The Palliser Novels: Complete Parliamentary Chronicles (All Six Novels in One Volume)
Chapter XXXV. Mr. Monk Upon Reform
Chapter XXXVI. Phineas Finn Makes Progress
Chapter XXXVII. A Rough Encounter
Chapter XXXIX. Lady Laura Is Told
Chapter XL. Madame Max Goesler
Chapter XLII. Lady Baldock Does Not Send a Card to Phineas Finn
Chapter XLIV. Phineas and His Friends
Chapter XLV. Miss Effingham’s Four Lovers
Chapter XLVII. Mr. Mildmay’s Bill
Chapter XLIX. The Duellists Meet
Chapter LI. Troubles at Loughlinter
Chapter LIII. Showing How Phineas Bore the Blow
Chapter LV. Lord Chiltern at Saulsby
Chapter LVI. What the People in Marylebone Thought
Chapter LVII. The Top Brick of the Chimney
Chapter LVIII. Rara Avis in Terris
Chapter LX. Madame Goesler’s Politics
Chapter LXII. The Letter That Was Sent to Brighton
Chapter LXIII. Showing How the Duke Stood His Ground
Chapter LXV. The Cabinet Minister at Killaloe
Chapter LXVII. Job’s Comforters
Chapter LXVIII. The Joint Attack
Chapter LXX. The Prime Minister’s House
Chapter LXXII. Madame Goesler’s Generosity
Chapter LXXIV. The Beginning of the End
Volume I
Chapter I.
Phineas Finn Proposes to Stand for Loughshane
Dr. Finn, of Killaloe, in county Clare, was as well known in those parts,—the confines, that is, of the counties Clare, Limerick, Tipperary, and Galway,—as was the bishop himself who lived in the same town, and was as much respected. Many said that the doctor was the richer man of the two, and the practice of his profession was extended over almost as wide a district. Indeed the bishop whom he was privileged to attend, although a Roman Catholic, always spoke of their dioceses being conterminate. It will therefore be understood that Dr. Finn,—Malachi Finn was his full name,—had obtained a wide reputation as a country practitioner in the west of Ireland. And he was a man sufficiently well to do, though that boast made by his friends, that he was as warm a man as the bishop, had but little truth to support it. Bishops in Ireland, if they live at home, even in these days, are very warm men; and Dr. Finn had not a penny in the world for which he had not worked hard. He had, moreover, a costly family, five daughters and one son, and, at the time of which we are speaking, no provision in the way of marriage or profession had been made for any of them. Of the one son, Phineas, the hero of the following pages, the mother and five sisters were very proud. The doctor was accustomed to say that his goose was as good as any other man’s goose, as far as he could see as yet; but that he should