Word: xiv
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...genius for transforming loot into colossally vulgar display, ostentation on an imperial scale. The Emperor Elagabalus, it is said, ordered his slaves to bring him 10,000 lbs. of cobwebs. When they finished the task, Elagabalus observed, "From this, one can understand how great a city is Rome." Louis XIV of France wore a diamond-covered coat that, at the turn of the 18th century, was worth a dazzling 14 million francs: the Sun King got up in the splendors of Liberace...
...built by Aubert de Fontenay, royal collector of the salt tax, now contains a collection assembled by 20th century taxes. The artist would have relished the irony. Said the influential Le Monde: "One knows that Picasso is in his place in the noble building from the time of Louis XIV. He is home...
When Louis XIV outlawed the Protestant Huguenots in France, thousands of them came to Geneva, bringing their skills as watchmakers, jewelers, merchants, bankers. Within a century they had helped make dour Geneva one of the richest cities in the world. It still forbade theatrical performances as sinful, so Voltaire acquired a new house just across the French border in order to stage his plays. Today Geneva boasts a refurbished Grand Theater (it had been gutted in 1951 when something went wrong during one of the more fiery scenes in Wagner's Die Walkure), but there is still very little night...
...what you wanted to hear, isn't it? Usually, I just demur. People would like to know exactly how rich I am, but it's none of their goddam business." Of course not, but it is safe to guess that he is probably rich enough to buy Louis XIV's favorite armchair--and everything else in the palace of Versailles. But who would want such froufrou when he could have a genuine Harrison Ford bedside table? "It looks like a bedside table, and that's why I like it," says Ford, sounding like a boy in the first stage...
...them first to "check it out with Frank." Nancy also saw quite a lot of her rich bachelor friend Jerry Zipkin, a full-time Manhattan partygoer whom she has called "a modern-day Oscar Wilde." Says one of her former aides: "There is a little element here of Louis XIV's French court and les precieuses --the affected ladies. She had a certain liking for witty, amusing, well-dressed men who were willing to walk three paces behind and carry the purse...