leagues had quarrelled with the Prime Minister. Mr. Slide did not
care which it might be, but, whichever it might be, the poor country
had to suffer when such a state of things was permitted. It was
notorious that neither the Duke of St. Bungay nor Lord Drummond would
now even speak to their own chief, so thoroughly were they disgusted
with his conduct. Indeed it seemed that the only ally the Prime
Minister had in his own Cabinet was the Irish adventurer, Mr.
Phineas Finn. Lord Earlybird never read a word of all this, and was
altogether undisturbed as he sat in his chair in Exeter Hall,--or
just at this time of the year more frequently in the provinces. But
the Duke of Omnium read it all. After what had passed he did not dare
to show it to his brother Duke. He did not dare to tell his friend
that it was said in the newspapers that they did not speak to each
other. But every word from Mr. Slide's pen settled on his own memory,
and added to his torments. It came to be a fixed idea in the Duke's
mind that Mr. Slide was a gadfly sent to the earth for the express
purpose of worrying him.

And as a matter of course the Prime Minister in his own mind blamed
himself for what he had done. It is the chief torment of a person
constituted as he was that strong as may be the determination to do
a thing, fixed as may be the conviction that that thing ought to be
done, no sooner has it been perfected than the objections of others,
which before had been inefficacious, become suddenly endowed with
truth and force. He did not like being told by Mr. Slide that he
ought not to have set his Cabinet against him, but when he had in
fact done so, then he believed what Mr. Slide told him. As soon
almost as the irrevocable letter had been winged on its way to Lord
Earlybird, he saw the absurdity of sending it. Who was he that he
should venture to set aside all the traditions of office? A Pitt or
a Peel or a Palmerston might have done so, because they had been
abnormally strong. They had been Prime Ministers by the work of their
own hands, holding their powers against the whole world. But he,--he
told himself daily that he was only there by sufferance, because at
the moment no one else could be found to take it. In such a condition
should he not have been bound by the traditions of office, bound
by the advice of one so experienced and so true as the Duke of St.
Bungay? And for whom had he broken through these traditions and
thrown away this advi