Each time he arrived in Florence Marguerite looked anew at this man who was to be her husband as if to impress the fact upon herself by studying him as hard as possible. He was almost forty but sometimes she thought of him as a sixty-year-old who looked trimmer and younger; at other times he seemed thirtyish and prematurely bald, but a thirty-year-old who carried himself with authority and sobriety. The paradox went further: His monkish head, fringed by a narrow band of curly black hair, gave him a Franciscan air maliciously complemented by something furtive and foxy—and yes, lewd—in his small, dark eyes. He was a man of sensibility, a latinized young Spencer Tracy whose good looks had gone slightly askew, whose features gave the impression of perpetual caricature. But Alberto’s smile had grace and warmth and the hint of a genial satyr, and it was to this Pan who lurked in the monastic shadow that Marguerite was continually attracted.

Alberto liked her freshness. “You are like a child playing with Florence,” he would say fondly when he came to visit her and found her room packed like a corner of the straw-market with all manner of baskets, mats, hats, and flowers.

Marguerite would buy him beautiful things as she roamed the old streets: a box of lapis lazuli to keep on his desk; a little gold pen to write his poems; a white tooled-leather frame with her picture in it; a desk calendar that she had turned back to the February date of their engagement on the bridge to inscribe “Pazienza con Margherita” followed by weeks of “ancora pazienza.”

Her only reservation was that she felt he wanted not only to civilize but also to constrain her. Despite his garrulity and easy sociability, Alberto was inclined to a pessimistic view of things. “You optimistic Americans,” he’d say damningly—blaming her countrymen for the foolish simplicity they were inflicting everywhere—“no philosophical preparation at all, and you’re supposed to lead the world.”

Their civil marriage took place in May. They were married by the mayor of Venice, who wore a tricolor sash around his waist, and then there was a gay parade through the Piazza San Marco, scattering pigeons, to Florian’s, where they were toasted by Alberto’s sister Lauretta, some cousins, and the two friends of his who had been witnesses. It was a warm day and Marguerite had worn a plain white dress (called in those days a princesse) and short white gloves. Long hair, no jewelry, no matching wedding band for Alberto. Much laughter and good cheer . . . Alberto looking slim and elegant . . . his friends amused. And that was that.