Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Waters of Edera by Ouida
page 38 of 275 (13%)

The grasp of an invisible power took the crust off their bread, the
toll off their oil, off their bed of sacking, off their plate of
fish, and took their children when they grew to manhood and sent them
into strange lands and over strange seas; they felt the grip of that
hard hand as their forefathers had felt it under the Caesars, under
the Popes, under the feudal lords, under the foreign kings; they felt
it so now under the Casa Sabauda; the same, always the same; for the
manners and titles of the State may change, but its appetite never
lessens, and its greed never spares. For twice a thousand years their
blood had flowed and their earnings had been wrung out of them in the
name of the State, and nothing was changed in that respect; the few
lads they begot amongst them went to Africa, now as under Pompeius or
Scipio; and their corn sack was taken away from them under Depretis
or Crispi, as under the Borgia or the Malatesta; and their grape
skins soaked in water were taxed as wine, their salt for their
soup-pot was seized as contraband, unless it bore the government
stamp, and, if they dared say a word of resistance, there were the
manacles and the prison under Vittorio and Umberto as under Bourbon
or Bonaparte; for there are some things which are immutable as fate.
At long intervals, during the passing of ages, the poor stir, like
trodden worms, under this inexorable monotony of their treatment by
their rulers; and then baleful fires redden the sky, and blood runs
in the conduits, and the rich man trembles; but the cannon are
brought up at full gallop and it is soon over; there is nothing ever
really altered; the iron wheels only press the harder on the unhappy
worm, and there is nothing changed.

Here at Ruscino there were tombs of nenfro which had overhung the
river for thirty centuries; but those tombs have never seen any other
DigitalOcean Referral Badge