"Quite well: a little fagged, perhaps, by a day of visiting; nothing beyond that. You have been dining at the embassy? whom had you there?"
"A family party and a few of the smaller diplomacies."
"To be sure. It was Friday. Any news stirring?"
"Does Bartleton talk of retiring still?"'
"Yes. He says he is sick of sending in his demand for retirement. That they always say, 'We can't spare you; you must hold on a little longer. If you go out now, there's Bailey and Hammersmith, and half a dozen others will come insisting on advancement.'"
"Did n't he say Culduff too? eh, didn't he?" said the old lord, with a wicked twinkle of the eye.
"I'm not sure he didn't," said Temple, blushing.
"He did, sir, and he said more--he said, 'Rather than see Culduff here, I 'd stay on and serve these twenty years.'"
"I did n't hear him say that, certainly."
"No, sir, perhaps not, but he said it to himself, as sure as I stand here. There is n't a country in Europe--I say it advisedly--where intellect--I mean superior intellect--is so persistently persecuted as in England. I don't want my enemy to have any heavier misfortune than to be born a man of brains and a Briton! Once that it's known that you stand above your fellow-men, the whole world is arrayed against you. Who knows that better than he who now speaks to you? Have I ever been forgiven the Erzeroum convention? Even George Canning--from whom one might have expected better--even he used to say, 'How well Culduff managed that commercial treaty with the Hanse Towns!' he never got over it, sir, never! You are a young fellow entering upon life--let me give you a word of counsel. Always be inferior to the man you are, for the time being, in contact with. Outbid him, outjockey him, overreach him, but never forget to make him believe he knows more of the game than you do. If you have any success over him, ascribe it to 'luck,' mere 'luck.' The most envious of men will forgive 'luck,' all the more if they despise the fellow who has profited by it. Therefore, I say, if the intellectual standard of your rival is only four feet, take care that with your tallest heels on, you don't stand above three feet eleven! No harm if only three ten and a half."