The sword of wealth

by Henry Wilton Thomas

“I can die!” she told her comrades. “But it is not time. I have work to do.”

In Via Torino she led her women to a roof, from which they poured such a destructive fire on the troops that they had to retire for shelter. This was achieved without other weapons than bits of terra cotta, and by a form of attack not set down in any manual of war. The women tore up the tiles and chimney pots and dropped them on the heads of the soldiers. A little while and women lay dead on those roofs. An officer of the military, tired of seeing his men felled, stationed sharpshooters on other roofs to pick them off. But even from this danger La Ferita escaped unharmed.

Inured to long hours of toil, the day of battling had told little upon her strength, and the deed of vengeance her mind was set upon spurred her forward. Then there was the grappa, that fiery liquor dear to the Milanese workman. It was as free as the bread and the meat to-day, and La Ferita did not miss her share. In Via Torino she fell in with a part of the mob that was sweeping toward the Cathedral. Vainly she strove to lead them on to Palazzo Barbiondi, but they lacked courage to hurl themselves against the wall of men and horses that reached across the square.

Yet they drew nearer by inches, until their irregular front had pressed beyond Via Silvio Pellico, closing that entrance to the square and blocking its traffic. The carriage of the Cardinal of Milan, conveying his Eminence to the railway station, happened to be one of the vehicles stopped, and a footfarer unable to proceed for the same reason was Mario Forza. From his carriage window the Cardinal hailed Mario. It was their first meeting since the day in Palazzo Barbiondi when Tarsis blamed the leader of the New Democracy for the assassination of the King. Together they looked on while the legions of lawless force, fired with passion, approached the cool champions of constituted power, reviling them the while and provoking a reply by such irritants as stones and bottles often well aimed.

Presently the reply was delivered. A bugle blast, and the line of cavalry dashed forward. La Ferita, instead of joining the stampede of her comrades, kept to the tactics she had employed so successfully in the face of other cavalry charges. She ran toward the right flank of the onrushing troopers, thinking to gain the shelter of the portico of Victor Emanuel Gallery where it ends at Via Silvio Pellico. She would have succeeded this time but for that last glass of grappa, gulped down after her escape from the sharpshooters on the roofs.

A few feet from the intended refuge she stumbled and fell at full length. The thunder of hoofs and the clank of arms were loud above her head; but in the next moment Mario Forza had her in his arms, the cavalcade was flying by, and she stood safe under the portico. She never knew who saved her, nor did she care; enough for her that she had cheated the soldiers once more, and she shook her fist after them and cursed them as they went on with their task of driving the mob from the square.

Nor was Mario aware that the woman he had saved was she who cried out so bitterly against Tarsis in the hospital. Although she came out of the incident unscathed, her rescuer had not fared so well. The dangling scabbard of the last trooper of the file struck him a glancing blow, but one that dazed his senses and brought from his forehead a crimson stream. When full consciousness returned he found himself in the Cardinal’s carriage, which had come to a standstill in the square before La Scala Theatre.

With a handkerchief the Cardinal had done what he could to bandage Mario’s wound. “It is only a little one,” he told him, “but we shall look to it.” He had ordered the coachman to drive to the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. “A few minutes, Honourable,” he said, “and our friends the Bernardines will stanch that flow of blood and make you more comfortable.”

“The Bernardines?” Mario repeated. “They are in Corso Magenta, and your Eminence was bound for the railway station, in the opposite direction.”

“Never fear,” the other returned, cheerfully. “The trains for Como or anywhere else are not departing or arriving on the mark to-day, and if I miss one I shall take another. Ah, what have we here?”