A brief note on translation: I neither speak nor read French, and so I attempt this by the grace of God and Google to make this text available to the public, and to myself. Thank you for your patience, and I welcome any suggestions on how to improve this text. Back-and-forth commentary is the main reason I’ve broken the document out into posts as well as a complete text.

I have generally used the word “goblins” to translate the word “Farfadets,” which might mean any number of spirits, but Berbiguier uses it in a more infernal sense…demons, devils, and harmful spirits. I’ll occasionally use “demons” when it feels appropriate.
Names: Berbiguier’s almost exclusive use of surnames to identify characters obscures understanding, particularly with four characters in the same family. I’ve added first names based on the text, research, and in some cases, making things up, which will be noted in the text. The “Dramatis Personae” page following is for my own benefit, but may you find it somewhat useful.

This book has a great many chapters, with some repetition (including much of Volume 2), some flashbacks, and some possibly deliberate muddling of the dates. I’ve kept the chapters roughly as they are. One essayist describes the joy Berbiguier took in making a daily delivery to his publisher of most recent writing, and want to believe that the chapters reflect his daily journaling. Later in the trilogy, when he breaks up with the Mazarin Circle, his writing takes on a stream of consciousness tone that suggests that he’s filling pages to meet his personal deadlines. You’ll see.
With thanks to The Internet Archive, Open Knowledge Commons, Google, Harvard Medical School, and my patient husband.
Translated by Jacob Williamson, The Dispatchist Podcast, 2025
Creative Commons: Reuse with Attribution (“The Dispatchist Podcast”)