Residenza le 6A

Ada

Zeno Cosini, the main character in "Zeno's Conscience", is invited to visit the Malfenti family, where he meets the four daughters of his host. Ada, the second born, is beautiful, wise and endowed with all virtues. After refusing Zeno's proposal of marriage, she will marry Guido Speier, a man of talent and equal to her by social status and attractiveness. However, she will not be fulfilled as a wife, nor as a mother. She will become a sour intransigent woman and, with time, she will fade away as she is caught by Zeno's own nightmare: a disease will spoil her beauty.

Here is how Ada is first introduced, when she enters the room with one of her sisters:

Finally, Ada and Alberta came in. I breathed: they were both beautiful and brought in the room the light that was missing until then. Both were dark-haired and tall and slender, though fairly different one to another. Ada was already a woman, with her grave eyes in a face that better than snow-white was somehow blue, and thick curly hair, styled gracefully and severely.
That first time, I looked at Ada with one wish: to fall in love with her, because you had to get through that to marry her.

Image gallery

Le 6A

• Annetta
• Amalia
• Angiolina
• Ada
• Alberta
• Augusta