No one, it seemed, wished to talk about it. Except Martora, who observed at one point: ‘It must come from the sewer underneath here. There is one very old water pipe which runs into the river. Probably some sort of overflow …’ No one said anything.

Now it is time to study the reactions of Signor Gron, that true nobleman. He is looking at the small fan of cards in his left hand, but occasionally his glance steals out beyond the cards to take in the head and shoulders of Martora, who is opposite him, and finally to include the far end of the room where the polished floor disappears under the fringes of curtain. And now he no longer looks at the cards or at the face of his old friend, but stares beyond him at the back of the room, at the bottom of the curtain; his eyes widen further, kindle with a strange light.

At last the old nobleman says simply – dully, but in a tone of great desolation – ‘Look.’ He is not addressing his son, nor the doctor, nor Massigher in particular. He simply says ‘Look’, but that one word is frightening.

He uttered this one word and the others looked up, even his wife, who was sitting in a corner with great dignity, absorbed in her embroidery. Slowly, from beneath the lower border of the dark curtain, something black and shapeless crept across the floor.

‘Stefano, why on earth do you have to use that tone of voice?’ exclaimed Signora Gron, who had already jumped to her feet and was walking towards the curtain. ‘Can’t you see that it’s water?’ None of the four players had stood up.

It was indeed water. It had finally crept into the villa through some crack or gap, sneaking like a snake along corridors before finally entering the drawing room, where it looked black because of the shadow. It would have been amusing had it not been such a blatant outrage. But behind that negligible tongue of water, that merest trickle, might there not be something else? Could one be quite certain that that was the full extent of the damage? Was there no water trickling down the walls, no pools between the tall shelves in the library, no slow dripping from the arched ceiling of the next room (the water falling on the great silver salver – a wedding present given by the prince many years ago)?

‘Those idiots have left a window open,’ exclaimed Fedri. ‘Go and close it then,’ said his father.

But the signora intervened. ‘Out of the question – stay where you are; someone else will come and close it, I trust!’ She pulled the bell-pull nervously and they heard the distant sound of the bell. At the same time the mysterious splashing sounds began to occur with ominous, ever-increasing frequency; now they could be heard throughout the whole house. Old Gron, frowning, was staring at the tongue of water on the floor; it seemed to swell at the edges, then spill over, spreading a few inches, swell again, spread and so on. Suspecting that something unusual was about to happen, Massigher shuffled the cards to hide his own emotion. And Martora shook his head slowly, as if to say: ‘Such are the times we live in – one can no longer rely on one’s staff’; or perhaps, resignedly: ‘Nothing to be done about this now, my friends, you noticed it all too late.’