A Lady of Rome by F. Marion Crawford

The strike was an obstinate one, and lasted longer than had been expected. This story is not concerned with the theories or the practices of the so-called Chamber of Labour in Italy. It is enough to say that the organisation has neither the importance nor the intelligence of similar bodies in other great countries, and that instead of tending to the scientific socialism of Bebel, its leaders, or its tyrants, are distinctly of the anarchist class, and all they know about the French Revolution is that it had a Reign of Terror which they hanker to restore. There are true socialists in Italy, as there are many true republicans, but they must not be classed with the raving rowdies who force honest workmen to leave their work and who howl and throw stones in the streets. Beyond this, nothing need be said about the general strike during which the Countess of Montalto was haunted by a tormenting presentiment that something dreadful was going to happen to her son.

The facts, so far as they affected her, were simple enough. During some days the instigators of disturbance appeared at more or less regular hours, chiefly in the neighbourhood of the Piazza di Venezia, where they made wild and foolish speeches that stirred up a row which occasionally led to the throwing of a few stones. The city police and the foot carabineers then appeared to disperse the crowd, and generally succeeded in doing so without trouble when it was ready for its supper, or tired of its amusement, or had any sufficient reason for going home. There was not much more spirit in the whole thing than there used to be in the last days of town-and-gown rows in Oxford and Cambridge. But such as the disturbances were, they had become a great nuisance, and the strike itself was extremely irritating to all the better classes, to whom it was a source of great inconvenience.