EPILOGUE Now you will lay forever, my tired heart. The extreme deception perished, eternal I did believe it was. For I feel, in us some dear deceptions, for the hope, desire is dead. Rest forever. You throbbed very much. Nothing is worth your pulses , nor is the earth worthy of your sighs. Life is bitter and boring, nothing else ever: and the world is mud. Calm yourself now. Despair the last time. Fate gave nothing but death to men. Despise yourself, nature, the evil power that, hidden, reigns for a common evil, and the infinite vanity of everything. (To himself - Giacomo Leopardi) Autumn 1994. Twenty years later Greta sat in the warm September sun. Her gaze was lost among the thriving lemon trees that dotted Ponte Agro farm. She was now a fifty-year-old

