What am I going to do with you? You're carousing all over New Orleans making a right nuisance of yourself: lurking around the Quarter and the Garden District, all man, all maneuvers and all mustache. Piracy! Smuggling! Bow ties! Unbelievable!
Why did you did you do it Thomy? Was the humble charm of designing streets and bath-houses too lowly? Was the making of one of the strangest, most wonderful, most sublime cities in the world not enough to sate your appetites? You, the classicist scholar, you the philanthropist, you the man who saw past race at a time when it was not considered. So ahead of your time, yet stooping to petty lies and criminality. This is a grand and glorious disappointment.
Maybe I'll forget you move back north and flirt with some city folk, or maybe I'll become one of those great New Orleans eccentrics and wander the streets in a veil made of satin, weeping over a good man who was as bad, bad, bad as the darkest secrets on the hottest nights. The war made a lot of men and took a lot of men. I'm sorry to say that it took all the good out of the Barthelemy Lafon, at least the one I used to know.
Farewell,
Retly Corm
Dear Pope Sixtus V,
You know your Eminence, I'd be lying if I said that I'd never written one of these to a Pope before. Mama always told me not to lie to the leader of the Catholics, and I follow that advice. I gotta hand it to you, you're a man who knows marketing. Now I know what you'll say, that this great re-structuring of the Roman streets isn't for profit, it's for the glory of God and typically I'd think that was just lip-service, but I bet you really mean it.
See, your holiness, I've seen Popes before who claim to be holy, but really, they're just in it for the money and the power. *cough Alexander VI cough* What? Oh nothing. Just got some Borgia stuck in my throat.Anyway, what I'm saying is that you saw a unique opportunity and took advantage of it. All of Europe is engulfed in a cataclysmic war, that is except Rome. So what do you do? You make Rome the #1 go-to site for all Catholics from everywhere. This may be anachronistic, but your Disney-land this town like none-other. It's smart. You make sure that every major church has a relic and that you can get from one to the other without a map. Then you build fountains and obelisks so the faithful, and maybe even the not-so, will gather around and use public spaces, bringing a sense of community. If the Reformationists want a battle of art and ideas, you give them the best you can give. Rome will Baroque the
Now, if only you could lay off the Inquisition and the whole Spanish Armada thing, we might actually have a decent Renaissance Papacy going.
Best,
Retly Corm
