Bryan de Courcy Cavanagh, Australian in Paris, top-notch international lawyer, happily-married New World gentleman, is sixty-five. But arriving on his birthday is a sealed letter from Rome, bearing the arms of the ancient house of the Farnese di Mongrifone. Affectionate, imperious, it is a summons from the woman he loved - and lost - forty years previously,in the stormy, opportunistic world of post-war Europe......