Almost 16 years ago on a Saturday afternoon in Rome, as the team of the Republic of Ireland prepared to face Italy in one of the quarter-finals of the World Cup, Charles J Haughey arrived at the ambassador's residence for a small reception.
As he moved among the guests, he exuded the aura of someone on whom nothing was lost. He was full of clipped banter with some, offering others, including myself, a slow and studied disregard. Like a number of journalists at that time, I had been writing pieces which did not please him.
Suddenly, without warning, a journalist who seemed to know him well steered him directly towards me and asked him if he knew me. His face was a mask, his expression proud and impassive. He rose to the height of his own importance, which, despite his stature, was considerable.
He was beautifully dressed. He regarded me, daring me to speak. His expression suggested that he had larger things on his mind, affairs of State, perhaps, or even existential issues. He was formidable.
This steely silence lasted a whole half-minute until an Irish diplomat of the old school broke the ice by joining us but not saying a word either.
I could not bear it any longer. I pointed to the diplomat cheekily and then to the splendour of the rooms and said how marvellous it was for all of us that these fellows could live in such luxury.
Charles Haughey did not smile. He said, as though addressing the joint houses of the Oireachtas, that some of our embassy buildings and ambassadors' residences were very fine. That was correct, he said.
Indeed, he went on, our building in Paris was one of the finest in the city. Then he gave me a weary connoisseur's glance before pointing out that that was saying a great deal. He offered me in a withering glance a deep appreciation of the allure of Paris. And, he added, when he suggested that the Paris building be bought, there was an outcry by the same sort of people - he waved his hand suggesting smallness and worthlessness - who are attacking us now.
People like yourself, he said, issuing a wintry smile, and slowly turned, moving away.
He had managed to make clear that he took the long and the grand view, that he was not to be trifled with, and that nothing, not even on a day of celebration in Rome, would ever be forgotten.
Like an old Roman emperor, who had survived the wars, or a Greek philosopher, he made clear to his enemies that he thought they were fools, but that he himself drank from the cup of stoic wisdom.
He was the boy from Donnycarney who had learned to appreciate beauty, the man who could handle the grassroots of his party and know also where to buy exquisite shirts.
He was a master of the ambiguous aura, the masked expression, an almost French pomposity. He could convey Seán Lemass's pragmatism and feel at home also in de Valera's dreamy rhetoric. He was an accountant who managed some of the mystery and allure of Parnell.
Thus, for everything you could say about him the opposite was also true, and this will make him a godsend for future biographers and playwrights and novelists. He was the quintessential northside Dubliner who loved the Blasket Islands. He was a man who loved his family and loved also the good life.
He could both manage and mismanage the economy. He was both loyal and disloyal to his friends. He was reputed to be funny and brilliant in private, but could be the dullest public speaker.
He oversaw the restoration of some of the great buildings of Dublin city and the Temple Bar area; on the other hand, some of his best friends supported the destruction of the great Georgian city.
He was a great politician who never won an overall majority in the Dáil. He was, as a young minister, one of a team of young and brilliant Fianna Fáil politicians; as taoiseach, he did not re-create such a talented team.
He was in his personal life a liberal and generous man; as leader of Fianna Fáil, he allied himself with a deeply divisive abortion referendum and did not support the freedom to divorce. He was a pure Fianna Fáiler, but the first of its leaders to share power in a coalition government.
Ireland, for him, came in two guises. It was first an old country, whose image had been made in the likeness of the great artists. Thus he cared deeply about archaeology and paintings, and understood the value of the other arts. He sought to do what he could to improve things for artists.
But he also saw Ireland as an economy, and saw that a pact between the unions, the employers and the government was an essential way to prosperity. He put a great deal of energy into that.
As a widow's son, he knew that pensions mattered. I remember vividly the difference his budgets of 1968 and 1969 made to our house, also run by a widow. He backdated the increases and these were paid in a lump sum.
He had a vision of Ireland as a place where history had been important, but he had a deep respect for the present.
He understood that Northern Ireland could only be dealt with if the two sovereign governments worked together; he then destroyed this by opposing Thatcher on the Falklands War, losing her trust. His silence after the Arms Trial did not help him woo either the unionist community or those who saw no future in Irish nationalism.
He did the State some service, and then made that service seem tawdry and self-seeking by taking money from wealthy men. His excuse that he needed to devote his time to large matters, and thus left his private finances to be dealt with by minions, was part of his grand view of himself.
But he was right when he said that he held on to one asset, which grew in value year after year, his beautiful house and farm at Kinsealy, which proved, just like his own mystique, to be a very smart investment.
He remains one of the dominating and intriguing forces in Irish public life in the second-half of the century. His legacy as one of the architects of contemporary Ireland will be open to question and passionate debate for many years to come. It is not hard to imagine the withering glance the wily old prince would have given me had I mentioned even part of this to him that day in Rome. He would have known what to do.