He didn’t make me; he taught me how to finish the seam and vanish.

 “Anthony believed hair was sacred. To brush it, arrange it, lacquer it into place was not vanity but benediction. ‘The head,’ he told me, ‘is where you carry your name—your story, your crown.’ He had a comb for everyone—real princesses, imagined royalty, women fallen from favor, trembling boys. He knew which side to part your myth. Whatever frayed, he returned to the ritual: compose the crown. The people in this memoir are poetic survivors, with myth in their blood and longing in their bones. He showed me the seam that holds a life together, and the gentler art that follows: how to finish it, and vanish—leaving only light on the lacquer. And in the retelling of our story, I have found him again—not as he was, but as I needed him to be. Furious. Glittering. Impossible.”

 The lead gendarme looked Anthony up and down, trained disdain giving way to confusion. Nothing had prepared him for this: an apparition in Versace leopard print jeans, the large crystal Maltese cross choker, and a chinchilla coat worn like a coronation robe. “Messieurs,” Anthony  purred, menace braided with silk, “far be it from me to impede law and order. But whatever procedure you’re planning will nee to happen very fast. This demoiselle—my niece—does cannot miss her transatlantic flight.” He let the moment breathe. “And in this bag,” a tap on the LV duffel, “is the direct number for the Ministry of the Interior. Which I will now dial.” He didn’t blink. The gendarme turned to his men and barked, “On laisse tomber!” We’re dropping it. Rifles lowered;  uniforms vanished like choreography.

August had Paris molten; Anthony’s apartment stayed twilight-cool, smelling of cedar and old perfume. He knelt in a volcano of calling cards, then slid to the fireplace and pressed 'Play' on his ancient answering machine. A whirr, a click, a breath—then a voice, lacquered and breathy, poured like kirschwasser, from the dusty speaker: “Anthony—ici Ankella… Prinzessin von Hohenzollern. I am in Paris. May we meet? For my coiffure, please?” She was chic, he liked to say, in the way barbed wire is chic—Chernobyl, if it had accessorized.

He hugged the machine like a relic, exhaled, and smiled.

“I’m not mad,” he said. “I’m magnificent. She’s a real princess. She left a message. On tape. For me.”

“‘To place a final bow on it,’ Gigi said, ‘I consulted Her Royal Highness, the Comtesse de Paris. Her husband—the Fons Honorum—granted our request.’ She let the name fall: ‘Le Comte de Paris - the pretender to the Throne of France.’

She quoted his message, airy and absolute: ‘The Fersens were Comtes of proven loyalty… with the lineage affirmed, and this young artist honoring the name—let him be known as Comte de Fersen. France remembers the house with affection.’

She pressed a crimson box into my hands: a gold chevalière from Mellerio, a winged fish taking a ring. ‘Noblesse de rang,’ she smiled. ‘But the measure is noblesse de cœur—always.’

A courtesy became a key; a crest, a small light in the pocket.”