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When Sophia held her sister’s tiny daughter , it was as though her dream had come true—almost
Such a tiny baby! So little, so warm and cuddly in her arms! Sophia Loren held the wee bundle of humanity gently against her own warm woman’s body and looked tenderly into the baby girl’s face.
“At last,” she thought as in a dream. “At last I have my baby.”
With solemn attention she stood before Father Virginio Rotondi and heard the Jesuit priest pronounce the name of the blessed infant in her arms: Alessandria.
When the christening ceremony was over, Sophia sighed and relinquished two-weeksold Alessandria Maria Romano Mussolini into the waiting arms of her young mother. It had been so lovely, for those few minutes, to dream and pretend that it was her own baby she was holding — her’s and Carlo’s. But of course it was only that — a dream. Little Alessandria belonged to Sophia’s younger sister. To Maria, whom Sophia loved tenderly. Almost, she thought to herself, as much as I love this baby!
From the moment Maria had confided that she and her husband Romano — son of the late 11 Duce — were expecting, Sophia too had been eagerly expectant. It was almost as though she were living through Maria, during the months of pregnancy. Not that she envied her little sister — you do not envy those you love, you wish them well. But how she’d have loved a baby of her own! A little, sweet baby.
And this, of course, was an impossibility. When you are caught and twisted in the coils of the law, so that you don’t know from one day to the next if your husband is your husband, or if you are legally a bigamist or an adulteress— how can you bring a helpless baby into your confused world? Sophia has ( Please turn the page )