The Marquis found it a more difficult task than he had expected. The General, he confessed, was very stupid, and offered all kinds of objections. He even went so far as to say that he doubted whether the suggested stratagem was quite soldierly, but he was at once pooh-poohed into recantation by the Marquis's English precedents. Still he held out with confused obstinacy, which the Marquis put down to the General's denseness, but which was, in fact, due to his own mistaken estimate of the situation. His hasty and erroneous conclusions as to the real relations between the respective parties had caused him, as has been already hinted, to entirely misunderstand Dolabella's position, and he was adopting a false method of attack.
"But pardon me for saying," said the General, retreating to this point for the tenth time, "that I cannot see what I or my party is to gain by adopting the course you propose." The General always distinguished between himself and his party. It was no doubt entirely due to that unique and complex condition of Oneirian politics, which was the precise element in the question, that the Marquis in his haste had failed to grasp. The shrewd Frenchman began to perceive he was at fault somewhere, and determined to fathom the mystery.
"I perceive," said he, "that you have more than once spoken of yourself as something distinct from the party you lead. May I venture to ask whether the usual procedure in this country is to deal with the two things separately?"
"God forbid!" cried the General in alarm. "To hint of such a thing would smell of disloyalty in any but a foreigner who does not understand us."
"Forgive my ignorance, General," said the Marquis, "and show your pity for it so far as to explain your unintelligible position."
"With great pleasure, my dear Marquis," answered the General, with a look of painful worry at the almost impossible feat demanded of him. "It is a little complicated, but I think I can show you how things lie. You see, although I lead the Kallikagathist party, it does not follow me."
"That _is_ a little difficult," answered the Marquis gravely. "You mean that I should arrange with your party which way it means to go, that you may be in a position to know how to lead it?"