One represented a fierce, bearded creature like a Cossack, with round staring eyes.  No; intrinsic evidence condemned this:  it was exactly how a coarse imagination would have pictured a man who seemed to be having a great influence in the East.

The second showed a fat face with little eyes and a chin-beard.  That might conceivably be genuine:  he turned it over and saw the name of a New York firm on the back.  Then he turned to the third.  This presented a long, clean-shaven face with pince-nez, undeniably clever, but scarcely strong:  and Felsenburgh was obviously a strong man.

Percy inclined to think the second was the most probable; but they were all unconvincing; and he shuffled them carelessly together and replaced them.

Then he put his elbows on the table, and began to think.

He tried to remember what Mr. Varhaus, the American senator, had told him of Felsenburgh; yet it did not seem sufficient to account for the facts.  Felsenburgh, it seemed, had employed none of those methods common in modern politics.  He controlled no newspapers, vituperated nobody, championed nobody:  he had no picked underlings; he used no bribes; there were no monstrous crimes alleged against him.  It seemed rather as if his originality lay in his clean hands and his stainless past—­that, and his magnetic character.  He was the kind of figure that belonged rather to the age of chivalry:  a pure, clean, compelling personality, like a radiant child.  He had taken people by surprise, then, rising out of the heaving dun-coloured waters of American socialism like a vision—­from those waters so fiercely restrained from breaking into storm over since the extraordinary social revolution under Mr. Hearst’s disciples, a century ago.  That had been the end of plutocracy; the famous old laws of 1914 had burst some of the stinking bubbles of the time; and the enactments of 1916 and 1917 had prevented their forming again in any thing like their previous force.  It had been the salvation of America, undoubtedly, even if that salvation were of a dreary and uninspiring description; and now out of the flat socialistic level had arisen this romantic figure utterly unlike any that had preceded it....  So the senator had hinted....  It was too complicated for Percy just now, and he gave it up.

It was a weary world, he told himself, turning his eyes homewards.  Everything seemed so hopeless and ineffective.  He tried not to reflect on his fellow-priests, but for the fiftieth time he could not help seeing that they were not the men for the present situation.  It was not that he preferred himself; he knew perfectly well that he, too, was fully as incompetent:  had he not proved to be so with poor Father Francis, and scores of others who had clutched at him in their agony during the last ten years?  Even the Archbishop, holy man as he was, with all his childlike faith—­was that the man to lead English Catholics and confound their enemies?  There seemed no giants on the earth in these days.  What in the world was to be done?  He buried his face in his hands....