Then there are questions that are not so much difficult as awkward.  "Are you kidding?" for example, springs readily to mind and all too often to the lips while sadly being nearly always ill-advised.  ("No really, amusing as it is to make jokes about the passing of a loved one, as a matter of fact I'm not kidding, but thanks for asking.")

Not asking is one approach; by the same token, of course, sometimes asking is simply not an option.  I recall the case of a dear friend who confided in me that all she could do in a particular circumstance, after a brief but vivid assessment of the matter at hand, so to speak, was to bury her face in the pillow to muffle her screams.  I must confess, however, that this was one occasion in which the question, "Are you kidding?" as it referred to the source of her dismay and discomfort, was not unjustified.  All of us enlightened by her answer henceforth gained a new and profound respect for the individual she subsequently went on to marry. 

But to continue, and setting aside the rhetorical question of why we still call our friend's husband "Lethal Weapon," there remains the very interesting but thorny issue of what might be termed questions of an aesthetic nature.  "Is it beautiful?" "Is it valuable?"  "Is it good?" -- queries such as these inevitably open up that old Aristotelian can of worms and opinion and, unless you are among the most devoted of friends or the most diplomatic of critics, provoke the sort of dialogue which, alas, is almost guaranteed to end badly, especially if the question pertains to anything of your own doing or making.  Just as a doting parent rarely asks one's opinion regarding their offspring's physical appearance or personal conduct (unless in the strictly rhetorical fashion, eg, "Isn't he/she adorable?" in which case see above, as being outside the scope of this investigation), so should one exercise extreme caution when seeking the answer to any question of the goodness or quality of one's personal creations and efforts.  Moreover, the replies one does receive -- "You were fantastic, the best I ever had, the most brilliant thing I've ever seen, read, felt, heard, tasted," or "No, it was absolutely not your fault, it could have happened to anyone, no one is blaming you," and etc. -- should not, strictly speaking, be given too much credence nor taken as absolute truth or proof against any future argument to the contrary.

Free advice, when offered in response to questions of almost any kind, whether legal, financial, moral or medical, is in my experience often worth about as much as one has paid, which is to say, nothing; unsolicited advice tends to be of even less value.  Unless, obviously, you trust your source.  And even then, oddly enough sometimes when I ask I also wonder to myself whether I really want to know.         

And therefore, as regards the question of what ought to happen to the Villa Trianon (see previous posts), that marvelous creation of Elsie de Wolfe's, located on the Boulevard Saint-Antoine and backing up, as they say, on the Parc de Versailles and the Hameau of Marie-Antoinette (it is said that the outbuildings associated with the Villa were originally part of the Queen's romantically bucolic getaway), and whose fate now hangs in the balance, one may well ask, "Can it be saved?"  and "Is it worth the effort, and the money?" 

I'm not absolutely certain I know the answers to these questions, my darling.  I don't know the asking price, to begin with, or even if there is an asking price.