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Now imagine the unlimited future it might have under a new owner who didn’t run his affairs like a crapulent mini-Caligula.

They invariably come laden with words that seem meant to prove his vocabulary is bigger than yours: flocculent, crapulent, caducous, anaglypta, mephitic, velutinous.

The man, sadder but wiser, yet still diaphanously crapulent, went back to bed.

“Remorse over the crapulent major’s death was ringing me up a few times a day, tenacious as a debt collector,” he thinks.

There were fish shops, cheap Italian restaurants, and the long lines of low houses vanished in crapulent night.