cathedral, in the guise of a Catholic priest, performing the high
mass. O weary search! But I must not falter; and surely my heart-
deep quest of Truth shall avail at last."

He paused and fixed his eyes upon the Intelligencer with a depth of
investigation that seemed to hold commerce with the inner nature of
this being, wholly regardless of his external development.

"And what are you?" said he. "It will not satisfy me to point to
this fantastic show of an Intelligence Office and this mockery of
business. Tell me what is beneath it, and what your real agency in
life and your influence upon mankind."

"Yours is a mind," answered the Man of Intelligence, "before which
the forms and fantasies that conceal the inner idea from the
multitude vanish at once and leave the naked reality beneath. Know,
then, the secret. My agency in worldly action, my connection with
the press, and tumult, and intermingling, and development of human
affairs, is merely delusive. The desire of man's heart does for him
whatever I seem to do. I am no minister of action, but the
Recording Spirit."

What further secrets were then spoken remains a mystery, inasmuch as
the roar of the city, the bustle of human business, the outcry of
the jostling masses, the rush and tumult of man's life, in its noisy
and brief career, arose so high that it drowned the words of these
two talkers; and whether they stood talking in the moon, or in
Vanity Fair, or in a city of this actual world, is more than I can
say.