VIII
FIRST MIDNIGHT CONVERSATION
The Borgo of Borso's day was, as you might say, a sucker of the city of the Po, a flowery crop of villas and gardens about the city's root. There was the discreet house which Captain Mosca had once chosen for his Olimpia; there also was that which Guarino Guarini maintained for his (or any) Bellaroba. It is probable that there were many such houses in the Borgo; it was a very pleasant place, heavy scented with lilac and hawthorn in the spring, drowsy all the summer through with rustling leaves and the murmur of innumerable bees. The place was quiet; there was no traffic, no hint of the city bustle; on the other hand there was the notoriety which must always attach to any act done where no others are doing. Time, day-time especially, hangs heavy in the Borgo. One machinates in the face of many green shutters, which are not necessarily dead because they are shut.
This reasoning does not attack the sagacity of Count Guarini, for the only circumstance which could give it force was entirely unknown to him. He did not know that the Borgo held Bellaroba's friend, Olimpia, or that it sheltered under the same roof Olimpia, the Captain's enemy. He knew nothing of Bellaroba's friends and cared
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