'This story of the alliance between Italian aristocracy and American millionaires is "a work unique among all [James'] novels: it is [his] only novel in which things come out right for his characters ...he had finally resolved the questions, curious and passionate, that had kept him at his desk on his inquiries into the process of living. He could now make his peace with America - and he could now collect and unify the work of a lifetime' - Leon Edel in "The Life of Henry James".