In an Italian Village, desire- under the chestnut trees-prompts 39 year old Dr. Castiglia's proposal of marriage to Sabina, a 17 year old girl who has worked in a tavern. This late bloom, with its lascivious fantasies of the pleasures to come, alone animates him and he believes that Sabina is ""purity personified"", although he entertains misgivings-his mother's disapproval, anonymous letters. The first night of the honeymoon reveals all that he had feared and he subjects the poor girl to a battery of accusations, humiliations, interrogations before she confesses her previous victimization at the hands of a village youth. He returns home with her to kill her (and her aunt who had assured him of her chastity) and to stand defense for the crime which is ""traditional, irrepressible, in its way holy""... A much more ironic book than last year's The Novice, this tells its story of hot and cold blooded passions with a Moravian sexual realismo.