Francois Boucher Madame de Pompadour painting

Francois Boucher Madame de Pompadour paintingFrancois Boucher Adoration of the Shepherds paintingJohannes Vermeer The Concert painting
Stoker, she had willingly assented to the match at the time of its arrangement by her guardian, Ira Hector, and further that she would not dream of deserting one who needed her so absolutely as did her husband -- however violently he himself denied that need.
"I knew it!" Max cried out. "A pact between the meanest mind on campus and the flunkèdest!" Ira Hector, he reminded me, was the wealthy and infamously selfish older brother of the former chancellor of NTC; from humble beginnings as a used-book peddler he had risen to his present position as head of a vast informational empire, controlling the manufacture and distribution of virtually every reference-volume published in the West-Campus college. Ready to line his pockets at anyone's expense, he was despised and catered to by liberals and conservatives alike (though always closer in spirit to the latter); while he preached the virtues of free research, what he practiced was the stifling of competition, the freedom of the clever to oppress the ignorant and stupid. Yet so enormous was his and so ubiquitous his influence, every New Tammany chancellor had to come to terms with him; and Max himself, how vehemently soever he had used to rail in the