e go?"
the other Duke had said to him.

"What;--because such a man as Sir Orlando Drought throws up his
office?"

But in truth the Duke of Omnium had not been instigated to ask the
question by the resignation of Sir Orlando. At that very moment
the "People's Banner" had been put out of sight at the bottom of a
heap of other newspapers behind the Prime Minister's chair, and his
present misery had been produced by Mr. Quintus Slide. To have a
festering wound and to be able to show the wound to no surgeon, is
wretchedness indeed! "It's not Sir Orlando, but a sense of general
failure," said the Prime Minister. Then his old friend had made use
of that argument of the ever-recurring majorities to prove that there
had been no failure. "There seems to have come a lethargy upon the
country," said the poor victim. Then the Duke of St. Bungay knew that
his friend had read that pernicious article in the "People's Banner,"
for the Duke had also read it and remembered that phrase of a
"lethargy on the country," and understood at once how the poison had
rankled.

It was a week before he would consent to ask any man to fill the
vacancy made by Sir Orlando. He would not allow suggestions to be
made to him and yet would name no one himself. The old Duke, indeed,
did make a suggestion, and anything coming from him was of course
borne with patience. Barrington Erle, he thought, would do for the
Admiralty. But the Prime Minister shook his head. "In the first place
he would refuse, and that would be a great blow to me."

"I could sound him," said the old Duke. But the Prime Minister again
shook his head and turned the subject. With all his timidity he was
becoming autocratic and peevishly imperious. Then he went to Lord
Cantrip, and when Lord Cantrip, with all the kindness which he could
throw into his words, stated the reasons which induced him at present
to decline office, he was again in despair. At last he asked Phineas
Finn to move to the Admiralty, and, when our old friend somewhat
reluctantly obeyed, of course he had the same difficulty in filling
the office Finn had held. Other changes and other complications
became necessary, and Mr. Quintus Slide, who hated Phineas Finn
even worse than the poor Duke, found ample scope for his patriotic
indignation.

This all took place in the closing week of the Session, filling our
poor Prime Minister with trouble and dismay, just when other people
were complaining that there was nothing t