Dr. Verdile seemed to think you could simply walk out after having made some kind of loose verbal accord with your husband, but then he was a Jungian. (Some weeks ago, one of Marguerite’s Jewish-American friends in Rome had said sententiously, “Rome is full of Jungian shrinks—it’s a good place for them to talk their mumbo jumbo. They’re a sad bunch.”

“Why?” Marguerite had asked, fascinated by the graceless remark and now knowing better, much better.

“They’re nothing more than astrologers—for logic and a rational approach, it takes a Freudian.”

Marguerite felt thankful to have learned before it was too late that there is more in the psyche than reason. There was swinging mumbo jumbo, too.)

In the meantime, the miserable decisions had to be attended to: child support, property division, car ownership.

Was it justice that she give up the home and its furnishings and take a furnished place in Florence decked out with all the sad discards of mean-souled landlords? Yes, she supposed it was just—in the sense that justice was requital.

Marguerite was a failure both as an American woman and as an Italian. She couldn’t be one of those sharp, self-confident Americans who put their husbands through the wringer getting house, car, furnishings, special school allowances for children, high monthly support, and even the lawyer’s fees paid. Back home, even when the woman wanted the end of the marriage it was always the husband, the good sport, who got out and went to a hotel someplace with a suitcase of clothes hastily thrown together. And she couldn’t be Italian, sticking in no matter what.

Alberto was no sport; he was an old-fashioned, obtuse Catholic provincial who could only say, when she pointed out the finesse of other separating couples, “This is my home; I can’t leave it. I must defend it. It will be here for you, and the girls, unchanged, when you want to return.”

She personally wanted nothing except a few of her books. The rest she would leave; it was the price she was paying for her freedom and she accepted it. “Why don’t you stick up for yourself?” her mother would have said if she had known what was going on. “Just think of how much you’re giving up”—and she’d have meant the silver and furnishings, not Alberto.

A few nights before the formal separation, Alberto’s old friend, the octogenarian critic Cesare Servi, called and asked her to dinner with him—just the two of them. He knew everyone and everything that went on in literary circles; she wasn’t surprised when he asked why she was leaving Alberto. Was there another man?

“No, there’s no one else. I’m not leaving for another man. I’m leaving for myself.”