Monday, 8 September 2025

He was born to be Emperor of Cochin-China, to smoke 36-fathom pipes, to have 6,000 wives and 1,400 catamites

At eighteen, he [Flaubert] decides that some freakish wind must have mistakenly transported him to France: he was born, he declares, to be Emperor of Cochin-China, to smoke 36-fathom pipes, to have 6,000 wives and 1,400 catamites; but instead, displaced by this meteorological hazard, he is left with immense, insatiable desires, fierce boredom, and an attack of the yawns.

J. Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot (1984), 142

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