there were not wanting those who said that Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in truth, doing no good.  Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in brooding over his wrongs.  He believed now in nothing and in nobody.  He had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all around him as dishonest.  He had no satisfaction in any man other than that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, false, or fraudulent.  “Don’t tell me, Butterwell,” he would say—­for with Mr Butterwell he maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close.  “Don’t tell me.  I know what men are.  I’ve seen the world.  I’ve been looking at things with my eyes open.  I knew what he was doing.”  And then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for granted that the man in question was a rogue.  Butterwell would shrug his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn’t think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be.

Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things.  He believed in his Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing present martyrdom.  His Putney villa first, with all its attendant comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards.  It was thus that Mr Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think that we need quarrel with his creed.

Mr Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, and in himself.  He had long thought that everything was nearly right; but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, he was quite sure that everything must be right.  In Sir Raffle Buffle, indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the tones of that terrible knight’s hated voice.

Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential position in his office.  There were, indeed, some among the clerks who did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty nearly all his own way.  As for “Old Opt,” there would be, they said, no difficulty about him.  Only tell him that such and such a decision was his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller.  Butterwell was not fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many years.  As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly indifferent in deed.  If the whole office were made to go to the mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion.