
Creed in Latin still, and the night of the challenge in the public-house.
    »But Fortune didn't lie that way?« threw in Joe. »Yer powers wasn't enough
to carry 'ee through?«
    »Don't answer them any more!« entreated Sue.
    »I don't think I like Christminster!« murmured little Time mournfully, as he
stood submerged and invisible in the crowd.
    But finding himself the centre of curiosity, quizzing, and comment, Jude was
not inclined to shrink from open declarations of what he had no great reason to
be ashamed of; and in a little while was stimulated to say in a loud voice to
the listening throng generally:
    »It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man - that question I
had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing at the present moment in
these uprising times - whether to follow uncritically the track he finds himself
in, without considering his aptness for it, or to consider what his aptness or
bent may be, and re-shape his course accordingly. I tried to do the latter, and
I failed. But I don't admit that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one, or
that my success would have made it a right one; though that's how we appraise
such attempts nowadays - I mean, not by their essential soundness, but by their
accidental outcomes. If I had ended by becoming like one of these gentlemen in
red and black that we saw dropping in here by now, everybody would have said:
See how wise that young man was, to follow the bent of his nature! But having
ended no better than I began they say: See what a fool that fellow was in
following a freak of his fancy!
    However it was my poverty and not my will that consented to be beaten. It
takes two or three generations to do what I tried to do in one; and my impulses
- affections - vices perhaps they should be called - were too strong not to
hamper a man without advantages; who should be as cold-blooded as a fish and as
selfish as a pig to have a really good chance of being one of his country's
worthies. You may ridicule me - I am quite willing that you should - I am a fit
subject, no doubt. But I think if you knew what I have gone through these last
few years you would rather pity me. And if they knew' - he nodded towards the
college at which the Dons were severally arriving -'
