Jacques Tournebroche, son of a Paris cookshop keeper in the eighteenth century, is taught Greek and Latin by the learned, worldly and frequently drunk Abbé Jérôme Coignard. Both are taken into the strange household of M. d’Astarac, an alchemist who believes the air is full of sylphs and salamanders waiting to marry mortals, and soon find themselves tangled in love, duels and flight.
A picaresque romance written with Anatole France’s dry irony, for readers who enjoy Voltaire or Dumas with a sceptical wink. Download the free EPUB.