There had been a coalition.  They who are well read in the political literature of their country will remember all about that.  It had perhaps succeeded in doing that for which it had been intended.  The Queen’s government had been carried on for two or three years.  The Duke of Omnium had been the head of that Ministry; but, during those years had suffered so much as to have become utterly ashamed of the coalition,—­so much as to have said often to himself that under no circumstances would he again join any Ministry.  At this time there was no idea of another coalition.  That is a state of things which cannot come about frequently,—­ which can only be reproduced by men who have never hitherto felt the mean insipidity of such a condition.  But they who had served on the Liberal side in that coalition must again put their shoulders to the wheel.  Of course it was in every man’s mouth that the Duke must be induced to forget his miseries and once more to take upon himself the duties of an active servant of the State.

But they who were most anxious on the subject, such men as Lord Cantrip, Mr Monk, our old friend Phineas Finn, and a few others, were almost afraid to approach him.  At the moment when the coalition was broken up he had been very bitter in spirit, apparently almost arrogant, holding himself aloof from his late colleagues,—­and since that, troubles had come to him, which had aggravated the soreness of his heart.  His wife had died, and he had suffered much through his children.  What Lord Silverbridge had done at Oxford was a matter of general conversation, and also what he had not done.

That the heir of the family should have become a renegade in politics was supposed to have greatly affected the father.  Now Lord Gerald had been expelled from Cambridge, and Silverbridge was on the turf in conjunction with Major Tifto!  Something, too, had oozed out into general ears about Lady Mary,—­something which should have been kept secret as the grave.  It had therefore come to pass that it was difficult even to address the Duke.

There was but one man, and but one, who could do this with ease to himself;—­and that man was at last put into motion at the instance of the leaders of the party.  The old Duke of St Bungay wrote the following letter to the Duke of Omnium.  The letter purported to be an excuse for the writer’s own defalcations.  But the chief object of the writer was to induce the younger Duke once more to submit to harness.

’Longroyston, 3 June, 187-

’Dear duke of Omnium,

’How quickly the things come round!  I had thought that I should never again have been called upon even to think of the formation of another Liberal Ministry; and now, though it was but yesterday that were all telling ourselves that we were thoroughly manumitted from our labours by the altered opinions of the country, sundry of our old friends have again been putting their heads together.