, usually, by taking refuge behind the skirts of some higher
political power--in the last reaches, Messrs. Butler, Mollenhauer, and
Simpson. Just now it was without important fuel or ammunition; and this
assignment of Cowperwood, with its attendant crime, so far as the city
treasury was concerned, threatened, as some politicians and bankers saw
it, to give it just the club it was looking for.

However, the decisive conference took place between Cowperwood and the
reigning political powers some five days after Cowperwood's failure, at
the home of Senator Simpson, which was located in Rittenhouse Square--a
region central for the older order of wealth in Philadelphia. Simpson
was a man of no little refinement artistically, of Quaker extraction,
and of great wealth-breeding judgment which he used largely to satisfy
his craving for political predominance. He was most liberal where money
would bring him a powerful or necessary political adherent. He fairly
showered offices--commissionerships, trusteeships, judgeships, political
nominations, and executive positions generally--on those who did his
bidding faithfully and without question. Compared with Butler and
Mollenhauer he was more powerful than either, for he represented the
State and the nation. When the political authorities who were trying
to swing a national election were anxious to discover what the State of
Pennsylvania would do, so far as the Republican party was concerned, it
was to Senator Simpson that they appealed. In the literal sense of
the word, he knew. The Senator had long since graduated from State to
national politics, and was an interesting figure in the United States
Senate at Washington, where his voice in all the conservative and
moneyed councils of the nation was of great weight.

The house that he occupied, of Venetian design, and four stories in
height, bore many architectural marks of distinction, such as the
floriated window, the door with the semipointed arch, and medallions
of colored marble set in the walls. The Senator was a great admirer of
Venice. He had been there often, as he had to Athens and Rome, and had
brought back many artistic objects representative of the civilizations
and refinements of older days. He was fond, for one thing, of the stern,
sculptured heads of the Roman emperors, and the fragments of gods and
goddesses which are the best testimony of the artistic aspirations of
Greece. In the entresol of this house was one of his