One learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence. - Robertson Davies

It was as though she was an exile from a world that saw things her way

The King had every privilege except that of being at ease. Pompadour provided the atmosphere in which that final luxury was possible. She did not do this, as anyone who thinks about the matter for twenty seconds will know, by twenty years of rapt contemplation of the ceilings of Versailles. Indeed, Pompadour was not a physically ardent woman, and love-making tired her. After about eight years of their association Louis XV did not sleep with her... But it was to Pompadour that he talked, and it was to Pompadour that he listened.

It seemed to me as if the stones sang, in the strangest voices, in the language of Ultima Thule.