Word: mistressful
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Madame de Pompadour, by Nancy Mitford. A life of Louis XV's dazzling mistress, done up in rich literary brocades by a fine British writer (TIME, June...
That night the men of the Gouws family fashioned a rough coffin, and Mistress Katrina van Schalkwyk supplied a winding sheet. Joseph's body was delivered to his grandmother with strict instructions: "You must bury him without opening the coffin, because he died of a contagious disease." But Joseph's father, Abraham, raised the coffin...
...history-"a more accomplished woman," says Author Mitford, "has seldom lived." The only interesting thing about her childhood comes from an account book, where she records payment of 600 livres to a fortune teller "for having predicted, when I was nine, that I would be the King's mistress...
Projects of a Mistress. Today's visitor to Versailles can "still see what she saw from her little balcony . . . the fountains of mermaids and cupids, the avenue of trees . . . We still hear the great clock on the parish church, the organ in the palace chapel . . . But we do not hear the King's hunt in the forest, the hounds and the horns . . . The rooms, so empty today, so cold with their northern light, were crammed to bursting point when she lived in them; crammed with people, animals and birds . . . furniture, stuffs, patterns . . . plans, sketches, maps, books . . . embroidery . . . letters...
Unlike other historians, Author Mitford believes that "sincère et tendre Pompadour" (Voltaire's description) did all she did for love of the King, not because she was ambitious. Her weakness-a terrifying one for a royal mistress-was that she was "constitutionally incapable of passion." "She tried to work herself up to respond to the King's ardors by every means known to quackery"-diets of vanilla, truffles and celery, "elixirs" guaranteed to "heat the blood." Nobody knows how far she succeeded, but Louis adored her even when he had turned for his pleasure to what...