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 By six of the evening Mosca, seeing Olimpia's house still keep a dead face, threw off the last There was no trouble on the child's score. The Countess was away; a feigned message from her was enough. Had she been at home and in a good humour, she would have accorded a real one, no doubt; so the deceit was quite harmless. Bellaroba demurred a little that she could not in person warn Angioletto, but the Captain begged her to have no fears. Time pressed; it was evident the Countess's service was urgent. Yet the Captain swore by all that he held sacred—to be sure no great things, but Bellaroba could not know that—to deliver her message to the lad with his own hand. "For," said he, and confirmed it with an oath, "if I don't see him this very night it will be a pity:" words which were afterwards thought to have been prophetic by the curious in such matters. So Bellaroba entrusted him with her scrawl to "My love Angilotto," and the Captain chewed and swallowed it when she was not looking. Then he lifted her to his horse I spare you the picture of her fury: it was not seemly, for all it was very white and still. The sight of a handsome girl shuddering in a cold stare under the grip of an evil spirit can never be pleasant; and where the experienced Donna Matura shrank from what she saw and heard, it becomes not me to tread. Donna Matura was of her country, that cheerful, laughing Midland of the Po, and neither felt the Venetian throb of pleasure nor conceived the excesses of Venetian pain. Extremes touch on the Lagoon. Donna Matura saw her gold-haired mistress white and drawn, saw her witless shaking, saw her tear and rend herself, heard her jerked words of loathing, blasphemy, and obscene defiance—and fairly fled the house. "For," as she said, "if words of man or woman could bring the rafters about our ears, or open a pit to send us lightly whither we all must go who have heard them, those words which Madam Olimpia spat about her must surely do it." So much she confessed to afterwards, but no more; for she stayed nothing more. Olimpia may have leaned twisting against her wall for about an hour, mouthing insane babble from her blued lips. It was at least quite dark when she came to herself, lit the lamp, wiped the cold beads from her forehead, smoothed and bound her hair. She was not herself, nor looked to be so; she had a face completely colourless, lips like grey mould, and burning black eyes. The door of the house she knocked upon was opened by a page, who asked her business. "Mosca, Captain Mosca, is my business," said she in a whisper. "The Signor Capitano is occupied, Madonna," replied the boy. "I know it, I know it," she answered. "But my business is the lady's business also. I must see them both—and at once. Let me pass." The page vowed and swore by all the company of Heaven that those were her actual words. He was put to the torture and cried in the most heartrending manner; but he held to it, so long as he could hold to anything, that the visitor had said "her business was the other lady's business." Olimpia walked across it alone, went straight to a door at the bottom on the right-hand side, turned the handle, and entered. There was a table spread with supper; there was Captain Mosca seated at it eating a peach from his wine-glass; there was Bellaroba, flushed and marred with tears, leaning against the further wall. She gave a little gasp of fear when she saw what the doorway framed; after that she followed Olimpia about the room with the same incurable fascination which the page-boy had felt. Olimpia shut the door as softly as she had opened it, and as softly shot the bolt. Then it seemed that Mosca felt her presence, for he turned, saw, and jumped up with a cry mingled of fear and rage. It was found out afterwards that he was unarmed. This will explain his alarm. Disastrous honesty! his sword was upstairs in the bed. There followed a most curious scene. The Captain stood up by the table and dogged Olimpia with his narrow eyes. When she advanced, Then came the end. Olimpia made a lunge at his right side. The Captain hugged Bellaroba there. At the next moment the long knife was below his left arm, buried to the hilt, and defender and defence rolled heavily to the floor. Olimpia walked to the table and helped herself to the Captain's Val Pulicella. The watch (whom the page had roused after Mosca's first cry) broke in by the window, |