La rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque

by Anatole France

"La rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque" by Anatole France is a historical novel published in 1893. Set in early eighteenth-century Paris, it follows young Jacques Ménétrier, son of a rotisserie owner, as he navigates an extraordinary education under the eccentric abbé Coignard. Their world includes drunken monks, loose-moraled chambermaids, and a delusional nobleman obsessed with alchemy and salamanders. When alchemical experiments go awry and a scandalous elopement implicates them, master and pupil must flee their former lives in this witty pastiche of eighteenth-century novels.