The duke was a kind master and a great man, but by G-d did he stink. Every six or eight months, when they couldn’t stand it any more, the servants would conspire to get the duke drunk and insensible, then swiftly put their plot into motion.
          At the signal from his valet, the big boys from the stables, perfumed handkerchiefs tied around their faces, would enter the bedroom and gently strip the duke bare. The clothes were immediately taken away to be laundered, as were the bedclothes. A fresh wig was substituted. The bathtub had been brought in at the same time. It was filled with rosewater, tepid so as not to shock the duke awake. The duke was submerged; lice departed his body in a panic, great families of them drowning in the lye-rich bath. Blooms of filth slicked the surface, reeking of shit. The chambermaids, gagging, with eyes watering, laved the duke all over, down to the last crust and crevice. Meanwhile the bed had been made up. The stable boys would then lift the duke from the bath, and the maids would drape him in a snow-white linen nightshirt and tuck him within the covers. Then everyone, micelike, would silently depart.
          What the duke thought of this, for he must have known, is not recorded. But for the boy in the basement, whose job it was to receive the tub of slime, empty it and clean it, each of these occasions was a delight. For when the stable lads laid down their bounty near the basement drainpipe and coughing took their leave, the boy, who would be a duke himself someday, he knew, would bar the door and bathe his own self in the dark water, every so often opening his throat wide to swallow great gulps of the gritty oily stuff, and so in this manner to absorb some of the greatness of the duke.
          And so he dreamed, and so it continued until the old duke died, and the basement boy, now grown strong and reliable, took upon himself the task of preparing the duke for his final rest, and the other servants, in sadness and gratitude, were only too happy to leave the task to him.
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