When the gorgeous trinket was in his grasp, and he was at the zenith of his eminence, I have already recorded an impressive instance. I may contrast with this another picture, also of a fact already chronicled in the interesting recollections of a young associate of his old age. It will bear repetition. The scene was Hughenden in late autumn, the time, after Lady Beaconsfield’s death. He sat in reverie before the fire, watching the flickering embers. “Dreams, dreams, dreams,” he murmured, as the wreaths of smoke and the sparks of flame went upwards. He was thinking of his favourite Sheridans, by whose own fireside, and basking in whose sunshine of wit and beauty, so many of his happiest evenings had been spent forty years agone. And perhaps, also, he was thinking of that charming daughter of Lord Lyndhurst, whose pet name tallied with his own sister’s; and possibly, too, of that little Frances Braham, whom he had known in girlhood, and whom, after she, too, had carved a career, he still knew and admired as Frances, Lady Waldegrave. Yet one more dissolving view-- The scene shifts again to London and a Foreign Office reception, with its gaping throng. It was the last function that Lady Beaconsfield, frail with age and bent with rheumatism, was able to attend. Step by step, all the way down that long staircase, he himself planted her feet and tenderly supported her feeble frame, till, when she reached the end, he presented to her a youth of promise, since a member of ministries, who will still remember it. Yes, it was companionship, not “society,” that was precious to him. And trial proves friendship. “‘Since I last met you, I heard you had seen much and suffered much.’--‘And that makes the kind thoughts of friends more precious.’--‘You have, however, a great many things which ought to make you happy.’--‘I do not deserve to be happy, for I have made so many mistakes....’--‘Take a brighter and a nobler view of your life.... Feel rather that you have been tried and not found wanting.’” [Illustration: DISRAELI IN 1852 _After a painting by Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A._] CHAPTER IX LITERATURE WIT, HUMOUR, ROMANCE Whatever Disraeli wrote was always literature, and never lecture. He was a born man of letters, and Dickens once lamented that politics had so long and often deprived fiction of a master. Disraeli is renowned for his wit; but he is not so generally famed for two qualities in which he excelled, though with limitations--his subtle sense of humour and his fine feeling for the picturesque and romantic.