Soldiers should alone be used for such work;
they alone knew when to fire and when to stop, and they never acted
without orders. In fact, the troops supporting the police took no part
in the fray, as the workmen's press recognized with patriotic rejoicing.
The next morning a signal silence prevailed throughout the city, where
not a wheel stirred or the sound of a hoof broke the hush of the
streets. We had noted already that there were seven Sundays every week
in Rome, as was fit in the capital of the Christian religion, but this
Thursday was of an intenser Sabbath stillness than any first day of the
week that we had yet known. There was the clack of passing feet in the
street under our windows, but we looked out upon a yawning void where
the busy cabs had clustered, and the cabmen had socially chaffed and
quarrelled, and entreated the stranger in the cabman's superstition that
a stranger never knows when he wants a cab. Now he could have walked all
over Rome without being once invited to drive.
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