t monkey-faced
foreigner. On the other hand Jacobi had little hope of success: "What
can an old man do?" said he with perfect sincerity to Carrington; "If
I were forty years younger, that great oaf should not have his own way.
Ah! I wish I were young again and we were in Vienna!" From which it was
rightly inferred by Carrington that the venerable diplomatist would, if
such acts were still in fashion, have coolly insulted the Senator, and
put a bullet through his heart.

Chapter VI

IN February the weather became warmer and summer-like. In Virginia there
comes often at this season a deceptive gleam of summer, slipping in
between heavy storm-clouds of sleet and snow; days and sometimes weeks
when the temperature is like June; when the earliest plants begin to
show their hardy flowers, and when the bare branches of the forest trees
alone protest against the conduct of the seasons. Then men and women are
languid; life seems, as in Italy, sensuous and glowing with colour; one
is conscious of walking in an atmosphere that is warm, palpable, radiant
with possibilities; a delicate haze hangs over Arlington, and softens
even the harsh white glare of the Capitol; the struggle of existence
seems to abate; Lent throws its calm shadow over society; and youthful
diplomatists, unconscious of their danger, are lured into asking foolish
girls to marry them; the blood thaws in the heart and flows out into the
veins, like the rills of sparkling water that trickle from every lump
of ice or snow, as though all the ice and snow on earth, and all the
hardness of heart, all the heresy and schism, all the works of the
devil, had yielded to the force of love and to the fresh warmth of
innocent, lamb-like, confiding virtue. In such a world there should be
no guile--but there is a great deal of it notwithstanding. Indeed, at
no other season is there so much. This is the moment when the two whited
sepulchres at either end of the Avenue reek with the thick atmosphere of
bargain and sale. The old is going; the new is coming. Wealth, office,
power are at auction. Who bids highest? who hates with most venom? who
intrigues with most skill? who has done the dirtiest, the meanest, the
darkest, and the most, political work? He shall have his reward.

Senator Ratcliffe was absorbed and ill at ease. A swarm of applicants
for office dogged his steps and beleaguered his rooms in quest of his
endorsement of their paper characters. The new President was to