I woke with a start. The heat was intense, the fumes of the charcoal terrible, and I had been dreaming a dyspeptic dream in my berth. Moral: Never travel by an overheated sleeping-car after thinking about cremation all day.
CHAPTER XVIII.
A REVOLUTION IN TICINO.
All things come to those who wait. I have waited nearly a fortnight in Ticino for a revolution, and I have seen it at last. I have seen the soldiers charge the mob, and I have seen the mob stone the soldiers. I have seen the soldiers retire with cracked skulls, and I have seen the citizens flying to the chemists and the doctors to have their bayonet wounds dressed. I have seen a town suddenly seized with panic, the streets cleared, the shops shut, and the cafés barred and bolted. And it all happened in a minute, without the slightest warning. It all happened just when I had packed my portmanteau and was going to leave Ticino because the excitement was over and everything was getting insufferably dull, and the weather was giving the Ticinese a seasonable hint to keep indoors by their wood fires and to abandon politics as an outdoor amusement.
Last Sunday was the day of the general election all over Switzerland for members of the National Council, which sits at Berne. In Ticino the greatest interest attached to the election, because of recent unfortunate events and the terrible pitch which the enmity long existing between the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party had reached.
On Sunday in Ticino things went off pretty quietly. I was in Lugano, and spent the morning watching the voters as they went to the poll and the populace that stood about the public squares and discussed the situation. The Liberals made a big show in Lugano. The trees of liberty, surmounted by the hat of William Tell, were everywhere decorated with the red flag of Radicalism. To some of them were affixed wreaths of laurel ‘offered by the Liberal ladies of Lugano'; others were ornamented with Liberal inscriptions couched in language that, to say the least of it, was thorough. The Italian—I beg pardon, the Ticinese—politician is given to discuss matters as much with his hands as with his tongue, and all day long an energetic crowd indulged in vehement finger-wagging and hand-elevating, which would have given a stranger not used to the wealth of Italian gesture an idea that St. Vitus’s dance was a national disease.
The Liberals were easily distinguished from the Conservatives by red ties, by red feathers worn bravely in enormous brigand hats, and by red flowers in their buttonholes. Every Liberal sported a little red, and even the Liberal ladies had arrayed themselves in accordance with their political sympathies.
Apart from the idea that the election of October 26 might lead to a little revolution, I was interested in it for another reason. Was not my old friend Agostino Gatti, of the Adelaide Gallery and of the Adelphi Theatre, a Consigliere di Stato? and was not Agostino Gatti up for re-election as one of the six members for Ticino in the National Council of Switzerland?
It was a great day for all Ticino. Every man was expected to vote, and nearly every man did. Some of them travelled miles and miles to fulfil the duty of citizenship. I soon found out how seriously the Ticinese take politics. Very early on Sunday morning my waiter hurried me over my breakfast with a thousand apologies; he was going to vote, and his native place was in a valley across the lake ten miles away. The porter brought me a day’s supply of wood to my room before I was up; a thousand pardons, but he had to catch an early train that he might go home to vote. There was not a flyman outside my hotel when I went out; they had all gone to vote. The boats upon the lake lay floating empty on the wave; the boatmen had all gone to vote. When I went into the salle-à-manger I quite expected to see a note to the effect that, ‘In consequence of all the waiters having gone home to vote, there will be no table d’hôte.’
Giuseppe, my sitting-room waiter, is a Conservative; Napoléon, the salle-à-manger waiter, is a fierce Radical. Between them I endeavoured to arrive at the truth of the various incidents which they narrated for my benefit. Giuseppe hails from the village to which poor Rossi belonged—Rossi, the unfortunate victim of the brutal outrage of September 11. Rossi was a young man universally beloved and respected. He had only joined the Government a few months. He had never done any man harm; he was only recently married, and he was assassinated in cold blood in the name of civil and religious liberty. Giuseppe trembles so violently with rage when he tells me of Rossi, his fellow-townsman, that I expect him to drop the tray every moment; but Napoléon talks of it calmly, says it was a pity, but won’t have it that the Radicals are to blame for it. But I am digressing. Of Giuseppe and Napoléon more anon.
I wait patiently opposite the Municipio all day expecting a demonstration, and none comes. So I fill up my time by noting one or two minor matters. A gentleman selling fowls wrings their necks one by one coram populo, and I watch the process till I feel sick. A Conservative dog creates a diversion by having a furious fight with a Radical dog. The dogs are arrayed in their masters’ colours, and the red dog walks up to the blue dog in a most insulting manner. Then the row begins, and all the dogs of Lugano rush to the square and take sides. Heaven only knows if it would not have ended in a dog revolution had the Federal troops not interfered. Two soldiers separated the combatants, and once more, thanks to the Federal bayonets, peace is restored.