The book by Kondraty Birkin (P.P. Karataev), an almost forgotten Russian writer, offers readers a rare opportunity to feel the atmosphere of palace secrets, intrigues and scandals in Russia, England, Italy, France and other states in the period of the 16th–18th centuries.U Francis I famous: “Everything is lost - except honor” (which we have already discussed with the reader); in Louis XIV: “The State is I” (l’etat – c’est moi) and “There are no more Pyrenees” (il n’y a plus de Pyrenees); Henry IV, the most popular of the three, promised chicken soup to the poorest of his subjects. This chicken can be most closely compared to a newspaper duck; I didn’t wait for her, and it’s unlikely that the poor bachelor, the heraldic French rooster, will ever wait.