Middlemarchme you will offend Bulstrode.’
‘What is there against Bulstrode?’ said Lydgate, emphati-
cally.
‘I did not say there was anything against him except that.
If you vote against him you will make him your enemy.’
‘I don’t know that I need mind about that,’ said Lydgate,
rather proudly; ‘but he seems to have good ideas about hos-
pitals, and he spends large sums on useful public objects.
He might help me a good deal in carrying out my ideas. As
to his religious notions— why, as Voltaire said, incantations
will destroy a flock of sheep if administered with a certain
quantity of arsenic. I look for the man who will bring the
arsenic, and don’t mind about his incantations.’
‘Very good. But then you must not offend your arse-
nic-man. You will not offend me, you know,’ said Mr.
Farebrother, quite unaffectedly. ‘I don’t translate my own
convenience into other people’s duties. I am opposed to
Bulstrode in many ways. I don’t like the set he belongs to:
they are a narrow ignorant set, and do more to make their
neighbors uncomfortable than to make them better. Their
system is a sort of worldly-spiritual cliqueism: they really
look on the rest of mankind as a doomed carcass which is to
nourish them for heaven. But,’ he added, smilingly, ‘I don’t
say that Bulstrode’s new hospital is a bad thing; and as to
his wanting to oust me from the old one—why, if he thinks
me a mischievous fellow, he is only returning a compliment.
And I am not a model clergyman— only a decent make-
shift.’
Lydgate was not at all sure that the Vicar maligned him-