“All our mills are shut down.”
“All in Milan?”
“In three provinces—Piedmont, Lombardy, and Venetia. They called the hands out by telegraph. But that was only the beginning. The mob is shouting for bread and rioting; not alone the silk workers, but hundreds of others—all the lazy rabble of the quarter”; and the man of practical notions fumed in wrath against this unexpected phase of social phenomena.
“A bread riot is hardly our affair,” Tarsis remarked, dropping into a chair. “It’s a case for the police.”
“But they have made it our affair,” Ulrich said. “Every window in the Ticinese Gate mill is smashed, and what is more, the place would have been in flames but for the carbineers.”
“Are the soldiers out?” Tarsis asked, blowing the ashes from his cigarette.
“Soldiers out! Horns of the devil! The soldiers have been attacked, they have discharged a volley into the crowd, killed two, and wounded nobody knows how many.”
The Austrian looked in vain for any sign of alarm on the face of his master. To Tarsis it seemed a petty incident, indeed, by contrast with the revolt in his own soul and the deed upon which he had determined.
“This has happened before,” he said, “and I have no doubt that order will be restored in a few hours. Now, let us consider the strike. That is more to our concern. What do they want this time?”
“I confess that I do not know and am unable to ascertain,” Ulrich answered, quelled in a measure by the other’s belittlement of the situation, but not convinced.