Dogma sat lightly on him, and he construed the apostolic exhortations to charity in their widest sense.

But these views were reserved for Angela and myself.

With his flock he was the Roman ecclesiastic--a sovereign pontiff--whom they must obey in this world on pain of being damned in the next.

For he held that the only ways of successfully ruling semi-civilized races are by physical force, personal influence, or their fear of the unseen and the unknown.

At the outset Balthazar, having no physical force at his command, had to trust altogether to personal influence, which, being now re-enforced by the highest religious sanctions, made his power literally absolute.