The silvery-white dress had been meant for the pope's reception – now, however, Christina, daughter of Gustav II Adolf, was making her confession in it. Despite the fact that all the artists and cardinals patronise her salon, no matter that the population worship her as a protectress, her arch-rival the pope-maker, Orsini, has instigated the Holy See against her. Her nature is far too arrogant, her lifestyle outrageous. Didn't she have her former lover executed? Doesn't she maintain far too close a relationship with the Jew Ehud? And now at the ripe age of 43, she turns toward the Jesuit Antonio Vieira whose heretical ideas have landed him in the Vatican's prison and whose fate preoccupies the fantasies of idle Roman women. What is left out of the chronicles is brought to life in this novel: the last mysterious affair of Rome's amazon.

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