The Blessing
1976 Penguin Books trade paperback, 16th printing. Nancy Mitford (The Pursuit of Love). With characteristically amusing malice, Mitford blends a comedy of manners with culture shock as Grace Allingham, a naive English rose, impulsively marries Charles-Edouard de Valhubert, a French nobleman with all his class's charm and decadence. Both are duped, however, by their son Sigismund -- the Blessing of the title -- a juvenile Machiavelli who mixes Gallic cunning with Saxon thoroughness to become one of Mitford's most memorable characters.