They are quite
proud of the proof of their still procreative powers. The division
to-night had not been on a subject of any public interest or importance;
but still it was a division, and, what was more, the Government had been
left in a minority. True, the catastrophe was occasioned by a mistake.
The dictator had been asleep during the debate, woke suddenly from a
dyspeptic dream, would make a speech, and spoke on the wrong side.
A lively colleague, not yet sufficiently broken in to the frigid
discipline of the High Court of Registry, had pulled the great man once
by his coat-tails, a House of Commons practice, permitted to the Cabinet
when their chief is blundering, very necessary sometimes for a lively
leader, but of which Sir Robert highly disapproves, as the arrangement
of his coat-tails, next to beating the red box, forms the most important
part of his rhetorical accessories. The dictator, when he at length
comprehended that he had made a mistake, persisted in adhering to it;
the division was called, some of the officials escaped, the rest were
obliged to vote with their ruthless master; but his other friends, glad
of an opportunity of asserting their independence and administering to
the dictator a slight check in a quiet inoffensive way, put him in a
minority; and the Duke of Bellamont and Lord Eskdale had contributed to
this catastrophe.
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