e
him_). No?... You must have had interesting conversations with him,
Madam, in the past.

QUEEN (_very emphatically_). I have never once had a conversation
with Mr. Gladstone, in all my life, Lord Beaconsfield. He used to talk to
me as if I were a public meeting--and one that agreed with him, too!

LORD B. Was there, then, any applause, Madam?

QUEEN. No, indeed! I was too shy to say what I thought. I used to cough
sometimes.

LORD B. Rather like coughing at a balloon, I fear. I have always admired
his flights-regarded as a mere _tour de force_--so buoyant, so
sustained, so incalculable! But, as they never touch earth to any
serviceable end, that I could discover--of what use are they? Yet if there
is one man who has helped me in my career--to whom, therefore, I should
owe gratitude--it is he.

QUEEN. Indeed? Now that does surprise me! Tell me, Lord Beaconsfield, how
has he ever helped you?

LORD B. In our party system, Madam, we live by the mistakes of our
opponents. The balance of the popular verdict swings ever this way and
that, relegating us either to victory or defeat, to office or to
opposition. Many times have I trodden the road to power, or passed from it
again, over ruins the origin of which I could recognise either as my own
work or that of another; and most of all has it been over the
disappointments, the disaffections, the disgusts, the disillusionments--
chiefly among his own party--which my great opponent has left me to profit
by. I have gained experience from what he has been morally blind to;
what he has lacked in understanding of human nature he has left for me
to discover. Only to-day I learn that he has been in the habit of
addressing--as you, Madam, so wittily phrased it--of addressing, "as
though she were a public meeting," that Royal Mistress, whom it has ever
been my most difficult task not to address sometimes as the most charming,
the most accomplished, and the most fascinating woman of the epoch which
bears her name. (_He pauses, then resumes_.) How strange a fatality
directs the fate of each one of us! How fortunate is he who knows the
limits that destiny assigns to him: limits beyond which no word must be
uttered.

(_His oratorical flight, so buoyant and sustained, having come to its
calculated end, he drops deftly to earth, encountering directly for the
first time the flattered smile with which the Queen has listened to
him_.)

Madam, your kind silence reminds me, in the gentles