to have many things
to communicate; and here we must leave them while we hasten on to other
scenes and other actors.

CHAPTER XLIII. DOINGS IN DOWNING STREET

The dull old precincts of Downing Street were more than usually astir.
Hackney-coaches and cabs at an early hour, private chariots somewhat
later, went to and fro along the dreary pavement, and two cabinet
messengers with splashed _caleches_ arrived in hot haste from Dover.
Frequent, too, were the messages from the House; a leading Oppositionist
was then thundering away against the Government, inveighing against the
treacherous character of their foreign policy, and indignantly calling
on them for certain despatches to their late envoy at Naples. At
every cheer which greeted him from his party a fresh missive would
be despatched from the Treasury benches, and the whisper, at first
cautiously muttered, grew louder and louder, "Why does not Upton come
down?"

So intricate has been the web of our petty entanglements, so complex the
threads of those small intrigues by which we have earned our sobriquet
of the "perfide Albion," that it is difficult at this time of day to
recall the exact question whose solution, in the words of the orator of
the debate, "placed us either at the head of Europe, or consigned to us
the fatal mediocrity of a third-rate power." The prophecy, whichever way
read, gives us unhappily no clew to the matter in hand, and we are only
left to conjecture that it was an intervention in Spain, or "something
about the Poles." As is usual in such cases, the matter, insignificant
enough in itself, was converted into a serious attack on the Government,
and all the strength of the Opposition was arrayed to give power and
consistency to the assault. As is equally usual, the cabinet was totally
unprepared for defence; either they had altogether undervalued the
subject, or they trusted to the secrecy with which they had conducted
it; whichever of these be the right explanation, each minister could
only say to his colleague, "It never came before _me_; Upton knows all
about it."

"And where is Upton?--why does he not come down?"--were again and again
reiterated; while a shower of messages and even mandates invoked his
presence.

The last of these was a peremptory note from no less a person than the
Premier himself, written in three very significant words, thus: "Come,
or go;" and given to a trusty whip, the Hon. Gerald Neville, to deliver.

Armed wi