A couple of days ago, I blogged about Silvio Berlusconi's resignation as Prime Minister of Italy and quoted an English friend of mine who has lived there for around 25 years.
Yesterday, she told me the national newspaper Corriere della Sera carried an interesting front page.
The Rubik's cube of Italian politics is not exactly simplified by the fact that the secret masonic lodge P2 (Propaganda Due), in effect, ran Italy from the end of the Second World War until at least 1976 and possibly until 1981. Its all-pervading power lay in its membership and links, which included Cosa Nostra (the Sicilian Mafia), politicians, media, the police and the intelligence services.
It was a bit like the Groucho Club with attitude problems and access to armed force.
A list of P2 members, discovered in 1981 included Silvio Berlusconi.
"Right in the centre of Corriere della Sera's front page today," my friend told me yesterday, "there is a photograph of the two Sicilian judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino who were both assassinated within a two month period in 1992 after they led the Italian government's anti-Mafia investigation.
"Corriere della Sera quotes Borsellino's wife as saying he told her - only 24 hours before he was blown to bits in a car bomb outside his flat - that, if he was assassinated, it would not be the Mafia who killed him. Corriere della Sera presumably printed this article now because there is a current investigation into claims that the Italian State continues to be connected to organised crime in a big way.
"Ask yourself why," my friend told me: "Ask yourself why - in this week of all weeks - on this day of all days - why this particular photo and story would be on the front page of a national newspaper that is otherwise all about Berlusconi..."
In his last video interview, given four days before Falcone's assassination and two months before his own assassination, Paolo Borsellino spoke about the possible link between Cosa Nostra's mafiosi and rich Italian businessmen including Silvio Berlusconi.
Borselino claimed that well-connected mafiosi Vittorio Mangano was the Sicilian Mafia's link to its business interests in Northern Italy.
Somewhat bizarrely, Berlusconi employed Mangano to look after the horses at his villa in the small town of Arcore, near Milan, where Berlusconi lived. It has been alleged that Mangano's real job may have been to deter kidnappers from targeting the Berlusconi's children.
But there were also allegations made by Mafia supergrasses that Berlusconi was connected to the bomb blasts which killed Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
Magistrates in Caltanissetta spent almost two years examining these allegations and decisively rejected them.
The mafiosi supergrasses had also apparently wrongly alleged Berlusconi had had contact with Mafia 'boss of bosses' Totò Riina and arranged legislation favourable to the Sicilian Mafia in exchange for Cosa Nostra support for his political party Forza Italia.
Politics - in Italy perhaps even more so than in other countries - is a dark art involving smoke and mirrors.
It also reminds me of the ancient Roman saying Qui cum canibus concumbunt cum pulicibus sergeant.
It sounds very posh because it is Latin. But it has a more basic meaning:
"If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas".
Something that applies to all politicians.