‘If the Signora knew …’ one of her workers said to her in the shop.

‘What is it?’ she asked, disturbed.

‘Nothing,’ she said, just to say something.

‘But tell me, maybe you met him somewhere last night?’

The shop-girl burst out laughing and disappeared into the back room, humming. Elvira looked at her hands, which she had ruined by washing so many sheets and towels the day before. She was worried. She had heard from a friend of hers that Arturo was considered a man with a future and, one of these days, would be able to give up the modest position he now occupied. My God, how would she manage? She, too, would make a reputation, would build a great fashion house in Milan. There was no other way: she had to keep up with him. Not stay behind. What a surprise Marchesa Y had that night when she saw the hat with feathers arrive (the young cavalry captain would spur his horse to a little jump of pleasure, a nice hop! hop! in honour of the marchesa), which she had ordered just the day before! And how refined it was! And how it suited her! And how majestic she was! The next day, the large marchese, sitting in the café with the silver knob of his cane in his hands, saw his wife’s fluttering feathers through the smoke rings from his very aromatic cigar. The gentlemen complimented him with a wink. Later, the ladies flooded into the shop: ‘What a beautiful hat you made for the marchesa! We want one that’s just the same but doesn’t cost so much, we don’t have a lot to spend.’ The city was invaded by so many feathers in luscious colours, and an unusual softness flowed through it; the men, touching the gold watches in the pockets of their waistcoats, eyed the women happily. They passed by, swinging their hips slightly, just revealing an aching foot, feathers in the wind and bunches of violets pinned to their chests.

Picking violets one day in early spring, in the meadows outside the city, she had slipped, and a man with a handsome bearing had said to her: ‘What nice legs, Signora!’ He helped her up and between one compliment and the next squeezed her arm hard. She had let him take her home. Her old aunt, preparing dinner, observed: ‘You have a big rip in your sleeve. At your age, thirty, do you have to be followed about on the street?’ She blushed, thinking that someone had torn her sleeve. At thirty she wasn’t yet married, and though she was an attractive woman that didn’t keep others from laughing at her behind her back.

Once, at seventeen, she went for a walk alone with a young medical student. He stank of tobacco, had a nice tie and bad teeth. For seven days he had waited for her to emerge from the workshop of her first teacher: an old dressmaker, a friend from her mother’s youth. The teacher was still going to the Carnival parties, in the company of a seventy-year-old senator who liked to enjoy himself or to be seen enjoying himself. On those occasions he had a little dinner prepared at home, including meat pie, aspic, fruit tart, red wine from his farm in the hills, Sassolino liqueur. The porter, who dressed as a servant for the occasion, brought the dinner basket to the theatre, and served the senator and the dressmaker in the rear of the box. Although she was old, the wine emboldened her, and she climbed over the balustrade and descended into the orchestra half undressed. For two days she didn’t come to the workshop, and the girls knew that she was sobering up from the dinner.