“Perhaps what all the world most wants next to the fulfilment of its personal desires,” continued Fessenden imperturbably, “is the obliteration of its most actively malignant forces. The most malignant force in the world to-day is Russia; in a lesser degree, Turkey. These countries, by their unredeemable barbarism, compass the utter misery of more millions of helpless human beings than all the other causes in the rest of the world that conduce, in the natural order of things, to unhappiness. Moreover, Russia is the one menace which prevents Europe and England from enjoying a moment’s security. She creeps and creeps, and never retraces a step. In far-sightedness Russia is the greatest genius among nations, and she is absolutely unscrupulous; the tyro in diplomacy does not trust her, and yet she outwits again and again. There is a hideous possibility of her eventual triumph, and the day she weakens the power of England, puts her nose in the Persian Gulf, flows over Turkey, that day sounds the passing bell of modern civilization. Therefore, the power or powers that hamstring this anomaly in the twentieth century, forcing her to crouch with her feet in the sand like a malignant but helpless sphinx until invading progress has taught her wisdom--these powers would achieve an immortality in history which they could compass by means of no other modern conditions. Am I not right?” The Emperor nodded. He was very pale. Not only had Fessenden pricked from its drugged sleep one of the passionate hopes of his early manhood, but he knew that the American was no idle dreamer, that he had already accomplished the impossible. He had a sensation of standing spellbound on the threshold of a miraculous future towards which the great forces within him had moved precisely since the birth of the worlds. But the impression was hardly realized; his faculties were concentrated upon the utterance of the man who no longer looked young, in whose aspect was no trace of the lover of the Archduchess of Austria, who, indeed, looked little more than an intellect, using a casual body as a convenient medium. Abbott asked his next question so abruptly that the Emperor stiffened into an attitude not unlike that of a midnight sentry alarmed by a sudden footfall. “You know what I have been trying to do in my factory out West?” “Well?”