ITALY: Form Letter

Sleek and slinky Countess Pia Bellentani was an amateur poetess and a woman of passion. She had long regarded her relations with the middle-aged count, her husband, as a "purely formal duty." Her friend Carlo Sacchi the silk merchant was an amateur poet as well and only slightly less passionate. In Italy's caviar and champagne set during the early '40s, the two made a neatly rhymed couplet, and even Signora Sacchi nodded at their idyl on the theory that it was only a "passing passion."

From Countess Pia's point of view, however, it passed too fast. By 1948, her poetry had taken on a brooding tone, and Carlo's had become downright morbid: "I see death moving about in the room." One night in September of that year, Pia and her husband, the Sacchis and Sacchi's newest girl friend were all dining together in sophisticated splendor at the sumptuous Villa d'Este. "An ill wind is blowing for me tonight," murmured Sacchi darkly. Eying Sacchi's new girl, Pia asked a friend: "What am I to do?"

The question was purely rhetorical. Pia knew just what to do. She went to the desk where her husband had checked his pistol. Then she faced Sacchi, took aim and fired. "It sounded just like the popping of another cork," remembers one of the bystanders. A moment later, Pia aimed the gun at her own temple and pulled the trigger once again. But the gun misfired. "It won't shoot," screamed Pia.

Last week, after a three-year sojourn in a Naples asylum, Pia stood trial for murder in Como. She readily confessed the killing in a 104-page deposition burning with passion. But, she said, "I didn't want to kill him, only to intimidate him." Why? Because the brute Sacchi had not only broken off their affair; he had done it via a form letter—sent at the same time to five other mistresses.