"I'll do that myself. The accounts that I intend to set a-going would frighten any one less audacious. And I mean to be my own home secretary, and to keep my own conscience,--and to be my own master of the ceremonies certainly. I think a small cabinet gets on best. Do you know,--I should like to put the Queen down."
"No treason; nothing of that kind. But I should like to make Buckingham Palace second-rate; and I'm not quite sure but I can. I dare say you don't quite understand me."
"You will some of these days. Come in to-morrow before lunch. I suppose I shall know all about it then, and shall have found that my basket of crockery has been kicked over and every thing smashed."
At about nine the Duke had returned, and was eating his very simple dinner in the breakfast-room,--a beefsteak and a potato, with a glass of sherry and Apollinaris water. No man more easily satisfied as to what he eat and drank lived in London in those days. As regarded the eating and drinking he dined alone, but his wife sat with him and waited on him, having sent the servant out of the room. "I have told her Majesty that I would do the best I could," said the Duke.
"Not at all. Mr. Daubeny is Prime Minister. I have undertaken to form a ministry, if I find it practicable, with the assistance of such friends as I possess. I never felt before that I had to lean so entirely on others as I do now."
"Lean on yourself only. Be enough for yourself."
"Those are empty words, Cora;--words that are quite empty. In one sense a man should always be enough for himself. He should have enough of principle and enough of conscience to restrain him from doing what he knows to be wrong. But can a ship-builder build his ship single-handed, or the watchmaker make his watch without assistance? On former occasions such as this, I could say, with little or no help from without, whether I would or would not undertake the work that was proposed to me, because I had only a bit of the ship to build, or a wheel of the watch to make. My own efficacy for my present task depends entirely on the co-operation of others, and unfortunately upon that of some others with whom I have no sympathy, nor have they with me."
"Leave them out," said the Duchess boldly.