French writer de Feydeau offers a unique take on the closing years of the ancien regime in France--specifically, court life at the Palace of Versailles as presided over by Queen Marie Antoinette--in composing the life story of Her Majesty's official perfumer. Following an introduction that provides one of the clearest summaries of the French Revolution to be found anywhere, the author proceeds to reconstruct the life of Jean-Louis Fargeon, who hailed from Montpellier, where perfumery was an important profession. His advances from his hometown to his advent into Paris, where his talents were brought to the attention of Madame du Barry, mistress of Louis XV, and then to that of the new queen, Marie Antoinette, is a path the reader follows with absorption, gaining insight into the lives and preoccupations of the elite during the eleventh hour of the old monarchy. Fargeon is an interesting individual in his own right, but doubly so as a paradigm of the precariousness of life for anyone--but especially for former purveyors to the royal court--during the bloody revolution. Brad Hooper

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