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isn't proper." my mother said and I could tell from her voice that she was determined not to let me read the book.

This was exaggerated, I was 22 after all, I grumbled. Here, my career was ruined, nipped in the bud. I would regret it for the rest of my life...

My mother and Francesca consulted each other and decided that they would tell me the purged story so that I could draw ideas for the cover from the summary.

Knowing, more or less, how the story unfolded, I set to work feeling completely inspired. I was looking out of the window nervously sucking my brush when my mother came to tell me that Marcellina had nicely decided that the next day her daughters would have a dinner in honor of Monique who was in Venice at the time.

"Only Monique will go there because I'll still be busy with the covers: I don't have much time to finish them."

"Busy with the covers? But not likely!! You're going to lunch, all right! I won't let it mess up normal life for a cover."

I kept drawing, I kept messing around. Well, first they wouldn't let me read the book, then they won't let me draw the cover: was it perhaps this was a "normal view?" Oh no, if I was happy when I wrote or painted, it meant that this was normal for me and sooner or later I would have to decide not to waste time and to do only what was normal for me and that which made me alive and happy, at the cost of retiring to a convent. But was it possible that I had to end up in a convent just to be able to paint and write in peace?

In the evening I let off steam with Monique. She understood me and she was sorry that she was the unintended cause of all this, she said. Of course, in Venice sometimes one had the impression of living in the nineteenth century.

On the next day, unexpectedly, I began to throw down one idea after another. I was happy: soon I could...