In the age of Louix XVI, a modest country engineer traveled to Versailles with a plan to save the people of his village from an epidemic by asking the king to subsidize a swamp drainage system. He thought he would persuade the palace with logic, reason, and an appeal to human decency. He was wrong. To succeed in this court, he'll have to learn to dress, to dance, to scheme, to seduce--and above all, he'll learn that wit is the ultimate weapon. In this strange world of decadence, where fortunes and power change hands overnight, where men are made and ruined in an instant, the key to survival is avoiding the ultimate disgrace: ridicule. In a place where even the slightest misstep can be fatal, he'll have to focus every ounce of energy on extracting royal favor. The one thing he must not do... is fall in love.