"The Repairer Of Reputations", Chapter 1, from "The King in Yellow" by Robert W. Chambers

"Ne raillons pas les fous; leur folie dure plus longtemps que la nôtre.... Voila toute la différence."

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Time for a little bit of alt-history. Exactly where the timeline for this story diverges from the historical one is not particularly obvious, but it tells us a lot about the author's attitudes on race and society! The book was first published in 1895, so the divergence occurs well before WW1, but still correctly anticipates a war with Germany, interestingly enough. But gives Germany too much success...

I've never encountered the surname of Castaigne before. Castiglione, yes, but Castaigne, no. It appears to be French in origin? But since this story takes place in the USA, I didn't concern myself with trying to give it a proper French pronunciation. It's well known that English-speakers don't do foreign :-P

Traducer: one who attacks the reputation of another by slander or libel.

The picture used is of Hildred Castaigne reading The King in Yellow, by Tucker Sherry (a.k.a. AmazingMoondog), used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en).

To follow along: https://gutenberg.org/files/8492/8492-h/8492-h.htm#THE_REPAIRER_OF_REPUTATIONS