The story of this manuscript (on which see the essay by the late Luigi de Nardis, "Les pierreries ensoleillées": an unpublished work from 1918, in Nouveau cahier de route. Giuseppe Ungaretti: Inediti, aggiornamenti, prospettive , Proceedings of the Rome conference, May 1997, edited by A. Zingone, Florence, Passigli, 2000, pp. 53-58) is a beautiful episode in the fantastic novel that is Ungaretti's biography. In Paris, returning from the war, the poet falls in love with Marthe Roux, the enfant frêle also beloved by his close friend, the avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Apollinaire had once promised Ungaretti that he would translate his first book, Il Porto Sepolto, into French, printed in the trenches by his friend Ettore Serra in Udine, at the height of the Great War. But he died before he could keep his promise. Ungaretti then translated some of his poems himself, offering them as gifts for Marthe to read. A beautiful story of love and friendship, of war and death.