Renzi, who had hoped for Merkel’s blessing on his requests to the European Commission for the time and financial flexibility to rescue the beleaguered economy he inherited, put it this way: “Dostoyevsky wrote that beauty will save the world. Let’s see if it can save Europe, too.” (Not precisely. It was part of an insolent question posed to the eponymous hero of “The Idiot.”)

Renzi and Merkel are the European Union’s odd couple. Like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, they get along.