“And tell me, is it true she has a hairy wart here, on her lip?”

“A wart?”

“Hairy, here.”

“I never noticed one. But no, who told you that?”

“I imagined it. As far as I’m concerned, Roncella must have a hairy wart on her lip. I always seem to see it when I read her things. And tell me: her husband? What’s her husband like?”

“Just drop it!” Raceni replied impatiently. “He’s not for you.”

“Thank you very much!” Dora said. “I want to know what he’s like. I imagine him rotund. . . . Rotund, isn’t he? For heaven’s sake, tell me he’s rotund, blond, ruddy, and . . . not mean.”

“All right: that’s the way he’ll be, if it makes you happy. Now, please, can’t we be serious?”

“About the banquet?” Signora Barmis asked again. “Listen, darling: Silvia Roncella is no longer for us. Your little dove has flown too too high. She has crossed the Alps and the sea and will go to make herself a nest far far away, with many golden straws, in the great literary journals of France, Germany, and England…. How can you expect her to lay any more little blue eggs, even if very tiny ones, like this … on the altar of our poor Muses?”

“What eggs! What eggs!” Raceni said, shaking himself. “Not dove eggs, not an ostrich egg. Signora Roncella wont write for any magazine again. She’s devoting herself entirely to the theater.”

“To the theater? Really?” exclaimed Signora Barmis, her curiosity aroused.

“Not to act!” Raceni said. “That would be the last straw! To write.”

“For the theater?”

“Yes. Because her husband . . .”

“Right! Her husband . . . what’s his name?”

“Boggiolo.”

“Yes, yes.