Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the novel’s depiction of racism and discrimination against Romany people. The novel also includes pejorative terms to refer to Romany people, which this guide includes in direct quotes only. In addition, the text depicts ableism and contains portrayals of people with disabilities and visible differences that might be considered offensive.

“This is the end of the world then.”

To some gathered in the Palace of Justice, the abandonment of the play amid the chaos of the festivities seems like “the end of the world.” In the novel, this period in French history is essentially the end of the Medieval world, and the transition from the Medieval to the Renaissance era is evident in architecture and art. This lends an apocalyptic feeling to the novel, the sense that the characters are living at the end of an era, even if they can acknowledge it only in passing, fleeting, and unknowing ways.

“Coppenole bowed proudly to His Eminence, who bowed back to this all-powerful burgher so feared by Louis XI.”

Coppenole is a man ahead of his time. By his own insistence, he is little more than a wealthy merchant. Because of the size of his fortune, however, he socializes with the aristocracy and even the King of France. Coppenole operates on the boundaries between social classes, which during this era of social change are in flux. Coppenole and his upstart attitude herald a riotous future of social change. That the king fears him and the Cardinal bows before him as an equal illustrates the coming power of wealth to flatten traditional social classes.