The Chevalier Goldberg smiled again, but less patiently. “My dear good friends,” he said, “do you think the world and its inhabitants will all undergo a radical change because Israel has obtained permission from Czarigrad to re-colonise Palestine? I tell you that as soon as our scheme is known, it will become the butt for the malice and jealousy of the whole earth. The hostile nations will unite against us; our own friends will be swept into the vortex. To enable us to surmount the crisis before us, we need a leader of such varied gifts and experiences as it would seem almost impossible to find combined in a single individual. In fact, there is only one man in Europe, perhaps in the world, who possesses them, and I expect him here in a few minutes.” “And who may this heaven-sent leader be?” sneered Dr Texelius. “I see him now, coming round the corner of the Opera-house,” pursued the Chevalier, who from his seat by the window could obtain a view through the openings of the sun-blind. “That is he--the short man with the light moustache.” “An Englishman, evidently,” said Rubenssohn; “or he would not walk to keep an appointment when he might drive.” “Right, Herschel my son. He is an Englishman. But,” and the Chevalier dropped the blind which he had partially drawn up, and turned away from the window and the sounds of voices, laughter, and crowding footfalls which it admitted, “he is also a true cosmopolitan. For over ten years he was a king in all but name, and might, had he cared to do it, have married a queen.” “What! You too have been taken captive by the Mortimer idea?” cried Dr Texelius. “Our Thracian friends can’t find words to deplore his loss. To hear them one might indeed think him Moses and David rolled into one.” “Is your friend really the man who was Prime Minister of Thracia, and was overthrown by foreign intrigues the day that the young King attained his majority, Chevalier?” asked Rubenssohn eagerly. “He has always seemed to me a heroic figure in an unheroic age.” “What I want to know is, how much are you going to pay him?” vociferated Dr Texelius, while the Chevalier smiled rather drily. Before he could answer the question, a deferential servant at the door announced “His Excellency Count Mortimer,” and ushered in a grey-haired man, whose keen blue eyes appeared to take the measure of all the occupants of the room at a single glance. “Ah, my frient! You hef arrifed, den?” cried the Chevalier in English. “Beholt us all awaitink your pleassure. Dis fenerable clerchymen iss our goot frient de Rabbi Schaul, and here iss de worlt-renowned scientist Dr Texelius. Dis younk men iss Herschel Rubenssohn, de Poet off de Ghetto, a redical in theory, but aristocret by nature.”