te entertainment during that
festival would rival the duke's.

But there was still much to be done in London before the Goodwood week
should come round, in all of which Mr Melmotte was concerned, and of
much of which Mr Melmotte was the very centre. A member for
Westminster had succeeded to a peerage, and thus a seat was vacated.
It was considered to be indispensable to the country that Mr Melmotte
should go into Parliament, and what constituency could such a man as
Melmotte so fitly represent as one combining as Westminster does all
the essences of the metropolis? There was the popular element, the
fashionable element, the legislative element, the legal element, and
the commercial element. Melmotte undoubtedly was the man for
Westminster. His thorough popularity was evinced by testimony which
perhaps was never before given in favour of any candidate for any
county or borough. In Westminster there must of course be a contest. A
seat for Westminster is a thing not to be abandoned by either
political party without a struggle. But, at the beginning of the
affair, when each party had to seek the most suitable candidate which
the country could supply, each party put its hand upon Melmotte. And
when the seat, and the battle for the seat, were suggested to
Melmotte, then for the first time was that great man forced to descend
from the altitudes on which his mind generally dwelt, and to decide
whether he would enter Parliament as a Conservative or a Liberal. He
was not long in convincing himself that the conservative element in
British Society stood the most in need of that fiscal assistance which
it would be in his province to give; and on the next day every
hoarding in London declared to the world that Melmotte was the
conservative candidate for Westminster. It is needless to say that his
committee was made up of peers, bankers, and publicans, with all that
absence of class prejudice for which the party has become famous since
the ballot was introduced among us. Some unfortunate Liberal was to be
made to run against him, for the sake of the party; but the odds were
ten to one on Melmotte.

This no doubt was a great matter,--this affair of the seat; but the
dinner to be given to the Emperor of China was much greater. It was
the middle of June, and the dinner was to be given on Monday, 8th
July, now three weeks hence;--but all London was already talking of it.
The great purport proposed was to show to the Emperor by this banq