was very much that of tongue in
cheek. The attitude was especially marked in this way when he had to do
with the affairs of Gloria. He copied out and improved and enriched the
graceful sentences in which his chief urged the representatives of
England to be at once firm and cautious, at once friendly and reserved,
and so on, with a very keen and deliberate sense of a joke. He could
see, of course, with half an eye, where the influence of Ericson came
in, and he should have dearly liked, but did not venture, to spoil all
by some subtle phrase of insinuation which perhaps his chief might fail
to notice, and so allow to go off for the instruction of our
representative in Gloria or Orizaba. Soame Rivers had begun to have a
pretty strong feeling of hatred for the Dictator. It angered him even to
hear Ericson called 'the Dictator.' 'Dictator of what?' he asked himself
scornfully. Because a man has been kicked out of a place and dare not
set his foot there again, does that constitute him its dictator! There
happened to be about that time a story going the round of London society
concerning a vain and pretentious young fellow who had been kicked out
of a country house for thrusting too much of his fatuous attentions on
the daughter of the host and hostess. Soame Rivers at once nicknamed him
'The Dictator' 'Why "The Dictator"?' people asked. 'Because he has been
kicked out--don't you see?' was the answer. But Soame Rivers did not
give forth that witticism in the presence of Sir Rupert or of Sir
Rupert's daughter.

Meanwhile, the Dictator was undoubtedly becoming a more important man
than ever with the London public. The fact that he was staying in London
gave the South American question something like a personal interest for
most people. A foreign question which otherwise would seem vague,
unmeaning, and unintelligible comes to be at least interesting and
worthy of consideration, if not indeed of study, if you have under your
eyes some living man who has been in any important way mixed up in it.
The general sympathy of the public began to go with the young Republic
of Gloria and against her bigger rival. A Republic for which an
Englishman had thought of risking his life--which he had actually ruled
over--he being still visible and so the front just now in London, must
surely be better worthy the sympathy of Englishmen than some great, big,
bullying State, which, even when it had a highly respectable Emperor,
had not the good sen