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How may I describe the place in which Gabrielle and myself drew our first breath? It is une merveille, a wonder beyond human comprehension, to which all our muses, should they prove themselves to be worthy of the name, are invited, so that they may ponder the miracle of which they are part. I have stood beneath the Great Dome, every inch of which is covered by a tumult of celestial beings caparisoned in rich golds and purples and blues, and known that were they living gods every figure would testify to the masterwork that is La Ronde. It is, of course, from this great room and its singular work, that we are named. The room is a vast organism (yes, truly, for such a masterpiece of colour and light and movement can only be understood in the context of a living thing), a circle as its name implies, and it is the greatest work of artistic genius that exists in the world, or has ever existed, beyond Donatello, Michelangelo, beyond all the nameless prodigies of vanished centuries. Even Pheidias, although it is said of him that when Vesnia Losnai (one of our earliest foremothers, and a peerless worker of bronze and terracotta) visited his studio at Olympia, she was so moved by his metalwork that she declared him worthy of his own place in La Ronde. Indeed, she commissioned from him the twin statues of chryselephantine that now stand inside the leaving doors.
