'Peel welcomed me very warmly,' he reported to Bradenham, 'and all noticed his cordial demeanour. He looks very well, and asked me to join a swell dinner at the Carlton on Thursday--a House of Commons dinner purely,' he said. 'By that time we shall know something of the temper of the House.' A fortnight later he mentioned, with evident pride, that he had met Peel again, and Peel took wine with him. [Sidenote: FINANCIAL EMBARRASSMENTS] [Sidenote: MAIDEN SPEECH IN HOUSE OF COMMONS] Success to Disraeli in the House of Commons was the alternative of a financial catastrophe. His debts were large; money had been necessary to him for the position to which he aspired. He had no securities to offer, and never entangled friends in his pecuniary dealings. He had gone frankly to the professional money-lenders, who had made advances to him in a speculation upon his success. There was no deception on either side--Disraeli was running his talents against the chance of failure. If he succeeded the loans would be paid. If he did not succeed, the usurers had played for a high stake and had lost it, that was all. At worst he was but following the example of Burke and the younger Pitt. As his bills fell due, they had been renewed at 8 and 10 per cent. and even more, and when he commenced his political life would have been formidable to anyone but himself. They were all eventually paid, and he was never charged, even in thought, with having abused afterwards the opportunities of power to relieve himself. But it was with this weight upon his back that he began his Parliamentary career. He had started on his own merits, for he had nothing else to recommend him, and he had challenged fate by the pretensions which he had put forward for himself. His birth was a reproach to be got over. He had no great constituency at his back, no popular cause to represent. He was without the academic reputation which so often smooths the entrance to public life, and the Tory gentlemen, among whom he had taken his place, looked upon him with dubious eyes. 'Had I been a political adventurer,' he said at Wycombe, 'I had nothing to do but join the Whigs.' The Radicals would have welcomed him into their ranks; but the Radicals looked on him as an apostate, as a mischievous insect to be crushed on the first opportunity. The 'Globe' had assailed him brutally, and he had replied in kind. 'The Whig Samson should never silence him with the jaw of an ass. He would show the world what a miserable poltroon, what a craven dullard, what a literary scarecrow, what a mere thing stuffed with straw and rubbish was the _soi-disant_ director of public opinion and official organ of Whig politics.' A first speech in the House of Commons is usually treated with indulgence. The notoriety which Disraeli had brought on himself by these encounters was to make him a solitary exception. He had told O'Connell that they would meet at Philippi. Three