by the time that he reached Brooks’s, he had been enabled to convince his Under-Secretary, and though he had always thought well of his Under-Secretary, he thought better of him now than ever he had done.  Phineas during the whole time had been meditating what he could do to Lord Chiltern when they two should meet.  Could he take him by the throat and smite him?  “I happen to know that Broderick is working as hard at the matter as we are,” said Lord Cantrip, stopping opposite to the club.  “He moved for papers, you know, at the end of last session.”  Now Mr. Broderick was a gentleman in the House looking for promotion in a Conservative Government, and of course would oppose any measure that could be brought forward by the Cantrip-Finn Colonial Administration.  Then Lord Cantrip slipped into the club, and Phineas went on alone.

A spark of his old ambition with reference to Brooks’s was the first thing to make him forget his misery for a moment.  He had asked Lord Brentford to put his name down, and was not sure whether it had been done.  The threat of Mr. Broderick’s opposition had been of no use towards the strengthening of his broken back, but the sight of Lord Cantrip hurrying in at the coveted door did do something.  “A man can’t cut his throat or blow his brains out,” he said to himself; “after all, he must go on and do his work.  For hearts will break, yet brokenly live on.”  Thereupon he went home, and after sitting for an hour over his own fire, and looking wistfully at a little treasure which he had,—­a treasure obtained by some slight fraud at Saulsby, and which he now chucked into the fire, and then instantly again pulled out of it, soiled but unscorched,—­he dressed himself for dinner, and went out to Madame Max Goesler’s.  Upon the whole, he was glad that he had not sent the note of excuse.  A man must live, even though his heart be broken, and living he must dine.

Madame Max Goesler was fond of giving little dinners at this period of the year, before London was crowded, and when her guests might probably not be called away by subsequent social arrangements.  Her number seldom exceeded six or eight, and she always spoke of these entertainments as being of the humblest kind.  She sent out no big cards.  She preferred to catch her people as though by chance, when that was possible.  “Dear Mr. Jones.  Mr. Smith is coming to tell me about some sherry on Tuesday.  Will you come and tell me too?  I daresay you know as much about it.”  And then there was a studious absence of parade.  The dishes were not very numerous.  The bill of fare was simply written out once, for the mistress, and so circulated round the table.  Not a word about the things to be eaten or the things to be drunk was ever spoken at the table,—­or at least no such word was ever spoken by Madame Goesler.  But, nevertheless, they who knew anything about dinners were aware that Madame Goesler gave very good dinners indeed.  Phineas Finn was beginning to flatter himself that he knew something about dinners, and had been heard to assert that the soups at the cottage in Park Lane were not to be beaten in London.  But he cared for no soup to-day, as he slowly made his way up Madame Goesler’s staircase.