Lord Kessler looked round, and came back to him. "Ah yes," he said, with a smile. "You couldn't be more right. In fact it was made for Mme de Pompadour."

"How amazing!" They stood and admired the bulbous, oddly diminutive desk-kingwood, was it?-with fronds of ormolu. Lord Kessler pulled open a drawer, which rattled with little china boxes stowed away inside it; then pushed it shut. "You know about furniture," he said.

"A bit," Nick said. "My father's in the antiques business."

"Yes, that's right, jolly good," said Gerald, as if he'd confessed to being the son of a dustman. "He's one of my constituents, so I should know."

"Well, you must look around everywhere," Lord Kessler said. "Look at anything and everything."

"You really should," said Gerald. "You know, the house is never open to the public, Nick."

Lord Kessler himself took him off into the library, where the books were apparently less important than their bindings, which were as important as could be. The heavy gilding of the spines, seen through the fine gilt grilles of the carved and gilded bookcases, created a mood of minatory opulence. They seemed to be books in some quite different sense from those that Nick used and handled every day. Lord Kessler opened a cage and took down a large volume: Fables Choisies de La Fontaine, bound in greeny-brown leather tooled and gilded with a riot of rococo fronds and tendrils. It was an imitation of nature that had triumphed as pure design and pure expense. They stood side by side to admire it, Nick noticing the pleasant smell of Lord Kessler's clean suit and discreet cologne. He wasn't allowed to hold the book himself, and was given only a glimpse of the equally fantastic plates, peopled with elegant birds and animals. Lord Kessler showed the book in a quick dry way that was not in itself dismissive but allowed for Nick's ignorance and perhaps merely polite interest. In fact Nick loved the book, but didn't want to bore his host by asking for a longer look. It wasn't clear if it was the jewel of the collection or had been chosen at random.