The Silent Duchess

Uncle husband was seldom to be seen on the building site. He could not bear bricks, dust, lime.

By the age of forty he was still unmarried and, apart from the brothel he would sometimes resort to, he did not seem to know what love was. The only person he felt at ease with was his sister Maria

Yet they have had five children, and three who died before birth, making eight in all: eight times they have encountered each other beneath the sheets without a kiss or a caress.

she reads too many books and this makes her seem cut off and ‘a little bit mad’, as she says to her friends to excuse her.

her grandmother Giuseppa

Agata has continued to wither.

Fiammetta has become Canoness of the Carmelite Convent of Santa Teresa. She wears her thick chestnut hair imprisoned inside a wimple that she sometimes tears off, especially when she is doing the cooking.

Signoretto has become a senator, just as he had planned. After years of being a bachelor he has married a marchioness, already widowed,

Twenty-five years have passed since then. Geraldo died in an accident: a carriage crashed into a wall, his body was flung through the air on to the ground,

Signoretto, Geraldo, Carlo, Fiammetta, Agata, the beautiful Agata, who seemed then to be destined for a future as a queen.