The Reverse of the Medal by Patrick O'Brian

Author:Patrick O'Brian [O'Brian, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Adventure fiction; Sea Faring; Historical
Published: 2011-02-12T00:00:00+00:00

and those who remained could hope for no countenance or advancement. Their clerks were taken from them, their rooms were given to others, and they were lodged in mean holes and corners to induce them to resign, and the least slip of some remote agent was seized upon to discredit them. It was the same with those outside the administration.

'Invaluable colleagues have been treated with disrespect and have withdrawn in disgust.

When you call at the Admiralty, do not be surprised if they ask you to give up your key to the private door. The pretext will no doubt be that the locks are being changed.' Sir Joseph himself would have resigned months ago if this had been an ordinary department and if he had not had some hopes of reversing the situation in the end. 'I cannot tell you, Maturin,'

he said, 'how passionately I long to put things right again, and I shall hold on, in spite of all affronts, in order to do so.'

'When you speak of your opponents, do you have them clearly in your eye?' asked Stephen.

'No, I do not, and that is what makes me so uneasy. Barrow is back as second secretary, as 1 dare say you know, and we have never liked one another; indeed I might say that since the Wilson affair we have lived in a perpetual reciprocation of malevolence. He is an immensely laborious, immensely diligent man, devoted to form and detail, and respectful of rank to a servile degree; he is widely ignorant and he is quite incapable of taking a broad, intelligent view of any given situation; but having risen from a humble situation by his own efforts he has an extraordinarily high opinion of his abilities, and at first I thought that this reorganization was simply an attempt on his part to gain more power, particularly as he has kept Wray, an ambitious young man, as his chief adviser. But that is not the explanation. He is a little man and his idea of a famous victory is six extra clerks and a Turkey carpet. It is true that Wray, though flighty, paederastical and unsound, is very, very much cleverer, but now that

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