Whilst he is still a year or two on the fair side of thirty, it may happen that a turn of the political wheel will bring into high office a statesman who is quite willing to be served by those who are able to make themselves useful to him, without exacting from them solidity either of character or of attainments.  With him the Servant of Society, with an instinct that does credit to his discernment, will have established friendly relations.  The politician was first amused and then impressed by his versatility; now, having the opportunity, he offers to him the position of Assistant Private Secretary (unpaid), and it is scarcely necessary to say that the young man accepts it with a gratitude which proves that he believes his patron capable of conferring further favours.  From this time forward he begins to abandon the merely frivolous air that has hitherto distinguished him.  He lays in a mixed stock of solemnity, mystery, and importance, and occasionally awes the friends of his flippant days by assuming the reticent look and the shake of the head of one who is marked off from common mortals by the possession of secrets the revelation of which might, perhaps, imperil the peace of the world.  In country-houses, in London drawing-rooms, and at Clubs, where he had hitherto been mentioned with a laugh as “Little So-and-So,” he comes to be talked of as “So-and-So—­of course you know him—­Lord BLANK’S Private Secretary.”  Thus he becomes quite a personage.  But he is far from abandoning the role of Servant of Society.  Indeed, he only enlarges and glorifies the scope of his ministrations, without in any way ceasing to cultivate those smaller trifles which stood him in such good stead at the outset of his career.  He now has the satisfaction of seeing many of those who desire anything that a Cabinet Minister can give, cringing to one whom they despise, and who rejoices in the knowledge that he can afford to patronise them, and perhaps crush them by obtaining for them that which they want.

When, in the course of a few years, Lord BLANK’S party ceases to direct the government of the country, his Assistant Private Secretary follows him into the cold shade of adversity and opposition, and stands by him with exemplary usefulness and fidelity.  But, though he is often pressed, he never contests a constituency, feeling, perhaps, that it is impossible to serve both Society and the Caucus.  In time his name becomes the common property of all Society journals—­his biography is published in one, his discreet service is extolled in another, while a third goes so far as to hint that, if the truth were known, it would be found that the various departments of the State could not possibly carry on their affairs without his enlightened counsel.  He adopts an antique fashion of dress, in order to emphasise his personality.  He wears a stock, and a very wide-brimmed hat, and carries a bunch of seals dangling from a fob.