conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a story about Independent with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this story could be 'The Lady and the Unicorn'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this story.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Lady and the Unicorn
  The messenger said I was to come at once. That's how Jean Le Viste is – he expects everyone to do what he says immediately.
  And I did. I followed the messenger, stopping just briefly to clean my brushes. Commissions from Jean Le Viste can mean food on the table for weeks. Only the King says no to Jean Le Viste, and I am certainly no king.
  On the other hand, how many times have I rushed across the Seine to the rue du Four, only to come back again with no commission? It's not that Jean Le Viste is a fickle man – on the contrary, he is as sober and hard as his beloved Louis XI once was. Humourless too. I never jest with him. It's a relief to escape his house to the nearest tavern for a drink and a laugh and a grope to restore my spirits.
  He knows what he wants. But sometimes when I come to discuss yet another coat of arms to decorate the chimney, or to paint on his wife's carriage door, or to work into a bit of stained glass for the chapel – people say the Le Viste arms are as common as horse dung – he'll stop suddenly, shake his head and say with a frown, 'This is not needed. I should not be thinking about such commonplace matters. Go.' And I do, feeling guilty, as if I am to blame for bringing a carriage's decoration to his attention, when it was he who called for me.
  I'd been to the rue du Four house half a dozen times before. It is not a place that impresses. Even with all the fields around it, it is built as if it were in the middle of the city, with the rooms long and narrow, the walls too dark, the stables too close – the house always smells of horses. It is the sort of house a family that has bought its way into the Court would live in – grand enough but poorly placed. Jean Le Viste probably thinks he has done well to be given such a place to live, while the Court laughs behind his back. He should be living close to the King and Notre Dame, not outside the city walls in the swampy fields around Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A cunning look came over Marie-Céleste's face. 'I suppose you want to come and see me there, don't you?'
  I gaped at her, amazed that she was flirting with me after all that had happened. But then, she could be useful to me. I smiled and brushed a feather from her shoulder. 'Might do.'
  When she reached over and pressed her hand against me, my groin grew hard very fast, and her face suddenly looked less doughy and more rosy. She took her hand away just as quickly, though. 'I've to get back. Come and see me one day.' She described the house on the rue des Cordeliers.
  It was too easy. Once Marie-Céleste had left, swinging her basket as she went, I wondered for a moment what she meant to get from this, apart from a moment's pleasure between her legs. But I didn't think for long. I would see Claude Le Viste and that was enough.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I would see Claude Le Viste and that was enough. 'I suppose you want to come and see me there, don't you?'
  I gaped at her, amazed that she was flirting with me after all that had happened. But then, she could be useful to me. I smiled and brushed a feather from her shoulder. 'Might do.'
  When she reached over and pressed her hand against me, my groin grew hard very fast, and her face suddenly looked less doughy and more rosy. She took her hand away just as quickly, though. 'I've to get back. Come and see me one day.' She described the house on the rue des Cordeliers.
  It was too easy. Once Marie-Céleste had left, swinging her basket as she went, I wondered for a moment what she meant to get from this, apart from a moment's pleasure between her legs. But I didn't think for long.A cunning look came over Marie-Céleste's face.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Philippe and Aliénor had three more boys. The first son, Etienne, and the youngest became painters, while the other two became weavers.
  Georges was offered several other commissions to weave unicorns. He turned them down. 'Too much trouble,' he said to Christine.
  For all their expense and their glorification of the Le Viste coat of arms, the tapestries did not remain in the Le Viste family for long – on Claude's death (some time before 1544) they probably passed to another branch of the Le Viste family. By 1660 they had been hung in a château at Boussac in central France. They were rediscovered there in 1841 by Prosper Mérimée, inspector of historical monuments. He found them in poor condition, for they had been gnawed at by rats and in some places cut up – apparently people in neighbouring villages used parts of them as tablecloths and curtains. The writer Georges Sand soon became their champion, writing about them in articles, novels and her journal. In 1882 the French government bought the tapestries for the Musée de Cluny (now the Musée National du Moyen Âge) in Paris – where they still hang, restored and in a specially appointed room.
  I have tried to be faithful to what little is known about the tapestries, but on more general matters I have taken liberties here and there, as novelists always do – in using modern French throughout, and perhaps most of all in having the Brussels folk speak French when they quite likely would have spoken Flemish among themselves, if not to visitors.