Word: virgin
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...carnival in Nice, the crash is shattering. Rainier is a one-armed French intellectual with a two-fisted attitude toward love and war. For 15 years-in Spain, the French air force, the R.A.F., the Maquis-he has been fighting "to defend a civilization which, from the Virgin Mary, Dante, Petrarch and the Troubadors...to the humblest of our movies...has always celebrated the cult of love." Ann is a Hollywood movie star who seems frigid only because the right man has never come along to thaw her out. The emotional storm they generate is so electric that...
...only he were a monk, thought Cantalbert, he could live in a warm room, and have friends, and feed the birds and pray to the Holy Virgin. So he became a monk. But the other monks said Latin prayers and he knew no Latin. They chanted chants and he didn't know how to chant. They painted frescoes or copied manuscripts, or taught Scripture or cooked, and Cantalbert didn't know how to do any of these things. He felt more of a failure than ever, and the other monks complained about...
When Christmastime came, the monastery hummed with activity. Each monk was hard at work preparing a present for the Virgin. The cook baked an enormous many-tiered cake called "The Church Triumphant," the poet composed a miles-long Latin poem, Brother Arnaud presented Mary with the smallest illuminated Bible ever made, and Brother Thomas made an ivory carving of the Christ child that was so huge that a man had to stand away off to see it all. Juggler Cantalbert did not know what...
Then, before the image of the Virgin in a little chapel, Clare exchanged her bright dress for a rough wool robe, her jeweled belt for a knotted rope, her high headdress for a black veil. Francis himself cropped off her golden hair...
...cities, the children clustered around him, waist-high and squalling, grimy fists tugging at his sleeve. "Hey, sah-jint, you want buy? You want num-bah-one shoeshine? You want change-ee money, sah-jint? You want nice girl, maybe? Hey, sah-jint, you want numbahone nice virgin girl?" Sometimes they snatched a pen or wallet from his pocket and scampered off down an ill-smelling alley. Sometimes the crippled ones, scabrous and foul with dirt, hunched themselves into his path and clawed frantically at his trouser leg. "Money, skoshi money, little money! Three days, eat have...