As I walked down the cold, dark streets on a winter Paris night I looked up into the sky and said to myself "could life get any worse"." It was only one week ago that life wasn't that bad, it was still bad but not like the catastrophic dilemma I am facing today.

There are peasants and there are the very poor peasants. Unfortunately I would have to classify myself as a very poor peasant. This would probably be the reason my wife and two young girls left me for some rich merchant. Remarkably she only left a scrappy note on the bed. By the way, we had to share the tiny bed for the whole family. To make my tragic week even worse it was my turn for hard labour which entitled me to work my backside off and receive next to nothing pay. The termites have...