Phineas Finn. Anthony Trollope

Top Brick of the Chimney

       CHAPTER LVIII

       Rara Avis in Terris

       CHAPTER LIX

       The Earl's Wrath

       CHAPTER LX

       Madame Goesler's Politics

       CHAPTER LXI

       Another Duel

       CHAPTER LXII

       The Letter That Was Sent to Brighton

       CHAPTER LXIII

       Showing How the Duke Stood His Ground

       CHAPTER LXIV

       The Horns

       CHAPTER LXV

       The Cabinet Minister at Killaloe

       CHAPTER LXVI

       Victrix

       CHAPTER LXVII

       Job's Comforters

       CHAPTER LXVIII

       The Joint Attack

       CHAPTER LXIX

       The Temptress

       CHAPTER LXX

       The Prime Minister's House

       CHAPTER LXXI

       Comparing Notes

       CHAPTER LXXII

       Madame Goesler's Generosity

       CHAPTER LXXIII

       Amantium Iræ

       CHAPTER LXXIV

       The Beginning of the End

       CHAPTER LXXV

       P. P. C.

       CHAPTER LXXVI

       Conclusion

VOLUME I

       Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

Phineas Finn Proposes to Stand for Loughshane

       Table of Contents

      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 like some very strong evidence before he allowed himself to express an opinion that the young bird partook, in any degree, of the qualities of a swan. From which it may be gathered that Dr. Finn was a man of common-sense.

      Phineas had come to be a swan in the estimation of his mother and sisters by reason of certain early successes at college. His father, whose religion was not of that bitter kind in which we in England are apt to suppose that all the Irish Roman Catholics indulge, had sent his son to Trinity; and there were some in the neighbourhood of Killaloe—patients, probably, of Dr. Duggin, of Castle Connell, a learned physician who had spent a fruitless life in endeavouring to make head against Dr. Finn—who declared that old Finn would not be sorry if his son were to turn Protestant and go in for a fellowship. Mrs. Finn was a Protestant, and the five Miss Finns were Protestants, and the doctor himself was very much given to dining out among his Protestant friends on a Friday. Our Phineas, however, did not turn Protestant up in Dublin, whatever his father's secret wishes on that subject may have been. He did join a debating society, to success in which his religion was no bar; and he there