When I think of the things that happened and the things I did, it is as though I were living them ... My hands feel what I touched, and the smells that surrounded me fill my nostrils ... Old joys swell my heart, old sorrows clutch at my throat ... I remember every face, every name, every street ... So Gerard Vreilhac begins the story of his life from his boyhood as a gardener at the Chateau d Airelles before the French Revolution through six decades of upheaval and social change to the eve of Napoleon III s coup d etat. It is a story of heroism and devotion, of political intrigue, of the great battles fought in Napoleon s conquest of Europe, and of unprecedented upward mobility. Most of all it is the story of the men he loved: Julien, the aristocrat; the jealous and possessive Laurent; his Egyptian houseboy, Akmoud; Anatole, a male prostitute... And every time he fell in love with a man, it was forever.