"What you say is very true, my dear Petrobey, and I quite agree with you that there is no time to be lost. Would you not form a committee and deliberate what is to be done, and then submit your results to me to receive my sanction? You spoke, I remember, about the formation of some cavalry corps; a very wise plan I thought it, and I meant to have some talk with you about it. But really the days have slipped by so. Yes, we must, indeed, be up and doing, and my orderly has just informed me, gentlemen, that dinner is ready; and I shall be pleased to see you, my dear archbishop, and you, commander, at my table. Dinner will be served immediately, and our deliberations, gentlemen, in which I think we may say we have made some solid progress, will be adjourned till to-morrow at the usual hour." Nicholas saw that there was no help here, and he set himself to thwart Germanos with all his power. He considered that the presence of the primates in the camp rendered the army powerless, for it was eaten up with intrigue, slander, and incessant accusation, provoking counter-accusation. At the meetings of the senate he opposed Germanos on every point, whether or no his suggestions were honorable or expedient, and allying himself with any one who would join him in upholding the army against the church, ranged himself side by side with crooked and unscrupulous men like Poniropoulos and Anagnostes, mere brigands and adventurers, who, without any motive but their own greed, had got together a band of peasants, and were in command of a mere disorderly rabble; men who in his soberer moments he knew were as detestable as, in his furious anger against Germanos, he thought the primate to be. Every day the meetings of the senate grew more and more disorderly, and gradually Prince Demetrius saw that he was no more than a cypher in the eyes of these men. Of personal ambition Nicholas had none; honestly and with his whole heart he cared for nothing but the success of the revolution and the extermination of the Turk, and he used his great power and influence for the defeat of the intriguing primates, being convinced that till the question between the two parties was settled nothing could be done. At any rate, he was free from all stings of conscience; his conduct might be unwise, but he acted from impeccable motives, and there was enough truth in his allegations against Germanos to give them a sting that was wellnigh unforgivable.