more
than once. Well, here I am, just come home; a fellow gone to the bad; though I
had the best intentions in the world at one time. Now I am melancholy mad, what
with drinking and one thing and another.«
    Slowly Jude unfolded to the curate his late plans and movements, by an
unconscious bias dwelling less upon the intellectual and ambitious side of his
dream, and more upon the theological, though this had, up till now, been merely
a portion of the general plan of advancement.
    »Now I know I have been a fool, and that folly is with me,« added Jude in
conclusion. »And I don't regret the collapse of my University hopes one jot. I
wouldn't begin again if I were sure to succeed. I don't care for social success
any more at all. But I do feel I should like to do some good thing; and I
bitterly regret the Church, and the loss of my chance of being her ordained
minister.«
    The curate, who was a new man to this neighbourhood, had grown deeply
interested, and at last he said: »If you feel a real call to the ministry, and I
won't say from your conversation that you do not, for it is that of a thoughtful
and educated man, you might enter the Church as a licentiate. Only you must make
up your mind to avoid strong drink.«
    »I could avoid that easily enough, if I had any kind of hope to support me!«
 

                                   Part Third

            »For there was no other girl, O bridegroom, like her!«
                                                          Sappho (H. T. Wharton)
 

                                 At Melchester

                                       1

It was a new idea - the ecclesiastical and altruistic life as distinct from the
intellectual and emulative life. A man could preach and do good to his
fellow-creatures without taking double-firsts in the schools of Christminster,
or having anything but ordinary knowledge. The old fancy which had led on to the
culminating vision of the bishopric had not been an ethical or theological
enthusiasm at all, but a mundane ambition masquerading in a surplice. He feared
that his whole scheme had degenerated to, even though it might not have
originated in, a social unrest which had no foundation in the nobler instincts;
which was purely an artificial product of civilization. There were thousands of
young men on the same self-seeking track at the present moment. The sensual hind
who ate, drank, and lived carelessly with his wife through the days of his
vanity was a more likable being than he.