THE POT BOILS OVER
THE following day at dawn La Ferita and forty thousand fellow mill and
factory hands broke the time-honoured rule of their lives. Instead of
going to the work that awaited them, they joined the battalions of the
unemployed and set about the business of redressing their wrongs. They
adopted the extraordinary course of throwing up barricades and taking
possession of half of the town. To Ulrich the Austrian and masters of
labour in general this boiling over of the social pot was a puzzle.
And the municipal authorities were astonished that so many thousands
of the people should follow the banner of anarchy; that men and women,
hundreds of them, should stand their ground and die when cavalry
charged the barricades. The military officers could not comprehend it
at all, but agreed, over their cognac in the cafés, that such heroism
was worthy of the conventional battle-field.
Mario Forza and his party in the Camera had striven to avert the
disaster, but always the Government had been deaf to the warning. Why
workers should cease work and wish to upset the established order
was as much a riddle to the cabinet as to the shop-keeper and the
manufacturer. The editor of the newspaper that printed the famous
“punched nose” of Tarsis was asked what he thought of the situation.
He defined it as a mixture of labour war and hunger begotten of
incompetent, unenlightened government.
At one gate the troops--most of them country lads--had to fight
thousands of peasants armed with pitchforks and scythes who tried to
re-enforce the rebels within the walls. Cavalry rushes and volleys from
the infantry were used against them, but their barricades did not fall
until cannon was discharged into them. Many of the rioters had had more
experience as soldiers than the uniformed farm hands against whom they
fought; a condition difficult to avoid in a country where military
service is the price of citizenship.
On an outer boulevard a large body of insurgents, after a company of
Bersaglieri had given them a peppering from their muskets, advanced
on the soldiers and showed them what could be done with stones flung
by enthusiasts. They drove the soldiers into the moat that runs round
the city wall, then returned to the barricades they were building of
overturned carts and carriages of the gentry and an automobile they had
captured.
Every one arrested was heard before a court martial; all prisoners
were committed to cells. From behind their bars they launched curses
against their captors and defiance of authority. Some of the newspapers
hailed the uprising as the birth of a new and glorious Italy. These
were seized promptly. Men with swords sat at the desks where men with
pens had done their work. The Queen of Holland, who was expected,
was advised by the Minister of the Interior not to proceed to Milan.
Wherever workmen were found grouped an unceremonious shower of bullets
dispersed them.
It had been all fun for the rebels the night before, when Tarsis and
the Panther, in the gloom of Piazza dell’ Armi, arranged to square the
account against Mario Forza. There were not enough soldiers about then
to interfere with the mobs that took the ordering of pleasures into
their own hands. They swept into the Dal Verme Theatre and occupied
excellent seats. The manager, wise in his hour, accepted the situation
and instructed his singers to do their best. It turned out as he
expected. Listening to the arias of _The Huguenots_ proved tame work
for revolutionists, and before the act was over they rushed into the
street, following a leader who had shouted, in a voice heard above the
music, “On to the bakeries, comrades! On to the meat-shops!”
The same cry had begun to ring in every part of the town where the
revolt was in progress. It was an epitome of the new movement. After
all, the reform chiefly desired was a full stomach instead of an empty
one. Bakery windows were broken, haunches of meat were lifted from
their hooks, slaughter-houses were sacked of dripping carcasses. Bread!
It was piled up at the street corners! A new type of butcher presided
over the meat. He gave it for the asking and used no scales.
All this was pleasing and satisfactory to the Panther, who witnessed
such scenes of the drama as were enacted in the neighbourhood of the
Café of the Ancient Colonnade. It seemed to him that affairs had taken
a distinctly lucky turn, in view of the service Tarsis had engaged him
to perform. As he sipped his coffee or puffed his “Cavour” he reflected
that the minds of the officials, press, and public were preoccupied by
doings of great moment. Therefore, they would have scant attention to
spare on the result of the small commission intrusted to his skill.
In this carnival of bloodshed and pillage who would care whether the
Honourable Mario Forza were alive or dead? He had no misgiving, but
it was pleasant to feel that in case his work were done awkwardly the
police would be too busy to meddle with his business of escape.
“Easy money, and more to come,” he told himself, complacently, and
the hand in his pocket touched the thousand-lira note that had been
transferred from the wallet of Tarsis.
In other cities there had been similar risings, and the rulers,
appalled by the power of the people to help themselves, decided
suddenly to give them the measures of relief that Mario Forza and his
Parliamentary group had been asking for months. The General Government
issued a decree suspending the entire duty on wheat; the municipal
authorities of Milan put forth a proclamation saying that the price
of bread would be reduced at the public expense. But the concessions
were too late. Not by bread alone was the madness to be appeased. The
fire of insurrection had entered the blood, and the masses went on with
their object lesson in the science of bettering social conditions.
Refused the reasonable, they demanded the unreasonable.
Emblems of refinement and luxury enraged them. A blind fury which none
could foresee attacked the statues in the public squares, the ornaments
on the fountains, the treasure houses of painting, sculpture, and
letters. A few who loved and revered such things risked their lives to
save them.
Ulrich the Austrian, on his way to Palazzo Barbiondi to learn how it
fared with his master, saw and heard things that took the high colour
from his cheeks and made him continue his journey with the cab-shade
drawn. He had seen women place their children on the top of barricades,
bare their breasts to musket fire, and invite death. Once above the
wave of the mob’s rage he had heard the tremulous cry of a child; a
mother, in the front rank of the rebels, was holding it at arms’ length
while the cavalry dashed upon her. And he had seen women, when struck,
bandage their wounds and return to the battle.
Wherever the mob fought most savagely there was La Ferita, the long
scar on her face dulled now by the grime of the struggle. Often it
was her hand that applied the torch. With the women that followed
her she urged on the men, or dashed alone in front of the soldiers,
calling them cowards, assassins, “slaves of Tarsis, who killed little
children.” Now and then the soldiers charged their tormentors. Although
some of them stood their ground or were carried away wounded, La Ferita
was never among the number.
“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?”
The way was blocked again. A detachment of the mob which took the
soldiers unawares and succeeded in gaining the square had attempted
to pull down the statue of Leonardo da Vinci. The rope was ready,
but before they could throw it over the figure and haul it from the
pedestal a battalion of infantry had arrived at double quick. As the
insurgents retreated up Via Manzoni they filled the air with shouts of
defiance, mingled with a hideous uproar of mocking laughter. It was the
laughter of those who had taken up the cry, “On to the Supper! Down
with the Supper!”
The words came distinctly enough to the ears of Mario and the Cardinal,
in spite of the din all about, but they did not attach to them the
meaning of the grinning mob. Had they grasped the purpose expressed
in that grim cry they would have been keener to reach the Bernardine
community to which they were bound, and for a more potent reason
than that of caring for the wound of Mario Forza. For centuries the
refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie had held the
painting by which the world knows Leonardo da Vinci best--his _Last
Supper_. It had survived the periods of desecration begun by the monks
themselves and ended by the French soldiers in 1796, under command
of the general whose gift to the House of Barbiondi--the Napoleonic
table--Tarsis prized so highly. The picture must have been lost but
for the devoted service of other painters, who, with reverent hands,
from age to age, brought back its beauty of form and colour. Now the
monks were its guardians; and now it was a frenzied populace that
would desecrate it--not in the old way, by neglect or rough usage,
but by tearing it out of the wall and putting an end forever to the
restorations.
Via Alberto was clear again, and the carriage moved forward, while the
voice of the destroyers, growing fainter, sounded as a hoarse murmur
behind La Scala Theatre. In Piazza Mercanti hands used to far heavier
tasks laid hold of the horses’ heads and stopped the vehicle with a
jerk that threw the Cardinal and Mario from their seats. The doors were
flung open and jeering men and women surged about them.
“Make the gentlemen walk!”
“To the barricade with the carriage!”
“Come, let us see you use your legs!”
And the gentlemen would have walked but for the timely recognition of
Mario by one of the masters of the situation. “Back, comrades!” he
cried to them. “It is Mario Forza, the friend of labour.”
Quickly the horses were released, and the carriage rolled on amid
“Vivas!” for the Honourable Forza. Without mishap Corso Magenta was
attained, and they drew up at the portal of the convent. The chubby
face and mournful eyes of Brother Sebastiano greeted the Cardinal, and
the iron-bound door swung wide to him. Swift were the movements of the
brothers when they realised what had occurred. Not only his Eminence
under their roof, but with him the Honourable Forza, wounded and in
need of succour! Suddenly the calm of the place was changed to bustling
activity. Two of the brothers lugged a cot into a large high-ceiled
room where sunshine entered, and the prior Sebastiano sent others here
and there for liniment, water, lint for the bandage, and a flask of
brandy.
“You have placed me in good hands,” Mario said to the Cardinal from the
cot on which he reclined; “and I beg of you to retard your journey no
longer. Here you may leave me and have no anxiety.”
“Of that I am certain,” the Cardinal agreed, with a nod of confidence
to Brother Sebastiano. “Therefore I shall try for that train.” He
looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes after the hour. That the delays
to-day are of long duration is my hope; a forlorn one, yet I’ll pursue
it, for to Como I must go.”
Brother Sebastiano and his fellows held up their hands in dismay.
Passion was rioting without, but on their side of the convent walls
they knew a sense of security, as if the turmoil of the world, which
had turned humanity back to the instincts of the jungle, was far away.
They shuddered at the thought that violent hands might be laid on the
Cardinal. Heaven would not permit it, but suppose--suppose his Eminence
should receive a black eye!
“Travelling to-day within the city walls or without,” Brother
Sebastiano ventured to admonish him, “is a most perilous undertaking.”
“Difficult we have found it,” the Cardinal owned, “but hardly perilous.”
There was a low murmur of respectful dissent from the monks. “Perilous,
too, for the body, we can assure your Eminence. Ah, what if harm should
befall you!”
“Allay your fear, my dear brothers,” the other said, lightly, with an
assuring smile. “Suppose they do take my carriage? I can call a cab.
Failing there I can walk. The problem, you see, is exceedingly simple.
As to harm corporeal--come, now, why should the people harm me? To my
knowledge I have not harmed them.”
“True, true,” Brother Sebastiano hastened to assent. “And yet, if your
Eminence will pardon, there is our Brother Ignazio. He, too, did them
no harm; but look at his eye!”
Brother Ignazio had just entered the room, carrying a vessel of water.
One of his eyelids and the flesh above and below were of deep violet
shading down to sickly yellow.
“Alas, your Eminence,” he sighed, “those whom we would serve raised
their hand against me. It happened this morning in the Corso at our
gate, after the service of tierce. As I turned the corner they fell
upon me. They pulled my hair, my ears and--my nose. But, with no
bitterness in my soul, I passed on. Then, without warning, as I was
about to enter here, one of them ran up and gave me--this.” He pointed
to his discoloured eye.
The Cardinal admitted that the evidence was conclusive. In his offering
of consolation to Brother Ignazio he told him that the spirit abroad
to-day was no respecter of persons.
“Nevertheless,” he added, “I shall go to Como if I can get a train.
Addio, Honourable,” he said, going up to the cot, where the brothers
were busy with their patient. “If the railway is impossible I will
return. In any event, my friend, I will send the carriage to take you
to Via Senato.”
The prior and all the monks not in immediate service to Mario
accompanied the visitor to the door, and they gave a concurrent sigh of
anxiety as his carriage rolled away. A little while and their patient,
his wound dressed, was sitting up and telling them how it happened. He
had reached the point in the narrative where La Ferita fell and the
cavalry was rushing on, when his ear caught a familiar, ominous murmur
and he paused. It was the voice of the mob as he had heard it last
rising from behind La Scala. Only now it grew louder. All at once it
burst forth like a fury that had broken bounds, and coming in by the
open windows filled the convent in every part. And above the roar and
mocking laughter Mario heard again the cry, “Down with the Supper!” Now
he understood its import, and the white faces of the brothers told that
they too comprehended the jest of the savage throng.