Frank missed the mellow wisdom of his father’s counsel seriously.  He entered the shop, found a volume of Kant and scanned it for some moments till he read: 

“This world’s life is only an appearance, a sensuous image of the pure spiritual life, and the whole of Sense is only a picture swimming before our present knowing faculty like a dream and having no reality in itself.”

Acting upon a strange impulse, he bought the book, marked the passage and ordered it sent to Aleta.

A week after Ruef’s confession the trial of Mayor Schmitz began.  It dragged through the usual delays which clever lawyers can exact by legal technicality.  Judge Dunne, sitting in the auditorium of the Bush Street synagogue, between the six-tinned ceremonial candlesticks and in front of the Mosiac tablets of Hebraic law, dispensed modern justice.

Meanwhile the Committee of Seven sprang suddenly into being.  A morning paper announced that Schmitz had handed the reins of the city over to a septette of prominent citizens.  Governor Gillette lauded this action.  But Rudolph Spreckels disowned the Committee.  Langdon and Heney were suspicious of its purpose.  So the Committee of Seven resigned.

At this juncture the Schmitz trial ended in conviction of the Mayor which was tantamount to his removal from office.  It left a vacancy which, nominally, the Supervisors had the power to fill.  But they were under Langdon’s orders.  Actually, therefore, the District Attorney found himself confronted by the task of naming a new mayor.

Unexpectedly the man was found in Edward Robeson Taylor, doctor of medicine and law, poet and Greek scholar.  The selection was hailed with relief.  Frank hastened to the Taylor home, a trim, white dwelling on California street near Webster.  He found a genial, curly-haired old gentleman sitting in a room about whose walls were thousands of books.  He was reading Epictetus.

Stanley found the new mayor likeable and friendly.  He seemed a man of simple thought.  Frank wondered how he would endure the roiling passions of this city’s politics.  Dr. Taylor seemed undaunted by the prospect, though.

Without delay he was elected by the Supervisors.  Then began the farcical procedure of their resignations.  One by one the new chief named good citizens as their successors.

But the real fight was now beginning.  Halsey’s testimony had not incriminated Glass beyond a peradventure.  There remained a shade of doubt that he had authorized the outlay of a certain fund for the purposes of bribery.  The jury disagreed.  The Prosecution’s first battle against the “higher-ups” had brought no victory.

Ruef was failing Heney as a witness for the people.  After months of bargaining the special prosecutor withdrew his tacit offer of immunity.  Heney’s patience with the wily little Boss, who knew no end of legal subterfuge, was suddenly exhausted.  Frank heard that Ruef was to be tried on one of the three hundred odd indictments found against him.  Schmitz had been sentenced to five years in San Quentin.  He had appealed.