Bonjour, Monsieur Pompadour

If there is a girl who is a virgin engaged to a man, and another man finds her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city and you shall stone them to death; the girl, because she did not cry out in the city, and the man, because he has violated his neighbor's wife. Thus you shall purge the evil from among you.

Deuteronomy 22: 23-24

George Washington Bridge University loomed on a steep mountain like a forgotten ancient city of fables, surrounded by indomitable walls and shrouded in desolate mists.

The university was located on the site of a long-abandoned monastery. The penitent monks altered the lowlands and through hundreds of years of piling of rocks and dirt, they had built their Calvary.

The monastery replaced an ancient burial ground, which was built on and inside of a Neanderthal cave settlement, that was running through what used to be a prehistoric weasel colony. The weasels had led a long battle with field mice and winning it, they moved in, pushing the field mice into what is now called oblivion. What was there before the mouse burrows, no one knows for certain.

The monks had a serious water problem and daily they had to carry jugs of water on donkeys' backs from a tiny fetid lake, situated some distance from the Calvary hill. The dirty water caused the monks a number of health problems, but the arid land yielded no mercy.

The water dilemma was solved in the later centuries by a prisoner of war, Abdi Arnavut Pasha. Captured in a raid and locked in a dank cell of an enemy's castle, he spent hours grasping the bars of a tiny window, hungrily yearning for every ray of the weak northern sun. One morning he saw a fair lady crossing the courtyard on her way to the church for the morning mass. Her beauty, her innocence, and her white, soft skin shining in the morning sun, enchanted the wretch. And when she raised her deep violet eyes that matched the color of her dress, and their eyes met, he felt like a lightning bolt had flashed between them. Abdi Pasha fell hopelessly in love with the Christian beauty, Krisztina, and every morning impatiently waited for her daily appearance. With her eyes modestly cast down while she walked, Krisztina never acknowledged that she had heard his soft calls to her. It took many months before his hopeful expectations were rewarded and her eyes flickered for a brief moment at the prison's window. After that, slowly, she let her eyes linger longer and longer on his face, until she crossed the courtyard with her pretty violet eyes locked into his burning dark eyes.

When Abdi Pasha was ransomed, he returned to the castle with such splendid gifts, the likes of which had never before been seen in Christendom. His attendants unloaded the precious cargo from a long train of carriages, and in front of the castle lord's astonished eyes, his vassals and servants, produced piles of tunics of brocade from Syria; cloths of delicate mousseline from Bengal; porcelain and silk robes from China; jewelry from Samarkand; carpets from Persia; gemstones as large as ostrich eggs from India; golden pendants from Egypt; full-blooded horses, spices, and coffee from Arabia, and ivory and furs from Africa's interior. When the last carriage was unloaded, Abdi Pasha asked for Krisztina's hand. The proud baron, Istvan Dobo, Krisztina's father, arrogantly rejected Abdi's gifts, ordering him to leave his castle.

Abdi Pasha, in a blind fury, scampered out and vowed to take his love by force. He raised a ferocious army of marauders and laid siege on the stronghold. After incessant bloody assaults, the burning fortress fell to the assailants.

Baron Dobo, seriously wounded but still unyielding, told Abdi Pasha that his daughter had died in the siege, even showing the horrorstruck lover her mutilated corpse, buried under a broken piece of a wall.

Abdi Pasha lost all his will to live and decided to stay in the country of his beloved. He converted to Christianity and entered the nearby monastery on Calvary, daily visiting Krisztina's grave at her family's lot.