On our first pass, stopping to marvel at each detail of the collage, Rebecca happened to notice Fabiola standing beside her fellow artists, chatting away in Italian.

On our return, just as I surreptitiously snapped an iPhone keepsake, the artist arrived to talk thru our obviously abiding interest in her wonderful composition.

Typical art talk (for a collage), at first: la media, i vincoli della mostra (the constraints of the exhibit), l’orario dei treni (train schedule), e ponte ferroviario.

But unhearable by you, all our chat was being conducted in molto rapido Italian, as befits a celebration of Arte Moda e Gusto, a bike trek from Spoleto to Norcia.

So where the chat went from there is a bit hard to say, precisely because we were having no problem adding “Si, si” from time to time, as Fabiola raced on.

Still the best part, so far as we were concerned, is that without any chance of understanding each and every word we felt, all along, as if we were in the flow.

Now that, for an answer on a foreign language exam, is what U might judge to be totally unacceptable. Yet for us the morning passed in a deep shade of glory.