Read Online The Short Reign of Pippin IV by John Steinbeck - Free Book Online

child. At least it will do no harm to ask. Even if it were not as profitable as other accounts, a reputable agency might feel that the prestige of representing the King of France would be worth their while. It is called ‘institutional prestige,’ I believe. I shall inquire, Pippin. We can only hope.”
    â€œI do sincerely hope,” said the king.
    Â 
    Â 
    The spring in Paris was traditionally beautiful. Production of all things royal and all things French caused factories to put on night shifts. An era of good feeling and security justified a reduction in wages.
    As might have been expected, Madame took the change in her status with realism and vigor. To her it was like moving from one apartment to another—on a larger scale, of course, but having the same problems. Madame made lists. She complained that her husband did not take his duties as seriously as he should.
    â€œYou loll about the house,” she said to him, “when anyone can see that there are a thousand things to be done.”
    â€œI know,” said Pippin in the tone she knew meant he had not listened.
    â€œYou just sit around reading.”
    â€œI know, my dear.”
    â€œWhat are you reading that is so important at a time like this?”
    â€œI beg your pardon?”
    â€œI said, what are you reading?”
    â€œHistory.”
    â€œHistory? At a time like this?”
    â€œI have been going over the history of my family and also the records of some of the families which followed us.”
    Madame said tartly, “It has always seemed to me that the Kings of France, with singularly few gifts, have done very well for themselves. There are some exceptions, of course.”
    â€œIt is the exceptions I am thinking of, my dear. I have been thinking of the Sixteenth Louis. He was a good man. His intentions and his impulses were good.”
    â€œPerhaps he was a fool,” said Marie.
    â€œPerhaps he was,” said Pippin. “But I understand him, even though we are not of the same family. To a certain extent I think I am like him. I am trying to see where he made his errors. I should hate to fall into the same trap.”
    â€œWhile you have been daydreaming, have you given a single thought to your daughter?”
    â€œWhat has she done now?” Pippin demanded.
    Â 
    Â 
    It cannot be denied that Clotilde had led a rather unusual existence. When, at fifteen, she wrote the best-selling novel Adieu Ma Vie, she was sought out and courted by the most celebrated and complex minds of our times. She was acclaimed by the Reductionists, the Resurrectionists, the Protonists, the Non-Existentialists, and the Quantumists, while the very nature of her book set hundreds of psychoanalysists clamoring to sift her unconscious. She had her table at the Café des Trois Puces, where she held court and freely answered questions on religion, philosophy, politics, and aesthetics. It was at this very table that she started her second novel, which, while never finished, was to be titled Le Printemps des Mortes. Her devotees formed the school called Clotildisme, which was denounced by the clergy and caused sixty-eight adolescents to commit ecstatic suicide by leaping from the top of the Arc de Triomphe.
    Clotilde’s subsequent involvement in politics and religion was followed by her symbolic marriage to a white bull in the Bois de Boulogne. Her celebrated affairs of honor, in which she wounded three elderly Academicians and herself received a rapier thrust in the right buttock, caused some comment—and all this before she was twenty. In an article in Souffrance, she wrote that her career had left her no time for childhood.
    She then reached the phase when she spent her afternoons at the movies and her evenings arguing the merits of Gregory Peck, Tab Hunter, Marlon Brando, and Frank Sinatra. Marilyn Monroe she found overbloomed and Lollobrigida bovine. She went to Rome, where she acted in three versions of War