Another political type which is not quite pathological yet which occupies a position somewhat outside the main stream of normal political activity is that of the silent man, the one who often wields great power but remains nearly concealed from the public. He is found most often in American politics. Major Rann, boss of the Virginia Senate and opponent of Nick Burr in Ellen Glasgow’s _The Voice of the People_, “had never made a speech in his life, but ... he was continually speaking through the mouths of others.” Jethro Bass in _Coniston_ is another silent man, figuratively and literally. This type carried to the extreme is Dan Lurcock in _Revelry_, President-maker, interstate lobbyist, and national salesman of patronage. A European variant of this type is represented by Karl Yundt in _The Secret Agent_. Described as “no man of action,” his function is to goad others into action. This catalytic role is performed by anti-fascist Professor Quadri in _The Conformist_. His specialty is proselytizing the young. Cold and detached, he often channels his converts into actions he knows will be fatal, “desperate actions that could be justified only as part of an extremely long-term plan and that, indeed, necessarily involved a cruel indifference to the value of human life.” =The Disillusioned= In _The Age of Longing_ ex-Marxist poet Julien Dellatre asks Hydie Anderson: Do you remember ‘The Possessed’? They were an enviable crowd of maniacs. We are the dispossessed--the dispossessed of faith; the physically or spiritually homeless. A burning fanatic is dangerous; a burnt-out fanatic is abject. With these words he speaks for a constantly growing number of former political enthusiasts who have discovered that they had carried not a torch but a club. One is tempted to call this era the Age of Disillusionment. But this would in a sense be an error, for disillusionment is as old as politics. It is always present; only the number of cases varies. The literary list is a long one--Phineas Finn, the Duke of Omnium, Dick Remington, Hilary Vane, Harvey Sayler, Glenn Spotswood, and scores of others. Even the opportunist Shawcross is not immune. Near the end of his career he asks himself if statesmen are not actually “the true pests and cancers of human society.” He thinks that if he could have one wish granted, it would be that politicians would leave all the people alone for fifty years. “We might then have a better world,” he reflects. “We couldn’t have a worse one.”