“Has a man a right,” Kenelm said to himself, as he entered his brougham, “to employ all the brilliancy of a rare wit, all the acquisitions of as rare a scholarship, to the scaring of the young generation out of the safe old roads which youth left to itself would take,--old roads skirted by romantic rivers and bowery trees,--directing them into new paths on long sandy flats, and then, when they are faint and footsore, to tell them that he cares not a pin whether they have worn out their shoes in right paths or wrong paths, for that he has attained the _summum bonum_ of philosophy in the comfort of easy slippers?” Before he could answer the question he thus put to himself, his brougham stopped at the door of the minister whom Welby had contributed to bring into power. That night there was a crowded muster of the fashionable world at the great man’s house. It happened to be a very critical moment for the minister. The fate of his cabinet depended on the result of a motion about to be made the following week in the House of Commons. The great man stood at the entrance of the apartments to receive his guests, and among the guests were the framers of the hostile motion and the leaders of the opposition. His smile was not less gracious to them than to his dearest friends and stanchest supporters. “I suppose this is realism,” said Kenelm to himself; “but it is not truth, and it is not comfort.” Leaning against the wall near the doorway, he contemplated with grave interest the striking countenance of his distinguished host. He detected beneath that courteous smile and that urbane manner the signs of care. The eye was absent, the cheek pinched, the brow furrowed. Kenelm turned away his looks, and glanced over the animated countenances of the idle loungers along commoner thoroughfares in life. Their eyes were not absent; their brows were not furrowed; their minds seemed quite at home in exchanging nothings. Interest many of them had in the approaching struggle, but it was much such an interest as betters of small sums may have on the Derby day,--just enough to give piquancy to the race; nothing to make gain a great joy, or loss a keen anguish. “Our host is looking ill,” said Mivers, accosting Kenelm. “I detect symptoms of suppressed gout. You know my aphorism, ‘nothing so gouty as ambition,’ especially Parliamentary ambition.” “You are not one of those friends who press on my choice of life that source of disease; allow me to thank you.” “Your thanks are misplaced. I strongly advise you to devote yourself to a political career.” “Despite the gout?” “Despite the gout. If you could take the world as I do, my advice might be different. But your mind is overcrowded with doubts and fantasies and crotchets, and you have no choice but to give them vent in active life.”