Rome in the 1860s: the Saracinesca family, a marriage under strain, a forged claim to a title, and the Papal city in its last years before Italy takes it. Crawford lived above Sorrento and wrote more than forty books at a pace his publishers could not keep up with; this is the second of the Saracinesca novels, and the Roman aristocracy in it is drawn by a man who dined with them. Fifty-eight plates by painters including Telemaco Signorini and Antonio Rotta follow the old men, family quarrels, and Italian streets of the novel's world.
