[…] my Colour came and went several times, with Indignation to hear our noble Country, the Mistress of Arts and Arms, the Scourge of France, the Arbitress of Europe, the Seat of Virtue, Piety, Honour and Truth, the Pride and Envy of the World, so contemptuously treated.

Evangelists often encourage us to take an experimental attitude to their product by, for example, promising that “getting right with Jesus” will improve our marriages or that becoming Scientologically “clear” will have greater benefits for our mental health than buying sessions of secular psychotherapy.

That summer though, Fujimatsu Moriguchi passed away. He had left the store to his four sons (breaking with the Japanese tradition of leaving the business to the eldest son).

The Varlet was not an ill-favoured knave; A good deal like a Vulture in the face With a hook nose and a Hawk’s eye which gave A smart & sharper-looking sort of grace To his whole aspect, which though rather grave Was by no means so ugly as his case, But that indeed was hopeless as can be— Quite a poetic felony “de se.”