THE SWEET STYLISH PILLAGE OF THE NEW BARABARIANS

"It's a wedding!" exclaims the younger of the matronly Peck & Peck pair who are struggling to keep their Saturday's shopping in its many genteely undersized shopping bags as they shuffle along towards their Park Avenue homes past the long, black lines of limousines and liveried drivers parked beside the hotel door. "Someone must have gotten married!" she adds, while her friend agrees. And really, it's the only apt conjecture on this perfect, temperate, blue May afternoon, as to why an ominous unbroken row of Cadillacs covers the sunny side of Sixty-sixth Street. Spring is, after all, the time for marriage, the time of fertility and renewal in all of nature, and so, naturally, these black limousines, which in other weather or on other days might very well seem funereal, must be here for a wedding, a proper spring occasion.

The polished brass revolving hotel door spins at last (the procession is already twenty minutes late) to expel into the sunlit, wedding atmosphere as wintery and funereal a creature as ever walked. Black haired, black-jacketed, and slightly disheveled, to the uninitiated he might appear to be a ghastly intrusion on spring in all its glory. Happily, one supposes, Mesdames Peck & Peck are safely 'round the corner and down the avenue, turning their parcels over to doormen, secure in their fantasies of tender young brides and trim, pinkcheeked grooms. Keith Richards, to the uninitiated, might still remain the embodiment of the Prince of Darkness, but to those who've watched him for many years (albeit from afar), there have been subtle and yet startling changes. In fact, spring appears to have shed some light his way as well as ours.