The city’s theatrical life had come to an absolute standstill. The best members of the National Opera were constantly playing abroad, the Philharmonic Orchestra was just finishing a tour in South America, the private theatres had degenerated into provincial troupes with inadequate direction, inferior actors, and antiquated scenery; and visiting artists from abroad had long ago stopped coming because Vienna could not pay the great sums they demanded. Besides, some papers had lately had to suspend publication because the number of their readers was constantly diminishing; and suddenly the alarm was sounded again: “The krone is falling!” Enormous quantities of kronen were being sold on the foreign exchanges, so that Zurich soon rated them at the thirty-thousandth part of a centime. Prices rose in proportion, and the populace began to grow desperate. When a pound of fat cost a half million kronen there appeared again the mysterious little leaflet of the League of True Christians, with the question: “How long, Citizens of Vienna, will you bear with this government? When will you at last make the National Assembly dissolve, and force new elections to be called?” The morning of the next day was marked by looting in the markets; the embittered housewives stormed the stands, beat their owners, and took possession of the foodstuffs. In Favoriten the riot developed a revolutionary character; but the National Guard, which was called out, refused to proceed against the women. In the National Assembly, which was in session just then, not only the Social-Democrats, but some Christian-Socialists and Pan-Germans as well, put the question to the government as to what it proposed to do to help the desperate people. The Social-Democrats made a declaration of urgency and moved that the government immediately call new elections, so that the voters could decide themselves whether they were prepared to bear present conditions any longer. Deathly pale, the Chancellor rose to rejoin. “To call new elections at this moment of general confusion would be to deliver the fate of our country into the hands of the radical elements, and to open our gates wide to the Jews! The proudest and greatest work ever created by the Austrian legislature would collapse because we are not patient enough, because we are not capable of sufficient self-denial to endure present conditions and overcome our difficulties. I know that international Jewry is mixed up in this, and doubtless agitators, bought with Jewish money, are working to....” The rest of the Chancellor’s words were lost in the terrific hullabaloo that now filled the house. The Social-Democrats knocked on their desks, the galleries shouted wildly, and even from the benches of his partisans came calls like “Have you proof for your statements?”