My great grandmother —

my mother’s mother’s mother—was left as an infant on the doorstep of a parish priest in a farming village north of Venice, Italy. She, the secret love child of a Venetian woman of aristocratic standing. (Or so it is told.) When I was a young girl, my nonna assured me that this woman-line meant—beyond any doubt—that I was una principessa.

As an Italian saying goes: "Se non è vero, è ben trovato." Roughly: Even if it's not true, it makes a great story....