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Dizzy, biding his time, seemed to relish the dramatic effect of himself set up against the ponderous Gladstone. "One day Gladstone stood in his place on the Treasury Bench, imposing and thunderous, hurtling upon his rival epithets that became ever more violent. As each of these fell, Disraeli lowered his head a little further. He seemed to be literally crushed by the terrific hammering of Gladstone's voice. At last he ended, with such a smashing blow on the broad table between them that pens and papers flew in disorder. He sat down. For a moment the House, silent and motionless, wondered whether Dizzy would be able to raise his head. Then the prostrated figure was seen slowly coming back to life, first the head, then the shoulders. At last Disraeli rose, and said, in a voice so low as could barely be heard: 'The Right Honorable gentleman has spoken with much passion, much eloquence, and much—ahem—violence. (A pause—a long pause.) But the damage can be repaired.'" And painfully he bent over, gathered up one by one the objects scattered by the fiery Gladstone, methodically ranged them in their accustomed places on the sacred table, looked complacently at this restored orderliness, and then, in his finest voice, replied.
Sixty was painfully past, when luck turned. Peel he had overthrown unpleasantly by castigation, and was unpopular for it; Gladstone he now defeated gaily by playing more liberal than his Liberal opponent, and was applauded enthusiastically. Victoria welcomed her new Prime Minister with delight. Asked the secret of his success with the Queen, he replied: "I never refuse; I never contradict; I sometimes forget." From Osborne, she sent him primroses.
In 1875 Disraeli discovered that the majority stock in Suez Canal (France and Germany competing) could be had for some four million pounds. Such a sum had to be voted by Parliament. But Parliament was not in session. "The thing must be done," wrote Disraeli to the Queen, and sent a request to a great banker. "Rothschild was eating grapes. He took one, spat out the skin, and said: 'What is your security?'—'The British Government'—'You shall have it.'" The Faery, as Dizzy called the Queen, was the more overjoyed at "the thought of Bismarck's fury, for only shortly before, he had insolently declared that England had ceased to be a political force."
Appeared "the Russian menace to India." Disraeli threatened war, gained Cyprus for Britain, juggled deft political intrigue at the Congress of Berlin, returned to a veritable triumph in London: "We have brought you back, I think, Peace with Honor."
Then bad luck again—trouble with Afghans and Zulus—and Gladstone.
So he wrote another novel, glided charmingly through his last days, ruminating the bitterness of Power. But his had been, as the young Dizzy had intended, "a continued grand procession from manhood to the tomb."
"His grateful sovereign and friend, Victoria R. I.," sent primroses to his grave. Gladstone refused to believe these had indeed been his favorite flower.