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I've never been a fan of Conrad Black. Even before he got into legal trouble, he offended me; not by being rich and pompous, but by arrogantly slagging both working journalists and Canada, two things I obviously hold dear.

But lately, as news leaked out about how Lord Black is faring in a Florida slammer, five months into his 6½-year sentence for mail fraud and other illegal acts, I've got a new appreciation for the man.

Lord Black is radiating one of life's great qualities - resilience. Anyone who expects him to crumple as his legal options peter out (another appeal was recently denied and the only unlikely avenue left is the U.S. Supreme Court, or an even more improbable presidential pardon) should take their schadenfreude and shove it.

According to Britain's Daily Mail and other reports, Mr. Black is surviving nicely. Apparently nicknamed "Lordy" by his fellow inmates, he is working in the library, giving standing-room-only lectures in American history, even managing to file columns to his old newspaper, the National Post:

"Many of the people here are quite interesting, and I have had no unpleasantness with anyone," he recently wrote.

Honestly, he has said far worse about Hollinger shareholder meetings than he has about his time in prison.

Allegedly, he has even conscripted a cellmate to act as his butler and clothes washer. (Proving good help is not as hard to find as the privileged often complain it is.)

The article in the Daily Mail was accompanied by an oddly poignant picture of the once-fastidious press baron posing with another man.

Lord Black's dark work shirt is untucked, and a pant leg is carelessly rolled up. But he is smiling the exact smile he sported at board meetings and soigné social events.

You don't have to believe in Lord Black's innocence - and most of us don't - to give him his due for gracefully surviving what many of us would find unbearable.

Whatever it is that keeps him going - his faith, his self-delusion, his unshakable conviction he did nothing wrong - he has found a way, at least in these early days, to be upbeat.

Greater and much more honourable men than Lord Black have emerged after years in prison under far more noble circumstances with their characters unbroken, strong enough to change the world.

But even disgraced press barons can have their day in prison.

I don't think that when Lord Black emerges he will be Gandhi, but maybe, especially if he has to go the distance, he won't be the same superior, entitled person he once was, no matter who does his laundry inside.

In another blow to the schadenfreude crowd, Lord Black's much gossiped about marriage to writer Barbara Amiel is also demonstrating resilience.

Even that hard-bitten Daily Mail article grudgingly conceded that Ms. Amiel, now nearing 70, has loyally hung in. Despite being a "social pariah" in Palm Beach, Fla., Lady Black has based herself there, making the frequent four-hour trip to visit her husband, even laughing at herself occasionally in her Maclean's column, at the oddities of being a prison wife.

Not long ago, she wrote about having to take off her "Bali minimizer bra" and frantically rip the wiring out of it with her teeth so she could pass through the security system to see her husband. (She even managed to impart the helpful hint that this particular bra is a great brand. I had never heard of it but, needing a bra, I went out and bought one and she's right. It's terrific and costs next to nothing. Thanks, Barbara.)

Yet in her case, there has also been wild anger and despair.

In some marriages, when big trouble hits, one partner totes the emotional bale, allowing the other, perhaps more afflicted, one to be more serene. It's Conrad in prison who is smiling, while Barbara prowls the perimeter, raging, as she did in a recent cri de coeur in Maclean's in which she decried the injustices of the U.S. judicial system, and claimed ludicrously that it was mainly other people's envy of their marriage and success that did them in.

Her protestation that her husband did not do one illegal thing is too much to swallow. But she will never acknowledge anything different, not just out of self-interest but because she is (surprise) a passionately devoted wife.

The longing for her husband and the comforts of their marriage waft out of some of Ms. Amiel's recent writing.

So, I don't care if she is living in semi-reduced grand style in a probably hocked-up-to-its-eyeballs mansion in Palm Beach, or still able to afford her Diane von Furstenberg coat.

Her life sounds like hell. So does his. But they are still together, making the best of it.

You have to give them that.