Word: xv
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...perhaps, of her lives. MacLaine is not only actress, dancer, author, traveler, political activist, feminist, ex-wife and deliberately unmotherly mother. She is also, she says, "a former prostitute, my own daughter's daughter, and a male court jester who was beheaded by Louis XV of France"-all in past incarnations that she believes she has rediscovered with the aid of mediums, meditation and, in at least one case, acupuncture. Friends and former lovers have tried to persuade her to keep quiet about these prior existences, and about her faith in extraterrestrial intelligence, "out-of-body experiences" and telepathy...
...embarrassed himself on horseback, stumbled on the dance floor. But he had a fine old name, and after his father died when Gilbert was two years old and his mother when he was twelve, Gilbert came into a handsome fortune. Hating court life in the Versailles of Louis XV, the marquis went into the army. At 19, with only the briefest of military training, he set off to become a hero of the American Revolution...
...victims usually determined the degree of horror they would suffer. Death alone was rarely considered a sufficient penalty unless it was preceded by terror, torture and humiliation, preferably in public. One of history's most spectacular executions was that of Damiens, the unsuccessful assassin of Louis XV, in Paris in 1757. His flesh was torn with red-hot pincers, his right hand was burned with sulfur, his wounds were drenched with molten lead, his body was drawn and quartered by four horses, his parts were set afire and his ashes scattered to the winds. The execution was accomplished before...
...with their retinues. In 1687, Louis felt the need for a bit of privacy and built the Grand Trianon, a modest 72-room hideaway of pink and green marble, a mile and a half away. That edifice, in turn, inspired the Petit Trianon, a 30-room cottage that Louis XV built for his mistress Madame de Pompadour in 1762. When Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette fell victim to the French Revolution in 1789, so did Versailles: its paintings were carted off, its tapestries ripped apart for the gold thread, and its furniture sold. In 1830, 15 years after the monarchy...
...masterly performance. Gone were the Louis XV chairs and crystal chandeliers of Giscard's previous televised appearances from the presidential palace that had contributed to a growing image of "monarchical" hauteur. In the state-run TV studio, a relaxed and animated President chatted, swiveled in his chair and consulted visual aids to make his points. His new style made a good-humored mockery of journalists' questions about the "Giscardian monarchy." Said he: "You are posing stupid questions, but I will answer them...