"Cornelie De Retz Van Loo, a twenty-three-year-old divorcee from an upper-class Hague milieu, tries with mixed feelings to begin a new life in Italy in 1900. After some time in Rome, she discovers that Italy itself can never bring her the consolation she seeks. She meets the Dutch painter Duco van der Staal, and they move in together, flouting convention. Almost their only acquaintances are an amorous Italian prince and the American heiress he wants to marry for her money. Duco and Cornelie are happy but poor, and as their finances go from bad to worse, Cornelie, in desperation, takes a position as a companion to an elderly American lady in Nice. There she encounters her ex-husband." Considered one of Louis Couperus' most compelling achievements in fiction, Inevitable immerses us in turn-of-the-century Rome and examines a life in which Art is an exalted form of love. The social issues Couperus addresses in Inevitable provoked waves of criticism upon its publication in spite of the author's tremendous popularity.