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Post by Notre Dame on Mar 10, 2009 14:52:43 GMT -5
"Because it is beautiful." She meant the cathedral, which is what she had assumed he did too. "Because it is mine."
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Post by Valmont on Mar 10, 2009 14:56:01 GMT -5
"But isn't the whole city yours?" Valmont said, with the practiced calm of a man who was capable of conversing about anything, even if it seemed ridiculous even to himself. He wasn't sure what he thought about this woman, but he did know there was something off, something different, about her. And given what he'd seen lately, who was he to say she wasn't what she said she was?
Besides, wasn't it more fun if she was?
"Paris was here before religion, wasn't it? Er, weren't you? Or at least, this form of it."
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Post by Notre Dame on Mar 10, 2009 15:29:29 GMT -5
"Yes, but this is my favorite. I watched it built, I chose the stone. I saved the rose windows and frightened the desecrating Huguenots, I vanished away my bells and brought them back after the time of blood. It is mine." More heat in Notre Dame's voice now than before, more wildness to her eyes and her uneven breath. She slid slim fingers down the top of the pew, contorting into claws, then smoothing the wood. Her head tilted again so that the silken mass of her hair fell over her shoulders and spread over her chest and down the back of the pew, the cornsilk ends curling into the air as she shifted on her knees, rising for a moment above the pew a little and then settling down again. "Religion is for always, Vicomte. It never goes away."
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Post by Valmont on Mar 10, 2009 16:00:27 GMT -5
The passion of her speech did not surprise Valmont, in the sense that he had already detected such in her manner. But religion was not a close friend of his. It did, sometimes, serve a valuable purpose as a catalyst for the downfall of others. But personally he found little of worth in it.
She did, certainly, seem to take a lot of responsibility for the place.
"But does it not, after all, mademoiselle, rather belong to the people?" he asked. Without people, after all, there would be no religion, no Paris. "You must be very devout."
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Post by Notre Dame on Mar 10, 2009 18:01:29 GMT -5
"The people come and go. I wouldn't keep them from it. I can share." A pause, as Notre Dame frowned. "Devout to what?"
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Post by Valmont on Mar 10, 2009 18:06:35 GMT -5
Since people came and went as far as Valmont was concerned, he could more or less understand that.
"Well," he said. "God. Religion. You've chosen quite a powerful symbol of it, after all."
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Post by Notre Dame on Mar 10, 2009 18:11:47 GMT -5
"I have not chosen a God, Monsieur Valmont." Notre Dame was settling down again, cheek pressed into the palm of her hand. "I have chosen a building."
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Post by Valmont on Mar 10, 2009 18:15:14 GMT -5
Valmont tilted his head slightly.
"But is not your choice of building a statement in itself?" he asked. "You might have chosen Versailles, or the Bastille, or the Opera, or a tenement on the outskirts of the city. One cannot be surprised if something is read into that choice."
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Post by Notre Dame on Mar 10, 2009 18:26:23 GMT -5
"Notre Dame is older. Notre Dame was first."
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Post by Valmont on Mar 10, 2009 18:29:23 GMT -5
"A fair point," Valmont shrugged. "So you do not, then, subscribe to the particular notions of morality of those who built it?"
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Post by Notre Dame on Mar 11, 2009 9:58:44 GMT -5
“Sometimes I do. It’s a pretty idea, isn’t it? This is a holy place, with or without a God in it.”
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Post by Valmont on Mar 11, 2009 10:05:59 GMT -5
"Ah, but without God, one's idea of holy may not be the common idea of it. I am not, by any definition, a holy man, but I appreciate certain things that might be said to make up my own form of worship. If one wished to be poetic about it."
He paused, able to see Valerie roll her eyes at him in his mind's eye.
"What is your god, mademoiselle?"
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Post by Armand on Mar 12, 2009 8:45:01 GMT -5
"Yes," Notre Dame agreed, "But I would not be common, and neither would you." A shrug. "I like the God of big places, stern places, plaster saints and marble satues. He is so accommodating. I like the God of old, when he smote and raged, when bones leapt up from the ground and men spoke in tongues, but that is too like a pagan god, and no one talks of that God anymore. Mostly, I do not notice other people's Gods. And so, what is your God?"
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Post by Valmont on Mar 13, 2009 14:22:02 GMT -5
At the question, Valmont smiled, looking perversely at ease with his arms leaned across the back of the pew, aware that with his bad posture and crossed legs his posture resembled a debauched and too-clothed Jesus.
"Pleasure."
It wasn't as simple as that, of course, or rather for Valmont the word encompassed so many other things that it could almost be said to be a religion, where he was concerned.
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Post by Notre Dame on Mar 20, 2009 7:53:12 GMT -5
"Mm." Notre Dame crossed her arms over the back of the pew, distracted for a moment by someone moving about deeper in the cathedral. "Is there a building for your God? Does pleasure have a home?" No worse than anyone else's god, she supposed, but Notre Dame put a great deal of esteem in architecture.
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