(FORTUNE Magazine) – I said to my lawyers, "Just, just...is there anything we can do to get past this stupid thing?" --Bill Gates

It's hard to feel sorry for a guy who's worth nearly $50 billion. But it's easy to see why Microsoft CEO Bill Gates has rarely felt so frustrated, and even impotent, as he has during the past year.

Not only have federal and state regulators, U.S. Senators, competitors, consumer advocates, industry trade groups, and even free-marketers like Robert Bork and Bob Dole been pushing Gates to change Microsoft's monopolistic ways, but he's suffered a few indignities too. Like being smacked in the face with a cream pie in Belgium. Or being accused of being mentally deranged during Ralph Nader's anti-Microsoft conference. Or having art critics say he overpaid by spending $30 million on Winslow Homer's Lost on the Grand Banks. Or enduring an embarrassing computer crash while publicly demonstrating Windows 98, the controversial upgrade to Microsoft's flagship operating system.

He's been vilified on the op-ed page of the New York Times for being naive about politics and promoting software as cynically as tobacco execs hawk smokes. Meanwhile, the steady drip, drip, drip of leaks to the media from antitrust gumshoes has come to resemble, in tone if not in method, Kenneth Starr's well-ventilated scrutiny of the power plays of another guy named Bill.

The pressure intensified until May 14, when Gates, a steely strategist often accused of brinksmanship, succumbed to blinksmanship. He postponed the shipment of Windows 98 to forestall antitrust lawsuits by both the Department of Justice and a bevy of state attorneys general. As FORTUNE went to press, lawyers from both sides were huddling in Washington.

Microsoft's notoriously aggressive business practices are what prompted scrutiny, and deservedly so. But in many ways Gates himself has become the issue. He's been called the robber baron of our times and compared with business villains like John D. Rockefeller. His public image has become a full-blown caricature--of a pushy dweeb with a bad haircut and an ego to match the size of his bank account. The fact is, Gates the tycoon is a work in progress, feeling his way through a set of circumstances that would be unimaginable for other CEOs. Lacking a playbook for this kind of mess, he is operating largely on his gut.

He is also learning to suppress traits that helped him build Microsoft into the business phenomenon of his generation. As the Microcriticism gets shrill, he's curbed his well-documented instinct to strike back with sarcasm. That's one reason he hasn't granted many freeform on-the-record interviews of late--with the exception of the one that follows.

An inveterate quibbler, Gates could've been an excellent lawyer, had he chosen to follow in his father's profession. Those abilities have served him well, helping him pick apart new products and keep Microsofties at the top of their game. But his mastery of all kinds of minutiae sometimes blinds him to the larger, vaguer gestalt of his current predicament. Even though he really isn't in it for the money, the guy's almost obscene wealth has made it impossible for him to avoid the trappings and isolation such wealth imposes. That's too bad, because when he's being himself, Gates can be refreshingly straightforward, especially for a bigtime CEO.

Does anything take his mind off the weightier matters? His 2-year-old daughter, Jennifer, helps. Says he: "She's a real chatterbox now. The other day I overheard her sitting in her room, practicing how to say no." Given what's been going on recently, she sounds like a chip off the old block.