CHAPTER TWENTY: GILBERT RECOVERS THE LOSS OF HIS CROWN

Last we heard, young Gilbert had been in a little fender bender: his philosophical ass had been hungry and hallucinating on the road when he almost got run over by a speeding carriage. If you think there are too many speeding carriages in the Marie Antoinette saga, you have to put things in context: this was the "back then" equivalent of a Michael Bay "cut to the carriage chase" blockbuster. So whenever you hear about two carriages pursuing each other and you think "pretty horses around Central Park"- NO! You're supposed to be thinking "Fast and the Furious"!

(That's Michelle Rodriguez making out with Vin Diesel above and therefore creating a vortex of non-sexiness)
Anyway, Gilbert awakes from his fainting-spell and looks up and sees a young lady of "about five-and-twenty, with large gray eyes, a nose slightly retrousse, cheeks embrowned by a southern sun, and a delicately formed little mouth, which added to the naturally cheerful and laughing expression of her face something of circumspection and finesse. Her neck and arms, which were beautifully formed, were displayed to advantage by a closely-fitting bodice of violet-colored velvet with golden buttons, while the skirt of her dress of gray silk was so enormously wide as to fill almost the entire carriage."
I was just complaining that Evangeline Lilly doesn't get enough to do. WELL, she has just been cast here!

Hotdamn!!! Look-at-THAT!!! I feel tempted to neglect my writing duties, if you know what I mean.

"There IS a Heaven," says Gilbert upon first sight.

The young lady inquires as to why Gilbert is walking around in the middle of the road like a loon, and Gilbert explains that he's traveling from Taverney to Versailles after a) the dauphiness and b) Mademoiselle Andree, and the young lady doesn't give a hoot about b) but is suspiciously interested in getting to Versailles before a)! She promises to give the postilion a small barony or something if he breaks the cariage on this race to the court.
The carriage is jostling them around and Gilbert keeps accidentally getting his face lodged on the lady's pronounced bossom: "Sorry, mademoiselle!"
"I don't mind too much," says she. She's a party girl. "What's your name?"
"Gilbert!"
"Gilbert what?"
"Gilbert nothing," he says proudly. He has one name, like Cher.
The lady is impressed by the young man's cockiness: "Very well, Mister Nothing, aren't you a little young to be wandering around like this?"
"I'm a free spirit. I'm the pre-incarnation of Jack Kerouac. Except instead of booze and drugs I'm high on philosophical musings."
"Is that why you ran into the way of my carriage?"
"That and the fact that I'm on the anorexic diet."
"Poor thing, you look famished!"
"Oh, but I have my pride and my honor to comfort me! Although my recent experiences with being abandoned and hungry and walking around and thinking depressing thoughts suggests to me that whenever our corporal presence is denied certain foodstuffs we are likely to see the world in a negative light, so I wonder if maybe we are just chemical compounds easily altered by imbalances of vitamins, and we are really toys of these situations. If you put certain chemicals in your food or beverage, you can force someone to fall in love, or become depressed, so that really 'emotions' are little more than the end result of our body being flooded by drugs and vitamins and hormones which signify to us that if we are unhappy we must strive to make a change in our dietary/ social/ psychological situations..."
Lady: "STOP STOP STOP! Half of the words you're using won't even be invented for centuries!"
Gilbert: "Sometimes I wish my brain would shut up."
Lady: "I kind of like your smarty-pants way. You would make a good physician."

TUM-TUM!!! Remember, Dear Imaginary Reader: this segment of the "Marie Antoinette" Saga is called "Memoirs of a Physician"... could it be that Gilbert is the curious young soul through whose eyes we will view the wide historical panorama unfold? Stick around: heads will roll, there will be blood, I promise. But in future chapters. All that happens here is that Gilbert gets to be petted back to health by this pretty lady, who I suspect we will get to know much much more in the near future!!!