Read Online Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 03 - The School for Psychics by Carolyn Jourdan - Free Book Online Page B

floor and to the apartments Madame Pompadour occupied after a new mistress was moved into the attic apartments.
    There was no residu e of anything in any of the rooms aside from sadness. Jean Poisson had died here of tuberculosis at the age of forty-two. Her body had been removed from the palace immediately, according to custom. The King was not allowed to reside in the same place as a dead body. Records from the time indicated that it was raining on the day of her death and that the King cried as he watched her body being taken away to the sprawling Capuchin Convent in Place Vendome for interment, as she had requested in her will.
    Marc was right. Neither Phoebe nor J.J. could detect anything of interest.
    “What now?” J.J. asked Phoebe.
    * * *
    “I’d like to tour the grounds,” said Phoebe.
    “The y are quite extensive,” warned Marc. “There are more than 200 acres of gardens and the entire estate encompasses over 2,000 acres.”
    “ Oh!” Phoebe said. “Well then, we’ll leave you to your work.” They thanked Marc, he gallantly helped Phoebe with her coat, they said their goodbyes, and left the Prince standing just outside the palace that employed him.
    * * *
    J.J. and Phoebe headed northwest. The helicopter had dropped them off on the south side of the grand axis that bisected the enormous grounds and they’d walked along it on the way to the palace. Now they decided to check out the opposite side.
    Phoebe kept taking looks back over her shoulder as they got farther and farther away from the château. It really was something. It was a singular experience. The main building was much larger than she’d ever imagined and far more majestic.
    It made her feel small, not just in her body, but in every way. She realized that even in her wildest dreams, she could never have imagined it. It was too much in every way. Just seeing the garden facade made you want to kneel, or cower.
    “What’s wrong?” J.J. asked , softly. “Is someone following us?”
    “No, I’m just looking at the house. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen or even dreamed of. It exists in its own separate universe. It’s amazing and terrifying at the same time.”
    “It was meant to be,” he said.
    They continued down a long pea gravel walkway between tall clipped hedges and a row of marble statues and urns set on pedestals. “I’m just a hick and in a place like this my rube-ness highlighted even more,” Phoebe said, laughing.
    “Not at all,” J.J. said. “Being here with you like this helps me understand something Le Seigneur told me years ago. My family is French, obviously. He said that really good psychics could see if a person had had a past incarnation as a Frenchman. He said it was a unique trait of the French—that they are the only ethnic group on earth for whom this is the case. Their souls retain a tincture of Frenchness even in subsequent lives. And this tincture is visible to people who can clearly discern auras.”
    “ Frenchness?” Phoebe asked.
    “I think it’s what you’ re feeling from the château. It’s that quality of pride that the French believe is deserved, which has been earned by the careful refinement of aesthetic judgment over many generations, but it is also what is so irksome to non-French people. It’s what reactive people perceive as arrogance and vanity. They feel insulted by it. They aren’t sensitive to the nuance. They don’t recognize the cultural basis of the aesthete .”
    “T hat’s interesting,” said Phoebe. “A place like this creates cognitive dissonance. It’s a massive display of size and power and yet at the same time it’s the ultimate in delicate refinement. It’s transgender or androgyny in architecture.”
    “A cross-dressing castle?” J.J. suggested.
    “ Exactement ,” said Phoebe.

Chapter 10.
    “How far should we go?” Phoebe asked. “The yard here goes on for a loooong way.”
    “It’s your call,” said J.J. “What works best for you?”
    “I guess