“True! True!” the others chorused. “But it’s our turn now. Neh? Our turn now.”
“Down with him!” was La Ferita’s argument. “He gave my little Giulia work in his mill and paid her fifteen soldi a day. Oh, yes; he gave her work. He worked her to death!”
For prelude to a new attack Errico shook his finger in Tarsis’s face. “You are a common thief!” he declared, savagely; “but there’s no law for your kind of thieving except the law that you’re getting now. You knew how to manage so that we should never get a fair share of what we earned. You have been too keen for us poor devils. You have known how to keep a pound while you gave us a grain; and now you have the gall to say that you have given us a chance to live. It is we, poor fools, who have given you the chance to rob us. But that time is gone. We are awake at last!”
Tarsis was without strength to frame a reply to this exposition of industrial philosophy; but, while the crowd applauded and poured anew their execration upon him, he raised his hand as if for silence. Every head bent forward and every ear strained to catch his words.
“You do me a great injustice,” he said. “I have given much of my fortune to the poor. Others know that.”
He raised his eyes feebly and turned his head toward where Hera stood, in mute appeal. Comprehending, she moved forward to speak, and men and women fell back to make place for her.
“Yes; he has done more than you think,” she began, impressively, standing by her husband’s side. “A while ago you called me the friend of the people. When you did that you were calling my husband your friend. I did but distribute his money. All that I had came from him. Once, when I asked him for funds to carry on my work of helping the poor, what do you think he said?”
She paused, and Red Errico asked, sullenly:
“Well, what did he say?”
“These were his words: ‘My whole fortune is at your disposal.’ And so it has been. He gave to the needy with generous hand. My family is poor. I had no fortune of my own. Believe me, all that has been done for you in my name has been done with his money. Men and women of Milan, you do my husband a great injustice.”