The bailiff led me out. I felt flushed and dizzy. It was a warm day, and perhaps the warmth got to me. A car backfired.

The ground rushed at my head.

It happened in slow motion, outside, with the television cameras looking on, there in front of the Palazzo Madama, which had been the residence of the princess of Austria before it was gutted and remodeled on behalf of the Italian democracy. My knees gave way. My hand grazed the shoulder of the guard at my side.

“I’m falling,” I said.

I fainted. Though some thought the moment had been staged, I hit the cobblestones hard enough. I heard the fuss around me. I lay on the ground with my purse open and my stockings split. I tried to get up, but things went black again, and in that blackness the news went out:

VITTORIA SWOONS IN FRONT OF PALAZZO MADAMA

They rushed me to the hospital. Two days later, on the doctor’s advice—and that of the party leaders—I was taken to a Catholic retreat, a place of convalescence. Around this time, I have been told, my picture first appeared for sale in the vendors’ booths outside the Forum.

19.

Il Sangue was in the heart of Rome at the top of Aventine Hill. Just outside the walls stood a medieval church with a statue of Pope Pius elevated in an outdoor vestibule. The good pope bowed his head, smiling in a way designed to evoke one of the beatitudes, I believe; but instead it had a punishing effect. A path led past the pope to a vista over the city. That first evening, I saw the nuns at the vista at sunset, gathered like birds in their winged habits.

My admittance had been arranged by the higher-ups in Orsini’s party. The idea, or so I was told, was to remove me from the scene in a way that would shame the committee from taking further action. The party had influence with the nuns’ confessor, Father Angiosti, and the priest had helped persuade the sisters to allow me in.

They gave me a small room, simply furnished, with a window overlooking the garden. I heard the sounds of birds in the morning and the nuns at matins. Though it wasn’t a place I would have chosen, I enjoyed the stiff bed and the bitter coffee. The convent wasn’t a place of escape, though, not really. Whatever intrigues I faced on the outside soon followed me in.

20.