rs was totally
incompetent. I gave him my advice many a time. Yes, it's all right. I'll
write a few sentences of explanation, and we shall have fuller news
to-morrow.' And he would write his few sentences of explanation, and the
paper he wrote for would come out next morning with the only
intelligible account of what had happened in the far-off country.

The Dictator did not know it at the time, but it was certain that
Captain Sarrasin's description of the rising in Gloria and the expulsion
of Gloria's former chief had done much to secure a favourable reception
of Ericson in London. The night when the news of the struggle and the
defeat came to town no newspaper man knew anything in the world about it
but Oisin Sarrasin. The tendency of the English Press is always to go in
for foreign revolutions. It saves trouble, for one thing. Therefore, all
the London Press except the one paper to which Oisin Sarrasin
contributed assumed, as a matter of course, that the revolution in
Gloria was a revolution against tyranny, or priestcraft, or corruption,
or what not--and Oisin Sarrasin alone explained that it was a revolution
against reforms too enlightened and too advanced--a revolution of
corruption against healthy civilisation and purity--of stagnation
against progress--of the system comfortable to corrupt judges and to
wealthy suitors, and against judicial integrity. It was pointed out in
Captain Sarrasin's paper that this was the sort of revolution which had
succeeded for the moment in turning out the Englishman Ericson--and the
other papers, when they came to look into the matter, found that Captain
Sarrasin's version of the story was about right--and in a few days all
the papers when they came out were glorifying the heroic Englishman who
had endeavoured so nobly to reorganise the Republic of Gloria on the
exalted principles of the British Constitution, and had for the time
lost his place and his power in the generous effort. Then the whole
Press of London rallied round the Dictator, and the Dictator became a
splendid social success.

Oisin Sarrasin had been called to the English bar and to the American
bar. He seemed to have done almost everything that a man could do, and
to have been almost everywhere that a man could be. Yet, as we have
said, he seldom talked of where he had been or what he had done. He did
not parade himself--he was found out. He never paraded his intimate
knowledge of Russia, but he happened at Constant