But to blaspheme against the Party was the sin for which there was no redemption.
"I always thought you a serious politician!" he gasped.
"Good God!" I cried.

"In my public utterances have I been as dull as that?
Ill-health or no, it is time for me to quit the stage." He laughed politely, because he conjectured I was speaking humourously--he is astute in some things--and begged me to explain.
I replied that I did not regard mustard poultices as panaceas, the _vox populi_ as the _Vox Dei_, or the policy of the other side as the machinations of the Devil; that politics was all a game of guess-work and muddle and compromise at the best; that, at the worst, as during a General Election, it was as ignoble a pastime as the wit of man had devised.

To take it seriously would be the course of a fanatic, a man devoid of the sense of proportion.

Were such a man, I asked, fitted to govern the country?
He did not stop to argue, but went away leaving me the conviction that he thanked his stars on the Government's providential escape from so maniacal a minister.

I hope I did not treat him with any discourtesy; but, oh! it was good to speak the truth after all the dismal lies I have been forced to tell at the bidding of Raggle's Party.