But to enter the Church in such an unscholarly way that he could not in any
probability rise to a higher grade through all his career than that of the
humble curate wearing his life out in an obscure village or city slum - that
might have a touch of goodness and greatness in it; that might be true religion,
and a purgatorial course worthy of being followed by a remorseful man.
    The favourable light in which this new thought showed itself by contrast
with his foregone intentions cheered Jude, as he sat there, shabby and lonely;
and it may be said to have given, during the next few days, the coup de grâce to
his intellectual career - a career which had extended over the greater part of a
dozen years. He did nothing, however, for some long stagnant time to advance his
new desire, occupying himself with little local jobs in putting up and lettering
headstones about the neighbouring villages, and submitting to be regarded as a
social failure, a returned purchase, by the half-dozen or so of farmers and
other country-people who condescended to nod to him.
    The human interest of the new intention - and a human interest is
indispensable to the most spiritual and self-sacrificing - was created by a
letter from Sue, bearing a fresh postmark. She evidently wrote with anxiety, and
told very little about her own doings, more than that she had passed some sort
of examination for a Queen's Scholarship, and was going to enter a Training
College at Melchester to complete herself for the vocation she had chosen,
partly by his influence. There was a Theological College at Melchester;
Melchester was a quiet and soothing place, almost entirely ecclesiastical in its
tone; a spot where worldly learning and intellectual smartness had no
establishment; where the altruistic feeling that he did possess would perhaps be
more highly estimated than a brilliancy which he did not.
    As it would be necessary that he should continue for a time to work at his
trade while reading up Divinity, which he had neglected at Christminster for the
ordinary classical grind, what better course for him than to get employment at
the further city, and pursue this plan of reading? That his excessive human
interest in the new place was entirely of Sue's making, while at the same time
Sue was to be regarded even less than formerly as proper to create it, had an
ethical contradictoriness to which he was not blind. But that much he conceded
to human frailty, and hoped to learn to love her only as a friend and kinswoman.
    He considered that he might so mark out his coming years as to begin