Anthony Trollope - The Palliser Novels - Complete Series - All 6 Books in One Edition

“For useful work, yes,—but hardly for enjoyment in the thing. And then I don’t believe it all as you do. To you the British House of Commons is everything.”

“Yes;—everything,” said Mr Palliser with unwonted enthusiasm;—”everything, everything. That and the Constitution are everything.”

“It is not so to me.”

“Ah, but it will be. If you really take to the work, and put yourself into harness, it will be so. You’ll get to feel it as I do. The man who is counted by his colleagues as number one on the Treasury Bench in the English House of Commons, is the first of living men. That’s my opinion. I don’t know that I ever said it before; but that’s my opinion.”

“And who is the second;—the purse-bearer to this great man?”

“I say nothing about the second. I don’t know that there is any second. I wonder how we shall find Lady Glencora and the boy.” They had then arrived at the side entrance to the Castle, and Mr Grey ran upstairs to his wife’s room to receive her congratulations.

“And you are a Member of Parliament?” she asked.

“They tell me so, but I don’t know whether I actually am one till I’ve taken the oaths.”

“I am so happy. There’s no position in the world so glorious!”

“It’s a pity you are not Mr Palliser’s wife. That’s just what he has been saying.”

“Oh, John, I am so happy. It is so much more than I have deserved. I hope,—that is, I sometimes think—”

“Think what, dearest?”

“I hope nothing that I have ever said has driven you to it.”

“I’d do more than that, dear, to make you happy,” he said, as he put his arm round her and kissed her; “more than that, at least if it were in my power.”

Probably my readers may agree with Alice, that in the final adjustment of her affairs she had received more than she had deserved. All her friends, except her husband, thought so. But as they have all forgiven her, including even Lady Midlothian herself, I hope that they who have followed her story to its close will not be less generous.

Table of Contents Table of Contents Can You Forgive Her? Phineas Finn The Eustace Diamonds Phineas Redux The Prime Minister The Duke’s Children

Volume I

Chapter I. Phineas Finn Proposes to Stand for Loughshane

Chapter II. Phineas Finn Is Elected for Loughshane

Chapter III. Phineas Finn Takes His Seat

Chapter IV. Lady Laura Standish

Chapter V. Mr. And Mrs. Low

Chapter VI. Lord Brentford’s Dinner

Chapter VII. Mr. And Mrs. Bunce

Chapter VIII. The News About Mr. Mildmay and Sir Everard

Chapter IX. The New Government

Chapter X. Violet Effingham

Chapter XI. Lord Chiltern

Chapter XII. Autumnal Prospects

Chapter XIII. Saulsby Wood

Chapter XIV. Loughlinter

Chapter XV. Donald Bean’s Pony

Chapter XVI. Phineas Finn Returns to Killaloe

Chapter XVII. Phineas Finn Returns to London

Chapter XVIII. Mr. Turnbull

Chapter XIX. Lord Chiltern Rides His Horse Bonebreaker

Chapter XX. The Debate on the Ballot

Chapter XXI. “Do Be Punctual”

Chapter XXII. Lady Baldock at Home

Chapter XXIII. Sunday in Grosvenor Place

Chapter XXIV. The Willingford Bull

Chapter XXV. Mr. Turnbull’s Carriage Stops the Way

Chapter XXVI. “The First Speech”

Chapter XXVII. Phineas Discussed

Chapter XXVIII. The Second Reading Is Carried

Chapter XXIX. A Cabinet Meeting

Chapter XXX. Mr. Kennedy’s Luck

Chapter XXXI. Finn for Loughton

Chapter XXXII. Lady Laura Kennedy’s Headache

Chapter XXXIII. Mr. Slide’s Grievance

Chapter XXXIV. Was He Honest?

Chapter XXXV. Mr. Monk Upon Reform

Chapter XXXVI. Phineas Finn Makes Progress

Chapter XXXVII. A Rough Encounter

Volume II

Chapter XXXVIII. The Duel

Chapter XXXIX. Lady Laura Is Told

Chapter XL. Madame Max Goesler

Chapter XLI. Lord Fawn

Chapter XLII. Lady Baldock Does Not Send a Card to Phineas Finn

Chapter XLIII. Promotion

Chapter XLIV. Phineas and His Friends

Chapter XLV. Miss Effingham’s Four Lovers

Chapter XLVI. The Mousetrap

Chapter XLVII. Mr. Mildmay’s Bill

Chapter XLVIII. “The Duke”

Chapter XLIX. The Duellists Meet

Chapter L. Again Successful

Chapter LI. Troubles at Loughlinter

Chapter LII. The First Blow

Chapter LIII. Showing How Phineas Bore the Blow

Chapter LIV. Consolation

Chapter LV. Lord Chiltern at Saulsby

Chapter LVI. What the People in Marylebone Thought

Chapter LVII. The Top Brick of the Chimney

Chapter LVIII. Rara Avis in Terris

Chapter LIX. The Earl’s Wrath

Chapter LX. Madame Goesler’s Politics

Chapter LXI. Another Duel

Chapter LXII. The Letter That Was Sent to Brighton

Chapter LXIII. Showing How the Duke Stood His Ground

Chapter LXIV. The Horns

Chapter LXV. The Cabinet Minister at Killaloe

Chapter LXVI. Victrix

Chapter LXVII. Job’s Comforters

Chapter LXVIII. The Joint Attack

Chapter LXIX. The Temptress

Chapter LXX. The Prime Minister’s House

Chapter LXXI. Comparing Notes

Chapter LXXII. Madame Goesler’s Generosity

Chapter LXXIII. Amantium Iræ

Chapter LXXIV. The Beginning of the End

Chapter LXXV. P. P. C.

Chapter LXXVI. Conclusion

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Dr. Finn, of Killaloe, in county Clare, was as well known in those parts,—the confines, that is, of the counties Clare, Limerick, Tipperary, and Galway,—as was the bishop himself who lived in the same town, and was as much respected. Many said that the doctor was the richer man of the two, and the practice of his profession was extended over almost as wide a district. Indeed the bishop whom he was privileged to attend, although a Roman Catholic, always spoke of their dioceses being conterminate. It will therefore be understood that Dr. Finn,—Malachi Finn was his full name,—had obtained a wide reputation as a country practitioner in the west of Ireland. And he was a man sufficiently well to do, though that boast made by his friends, that he was as warm a man as the bishop, had but little truth to support it. Bishops in Ireland, if they live at home, even in these days, are very warm men; and Dr. Finn had not a penny in the world for which he had not worked hard. He had, moreover, a costly family, five daughters and one son, and, at the time of which we are speaking, no provision in the way of marriage or profession had been made for any of them. Of the one son, Phineas, the hero of the following pages, the mother and five sisters were very proud. The doctor was accustomed to say that his goose was as good as any other man’s goose, as far as he could see as yet; but that he should like some very strong evidence before he allowed himself to express an opinion that the young bird partook, in any degree, of the qualities of a swan. From which it may be gathered that Dr. Finn was a man of common-sense.

Phineas had come to be a swan in the estimation of his mother and sisters by reason of certain early successes at college. His father, whose religion was not of that bitter kind in which we in England are apt to suppose that all the Irish Roman Catholics indulge, had sent his son to Trinity; and there were some in the neighbourhood of Killaloe,—patients, probably, of Dr. Duggin, of Castle Connell, a learned physician who had spent a fruitless life in endeavouring to make head against Dr. Finn,—who declared that old Finn would not be sorry if his son were to turn Protestant and go in for a fellowship. Mrs. Finn was a Protestant, and the five Miss Finns were Protestants, and the doctor himself was very much given to dining out among his Protestant friends on a Friday. Our Phineas, however, did not turn Protestant up in Dublin, whatever his father’s secret wishes on that subject may have been. He did join a debating society, to success in which his religion was no bar; and he there achieved a sort of distinction which was both easy and pleasant, and which, making its way down to Killaloe, assisted in engendering those ideas as to swanhood of which maternal and sisterly minds are so sweetly susceptible. “I know half a dozen old windbags at the present moment,” said the doctor, “who were great fellows at debating clubs when they were boys.” “Phineas is not a boy any longer,” said Mrs. Finn. “And windbags don’t get college scholarships,” said Matilda Finn, the second daughter. “But papa always snubs Phinny,” said Barbara, the youngest. “I’ll snub you, if you don’t take care,” said the doctor, taking Barbara tenderly by the ear;—for his youngest daughter was the doctor’s pet.