>> Oh, thought Berjeau, she's going to be one of those guests.
>
>What does he mean by that? Was it meant to sound disgusted?

Not so much disgusted as resigned. He's used to guests at her level having arbitrary whims, although insisting that the servants be treated like human beings and not cattle is pretty unusual.

>So she hasn't been to Paris, France, in the 2400s?

She has not. No particular reason to go there. She's read about the Eiffel Tower and seen pictures of it, though.

>> "Then the Fourth Republic is a damned disgrace, and we'll
>> have to overthrow it and set up one that isn't,"
>
>The scary part is he could, if he set his mind to it.

Oh, he's totally not joking, although he really hopes he won't have to follow through. It would be tricky to explain the necessity to Perrine, for one thing.

>I'm just a bit sad that Meiling's erhu playing doesn't have a Youtube
>link attached, though.

I didn't really have the bandwidth to educate myself on the subject sufficiently to make appropriate selections, but here is a Singaporean gentleman giving a basic overview, and here we have an erhu player and a cellist, which gives something of a flavor of what a Meiling-Sakuya duet would sound like.

>Also, it's June 21st, the solstice, and at Paris's latitude that means
>over 16 hours of full daylight. I know Remilia and Flandre don't go
>sizzle fwoosh in the sun, but it seems like bad luck that they wind up
>going into the outside world for the first time in the summer.

It's a bit annoying, particularly to Remilia, but that's life at a relatively high latitude. And as you note, at least they're semi-daywalkers. Otherwise the whole enterprise would be pretty much impossible.

>> "Oh wow," said Flandre, leaning closer. "Is that really what I look
>> like?"
>
>It occured to me just now that portrait artists would be invaluable
>for vampires, which (aside from their usual charm) explains their
>desire to have Julien Boissard draw them.

Indeed. They do have working non-silvered mirrors at home, so it's not as if Flandre literally didn't know what she looked like, but there's something different about seeing yourself through someone else's eyes, as it were. (And we always look odd to ourselves in drawings and photographs because our asymmetries all look backward—ironically enough, because they're not backward like they are in a mirror.)

>Speaking of which, is he based on anyone, or is he just a bohemian
>artist type?

Not meant to represent any specific person, just the archetype of the aspiring Parisian street artist. (Although as it happens, he's somewhat less bohemian than the stereotype. Even though he lives in Montmartre and runs in those circles, he'd be a bit over his head in the full-blown demimonde. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
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