They wouldn’t live together now except during the last year: the one when, following customs handed down unrevised, the mother, rather than die under the eyes of the old servant who had always been with her—and who in fact was her only friend—would have to confront that tremendous, ultimate human experience before a young stranger who knew nothing

Marriage was a way of leaving; she had only to be patient for two more months. But the life that Andrea promised her was another prison. He at the store, she at home with the maid, the mother-in-law who would come to visit, bringing her knitting. Christmas and Easter in the Lanziani house with the tolling of the pendulum. After dinner, father and

Nowhere does one read better than in the English countryside. In Sweden, perhaps: there the days are shorter and even more boring …

At the Grimaldi she had been betrayed by the illusion of a rebirth. She had felt young in a way that she never had been, as the only daughter of old parents who lived like old people. Andrea couldn’t understand that she herself, pretending to be something else, believed she was that; she wanted to experience an age that her parents, because of

“No longer will any woman fear the advancing years. It’s terrible to see our body wither little by little, the once slender figure become a graceless mass, the skin sag, lose its youthful glow. And yet going forward we improve ourselves: we are born female and become women, over time. Time frightens us because of men. When each of us has her own

The woman with a past couldn’t be her: twenty-five years old, low-heeled shoes, boarder at the Grimaldi institute. Yet she realized that nothing can destroy the past: you conceal it, you hide it, no one knows it apart from you, and you’ll never talk about it. But one day you will talk about it: you yourself will dig it up, you’ll realize that it’s

Better to return to Rome. Sell the furniture, collect a little money, and show up before Sister Lorenza. “Forgive me, Sister, have the Mother forgive me.” Then she would enter her friends’ rooms by surprise, while they were studying around the oil lamp, saying: “Make room for me next to you.” What a moment it would be, how moving! She had always

She was wearing a new dress, but these days clothes no longer gave her confidence. “It looks good,” Andrea said, and that was all. In the blink of an eye the new dress became an old dress.

Maurice didn’t know that in Milan there was Horsch. Horsch had the key to the apartment and now was coming every night. Without him, Xenia would never have set foot in Nice. In those few days, she had discovered something that poverty had kept her from enjoying: youth. She was only twenty-three, but she wasn’t supposed to get used to the taste of