Den of iniquity

The young men made their preparations with alacrity, and, headed by this western patriarch, we proceeded at a rapid gait to surprize the tenants of this den of iniquity.

"Shet up!" I snarled. "I'm jest payin' yuh back for all the pain and humiliation I suffered in this den of iniquity—"

Ms. Saint Phalle bought the converted inn with her husband, the Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely, in 1963; he died in 1991. Called Auberge au Cheval Blanc, it was once a brothel. "The villagers wanted an end to the den of iniquity, but then they did not like our sculptures, and for a while they would throw things at them," she says with a distinctive laugh, as wide open and explosive as her eyes.