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belts adorned with beads, sequins, in order to earn a living, and now she was selling her one-of-a-kind pieces even abroad.

They were really lucky, I thought looking at my aunts, really lucky to keep a young heart, full of enthusiasm and interest.

While the gondola, leaving the Basin, headed towards the island of San Giorgio, the aunts asked me if the seamstress had finally finished my costume. It had given a lot of worries, that costume for the Bestegui Ball. Already in Capri, Aunt Emma had asked for an opinion and help from a friend of hers, Titina Rota, the famous costume designer who, after finishing her partnership with Tatiana Pavlova, Guido Savini and Max Reinhardt, had retired to live on the blue island. Titiana had immediately designed a costume that at the time had been enthusiastically received there.

Then it was discovered in Venice that that dress was perhaps more suitable for flattering than for going to a ball, that all that velvet footage quilted with gold threads would cost a fortune. Fortunately, the two Sacahrovs came as guests of Aunt Emma at that time.

The Russian dancer agreed to help us. I looked at myself very well, then I ordered myself to take a few steps, to stop, to turn slowly on myself. A few more steps, another lap, stop. As Sakharov began to make the first quick marks on a sheet of paper, I was already beside him watching.

A half moon. Who knows what the moon has to do with it, I thought. Under the half moon, my face appeared and then all of me wrapped in draperies and then here I am again, now from behind, always the half moon in my hair, a quiver with arrows, bare arms and legs, sandals with a spool heel. "White and silver, all white and silver, aerial, sparkling... Diana the Huntress, an eighteenth-century Diana..." Sakharov declared.

"I'll take care of the moon, the quiver and the arrows!"...