 likely enough
to damage himself as much as Mr. Wrench could wish, by an unprofessional
openness.
    However, Lydgate was installed as medical attendant on the Vincys, and the
event was a subject of general conversation in Middlemarch. Some said, that the
Vincys had behaved scandalously, that Mr. Vincy had threatened Wrench, and that
Mrs. Vincy had accused him of poisoning her son. Others were of opinion that Mr.
Lydgate's passing by was providential, that he was wonderfully clever in fevers,
and that Bulstrode was in the right to bring him forward. Many people believed
that Lydgate's coming to the town at all was really due to Bulstrode; and Mrs.
Taft, who was always counting stitches and gathered her information in
misleading fragments caught between the rows of her knitting, had got it into
her head that Mr. Lydgate was a natural son of Bulstrode's, a fact which seemed
to justify her suspicions of evangelical laymen.
    She one day communicated this piece of knowledge to Mrs. Farebrother, who
did not fail to tell her son of it, observing -
    »I should not be surprised at anything in Bulstrode, but I should be sorry
to think it of Mr. Lydgate.«
    »Why, mother,« said Mr. Farebrother, after an explosive laugh, »you know
very well that Lydgate is of a good family in the North. He never heard of
Bulstrode before he came here.«
    »That is satisfactory so far as Mr. Lydgate is concerned, Camden,« said the
old lady, with an air of precision. »But as to Bulstrode - the report may be
true of some other son.«
 

                                 Chapter XXVII

 »Let the high Muse chant loves Olympian:
 We are but mortals, and must sing of man.«
 
An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly
furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this
pregnant little fact. Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel
made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched
in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of
illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine
series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the
scratches are going everywhere impartially, and it is only your candle which
produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling
with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches
are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now absent -
