“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.”
The little applauding ha! ha! ha! with which his Lordship ended was faintly chorussed by the secretary.
“And what is your news from home; you 've had letters, have n't you?”
“Yes. Augustus writes me in great confusion. They have not found the will, and they begin to fear that the very informal scrap of paper I already mentioned is all that represents one.”
“What! do you mean that memorandum stating that your father bequeathed all he had to Augustus, and trusted he would make a suitable provision for his brothers and sisters?”
“Yes; that is all that has been found. Augustus says in his last letter, my poor father would seem to have been most painfully affected for some time back by a claim put forward to the title of all his landed property, by a person assuming to be the heir of my grandfather, and this claim is actually about to be asserted at law. The weight of this charge and all its consequent publicity and exposure appear to have crushed him for some months before his death, and he had made great efforts to effect a compromise.”