He had donned his burgundy smoking jacket (which, to be perfectly frank, was disconcertingly snug), and in its pocket he placed a single gold coin for the undertaker with instructions that he be dressed in the freshly pressed black suit (which had been laid out on his bed), and that his body be buried in the family plot at Idlehour. But if the Count took pride in knowing that everything was in order, he took comfort in knowing that the world would carry on without him—and, in fact, already had.
Some notes of (a man called) ove
