This mixture of ideas had resulted in his mental picture of the Fathers becoming an amalgam of monsters of pride, venery and power.
Looking about the room Comstock decided that he could not possibly have been further wrong in the way he had pictured the Fathers.
For his first feeling as his unbelieving eyes swept around the table at which the Fathers sat, was one of pity.
Far from being the creatures with inflated egos, the monsters of uxoriousness that his inflamed imagination had painted, these men who guided the affairs of his world were invalids... The lame, the halt and the blind.
Each face was torn by pain, every body bore the stigmata of some fatal disease.
Only the Grandfather, ridiculously tall and spare, standing at the far end of the gigantic room was as his imagination had foretold He would be.
In the silence that greeted them Comstock finally turned to Grundy and said, "I ... I don't understand."
The Grandfather walked to the head of the table and prepared to speak. While they waited, Grundy whispered, "Think a moment. The only cure for disease that our people know is vice. Right?"
Nodding, Comstock waited.
"But the only people on the whole planet who know how this cure works, what psychic machinery is involved, are the Fathers."