“Why?” “The cries they raise are for blood.” “What do they say?” “Oh, signore! Something terrible!” “Speak!” “I heard them shouting, ‘Down with the robbers of the poor!’” “And you think they mean me?” “I don’t think, signore.” “They cry my name?” The Austrian answered with a nodding of the head. “What do they say, for example?” Tarsis asked. “Some of them cry, ‘Down with Tarsis!’ Others revile you, oh, with awful epithets, signore. They have gone mad!” Tarsis threw himself in a chair, rested an arm on the Napoleonic table, and tapped it nervously. “I see,” he said; “the beasts would bite the hand that has put food in their mouths. We must act at once. Signor Ulrich, you will go to the Questura and give my message. Say that I demand a guard for Palazzo Barbiondi.” The little colour that had remained to the superintendent left his face; but he said he would go, and taking up his hat he started for the door. “Tell them,” Tarsis called after him, and the other paused--“tell them that my servants have deserted me; that I am here absolutely alone. Make haste, and return at all speed with their answer.” Signor Ulrich bowed his acquiescence and left the library. When he had crossed the grand saloon and moved through the echoing corridors a shudder came over him to see how deserted was the great house. The homely proverb about rats forsaking the sinking ship occurred to his mind and made him quicken his steps. He glanced into the open doors that he passed, and in the ante-room called out the name of Beppe; but it was as the master had said--he was alone. At the foot of the staircase, in the portico, he stood a moment irresolute, then turned and struck across the rear court, past the stables and garage, to the Via Cappuccini gateway. In taking this back street the Austrian yielded to a hunted feeling that had possessed him since he heard the rioters cry, “Down with Tarsis and his crew!” By following Via Cappuccini he would come out by the Cathedral, and from that point it was a few rods to the Questura. Tarsis emerged from the Library and paced the long course of the Atlantean chamber, a little humbled in spirit, yet angry in the realisation that there had risen a tyrant, somehow, from somewhere, who kept him a prisoner in his own house. He was conscious of a power that had awakened to render him powerless. Too rich he was to think much about his wealth, but now he could not avert the recurrent thought that with all his millions he was a supplicant for life’s barest necessity.