This impression, being rarely personal in its consequences, was not of much moment; but it was conjoined with a more serious error, which was to imagine that all rule and governance in Ireland should be carried on with a Machiavellian subtlety. The people, he had heard, were quick-witted; he must therefore out-manoeuvre them. Jobbery had been, he was told, the ruin of Ireland; he would show its inefficiency by the superior skill with which he could wield its weapon. To be sure his office was a very minor one, its influence very restricted, but Mr. Balfour was ambitious; he was a Viceroy's nephew; he had sat for months in the House, from which he had been turned out on a petition. He had therefore social advantages to build on, abilities to display, and wrongs to avenge; and as a man too late for the train speculates during the day how far on his road he might have been by this time or by that, so did Mr. Balfour continually keep reminding himself how, but for that confounded petition, he might now have been a Treasury this or a Board of Trade that,--a corporal, in fact, in that great army whose commissioned officers are amongst the highest in Europe. Let us now present him to our reader, as he lay back in his chair, and by a hand-bell summoned his messenger. “I say, Watkins, when Clancey calls about those trousers show him in, and send some one over to the packet-office about the phosphorus blacking; you know we are on the last jar of it. If the Solicitor-General should come--” “He is here, sir; he has been waiting these twenty minutes. I told him you were with his Excellency.” “So I was,--so I always am,” said he, throwing a half-smoked cigar into the fire. “Admit him.” A pale, care-worn, anxious-looking man, whose face was not without traces of annoyance at the length of time he had been kept waiting, now entered and sat down. “Just where we were yesterday, Pemberton,” said Balfour, as he rose and stood with his back to the fire, the tails of his gorgeous dressing-gown hanging over his arms. “Intractable as he ever was; he won't die, and he won't resign.” “His friends say he is perfectly willing to resign if you agree to his terms.” “That may be possible; the question is, What are his terms? Have you a precedent of a Chief Baron being raised to the peerage?” “It's not, as I understand, the peerage he insists on; he inclines to a moneyed arrangement.” “We are too poor, Pemberton,--we are too poor. There's a deep gap in our customs this quarter. It's reduction we must think of, not outlay.” “If the changes _are_ to be made,” said the other, with a tone of impatience, “I certainly ought to be told at once, or I shall have no time left for my canvass.” “An Irish borough, Pemberton,--an Irish borough requires so little,” said Balfour, with a compassionate smile. “Such is not the opinion over here, sir,” said Pemberton, stiffly; “and I might even suggest some caution in saying it.”