FLASHBACK: 491 Bay (2008-2010)

We called it The House of Five Gables and stayed put for three summers.  Instagram wouldn't launch until a year after we left, but once it did we could observe in real time what happens when a Pines landlord caters to the quarter-share market, renting to four different groups a month: lots and lots of parties, coupled with rapid deterioration of the amenities.  The interior--which included a baby grand piano!--is stripped of its quirky charm, a reflection of the former owners' ungepatchke taste, and wooden, cushioned lounge chairs give way to the plastic kind.

I particularly loved this flag.

The hot tub, however, did survive. My sunglasses caught the reflection of the setting sun, a premature metaphor for my tenure in the Pines, which would last another 13 sumers in two more houses.

2008

Shortly after throwing a substantial portion of the house's kitschy teapot collection into the Great South Bay (appalling, especially for a guy who embraced Crocs from the get-go!), Patrick discovered how a diva could make best dramatic use of a fairly wide and very long bulkhead.

Randy embraced the runway strut.  And no wonder: at 52, he never looked better.

For the first time in more than a decade, we had spectacular sunset views without ever leaving our deck.

Was sun-averse Chris the first person to commute to the Pines from Pakistan?

He and Steven always take a good picture.

Andrew really, really rocked a wig, British Invasion style. 

Our collection grew to include one his sister-in-law bought to camouflage the effects of chemo therapy.  We referred to it as the "cancer wig."  She recovered.

Randy and I thought he looked like Rula Lenska in this one.

Most of our guests, including Rault (far left) and Andrew (in pearls) never missed an opportunity to put on a cocktail dress designed by Thom (white tank top).  Andrew, the founder of N2N Bodywear, always brought samples of his latest creations which he deposited in a bowl on the living room table, first-come, first served.  Truth be told, I was more amenable to a plunging neckline than a pouched thong.

I took this jubilant photo of Sue, Chris and Thom from inside the Ascension Party on the beach.

Randy's posse kept getting younger, including a new, dewy recruit named Richert whose eventual transformation into the embodiment of "masc" definitely would have seemed counter-intuitive at the time.

2009

Mateje emerged like a demented butterfly from a soporific cocoon during our Drag Summer. He's giving Suzanne Pleshette here.

Each of Mateje's looks became more outrageous than the last

. . . culminating in a Phyllis Diller resurrection, minus the cigarette holder, that failed to resonate with some of our younger housemates or foreign guests who never caught her act on the television variety shows of the '60s and '70s.

Thom also brought suitcases filled with so many of his slinky creations that we could dress according to whim. Steven veered from off-the-shoulder femme fatale 

 

to Coffee, Tea or Me?, yet another reference that dated me.

Andrew (later and still his husband) let loose in other ways.

Patrick could go from demure

. . . to fierce with just a wig change. Cue (I think) "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going."

Marty, however, radiated the realness--if not the bitchiness--of a Pines housewife.

Meanwhile, someone had to devil the eggs (once a house mother, always a house mother!). Florian, always the bearer of thoughtful gifts, brought me this apron from the Art Institute of Chicago.

No one loves to dress up more than he.  Drag made him Schatzier than ever.  I had given him that nickname because it's how my father always referred to hot frauleins when we lived in Munich and Heidelberg.

Schatzi was no slouch when working the runway in free N2N swimwear.  That's a silver star on his crotch.

But he also used his resourcefulness to help others realize their runway dreams, too, 

. . . flapping a beach towel to create a wind-blown effect for Steven on a still, sultry day.  

We were SO on trend.  Although Ru Paul's Drag Race had premiered only the February before, Mateje was ready to take her latest look to the Invasion where she could score free drinks without having to ride the ferry from Cherry Grove as these glamazons no doubt did.

Chris killed among the geopolitically-minded set with his imported-for-the-occasion burka. Mateje had no time for traditional Muslim wear.

Neither Richert nor I had been quite ready to go public in our frocks

. . . although we both got into the margarita-fueled spirit of things back at the house.

Ebullient (just a fancy way of saying really, really lit), but scary. Very scary!

There were quieter moments in civvies, too.  

Varick introduced us to Ted, now his longtime companion--never bitten by the Pines bug--who had served in the Coast Guard

. . . and with help from his guest Andrew--and imported "cow"--he added Beef Wellington to our usually pedestrian menu.  

Magda, my goddaughter, made her first adult visit to the Pines with Joe, her new boyfriend. If you think the drop earrings made an impression, you should have seen his cut-off jeans! While officiating at their wedding five years later I referenced the night they "danced ecstatically with me and my friends as the Black Eyed Peas sang I gotta feeling tonight is a gonna be a good night.” Joe had asked:  why isn't dancing at straight clubs this much fun?" Perhaps because not all eyes there were upon him!

Some of our guests were a lot more random, including one whose name I didn't catch.  I believe Victor had met him on Grindr, then a brand new dating app.  

No doubt Kissy Poo was looking for an invitation to crash overnight.  It wasn't forthcoming but his revenge must be sweet:  he's probably still in his thirties!  

A fire burned down several houses not far from where Victor eventually would buy his own home.

On some nights, it looked as if the bay itself was bathed in flames.

Honestly, much of the summer remains a blur.  The blender was going constantly.  And we got almost as much mileage out of this platinum wig that someone purchased on 14th Street along with much of the costume jewelry.

Lamont and Ryan, members of Randy's posse who had begun dating at Harvard, later married. And then divorced, with one forced to continue paying down the cost of their expensive wedding for years afterward.  So smart, yet so dumb.

Was it unkind of me to tell Victor he looked like a truck stop tranny?  Yes, I know it was definitely politically incorrect but this was well before the Awakening . . . 

Michelle, now Andrew's former sister-in-law, was our only female housemate in my 34 years of sharing in the Pines.

She and Schatzi, however, did bear a resemblance when wearing the same wig.

This giddy runway shot became the cover for a book of photos (so analog!) I made to commemorate our Drag Summer.  (Wo) Man, did we ever have a good time--it's among my top three favorite seasons!

 

2010

The next and final summer at the House of Five Gables brought two new additions: Grayson, the newborn boy whom Patrick and Marty were able to adopt more quickly than anticipated, and Curtis, now sadly gone.

Drag seems to have taken a back seat to the baby monitor, or perhaps I just got tired of photographing a bunch of drunken queens. Nevertheless, it appears from the date of this shot that I did make my debut at the Invasion, channelling my mother.  But I recall dancing in heels one night at the Pavilion with Thom in the same outfit with much greater detail because of mother's little helper (although Mary preferred downers) and going home with blisters on my feet that took more than a week to heel.  It was worth it, too:  I'd NEVER before been the center of attention on the dance floor.

And there was impromptu drag after the Ascension Party where I drank up the courage to invite Eric, a longtime French crush and perhaps the most outrageous flirt in the Pines, back to the house for cocktails. Varick had once brought him back from tea for dinner and more.

 

Bitch stole my dress!  Mine reminds me of a line ad libbed by Maggie Smith in Gosford Park.  "Difficult color, green."

We also established an enduring tradition over the Columbus Day weekend, our last in the house, which we called Pines Thanksgiving.  Mataje decreed the dress code.  It didn't stop her from multitasking with Grayson.

What They Said: March 2026

“The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events,” wrote Winston Churchill in My Early Life.  (New York Times, 03.01.26)

“We all lived in Brooklyn,” Neil Sedaka said of Carole King (whom he dated) Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand and Barry Manilow. “It was a wonderful time. It must have been something in the egg cream. We used to hang out in the sweet shop and have egg creams and potato knishes.”  (New York Times, 03.01.26)

“This city [Caracas] has the wages of Zimbabwe, the public services of Bangladesh and the prices of New York,” said Phil Gunson, a British political analyst who has lived there for decades. (New York Times, 03.01.26)

"What was unthinkable only yesterday we now take in stride, and we wait for that moment when things really have gone too far this time, when the fever breaks and things will revert to normal," writes Ian Buruma, whose Dutch father was deported to Nazi Germany as a slave laborer.  "But that moment probably won’t come. Things have gone too far too many times already. Hoping for better is still the right attitude, but only as long as we prepare for the worst." (New York Times, 03.01.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“The Mideast won’t be the same again,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House, a London-based research group. “For 47 years the Mideast has been living with a hostile regime and a destabilizing force that it has tried to first isolate and then manage.” (New York Times, 03.02.26)

"One of the things about Elon Musk that I admire that doesn’t get talked about that much is Elon Musk is an industrialist Lloyd Blankfein, former CEO of Goldman Sachs said.  "He had plant and equipment when most of these guys who made fortunes in a gigantic way — the Google guys, they could do it in a basement and get bigger and bigger and take in tons of revenue with a relatively minor capital investment. This guy had to build factories and supply chains. Who else has done that? Edison couldn’t do that." (New York Times, 03.02.26)

“Negotiating with the Americans is almost meaningless,” Fyodor Lukyanov, one of Russia’s best-known foreign policy commentators, wrote on Telegram. “It’s really either about surrender or an invitation to prepare for a military solution.” (New York Times, 03.02.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“If you are the leader of an adversary nation, you should be pretty worried,” said Paul Kolbe, who served as the C.I.A.’s station chief in Moscow, about improved surveillance methods (including AI) that tracked the movements of Iran's leader prior to his assassination. “But if you are Putin or Xi, not so much, because of the stakes at play. The lesson that keeps getting taught is that if you don’t have nukes, you are far more vulnerable.”  (New York Times, 03.04.26)

“I guess the worst case would be we do this and somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person,” said U.S. President Donald L. Trump after supporting Israel's successful attempt to assassinate Iran's leader. “Right, that could happen? We don’t want that to happen. It would probably be the worst, you go through this, and then in five years you realize you put somebody in who’s no better.” (New York Times, 03.04.26)

“The judge’s decision is clear: Donald Trump’s unlawful attempts to trample on the self-governance of his home state have failed spectacularly,” said New York governor Kathy Hochul. “Congestion pricing is legal, it works, and it is here to stay. The cameras are staying on.” (New York Times, 03.04.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“Never has so much risk or such sweeping military action of so much consequence been undertaken with so little apparent planning or weighing of potential consequences, both intended and unintended,” said David Rothkopf, the author of Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power.  (New York Times, 03.06.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“He no longer is able to strike fear in the way that he had hoped. That mantle has gone over to Trump,” said Bobo Lo, a Russia analyst and former Australian diplomat in Moscow.. “And so Putin looks, in a way, a little bit pathetic.” (New York Times, 03.07.26)

*   *   *   *   *

"Many people believe what they see on TV and do not distinguish between dramatization and documented fact — and the impact is not abstract, actress Darryl Hannah said about her demeaning depiction in Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette. "In a digital era, entertainment often becomes collective memory. Real names are not fictional tools. They belong to real lives." (New York Times, 03.09.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“What we need is a middle-ground solution that acknowledges that some people [i.e. parents of school shooters] can contribute to other people’s wrongdoing in ways that might be blameworthy,” said Ben McJunkin, an associate professor of law at Arizona State University, “but that aren’t the same as having committed the crime themselves.” (New York Times, 03.10.26)

“It’s remarkable to me,” said James Talarico, who won the Democratic primary for governor in Texas, “that you have an entire political movement using Christianity to prioritize two issues that Jesus never talked about . . . And so,” he continued, “I’m not saying they’re not important — I actually think both of those issues are very important. But to focus on those two things instead of feeding the hungry and healing the sick and welcoming the stranger — three things we’re told to do ad nauseam in Scripture — to me, is just mind-blowing.” (New York Times, 03.10.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“Let’s not kid ourselves: Reunification has gone wrong,” author Peter Schneider told a German newspaper in 2025. “The worst part is that the AfD emerged from it, and the other parties have no idea how to deal with this outcome.”  (New York Times, 03.13.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“In our time, it has become common for young reporters to give as their moral code, indeed as their reason for choosing the profession, that they aim to create a better world,” John F. Burns wrote in 2015 upon his retirement as chief foreign correspondent for the New York Times. “It is a handsome thing, but one that can foster a missionary complex — a hubris, even — that can favor a blindness to inconvenient facts to the advantage of others.”   (New York Times, 03.14.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“There’s always someone who thinks that if only we were crueler, if only we’d killed another million Vietnamese, then we would have won this war,” said Phil Klay, a novelist and a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq war. “If you reduce war to the satisfied feeling you get when you kill the enemy, it makes it a lot simpler and more satisfying.”  (New York Times, 03.15.26)

“[Jonathan Groff] has a real awareness of the people who’ve come before him," said Isaac Oliver, who wrote the speeches that the actor uses to introduce his portrayal of Bobby Darin. “He’s got a Ph.D. from the YouTube university of gay elders and icons.”  (New York Times, 03.15.26)

"Opportunism is contagious, but so is courage," writes Daniel Kehlmann, German author of The Director, about the Academy Awards ceremony.  "The question is not whether actors should become politicians but whether citizens who happen to be very visible will at a decisive moment refuse to play the role that every authoritarian leader assigns them: decorative proof that all is well." (New York Times, 03.15.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“If the U.S. is firing off so much ordnance against Iran, then they can’t use it against the Chinese in, say, two years, and it’s not going to be available for the Europeans against Russia,” said Ed Arnold, a European security analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, a research group in London. (New York Times, 03.16.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“This issue is not simply about Epstein or one man,” said Adam Howard, an education professor at Colby College who has studied prestigious private schools. “It is that these elite institutions often operate in a culture of quiet sponsorship and leverage and social networks. Most of us in the U.S. have no way of accessing these kind of networks that have one function and one function only: to make and remake elites.” (New York Times, 03.17.26)

“Anything that is considered extreme weather is some combination of the overall climate changes and the fluctuations in weather we have anyway,” said Mark A. Cane, a senior research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. “When the two line up, you get an extreme.”  (New York Times, 03.17.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“Air power is the U.S. drug of choice — we love to believe that it can achieve big political effects and also big military effects, yet the historical record doesn’t support that,” said Caitlin Talmadge, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who specializes in Gulf security issues. (New York Times, 03.19.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“The Iranians understand Israel and the United States want to destroy this material or take it out,” said George Perkovich, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the author of How to Assess Nuclear Threats in the 21st Century. “So presumably there are lots of decoy canisters, so when the Special Forces get down there, instead of 20 or so containers there are hundreds or thousands. They are going to do many things to bedevil anyone trying to get it.” (New York Times, 03.20.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“The beauty of Ramadan is that we break fast not by asking the person next to us of their name or their faith,” said NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani. “But simply by asking if they are hungry.” (New York Times, 03.22.26)

“The classic line of everybody, including myself, up to this point, was always, ‘[the Strait of Hormuz is] too big to fail,’ it will never close,” said Neil Crosby, head of oil research at Sparta, an energy market analysis firm. “Western or allied naval powers will never allow this to happen.” (New York Times, 03.22.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“I could bridge the gap between the people who created technology — the engineers, the bits-and-bytes people — and the people that use the technology,” Paul Brainerd, the developer of PageMaker, the first desktop publishing software said in 2009. “I was always bridging back and forth between those two groups.” (New York Times, 03.23.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“Part of [Banksy's] art, I realized, was getting out of trouble,” said Ivy Brown, the gallerist who had asked the daring artist to deface a meatpacking district billboard for Marc Jacobs clothing that showed a young man’s face with the tagline, “Boys Love Marc Jacobs.” (New York Times, 03.25.26)

“Heroes are elevated, and then the everyday people, the background player, or even the women who are the backbone of the movement, aren’t always talked about,” said Miguel Sandoval, a high school teacher in Los Angeles  “There’s something there for ethnic studies and history teachers to think about, which is: How do we move away from the sort of purification of individuals?” (New York Times, 03.25.26)

“What we are seeing from all sides — the United States, Iran and Israel — is a race to the bottom in which threats against civilian infrastructure are becoming normalized,” said Sarah Yager, the Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “This kind of rhetoric doesn’t just escalate tensions irresponsibly, it signals a dangerous willingness to erode the very rules designed to protect civilians in war.” (New York Times, 03.25.26)

“I don’t believe in the [Equal Rights Amendment] at all,” actress Valerie Perrine told the Los Angeles Times in 1980. “Women aren’t equal, they’re superior.” (New York Times, 03.25.26)

“It feels way too much of a risk and hassle to leave the U.S. right now,” said Alice Graham, a 46-year-old Boston woman who recently cancelled upcoming flight reservations to Europe and Japan. “Planes are dodging missiles in the sky and we started a war, which makes us a huge target.” (New York Times, 03.25.26)

*   *   *   *   *

"It’s not a geopolitical calculation that’s going to drive what Iran does eventually. It will be what’s in their hearts," said retired General Stanley McChrystal. (New York Times, 03.27.26)

“I thought of myself as a hunter-gatherer,” said David A. Ross whose jobs as director of major art museums in New York and San Francisco required him to raise funds from the global elite, including Jeffrey Epstein. “Some donors were great, wonderful people who became friends — people who cared deeply about art. Some were horrible assholes with just unbelievably troglodyte points of view, and I was the karma wash.” (New York Times, 03.27.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“These large-scale protest events make people feel like they’re not alone — it’s like collective therapy,” said Dana R. Fisher, a professor at American University who studies civic engagement. " . . . what we really need to do is the work of defending democracy in our communities,” she added. “It’s not about inflatable costumes. It’s not about clever signs.” (New York Times, 03.29.26)

“Iran won’t fall with missiles and drones,” said Rebaz Sharifi, a commander of forces under the Kurdistan Freedom Party, an insurgent group that has been trying to topple the theocracy for more than four decades. “Iran needs a force to enter its territory, give hope to the people, and support them in overthrowing the regime at this time. That force should be the Kurds.” (New York Times, 03.29.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“In our age of uncertainty, and in our age of great anxiety, is a thirst and hunger for God and stability that faith brings to people’s lives,” said Archbishop Mitchell Thomas Rozanski of St. Louis where the number of new Catholic converts is higher than in any year since 2016.  (New York Times, 03.30.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“We can all fondly remember the 99-cent shrimp cocktail and a dollar a gallon for gas,” said Derek Stevens, who owns several casinos in downtown Las Vegas, “but the reality is that’s in the past and it’s not coming back.” (New York Times, 03.31.26)

The Charterhouse of Parma (5*)

Who woulda thunk that a "himbo" could be the faux hero of a classic French novel?  Or that Fabrizio would be an early member of the 27 Club's literary equivalent?  But that's what makes Stendahl's 1839 masterpiece--450 pages dictated in a mere 52 days--so entertaining, even today.

Sure, the convoluted politics can be a little difficult to parse for readers without advanced degrees in European history.  The Charterhouse of Parma mostly takes place shortly after the Napoleonic wars in what is now northern Italy but during the author's lifetime was ruled off and on by the French and Austrians (guess which conquerors the locals, for the most part, preferred?). Stendahl pretends to be telling an authentic Italian story from the perspective of a Frenchman, a conceit that affords him the opportunity for plenty of fond stereotyping.

Italian hearts are, far more than ours in France, tormented by the suspicions and wild ideas which a burning imagination presents to them, but on the other hand their joys are far more intense and more lasting.

*  *  *  *

Once her vengeance was determined, she felt her strength; each step her mind had taken gave her a certain happiness. I am inclined to think that the immoral delight Italians experience in taking revenge is a consequence of their power of imagination; people of other countries do not, strictly speaking, forgive; they forget.

We meet the noble Fabrizio, the apple of his aunt Gina's eye, just as he leaves home to join Napoleon's army, alienating his father and older brother, both conservative sticks-in-the-mud who prefer to hole up in their castle near Lake Cuomo and enjoy the status quo.  It takes only a farcical chapter or two to realize that the rebellious teenager is a blithering, well-meaning idiot who has to rely on the kindness of women for tips about how to survive, including where to point his saber (heh, heh) if not how to mount his steed.

Nonetheless, he persists although his "service" at the Battle of Waterloo limits his career prospects upon his return to Parma.  Thanks to Count Mosca, a powerful patron enamored of his aunt Gina, Fabrizio is groomed for the "violet stockings" worn by archbishops.  This does not prevent him from skirt chasing, however, which results in a peculiar crisis of conscience for a man who presumably will take a vow of chastity.  Balzac's silence about this hypocrisy reflects a deep understanding of human nature as well as his own rejection of religious dogma in favor of the rationalism of the Enlightenment.

“But how odd it is,” [Fabrizio] would occasionally tell himself, “that I’m not susceptible to that exclusive and impassioned preoccupation known as love? Among all the relationships chance has bestowed upon me at Novara or in Naples, have I ever met a woman whose presence, even in the first days, I preferred to a ride on a fine new horse? Is what they call love,” he added, “only one more lie? Doubtless I love the way I have a good appetite at six o’clock! And could it be this rather vulgar propensity which our liars have made into Othello’s jealousy and Tancred’s passion? Or must I assume I am constituted differently from other men? Why should it be that my soul lacks this one passion? What a singular fate is mine!”

Singular indeed.  The further machinations of his aunt (now the wealthy Duchess of Sanseverina in a sham marriage arranged by Count Mosca) in the wake of a roadside altercation, propel an often breathless plot of page-turning intrigue and incident.  While Fabrizio intuitively understands the need to keep on Gina's good side, her flirtatiousness gives him serious pause because he believes they are related by blood.  Convention keeps the Duchess from hooking up with the hottie she loves but not from ruthlessly protecting him in a small but hostile court that recalls Peyton Place if all its residents had studied The Prince.

But the Frenchly amoral Duchess shares the same insecurities that plague women in Hollywood nearly two centuries later.  Here's how she reacts when she realizes that Fabrizio has finally fallen in love with Clélia, a much younger member of the court, in highly unusual circumstances.

A woman of forty is no longer something for the men who have loved her in her youth! Now I shall find no more than the pleasures of vanity; and do they make life worth living? 

After nine months of being locked away in a tower like a fairy princess, Fabrizio finally becomes a man, courting Clélia with sign language as she tends to her aviary. Unfortunately, the piety of his beloved--who promises the Madonna never to see Fabrizio again if he ever gets out of jail--and Gina's obsession with her nephew complicates the young couple's future.  

Desperate to keep him alive by any means necessary, she enlists Clélia  to prevent Fabrizio from being poisoned by his jailers, who include her clueless father.  In an act of supreme self-sacrifice Gina also finally clarifies the nature of her relationship with Fabrizio to Count Mosca so that her protector will continue scheming on his behalf .

People will have told you that I loved Fabrizio, for I know that such rumors have run through this wicked court.” Her eyes shone for the first time in this conversation, when she uttered the word wicked. “I swear to you before God, and on Fabrizio’s life, that there has passed between him and myself not the smallest thing which the eye of a third person might not have tolerated. Nor shall I tell you that I love him altogether like a sister; I love him by instinct, if I may put it that way. I love in him his courage, so simple and so perfect that one might say that he is not even aware of it himself; I recall that this sort of admiration began upon his return from Waterloo. He was still a child, despite his seventeen years; his great anxiety was to know if he had truly participated in the battle, and in case he had, if he could say he had fought, since he had marched to the attack of no enemy battery or column. It was during the serious discussions we had together on this important subject that I began to discern a perfect grace in my nephew. His great soul revealed itself to me; how many knowing lies would a well brought up young man have proffered in his place! In short, if he is not happy I cannot be happy. There, that is the phrase which perfectly describes the state of my heart; if it is not the truth, at least it is all the truth I can perceive.”

Stendahl, who died in 1842, just three years after the publication of The Charterhouse of Parma, filled his final novel to the brim with a lifetime of mostly 19th-century experience that somehow remains relentlessly contemporary, even for gay men (AIDS poet Thom Gunn called the book his favorite at one point). He juggles the consciousnesses of his fully drawn characters as dexterously as he scatters aperçus.

The presence of danger gives a touch of genius to the reasoning man, places him, so to speak, above his own level: in the imaginative man it inspires romances, bold, it is true, but frequently absurd.

*  *  *  *

In despotic courts, the first skillful intriguer controls the Truth, as the fashion controls it in Paris.

*  *  *  *

But you will learn, my Prince, that to have received power from Providence no longer suffices in this day and age—it requires a great deal of intelligence and a strong character to succeed in being a tyrant.”

But most memorably of all, the sly, proto-feminist author has turned what first appears to be a picaresque novel about a callow young man into a story of unrequited love that gives pride of place to one of the literature's most beguiling women who also happens to be more action-oriented than most.  If I were directing the limited series--and Charterhouse literally screams for a tart and leisurely adaptation--I would license a Rolling Stones classic for the Duchess's final scene:  

You can't always get what you want

But if you try sometime, you'll find

You get what you need