I came to think of Jean Marie as a real person - malleable, fallible, but above all, like Pepys, a product of the Enlightenment project of self knowledge and self improvement. His wisdom is as old as Socrates and as new as the emerging European nation state. "I've begun to believe that my life is like clay."
On the social commentary - he was also inevitably a creature of his time, who although sees peasants as people, also shrugs his shoulders when his tiger kills a gardener.
The sweep of history was grand and sublime, both in be rush of time and in the details.
I thoroughly enjoyed this.