tterly.
It must be remembered, too, that he had begun the interview with a
preconceived prejudice, expecting it to turn out badly, so that he was
the more ready to allow matters to take an unfavourable turn.

The result was not a decided break in his relations with his mother, but
a state of things more irritating than any open difference could have
been. From that time Corona discouraged him, and never ceased to advise
him to go to his father and ask frankly for enough money to clear him
outright. Orsino, on his part, obstinately refused to apply to any one
for help, as long as Del Ferice continued to advance him money.

In those months which followed there were few indeed who did not suffer
in the almost universal financial cataclysm. All that Contini and
others, older and wiser than he, had predicted, took place, and more
also. The banks refused discount, even upon the best paper, saying with
justice that they were obliged to hold their funds in reserve at such a
time. The works stopped almost everywhere. It was impossible to raise
money. Thousands upon thousands of workmen who had come from great
distances during the past two or three years were suddenly thrown out of
work, penniless in the streets and many of them burdened with wives and
children. There were one or two small riots and there was much
demonstration, but, on the whole, the poor masons behaved very well. The
government and the municipality did what they could--what governments
and municipalities can do when hampered at every turn by the most
complicated and ill-considered machinery of administration ever invented
in any country. The starving workmen were by slow degrees got out of the
city and sent back to starve out of sight in their native places. The
emigration was enormous in all directions.

The dismal ruins of that new city which was to have been built and which
never reached completion are visible everywhere. Houses seven stories
high, abandoned within a month of completion rise uninhabited and
uninhabitable out of a rank growth of weeds, amidst heaps of rubbish,
staring down at the broad, desolate streets where the vigorous grass
pushes its way up through the loose stones of the unrolled metalling.
Amidst heavy low walls which were to have been the ground stories of
palaces, a few ragged children play in the sun, a lean donkey crops the
thistles, or if near to a few occupied dwellings, a wine seller makes a
booth of straw and chestnut boughs