Milan's social circles could roughly be divided into two. One was the "Literary Society," whose members often gathered at the Zamagna Café near Milan Cathedral. Bernardo Zawagna of the Dalmatian school had once taught Greek and literature there. Later, he became the Pope's ambassador to Tuscany and left Milan. After his departure, his students still often met where they had once attended lessons, and it gradually became a café.
The other was La Scala Opera House, where the elite gathered, most of them exiled artists. The captain who excelled at poetry kept gravitating toward the theater, where The Pazzi Conspiracy had been playing these past few days.
The Pazzi family was the family that had assassinated Giuliano de' Medici at the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Flower in 1478. Lorenzo Medici had hidden in the sacristy before climbing out through a window. Yet in Machiavelli's records, the crime had taken place at the Cathedral of Saint Reparata.
But where exactly it had happened no longer mattered. Led by Melzi, Georgiana went to Murat's residence in Milan.
At the founding ceremony last time, Georgiana had wondered why the South-of-the-Mountains Republic had sent thirty representatives.
Those representatives had all been divided according to judicial districts. Like Britain's justices of the peace, they handled judicial, civil, and administrative matters, and every so often, the justices would report to the "Queen."
But Murat was not the sort of man who could sit still. As a garrison commander, he had meddled in many affairs and even planned to replace everyone in the South-of-the-Mountains Republic's administration.
That was how constitutional monarchy worked. A queen like Anne was ideal, though poets said she did nothing but eat.
If Murat intended to arrest Cheroni, he could not possibly fail to tell Melzi. And he needed Bonaparte's authorization