“That,” returned Mr. Lavender with a sigh, “is a great relief, for whether you rule the country or not, you are undoubtedly the source from which I, together with the majority of my countrymen, derive our inspirations. You are the fountainhead at which we draw and drink. And to know that your waters are pure, unstained by taint of personal prejudice and the love of power, will fortify us considerably. Am I to assume, then, that above all passion and pettiness, you are an impersonal force whose innumerable daily editions reflect nothing but abstract truth, and are in no way the servants of a preconceived and personal view of the situation?” “You want to know too much, don't you think?” said the Personage with a smile. “How can that be, sir?” asked Mr. Lavender: “If you are indeed the invisible king swaying the currents of national life, and turning its tides at will, it is essential that we should believe in you; and before we can believe in you must we not know all about you?” “By Jove, sir,” replied the Personage, “that strikes me as being contrary to all the rules of religion. I thought faith was the ticket.” By this answer Mr. Lavender was so impressed that he sat for a moment in silence, with his eyebrow working up and down. “Sir,” he said at last, “you have given me a new thought. If you are right, to disbelieve in you and the acts which you perform, or rather the editions which you issue, is blasphemy.” “I should think so,” said the Personage, emitting a long whiff of smoke. “Hadn't that ever occurred to you before?” “No,” replied Mr. Lavender, naively, “for I have never yet disbelieved anything in those journals.” The Personage coughed heartily. “I have always regarded them,” went on Mr. Lavender, “as I myself should wish to be regarded, 'without fear and without reproach.' For that is, as I understand it, the principle on which a gentleman must live, ever believing of others what he would wish believed of himself. With the exception of Germans,” he added hastily. “Naturally,” returned the Personage. “And I'll defy you to find anything in them which disagrees with that formula. Everything they print refers to Germans if not directly then obliquely. Germans are the 'idee fixe', and without an 'idee fixe', as you know, there's no such thing as religion. Do you get me?”