On this fifth day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-one, the presses of the Austrian Empire groaned forth their daily reckonings. In Vienna, the official chancery edicts, stamped with the double eagle, announced adjustments to the tolls upon the Danube passage, a measure designed to soothe the tempers of grain merchants whose barges had lain idle at the quarantine stations. Meanwhile, the commercial bulletins from Pest reported a sharp advance in the price of copper, driven by rumours of unrest in the Transylvanian mines. Here in the Exchange Arcade of th…