weaned calves, and none to show
dislike of his appearance except the little water-rats which rustled away at his
approach.
    He was fortunate enough when he got on to the highroad to be overtaken by
the stage-coach, which carried him to Brassing; and there he took the new-made
railway, observing to his fellow-passengers that he considered it pretty well
seasoned now it had done for Huskisson. Mr. Raffles on most occasions kept up
the sense of having been educated at an academy, and being able, if he chose, to
pass well everywhere; indeed, there was not one of his fellow-men whom he did
not feel himself in a position to ridicule and torment, confident of the
entertainment which he thus gave to all the rest of the company.
    He played this part now with as much spirit as if his journey had been
entirely successful, resorting at frequent intervals to his flask. The paper
with which he had wedged it was a letter signed Nicholas Bulstrode, but Raffles
was not likely to disturb it from, its present useful position.
 

                                  Chapter XLII

 »How much, methinks, I could despise this man,
 Were I not bound in charity against it!«
                                                        Shakespeare: Henry VIII.
 
One of the professional calls made by Lydgate soon after his return from his
wedding-journey was to Lowick Manor, in consequence of a letter which had
requested him to fix a time for his visit.
    Mr. Casaubon had never put any question concerning the nature of his illness
to Lydgate, nor had he even to Dorothea betrayed any anxiety as to how far it
might be likely to cut short his labours or his life. On this point, as on all
others, he shrank from pity; and if the suspicion of being pitied for anything
in his lot surmised or known in spite of himself was embittering, the idea of
calling forth a show of compassion by frankly admitting an alarm or a sorrow was
necessarily intolerable to him. Every proud mind knows something of this
experience, and perhaps it is only to be overcome by a sense of fellowship deep
enough to make all efforts at isolation seem mean and petty instead of exalting.
    But Mr. Casaubon was now brooding over something through which the question
of his health and life haunted his silence with a more harassing importunity
even than through the autumnal unripeness of his authorship. It is true that
this last might be called his central ambition; but there are some kinds of
authorship in which by far the largest result is the uneasy susceptibility
accumulated in the consciousness of the author - one knows of the river by a few
streaks