and striking experience to have so eminent a
man at the side of one's desk, revealing for one's guidance the secrets
of sovereigns and cabinets. Great names were mentioned in the course
of this dissertation--mentioned with the authoritative ease of one who
dined with princes and prime ministers--and Thorpe felt that he shared
in the distinction of this familiarity with the august. He was in the
position of paying a salary to this courtly old nobleman and statesman,
who could tell him of his own intimate knowledge how Emperors conversed
with one another; how the Pope fidgeted in his ornate-carved chair when
the visitor talked on unwelcome topics; how a Queen and an opera-bouffe
dancer waged an obscure and envenomed battle for the possession of a
counting-house strong box, and in the outcome a nation was armed with
inferior old muskets instead of modern weapons, and the girl got the
difference expressed in black pearls.

These reminiscences seemed to alter the atmosphere, and even the
appearance, of the Board Room. It was almost as if the apartment itself
was becoming historic, like those chambers they pointed out to the
tourist wherein crowned heads had slept. The manner of the Marquis lent
itself charmingly to this illusion. He spoke in a facile, mellifluous
voice, and as fluently as if he had been at work for a long time
preparing a dissertation on this subject, instead of taking it up now by
chance. In his tone, in his gestures, in the sustained friendliness
of his facial expressions, there was a palpable desire to please his
auditor--and Thorpe gave more heed to this than to the thread of the
discourse. The facts that he heard now about the Jewish masters of
international finance were doubtless surprising and suggestive to a
degree, but somehow they failed to stimulate his imagination. Lord
Chaldon's statesmanlike discussion of the uses to which they put
this vast power of theirs; his conviction that on the whole they were
beneficent; his dread of the consequences of any organized attempt to
take this power away from them, and put it into other and less capable
hands--no doubt it was all very clever and wise, but Thorpe did not care
for it.

At the end he nodded, and, with a lumbering movement, altered his
position in his chair. The fixed idea of despoiling Rostocker, Aronson,
Ganz, Rothfoere, Lewis, and Mendel of their last sixpence had been in no
wise affected by this entertaining homily. There appeared to be no n