The Marble Faun. Or, The Romance of Monte Beni

Four young people in Rome - an American sculptor, a copyist, a dark woman with a past, and an Italian count who may not be entirely human - and a death on the Tarpeian Rock that binds them. Hawthorne's last completed novel came out of two years in Italy, and readers pestered him so persistently about the count's ears that he added a postscript refusing to explain.