Michael was all too conscious of his condition, and when he was in his grimmest moods, he would say, I am a doomed man, though there was a hint of the messianic in this too: he was doomed as all messiahs are doomed. (When my friend Ren Weschler visited him once and asked how he was, Michael replied, I am in Little Ease. Ren looked baffled, and Michael had to explain that Little Ease was a cell in the Tower of London so small that a man could neither stand up nor lie down in it, could never find any ease.)