When he moved to the capital he had six houses in different parts of the country, racehorses, picture galleries, mines, factories, newspapers, and he headed the list of subscribers to the hospitals patronized by the Royal Family. At first, in the great city, he was diffident and shy among the illustrious personages with whom he fraternized, but it was not long before he discovered that they were just as susceptible to the pinch of money as the carpenter and the priest and the bailiff and the fruiterer in his village. It was quite easy to buy the control of these important people without their ever having to face the unpleasant fact. More than one beautiful lady, among them a duchess and a prima donna of surpassing loveliness, endeavored to cajole him and to discover his secret. In vain; he could not forget the Princess Elizabeth, and now ambition spurred him on. He was wearying of the ease with which fame and position and the highest society could be bought, and began to lust for power. With his native peasant shrewdness he saw that society consisted of the People, of persons of talent and cunning above them, of the descendants of persons of talent and cunning left high and dry beyond the reach of want, of ornamental families set at the head of the nations, of a few ingenious minds who (so far as there was any direction) governed the workings and interlockings of all the parts of the whole. They had control of all the sources of money except his box, and he determined, to relieve his boredom and also as a means of reaching his Princess, to pit his power against theirs. He was never ashamed of his mother, and she came to stay with him once a year for a week, but she never ceased to lament the loss of her other son, Peter, from whom no word had come. One night she had a dream, and she dreamed she saw Peter lying wounded in a thicket, and she knew perfectly where it was and said she must go to find him. Simon humored her and gave her money for a long voyage. She went back to her own village and out upon the road until she came to the effigy of the god, for this was the only god she knew, and she prayed to him. The old man appeared before her and told her to go to her home, for Peter would return to her before she died. At this she was comforted, and went home to her husband and sent Simon back his money, because she was afraid to keep so large a sum in the house. It was said in the capital that the land of the greatest of emperors was the richest of all countries, but the people were the stupidest and had no notion of its wealth. The financiers were continually sending concessionaires and adventurers, but they came away empty-handed. Simon had now paid his way into the royal circle, and for defraying the debt on the royal stable had been ennobled. He suggested to the King that he should send an embassy to invite the greatest of emperors and his daughter to pay a visit to the capital to see the wonders of their civilization.