Word: sanziani
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...timid new hotel chambermaid is warned to expect trouble from the countess, for Lucrezia Sanziani is dotty, penniless and old-a kind of walking Roman ruin. Fresh from Rome's Trastevere slums, Carmela, the young chambermaid, is prepared to quake at the countess' least whim. Instead, she finds herself cast as a confidante of yesteryear in the old lady's wandering mind. Each day, in the afterglow of the Roman twilight, the countess stares deeply into her Florentine silver-gilt hand mirror and conjures up a hallucinated remembrance of loves past...
...theatrical has-beens and wouldbes of Rome's fleabag Hotel Imperatore, the Countess Sanziani exudes the imposing aura of a famed once-was. For La Sanziani. as Carmela soon learns, was once a legendary courtesan, mistress of a d'Annunzio-like poet, playmate of a Dutch multimillionaire, brief bedfellow of the Kaiser and of many another great or near great. Carmela is too young to sense it, but the poignancy of the countess is that in her rage to relive these past love affairs, she is dueling with her last and most pressing suitor-death...
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