t had undertaken to put
him on the horns of a dilemma; either to force him into a hostile and
treacherous Cabinet, or to throw on him the blame of a refusal and
a quarrel. He meant to embrace one of the horns and to impale the
President on it, and he felt perfect confidence in his own success. He
meant to accept the Treasury and he was ready to back himself with a
heavy wager to get the government entirely into his own hands within six
weeks. His contempt for the Hoosier Stone-cutter was unbounded, and his
confidence in himself more absolute than ever.

Busy as he was, the Senator made his appearance the next evening at Mrs.

Lee's, and finding her alone with Sybil, who was occupied with her
own little devices, Ratcliffe told Madeleine the story of his week's
experience.

He did not dwell on his exploits. On the contrary he quite ignored those
elaborate arrangements which had taken from the President his power of
volition. His picture presented himself; solitary and unprotected, in
the character of that honest beast who was invited to dine with the lion
and saw that all the footmarks of his predecessors led into the lion's
cave, and none away from it. He described in humorous detail his
interviews with the Indiana lion, and the particulars of the surfeit of
lobster as given in the President's dialect; he even repeated to her the
story told him by Mr. Tom Lord, without omitting oaths or gestures; he
told her how matters stood at the moment, and how the President had laid
a trap for him which he could not escape; he must either enter a
Cabinet constructed on purpose to thwart him and with the certainty of
ignominious dismissal at the first opportunity, or he must refuse an
offer of friendship which would throw on him the blame of a quarrel, and
enable the President to charge all future difficulties to the account
of Ratcliffe's "insatiable ambition." "And now, Mrs. Lee," he continued,
with increasing seriousness of tone; "I want your advice; what shall I
do?"

Even this half revelation of the meanness which distorted politics; this
one-sided view of human nature in its naked deformity playing pranks
with the interests of forty million people, disgusted and depressed
Madeleine's mind. Ratclife spared her nothing except the exposure of
his own moral sores. He carefully called her attention to every leprous
taint upon his neighbours' persons, to every rag in their foul clothing,
to every slimy and fetid pool that lay bes