You have called the two last scions of the
family "a proud and selfish pair of beings"; proud they were, and
selfish too, but you are in error if you think their selfishness a
personal one: on the contrary, they were singularly oblivious of self
in the ordinary sense of the word. Theirs was the pride and the
selfishness of _race_. What consideration, think you, other than the
weal of his house, could induce Lord Randolph to take on himself the
shame--for as such he certainly regards it--of a conversion to
radicalism? He would, I am convinced, have _died_ rather than make this
pretence for merely personal ends. But he does it--and the reason? It
is because he has received that awful summons from home; because "the
end" is daily coming nearer, and it must not find him unprepared to
meet it; it is because Lord Pharanx's senses are becoming _too_ acute;
because the clatter of the servants' knives at the other end of the
house inflames him to madness; because his excited palate can no longer
endure any food but the subtlest delicacies; because Hester Dyett is
able from the posture in which he sits to conjecture that he is
intoxicated; because, in fact, he is on the brink of the dreadful
malady which physicians call "_General Paralysis of the Insane_.
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