FIRBANK: I give all my time and energy to "The Flower beneath the Foot", and what do I get?
GROUCHO: You get awfully tiresome after awhile.

Well, I finished it anway. Rather quick for my standards. I don't know what's the right speed for reading Firbank, but maybe I just didn't want to drag it out too long. "One does not need, my dearest nectarine, a prodigy of intelligence, however, to take him in." I may still sometimes not quite have got him. (Somebody else please put these words in the right order.)

A bit of a Marx Brothers movie as I said. Maybe with an all too talkative Harpo as the narrator. Maybe with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald straight out of some Lubitsch operetta and I-don't-know Who for that shitty sappy end, thrown into the mix.

Still very beautiful in places (I liked everything with swans and talking flowers), and I'm 'literally' plein d'espoir for my dearest nectarine's translation;-)