Fountain of Knowledge

Good quality mattresses were big bags of firm cloth called "ticking", filled with duck or goose feathers and tied (a piece of string sewn through and knotted on the other side) at regular intervals, sort of like a tied quilt. Bad quality mattresses might be just a heap of straw on a cot, covered with a blanket. The mattresses were used in stacks, until it got comfortable. (Remember how in the "The Princess and the Pea" they put a hundred mattresses on top of each other, over the pea?) Beds were not solid wood boxes--they were like frames with ropes woven back and forth in a criss-cross pattern, sort of like a hammock but without that much give. Beds were high off the floor, with curtains if you could afford them, to keep the heat in and provide some privacy (you often slept in the same room with your servants, if you had them, or married couples slept in the same room with their kids).

Incidentally, with variations on the curtains, beds were pretty much made this way up until the 1800s.

I'd leave both places in French, if people in the story are thinking of them in French. If you really wanted to I suppose you could have something along the lines of, "the lake that would one day be called Lake Geneva still sparkled under its true name..." but I think it's fine if you don't.

:)

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