All this was encouraged by his colleagues on the Council of Four, who, by the break-up of the Council of Ten, completed the isolation which the President's own temperament had initiated.

Thus day after day and week after week, he allowed himself to be closeted, unsupported, unadvised, and alone, with men much sharper than himself, in situations of supreme difficulty, where be needed for success every description of resource, fertility, and knowledge.

He allowed himself to be drugged by their atmosphere, to discuss on the basis of their plans and of their data, and to be led along their paths.
These and other various causes combined to produce the following situation.

The reader must remember that the processes which are here compressed into a few pages took place slowly, gradually, insidiously, over a period of about five months.
As the President had thought nothing out, the Council was generally working on the basis of a French or British draft.

He had to take up, therefore, a persistent attitude of obstruction, criticism, and negation, if the draft was to become at all in line with his own ideas and purpose.