can't remember the last time a book was throwing me off to the extent that I was convinced I was going to tap out only to find myself compelled by it again. found the lengthy but also quite surface-level and inconsistent descriptions of nineteenth-century emotional states to be a real slog but the highly self-conscious discussions of Bonapartism and stagnant aristocratic culture kept me going. very strange book, don't think these two modes were ever really bridged but that was very much part of the appeal