Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Marilyn Darling Show—today I’m reviewing a pinky-ish ink: J. Herbin Rouge Caroubier. I swatch it, do a water resistance test (it’s got a tiny bit of water resistance and it’s not too smoochy), and then we get into the fun part: chromatography. I run two “toilet paper chromatographies,” one with water and one with rubbing alcohol, and you can really see the ink split—there’s a pink component and a red component, and they trade places depending on which liquid you use. After that, I put Rouge Caroubier through my usual paper gauntlet, from nicer pads to absolute chaos paper. On the good stuff (like my JNB Copperplate graph pad, Rhodia 80gsm, Hobonichi, and several others), it behaves beautifully—clean lines, nice shading, and generally no feathering or bleeding. On a lot of cheaper papers and envelopes, though? Oh no—feather like a chicken, with ghosting and sometimes bleeding. I also do a quick comparison pass against other inks in my collection, and let’s just say I discovered I apparently own an alarming amount of “purple” while I was hunting for close matches.