, 'that it is your deliberate opinion that the young lady at present in question is a mincing Fool?'" (143)

One of the last sections also has a fantastic exchange between Cruncher and Pross about an unspecified It which Cruncher will no longer engage in and which Pross wishes to remain unspecified.

Mincing Fools! Yaha! Tst! Spies!