A candlelight dinner would have been romantic under other circumstances. Nevertheless, at Nico and Anne-Merry's home in San Francisco, there was a selection of cheeses in their larder -- also, Black Forest Ham; Pate de Campagne, and the makings for a salad of pecans, apple slices, figs, and Boston lettuce.

Nico arrived home about ten minutes before the earthquake. During the quake, time had been spent under the spacious dining room table. Tomorrow, when the extent of the damage became clear, he and Anne-Merry would open their home to displaced friends in the Marina District. Tonight, an unopened letter from Italy lay on the dining room table. Nico opened it.

challice Written in Italian, the letter from Father Rene-Marie Robichau was four thin European paper pages long. "Father Robichau is a storyteller," Nico St. Denis observed. "He begins with a story of a gold chalice that survived the World War II destruction of his parish church."

Nico translated roughly. "About 500 years ago, when a new church was built -- not the present building, which thankfully has been rebuilt since the war -- the people wished for a gold chalice like the ones they had seen in Cathedrals. About this time, on the way to a short-lived conquest of Naples, the French Army passed through the Apennines. The townspeople and their livestock hid. There was great commotion as under Charles VIII and his Commander, Louis duc d'Orleans, an Army marched through the deserted town." Nico paused to spread French butter and pate on the baguette with which he had arrived home.

"Somehow, a mule train end-car become detached. Either the French Army did not notice, or the hillside was too steep. Thus, when the community retrieved the provisions and goods scattered down the mountain, miraculously a gold chalice was found. In several paragraphs, this object is described. I will return to this later," Nico said to Anne-Merry. But, in summary, It sounds like a camping version of the chalice of Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis.