To her father’s face the incident brought a look of pity; it caused Donna Beatrice to screw up her little features into wrinkles of disgust, and in the changing glances of Tarsis it was easy to read a rising tide of resentment. When he spoke it was in the cold vein of mockery whereof on occasion he could be master. “The rights of labour,” he said, “are, of course, the only rights that a nation should consider. We have a new wisdom in Italy--it has come in with the New Democracy--the wisdom that is blind to the rights of capital and laughs at the idea of its having any virtue; all the prosperity our country enjoys to-day, understand, is due to the champions of the horny-fisted--the dreamers of the Camera. Is not that the fact, Don Riccardo?” “To be precise,” the Duke answered, “I don’t know.” “Surely you must be aware,” his son-in-law asserted, “that it is not men like myself who are giving the country what she needed so long--the breath of industrial life. Oh, no; it is our critics who are doing this, the silver-tongued doctrinaires. They would give us a very different sort of industry--the sort you see in that picture. Strife and bloodshed were the business of that day, and will be in ours, depend upon it, unless a stronger hand rules at Rome.” “What do you think ought to be done?” asked Donna Beatrice, frightened by the black forecast. “Done? The thing is simple. The Government should take measures to silence these mischief-makers, these plotters against industrial peace. We build up the wealth of the nation, they would tear it down. They delude themselves with the notion that they are the only patriots. How delicious! They are Italy’s deadliest foes.” “I tremble to think of the consequences,” said Donna Beatrice. “Why, our heads would not be safe. See how those blacksmiths and clod-hoppers lay about them with their pikes and terrible swords! I suppose the heads they are cracking are the heads that wouldn’t take in their new ideas! Ugh!” “Still, the world is somewhat hard for many,” Don Riccardo observed, for the sake of a word in support of Hera, who had moved away, resolved not to join issue with her husband. “I have always found the world what I made it,” Tarsis returned, and they passed on toward the door of the library. The contractor had stocked the massive oak shelves with volumes old and new, and supplied the room with modern leather furniture. “Oh, the Napoleonic relic!” exclaimed Donna Beatrice at sight of a large oblong table of Florentine mosaic. Tarsis was all attention. “Napoleonic relic?” he asked. “What do you mean?” “Ah, you must know,” she told him, “that when the conqueror came to Milan he made the palace his headquarters. This table was once in Villa Barbiondi, and my great-grandfather gave it to Napoleon.” Tarsis drew a chair to the table, and, with a nod of apology to the others, seated himself; resting his arms on the polished surface, he moved his right hand in simulation of the act of writing.