But when her ladyship and Mrs. Stistick had retreated--Oh, my readers, fancy what that next hour must have been to Caroline Harcourt!--How Gothic, how barbarous are we still in our habits, in that we devote our wives to such wretchedness as that! O, lady, has it ever been your lot to sit out such hour as that with some Mrs. Stistick, who would neither talk, nor read, nor sleep; in whose company you could neither talk, nor read, nor yet sleep? And if such has been your lot, have you not asked yourself why in this civilized country, in this civilized century, you should be doomed to such a senseless, sleepless purgatory?--But when they were gone, and when the judge, radiant with fun and happiness, hastened to fill his claret beaker, then Bertram by degrees thawed, and began to feel that after all the world was perhaps not yet dead around him. "Well, Mr. Stistick," said the baron; "if Sir Henry will allow us, we'll drink Lord Boanerges." "With all my heart," said Mr. Stistick. "He is a man of whom it may be said--" "That no man knew better on which side his bread was buttered." "He is buttering the bread of millions upon millions," said Mr. Stistick. "Or doing better still," said Bertram; "enabling them to butter their own. Lord Boanerges is probably the only public man of this day who will be greater in a hundred years than he is now." "Let us at any rate hope," said the baron, "that he will at that time be less truculent." "I can't agree with you, Bertram," said Sir Henry. "I consider we are fertile in statesmen. Do you think that Peel will be forgotten in a hundred years?" This was said with the usual candour of a modern turncoat. For Sir Henry had now deserted Peel. "Almost, I should hope, by that time," said Bertram. "He will have a sort of a niche in history, no doubt; as has Mr. Perceval, who did so much to assist us in the war; and Lord Castlereagh, who carried the Union. They also were heaven-sent ministers, whom Acheron has not as yet altogether swallowed up." "And Boanerges, you think, will escape Libitina?" "If the spirit of the age will allow immortality to any man of these days, I think he will. But I doubt whether public opinion, as now existing, will admit of hero-worship." "Public opinion is the best safeguard for a great man's great name," said Mr. Stistick, with intense reliance on the civilization of his own era. "Quite true, sir; quite true," said the baron,--"for the space of twenty-four hours." Then followed a calm, and then coffee. After that, the solicitor-general, looking at his watch, marched off impetuous to the House. "Judge," he said, "I know you will excuse me; for you, too, have been a slave in your time: but you will go up to Lady Harcourt; Bertram, you will not be forgiven if you do not go upstairs." Bertram did go upstairs, that he might not appear to be unmanly, as he said to himself, in slinking out of the house. He did go upstairs, for one quarter of an hour.