Villa Mayda enters the novel as a place bound to Benedetto’s final hours and to Massimo’s recollection of Jeanne. Its significance is concentrated rather than expansive: the villa’s gardener’s cottage is identified as the place where Benedetto died, while a brief sighting at the Mayda residence links the setting to the account of those events.

Benedetto’s Death

While telling Marcello Trento and Lelia Camin about Benedetto, Massimo traces his story from the night Benedetto disappeared from his home in Oria, in Valsolda, to devote himself to God, through to his death in Rome. He specifies that Benedetto died in the gardener’s cottage at Villa Mayda. The account also locates Benedetto’s burial elsewhere: when asked where he was buried, Massimo answers that, for the time being, it is Campo Verano. Villa Mayda is therefore the site of his death, not his stated resting place.

Jeanne and the Mayda Residence

Massimo’s account brings Jeanne into the same setting. Asked whether he knew Madame Dessalle, he says that he had seen her that very evening at the Mayda residence. The encounter was fleeting: she passed him in an anteroom during heavy rain, in poor light, and he could not judge her beauty; he remembers her figure as elegant. He later explains Jeanne’s part in Benedetto’s final hours. The narrative connects her to the death through Massimo’s testimony, without placing her specifically in the gardener’s cottage.

Narrative Significance

Villa Mayda is presented through recollection rather than as the setting of an extended scene. Massimo’s account joins a precise location—the gardener’s cottage—to two distinct facts: Benedetto died there, and Massimo saw Jeanne at the Mayda residence that evening. The distinction between the cottage and the residence matters: the text associates both with the same episode but does not collapse them into one described encounter. The villa thus serves as a geographical anchor for a story told after the fact, while Campo Verano marks the separate, provisional location of Benedetto’s burial.