Nor had the forces aligned against him marked time.  When again he took the field he must take it in a realm of altered and shrunken boundaries, and the roll-call of his allies would show many missing—­and many gone over to the foe.  But greater than all these things was the change in himself.  The cloyed wolf who had gorged too deep of success was no longer the lean fighting beast with a ravenous light of conquest in his eyes.  That Burton might have met even the present and triumphed.  This was a wolf on the defensive, fating a pack which had turned upon his leadership.  His weakened fangs were against the jaws of all the rest—­and he came scarred and spent from days and nights of physical feebleness.

Paul sat beside Hamilton in his car as they drove down-town on that first day when the financier defied the edicts of his physicians.

“Hamilton,” questioned the younger brother, voicing for the first time that deep anxiety which had been clamoring within him for weeks, “will you be able to drive back your assailants?  The papers predict that your reign is broken and your ruin near at hand.”

Hamilton raised his face and smiled.  It was the old imperious smile, but the face over which it spread was thinner and gaunter and between the hollowed cheekbones the smile lost something of its wonted illumination—­failed somewhat of its old convincing force.

“The papers have had their opportunity to prattle without check.  Now I am back again—­we shall see.”  He broke off and laughed, then he rushed on fiercely.  “They call this St. Helena.  They lie.”  In the weakness which was still upon him, he gasped a moment for breath.  “When Napoleon left Elba the papers of Paris raved about the escape of the unspeakable tyrant.  When he reached the borders of France they announced, without comment, the approach of Napoleon Bonaparte, but when he was near the gates they raised a paean of triumphal welcome to the Emperor, who had returned to make France more glorious than ever among nations!  I shall soon be at their city gates, Paul, and, while my star shines, no mortal power can stop me or stay my progress.”

But the Napoleon of the later phases was not the Napoleon of Austerlitz.  Out of the great heart and brain some essential element had gone.  Burton, too, had tasted defeat and knew its bitterness.  He was going back to rally shrunken forces and lead a forlorn hope and his eyes were grimly defiant—­where once they had been regnantly confident.  Perhaps Hamilton Burton during those next few months was after all more worthy of admiration than he had been since a boy whose dreams burned city-ward.  Feeling each day a day of adversity and giving no hint, he recognized, yet refused to admit, the dawn of defeat when defeat was far past its dawning.  Upon the world of allied assailants that pressed him back—­back—­ever back on dwindling millions and then shrinking hundreds of thousands he turned a fierce and unsurrendering face.  To himself he said even now that his star was infallible.