cahier de doléances, Bailliage de Saint-Omer, 1789. from Archives Departementales du Pas de Calais, France

Everything happened at the speed of a horse making steady progress into the heart of the countryside. We don’t have the sense of this now; how an order is given and how it then spreads like spilled wine on a fine linen cloth to reach the furthest part of the kingdom. The word seep. In this way it happened, was happening, was yet to happen, simultaneously. Time collapses differently on itself now.

I think of them writing in a careful hand these collected grievances which were always cocooned in praise and gratitude, and assumptions of mercy. Of course they hoped, these doléantes. To be a sovereign is a sharp thing, all blade and no handle — you cannot use it without cutting yourself: all powerful, all merciful, benevolent, wise, the King our Father.

There were some sixty thousand such notebooks —I want the words here, and not the number, I want the space that the words occupy — filled with petition, complaint, and despair. What room were they lodged in, when they made their equally slow return? How long might it have taken someone to read them all?

In the end, there was not enough of that slow time; the notebooks took forever to arrive and then everything was happening faster than anyone could have imagined. This is what I imagine: sixty thousand, all those words.