CHAPTER II TARSIS
Among the chieftains of production who were leading Italy to prosperity and power Antonio Tarsis held the foremost place. Son of a shop-keeper in Palermo, he began life poor and without influence. It had taken him less than twenty years to build up a fortune so large that the journals of new ideals pointed to it as a terrible example. Cartoonists had fallen into the habit of picturing him with a snout and bristled ears. There was a serious portrait of him in the directors’ room of one of the companies he ruled. It was painted by a man whose impulse to please was stronger than his artistic courage. He told all that he dared. In full length, it showed a man under forty, black-bearded, with a well-turned person of middle height; small, adroit eyes heavily browed, promine
