Nice 'mail from Phil this morning, with an enclosed snapshot of himself holding a stovetop espresso machine, asking me if I remember. I'll call him this morning from Kristen's. What is the moral of Marie Antoinettte's sad history? That, as soon as you see the Abyss widening at your feet, you should head for Austrian territory. Don't bother having a carriage built to get you there. Just go. And that (a widening Abyss), of course, is how I view the (forget the War on) Reign of Terror that the Bushies are unleashing. Kristen doesn't get it. Marianne doesn't even, quite, get it. I suppose that speaks well for them. Marcus is getting it, but, like most of America, he can't bear to believe it, and he doesn't have the intellectual resources (He's never read--couldn't curb his petulant impatience long enough to understand if he did--'The Screwtape Letters' or the second book of 'Paradise Lost') to comprehend the thing in principle. As my Dear Master has said, being a lunatic in a world of sane people is exactly the same condition as being the only sane person in a world of lunatics.