Time for some answers! You will recall that I challenged you on Monday to tell me what verbal linkage there was between “The Mooch” (Anthony Scaramucci, President Trump’s director of communications for ten days before being fired for using some heavy-duty profanity) and a famous novel set in the time of the French Revolution, Scaramouche (1921), the name of the dashing hero who is described in the first sentence of the book thusly: “He was born with the gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad.”
You Googlers have the answers by now. Scaramouche is by Rafael Sabatini, world-famous writer in his time of swashbuckling adventure tales—ideal fare for Hollywood flicks, both silents and “talkies.” You might just find Scaramouche, Captain Blood or The Sea Hawk (Errol Flynn gloried in such roles) or some other film version of them on Turner Classic Films some late night. The prolific Sabatini died in Switzerland in February of 1950 and is buried there. His tombstone reads: “He was born with the gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad.”
Sic transit Gloria mundi.