How is it, then, that Philip Alston can
move all these honorable and intelligent people to suit his villanous
purposes, as if they were pawns in a game of chess?"
"Ah, you don't know much about Philip Alston. You have met him only
once--yet that must have made you feel the wonderful charm of the man,
his singular power. You have seen how he looks," laughing at some
recollection. "Sometimes when he has talked to me, looking me straight
in the face with his clear, soft, gentle, blue eyes, I have doubted
everything that I ever had heard against him. Things that I know to a
moral certainty to be true seemed a monstrous slander. You must have
felt something of this, though you have seen him but once; and the more
frequently you meet him the more you will feel it. The power of the man
is past words and past understanding. Did you know that he once held a
high office under Spain? Oh, yes, for years he controlled the arrogant,
treacherous, local government of Spain as absolutely as he controls the
simple family of Cedar House. He was living in Natchez then, and was
apparently a very devout Catholic, too, about this time.
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