Three days later I was informed of the passing of Anzoni, Arch-priest of Meleager, and of the election of Marzona as his successor. For the former part of this intelligence I was, of course, fully prepared, but the latter intimation aroused my worst apprehensions and depressed my spirits to their lowest depth. For I understood only too well the hard, intractable, suspicious nature of the councillor who had just been chosen--by what means or on what system I knew not--to fill the vacant office of my dear old friend. All I could do was to conceal with equal adroitness both my sorrow for the first calamity and my anxiety over the second, and to pursue my normal course of life with all the composure at my disposal. Nevertheless, my first formal interview with the new potentate only served to strengthen every foreboding on my part. Marzona always treated me, I admit, with a courteous demeanour whether in public or private; but I was only too conscious on every occasion of our meeting that I was in the presence of a crafty, unrelenting foe, whom it would be useless to attempt to placate. As for Marzona's prior career, I had gathered some time ago that he was by birth a plebeian "intellectual," who had risen by his talents (in the manner already described by me in my former letter) to the order of the nobility, and from the ranks of the nobles had contrived to pass through the school of the neophytes and the college of the probationers, and thence into the coveted oligarchy beyond. For private reasons he had always aimed at the office of Arch-priest, sedulously declining, with this particular objective in view, to undertake the voyage to the Earth, with the result that now at last he had attained to that eminence on which for years he had concentrated his hopes, his desires and all his immense capacity of intrigue. In appearance Marzona was not unprepossessing, and his face, which showed of a somewhat lighter tint than is usual in Meleager, would have been accounted handsome, were it not for the dull hazel eyes, which, however, constantly emitted from their recesses a ruddy gleam, reminding me of the hidden tongue of flame that lurks in the so-called black opals of Queensland. To a nature so sensitive as mine, the very approach of this personage caused an involuntary tremor of repulsion, and in my heart I always quailed when those expressionless, opalescent orbs were directed at me.