The sword of wealth

A WEEK before the day set for her wedding, in a bright hour of early April, Hera rode forth from the park of Villa Barbiondi. Following the margin of the river, she trotted her...

AMONG the chieftains of production who were leading Italy to prosperity and power Antonio Tarsis held the foremost place. Son of a shop-keeper in Palermo, he began life poor and...

THE following afternoon Mario, on horseback, appeared at the villa and said he had stopped to accompany the Barbiondi in their ride to the Social Dairy. It was a proffer Donna B...

THE warning was a terribly familiar one to the people of Lombardy. They knew it presaged one of the severe storms of hail that plague the region--visitations which the farmer fo...

THAT Mario and Hera were taken in by the counterfeit despair and make-believe submission of Tarsis proved how little they knew the man with whom they had to deal. Tarsis had as...

THOUGH expectant of some shocking disclosure, and nerved for it, Donna Beatrice was not equal to an utter smash-up of all that she had planned and executed so satisfactorily to...

DON RICCARDO, from his secluded ground in the villa park, saw Tarsis’s car pass in the twilight, and guessed that the message to Rome was on its way. He thought the moment a goo...

AT noon they kneeled before the Cardinal of Milan, in the great white cathedral, speaking the words that welded their bonds. It was an hour of gray skies, and the many-hued suns...

IN the evening they departed from Charing Cross, and without interruption their journey to France was accomplished. When a day had come and gone the Alpine solitudes were behind...

THEY followed Donna Beatrice and Tarsis across the figured expanse of pavement, down the grand staircase and through the portico to the gardens. Beyond the yellow wall at the ba...

PUBLIC announcement was made next day that the King would arrive within the week at his summer palace in Monza--a peaceful town reposing at the end of two rows of stately poplar...

THE inarticulate voice of the crowd had grown to a roar and the ominous note Tarsis caught was now a distinct expression of horror. It rose above the tittle-chat, the tinkling o...

TARSIS gave orders that no bright lights be shown at the windows and that the palace in other respects preserve an air of mourning. He passed the night in the library, writing a...

TWO days afterward, when Hera and Tarsis were dining alone, he asked her about the work she had begun among the poor of the Ticinese quarter, and she told him that she had subsc...

IN ten hours, or at nine o’clock in the morning, Hera, and her maid, the only servant she had brought from the Brianza, entered a cab that had been summoned to the Via Cappuccin...

BY threading one crooked back street and another he came out behind the Cathedral, upon whose southern wall and forest of spires a moon almost round poured its light. That he mi...

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,...

The workman sweats And little gets; The rich and fine On capons dine. Is this fair play? Oh, yes! priests say, For the good God wills it so. Song of the Bread Rioters._

TARSIS spared no pains in the laying of a plan, but that done, and the work of execution satisfactorily begun, he awaited the result with confidence and equable temper. It was s...

AUNT Beatrice’s pride of blood was large and her sympathy for the peasant folk small; yet, when it came to expressing a primary emotion she was not above borrowing from the rugg...

HERA found herself one of the hundreds of peaceful visitors shut out in company with the rabble that was eager to feed the furnace of rebellion. Awhile she sat her horse wonderi...

HALF a minute more and they knew the mob had entered the Atlantean chamber. First they heard the howl of triumph and the trampling, rough-shod feet on the marble pavement; then...

WHEN they all had gone Hera groped on the wall for the electric key, found it, and redeemed the darkness with a flood of light. There was Tarsis, ashen to the lips, prostrate on...

HERA asked if the automobiles, too, were gone. The excited servants told her the garage had been attacked and everything smashed. Had any one seen Sandro? Yes; he was there look...