The Village of Stresa, Lake Maggiore, Italy,

September 7, 1960

Domenico de Grazia was a gentleman of the old school, a refined and courtly patrician, a man of breeding, poised and self-assured. Many of the simpler folk, out of respect for his lineage and his impeccable bearing, still spoke of him as il conte, the count, although the nobility had been abolished more than fifteen years before. And some took their hats off when he passed, but this was a practice he gently discouraged.

Despite his reputation, Domenico knew himself to be a shy man, uncomfortable with intimacy and easily embarrassed. At this moment he was finding it impossibly hard to make the proposal that had brought him to the modest apartment of Franco and Emma Ungaretti. For half an hour he had sat in their living room making stilted small talk, while they plainly wondered, with many glances between them, what had brought him there. Emma was his niece, his brother Cosimo’s only child. Franco was her husband, whom Domenico employed, out of an admittedly grudging charity, as a part-time gamekeeper on the de Grazia estate.

It was not often that Domenico visited them, although once upon a time, and not so long ago at that, he had doted on Emma. But Franco Ungaretti he could barely force himself to tolerate. Emma was such a pretty, good-natured girl too; to think of the husbands from whom she might have had her choice… but that was neither here nor there.

With his second glass of Amaretto (which he detested) came the resolve he needed. He put down the glass and took a deep breath. “My children,” he said-and immediately regretted the choice of words, given the strange proposition he was about to make-“as you know, my wife has recently suffered a second miscarriage-”

Emma began to murmur something, but Domenico, determined to carry on now that he had gotten started, talked over her. “-and Dr. Luzzatto has told us she can risk no further pregnancies.”