“Charlie found himself affecting the Emperor's formal speech patterns, as if somehow he had been transported to a royal court where a nobleman was distinguished by the crumbs in his beard and the royal guard were not above licking their balls.”

“But where, says some, is the King of America? I'll tell you. Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain.”

“He recounted how, after the last of Charlemagne's forty-seven victorious campaigns, when he was returning from Saxony, a comet flashed across the sky and the Emperor's horse shied and threw him to the ground. The great Frankish Emperor had fallen so violently that his sword belt had been torn off him and the Spear, which he was clasping in his left hand, had been hurled some twenty feet away from him. At the same time there were earth tremors in the Royal Palace at Aachen, and the word "Princeps" had mysteriously faded from the red ochre inscription high up on a central beam in the Cathedral, which had formerly read 'Karolus Princeps.' Charlemagne himself had taken little notice of these portents, which his courtiers had taken to be a prophecy of his imminent death. In Einhard's own words: 'He refused to admit that any of these events could have any connection ith his own personal affairs.' Yet the 70-year-old Emperor drew up his last will and testament just in case these portents were correct. And they were!”

“You did not bring down two of the royal guard in an unceremonious heap because the woman in the middle tripped.”

“Do you know the anecdote about Rubens? He was serving Holland as Ambassador to Spain and used to spend the afternoon in the royal gardens before his easel. One day a jaunty member of the Spanish Court passed and remarked, ‘I see that the diplomat amuses himself sometimes with painting,’ to which Rubens replied, ‘No, the painter amuses himself sometimes with diplomacy!”

“So he explored, explored within himself, scanning himself with a lamp, as if it were not himself at all but some strange monster that he had been commanded to guard.”