To find out how these events look from Brussels or Strasbourg, or what seemed important to the public in other European countries, has become almost impossible. It is like trying to listen to Radio Free Europe in the bad old days, through the jamming. IT'S SUNDAY evening and I'm standing in the police office at Pisa airport - see this column, passim - trying to explain that my bag's been stolen. Passport, ticket, driving licence, cheque book, credit cards, jewellery, camera, I've lost the lot. The theft happened at the railway station in Florence but the police there said it would take so long to fill in the forms that I'd miss my plane to London. So here I am, urgently needing to fill in a crime report - the delightfully named denuncia - and stranded. If Charles is ever crowned, it could well be at a similar age.

In the intervening years, the bishops may have come to a different view on the suitability of a divorced woman becoming a divorced man's consort And this time, at least we'll know that they're in love.. Unlike his great uncle, Edward VIII, who recognised it, and to hell with the consequences, Charles was always mindful of his duty as a future King. As a result, the best Camilla can probably expect is to continue her peaceful life as his mistress, just as her great grandmother, Alice Keppel was to his great great grandfather, Edward VII.But there is still another possibility. That affair was three years old when Edward ascended the throne at the age of 60. Her delightful response - "oh, darling, easier than falling off a chair" - is the sort of thing one imagines Lady Diana Spencer might have said before the ghastly reality of her life set in. With Diana in mind, the next few lines of the conversation are worth repeating. Charles: "You suffer all those indignities and tortures and calumnies." Camilla: "Oh, darling, don't be silly I'd suffer anything for you That's love It's the strength of love.

Night-night."In 1981, when pressed by a television reporter on the occasion of his engagement, Charles was unable to grapple with the concept of falling in love. The tragedy of this story is that Charles had already stumbled into true and lasting love, but failed to recognise it. While Diana had been bored by dinner-table conversations about history, architecture, and the environment, Camilla was interested, adroit and entertaining. Unlike the fashion-conscious and disco-mad Diana - her rival has never been particularly fussed in these departments - Camilla is happy to have refashioned herself in his image.Between discussing tampons and tits during the late-night Camillagate discussion Charles had his own rather pompous way of putting this: "Your great achievement is to love me," he said. By then she had been "finished" in Switzerland and Paris and was already a confident Sixties swinger while Charles was introspectively splitting wood and feeding pigs in the Australian outback.Her wedding in 1973 was one of the occasions of the year; as Camilla glided down the aisle of the Guards Chapel with diamonds in her hair, none of the 800 or so guests, including the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, could have imagined that the bride that hot summer's day would eventually resume her affair with the unmarried Prince; it would have been inconceivable that she could play such an instrumental part in arranging Charles's own wedding in 1981, and then resume their physical relationship when that marriage had broken down.The passion continued, it seems, because, unlike Diana, Camilla was able to shed her light-headed antecedents - she is not known to have picked up a book in earnest until Charles came on the scene - and share his life and interests, painting, music and gardening, as well as the hunting, shooting and fishing that Diana always abhorred.

Certainly, she was much in demand during her debutante season in 1964 - the gossip columnist Nigel Dempster was present at her coming-out cocktail party, and describes her as "smashing, funny, with a great sense of humour". She withstood the cold-bath regime of her first school, Dumbrells, with more equilibrium than Charles at Gordonstoun, by which time Camilla had moved to Queen's Gate School in South Kensington, London where she fenced, rode, bypassed any serious academic endeavour and, according to a former classmate, was a "very hoity-toity madam, and always looked great".Those looks have been much remarked upon. "Chips" Channon also said of Wallis Simpson that she was "jolly" and "plain"; most commentators say the same about Camilla, although few have ever seen her in the flesh, apparently an altogether different proposition than newspaper photographs might suggest. So how about it?"But as the date for Charles's own marriage loomed, so did her love for him deepen.