However, the motto, “Impudence rather than servility,” was not discarded.  Instead of a dashing style he developed a slow, subtle, scathing quality that was quite lost on all, save those who gave themselves to close listening.

And the House listened, for when Disraeli went after an antagonist he chose an antlered stag.  If little men, fiercely effervescent and childishly inconsequential, attempted to reply to him or sought to engage him in debate, he simply answered them with silence, or that tantalizing smile.

O’Connell and Disraeli, although unlike, had much in common and should have been fast friends.  Surely the age and distinguished record of O’Connell must have commanded Disraeli’s respect, but we know how they grappled in wordy warfare.  Disraeli called the Irishman an incendiary, and O’Connell, who was a past master in abuse, replied in a speech wherein he exhausted the Billingsgate lexicon.  He wound up by a reference to the ancestry of his opponent, and a suggestion that “this renegade Jew is descended from the impenitent thief, whose name was doubtless Disraeli.”  It was a home-thrust—­a picture so exaggerated and overdrawn that all England laughed.  The very extravagance of the simile should have saved the allusion from resentment; but it touched Disraeli in his most sensitive spot—­his pride of birth.

He straightway challenged his traducer.  O’Connell had killed a man in a duel years before, and then vowed he would never again engage in mortal combat.

Disraeli intimated that he would fight O’Connell’s son, Morgan, if preferred, a man of his own age.

Morgan replied that his father insulted so many men he could not set the precedent of fighting them all, or standing sponsor for an indiscreet parent.  But with genuine Irish spirit he suggested that if the son of Abraham was intent on fight and could not be persuaded to be sensible, why, the matter could probably be arranged.

Happily, about this time, police officers invaded the apartments of Disraeli and arrested him on a bench-warrant.  He was bound over, to his great relief, in the sum of five hundred pounds to keep the peace.

O’Connell never took the matter very seriously, and referred soon after in a speech to “my excellent, though slightly bellicose friend, child of an honored race.”

Disraeli did not take up politics to make money—­the man who does that may win in his desires, but his career is short.  Nothing but honesty really succeeds.  Disraeli knew this, and in his record there is no taint.  But the income of a member of the House of Commons affords no opportunity for display.  Disraeli’s books brought him in only small sums, and his father’s moderate fortune had been sadly drawn upon.  He was well past thirty, and was not making head, simply because he was cramped for funds.  To rise in politics you must have an establishment; you must entertain and reach out and bring those you wish to influence