Description
Book SynopsisFor Sébastien Faure, the experience of love is so profound that, in its wake, he will be left with an almost occult understanding of the world, a potent knowledge bequeathed to him by passion that will endure even when the object of his love is no more.
Sébastien is fifteen years old and already versed in the medicinal properties of plants and herbs when he meets the young nobleman Balthazar de Créon, whose life he saves after the latter is thrown from a horse. Struck by the boy's beauty as much as by his talents as a healer, de Créon orders Sébastien to his manor some months later so he can instruct him in the ways of the court, hoping thus to install him as Louis XV's surgeon. De Créon's motives, however, are clouded by his lust for Sébastien, and after a brief period of restraint Balthazar and Sébastien loose both their passion and their imaginations. But it is 1749. Their affair scandalizes the French court, bringing the king's wrath down upon them. Balthazar is eventually
