"The Baron's excuses, Excellency! Engaged in the Council-room with some of the Ministers, but expects to be out presently. Sit in the Loggia, Excellency?"
"So our host is holding a Cabinet Council, General?" said the English Ambassador.
"A sort of scratch council, seemingly. Something that concerns the day's doings, I guess, and is urgent and important."
"A great man, General, if half one hears about him is true."
"Great?" said the American. "Yes, and no, Sir Evelyn, according as you regard him. In the opinion of some of his followers the Baron Bonelli is the greatest man in the country—greater than the King himself—and a statesman too big for Italy. One of those commanding personages who carry everything before them, so that when they speak even monarchs are bound to obey. That's one view of his picture, Sir Evelyn."
"And the other view?"
General Potter glanced in the direction of a door hung with curtains, from which there came at intervals the deadened drumming of voices, and then he said:
"A man of implacable temper and imperious soul, an infidel of hard and cynical spirit, a sceptic and a tyrant."
"Which view do the people take?"
"Can you ask? The people hate him for the heavy burden of taxation with which he is destroying the nation in his attempt to build it up."