Turlupin

"What is so evident from the novels of Leo Perutz is his irrepressible pleasure in storytelling - and his abundant inventive gift . . . even if literature is forsaking sheer narrative, some of his finest novels must be preserved for posterity." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 1642. King Louis XIII is within a year of his death; his Chief Minister, Cardinal Richelieu, will not survive the year. But the ailing primate is determined to break the power of the French nobility if it is the last thing he does, and to this end he is on the point of achieving a sudden coup with the aid of the common people led by a disaffected aristocrat. Martinmas, November 11th, is to be the day of reckoning. It finds the leader of the French nobility gathered in the palace of the late Duc de Lavan, whose funeral has just taken place in glorious pomp. Plans are agreed among the assembled dukes and marquises to rally to their cause every ally they can find, knowing that they will not be given a second chance to assassinate the Cardinal and subvert his plot against them. Among the assembled aristocrats is the young Breton Monsieur de Josselin - or so he would have the noble household believe. In fact he is a Paris wig-maker and barber named Turlupin. When on the fateful 11th the Paris mob surrounds and attacks the Lavan palace and Turlupin sees in the front rank the very man most ready to expose him for an imposter, he has to act in haste - with results that no-one would then have predicted.