A Rogue's Tragedy by Bernard Capes — Read

At the lower end of the Via del Po, where it debouched upon the river, stood, nicked out of the north side of the street, a little Square of houses known as the Court of Doctors. The buildings in this Square -- for the most part unoccupied -- were very high, very narrow, very crazy, and so few in number that no more than two or three of them counted to any one of its three sides, the fourth lying open to the stream of fashionable traffic which flowed by it all day.

Quidnuncs had always been a power in Turin; whence this one-time appropriation of a niche to their worship. The Court of Doctors, in its present aspect, was said to date from the Regency of Madame Reale -- daughter to the fourth Henry of France, and wife to the first Victor-Amadeus of Savoy -- to whose politic superstition it had been indebted for a sort of unofficial charter. For what destinies foreshadowed, for what poisons brewed, for what villainies set bubbling in crucible and alembic within its precincts its past history was responsible, only its own dark heart might know. To this day the atmosphere of that sunless well of brick seemed brassy with chemicals; its doorways emitted a faint stale scent of drugs; an air of stagnant mystery overhung its pavements. But it was mystery grown unnegotiable. The moon of its prosperity had set; black decay hung brooding on its roofs; the ministers to its former notoriety were flown. Not that empirics were fewer than of yore in Turin, nor less potent in their persuasions. But traps for credulity, like traps for mice, miss of their efficacy after a few score, or a few hundred captures; and the bait must be laid down in some other place and form.