The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope — Read

When the ex-Prime Minister was left by himself after the departure of his old friend his first feeling had been one of regret that he had been weak enough to doubt at all. He had long since made up his mind that after all that had passed he could not return to office as a subordinate. That feeling as to the impropriety of Caesar descending to serve under others which he had been foolish enough to express, had been strong with him from the very commencement of his Ministry. When first asked to take the place which he had filled the reason strong against it had been the conviction that it would probably exclude him from political work during the latter half of his life. The man who has written Q. C. after his name must abandon his practice behind the bar. As he then was, although he had already been driven by the unhappy circumstance of his peerage from the House of Commons which he loved so well, there were still open to him many fields of political work.

But if he should once consent to stand on the top rung of the ladder, he could not, he thought, take a lower place without degradation. Till he should have been placed quite at the top no shifting his place from this higher to that lower office would injure him in his own estimation. The exigencies of the service and not defeat would produce such changes as that. But he could not go down from being Prime Minister and serve under some other chief without acknowledging himself to have been unfit for the place he had filled. Of all that he had quite assured himself. And yet he had allowed the old Duke to talk him into a doubt!