“I do not think that that influenced you,” said Phineas.

“It did not influence me.  To you I will make bold to state so much positively, though it would be foolish, perhaps, to do so to others.  I did not go for the shilling, though I am so poor a man that the shilling is more to me than it would be to almost any man in the House.  I took the shilling, much doubting, but guided in part by this, that I was ashamed of being afraid to take it.  They told me,—­Mr. Mildmay and the Duke,—­that I could earn it to the benefit of the country.  I have not earned it, and the country has not been benefited,—­unless it be for the good of the country that my voice in the House should be silenced.  If I believe that, I ought to hold my tongue without taking a salary for holding it.  I have made a mistake, my friend.  Such mistakes made at my time of life cannot be wholly rectified; but, being convinced of my error, I must do the best in my power to put myself right again.”

There was a bitterness in all this to Phineas himself of which he could not but make plaint to his companion.  “The truth is,” he said, “that a man in office must be a slave, and that slavery is distasteful.”

“There I think you are wrong.  If you mean that you cannot do joint work with other men altogether after your own fashion the same may be said of all work.  If you had stuck to the Bar you must have pleaded your causes in conformity with instructions from the attorneys.”

“I should have been guided by my own lights in advising those attorneys.”

“I cannot see that you suffer anything that ought to go against the grain with you.  You are beginning young, and it is your first adopted career.  With me it is otherwise.  If by my telling you this I shall have led you astray, I shall regret my openness with you.  Could I begin again, I would willingly begin as you began.”

It was a great day in Killaloe, that on which Mr. Monk arrived with Phineas at the doctor’s house.  In London, perhaps, a bishop inspires more awe than a Cabinet Minister.  In Killaloe, where a bishop might be seen walking about every day, the mitred dignitary of the Church, though much loved, was thought of, I fear, but lightly; whereas a Cabinet Minister coming to stay in the house of a townsman was a thing to be wondered at, to be talked about, to be afraid of, to be a fruitful source of conversation for a year to come.  There were many in Killaloe, especially among the elder ladies, who had shaken their heads and expressed the saddest doubts when young Phineas Finn had first become a Parliament man.  And though by degrees they had been half brought round, having been driven to acknowledge that he had been wonderfully successful as a Parliament man, still they had continued to shake their heads among themselves, and to fear something in the future,—­until he appeared at his old home leading a Cabinet Minister by the hand.  There was such assurance in this that even