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Title: The Young Duke

Author: Benjamin Disraeli

Release Date: December 3, 2006 [EBook #20008]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNG DUKE ***

Produced by David Widger

THE YOUNG DUKE

By Benjamin Disraeli

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BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.

_Fortune's Favourite_

GEORGE AUGUSTUS FREDERICK, DUKE OF ST. JAMES, completed his twenty-first
year, an event which created almost as great a sensation among the
aristocracy of England as the Norman Conquest. A minority of twenty
years had converted a family always amongst the wealthiest of Great
Britain into one of the richest in Europe. The Duke of St. James
possessed estates in the north and in the west of England, besides a
whole province in Ireland. In London there were a very handsome square
and several streets, all made of bricks, which brought him in yearly
more cash than all the palaces of Vicenza are worth in fee-simple, with
those of the Grand Canal of Venice to boot. As if this were not enough,
he was an hereditary patron of internal navigation; and although perhaps
in his two palaces, three castles, four halls, and lodges _ad libitum_,
there were more fires burnt than in any other establishment in the
empire, this was of no consequence, because the coals were his own. His
rent-roll exhibited a sum total, very neatly written, of two hundred
thousand pounds; but this was independent of half a million in the
funds, which we had nearly forgotten, and which remained from the
accumulations occasioned by the unhappy death of his father.

The late Duke of St. James had one sister, who was married to the Earl
of Fitz-pompey. To the great surprise of the world, to the perfect
astonishment of the brother-in-law, his Lordship was not appointed
guardian to the infant minor. The Earl of Fitz-pompey had always been on
the best possible terms with his Grace: the Countess had, only the year
before hi