“I always thought you a serious politician!” he gasped.

“Good God!” I cried.  “In my public utterances have I been as dull as that?  Ill-health or no, it is time for me to quit the stage.”

He laughed politely, because he conjectured I was speaking humourously—­he is astute in some things—­and begged me to explain.

I replied that I did not regard mustard poultices as panaceas, the vox populi as the Vox Dei, or the policy of the other side as the machinations of the Devil; that politics was all a game of guess-work and muddle and compromise at the best; that, at the worst, as during a General Election, it was as ignoble a pastime as the wit of man had devised.  To take it seriously would be the course of a fanatic, a man devoid of the sense of proportion.  Were such a man, I asked, fitted to govern the country?

He did not stop to argue, but went away leaving me the conviction that he thanked his stars on the Government’s providential escape from so maniacal a minister.  I hope I did not treat him with any discourtesy; but, oh! it was good to speak the truth after all the dismal lies I have been forced to tell at the bidding of Raggle’s Party.  Now that I am no longer bound by the rules of the game, it is good to feel a free, honest man.

Never again shall I stretch forth my arms and thunder invectives against well-meaning people with whom in my heart I secretly sympathise.  Never again shall I plead passionately for principles which a horrible instinct tells me are fundamentally futile.  Never again shall I attempt to make mountains out of mole-hills or bricks without straw or sunbeams out of cucumbers.

I shall conduct no more inquiries into pauper lunacy, thank Heaven!  And as for the public engagements which Dale Kynnersley made for me during my Thebaid existence on Murglebed-on-Sea, the deuce can take them all—­I am free.

I only await the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, for which quaint post under the Crown I applied, to cease to be a Member of Parliament.  And yet, in spite of all my fine and superior talk, I am glad I am giving up in the recess.  I should not like to be out of my seat were the House in session.

I should hate to think of all the fascinating excitement over nothing going on in the lobbies without me, while I am still hale and hearty.  When Parliament meets in February I shall either be comfortably dead or so uncomfortably alive that I shall not care.

Ce que c’est que de nous! I wonder how far Simon de Gex and I are deceiving each other?

There is no deception about my old friend Latimer, who called on me a day or two ago.  He is on the Stock Exchange, and, muddle-headed creature that he is, has been “bearing” the wrong things.  They have gone up sky-high.  Settling-day is drawing near, and how to pay for the shares he is bound to deliver he has not the faintest notion.

He stamped up and down the room, called down curses on the prying fools who came across the unexpected streak of copper in the failing mine, drew heart-rending pictures of his wife and family singing hymns in the street, and asked me for a drink of prussic acid.  I rang the bell and ordered Rogers to give him a brandy and soda.