Such was the state of affairs when Cyril left Ludwigsbad, summoned to Vindobona by urgent letters from the Chevalier Goldberg, who was alarmed by his own knowledge of what Dr Texelius had proposed to do. Events developed rapidly during the few hours that followed, and when Cyril reached the city he found one of the Imperial chamberlains awaiting him on the railway platform, with a face of direful import. “We were all in darkness last night,” he said, after a hurried greeting. “Then Texelius has nobbled the gas company?” asked Cyril. The official nodded. “We of the Court should not be sorry to see the municipality punished,” he said, “for they richly deserve it; but there will be barricades in every street, and a massacre of the Jews, if this goes on. The electric light is only in use in one or two quarters.” The situation was serious enough. The lighting of the city was in the hands of a company, floated chiefly by means of Jewish capital, upon the dividends of which the Anti-Semitic majority of the municipality had for many years cast a covetous eye. An attempt to buy up the plant and fittings by force had been foiled by appeal to the courts of law, but the check served only to stimulate the townsmen to discover some means of coercing the company. The plan at length adopted involved the expenditure of an enormous sum of money, and a long course of litigation and chicanery, but it was successful in its object of exhausting the resources of the victims. The municipality was now in possession of a lighting system of its own, almost in working order, and the value of the company’s shares was rapidly approaching the vanishing point. But the new gas supply was not yet ready for use, and here Dr Texelius found his opportunity. When the strife first began, a committee of the company’s shareholders had been formed for the purpose of defending its rights, and since the majority of its members were Jews, he had now little difficulty in persuading them to unite in a last desperate effort. If it did not succeed in saving their property from spoliation, it would at least incommode their enemies seriously.