If you vote for me you
will offend Bulstrode."
"What is there against Bulstrode?" said Lydgate, emphatically.
"I did not say there was anything against him except that.
If you vote against him you will make him your enemy."
"I don't know that I need mind about that," said Lydgate,
rather proudly; "but he seems to have good ideas about hospitals,
and he spends large sums on useful public objects. He might help me
a good deal in carrying out my ideas. As to his religious notions--
why, as Voltaire said, incantations will destroy a flock of sheep
if administered with a certain quantity of arsenic. I look for the
man who will bring the arsenic, and don't mind about his incantations."
"Very good. But then you must not offend your arsenic-man. You will
not offend me, you know," said Mr. Farebrother, quite unaffectedly.
"I don't translate my own convenience into other people's duties.
I am opposed to Bulstrode in many ways. I don't like the set
he belongs to: they are a narrow ignorant set, and do more to
make their neighbors uncomfortable than to make them better.
Their system is a sort of worldly-spiritual cliqueism: they really
look on the rest of mankind as a doomed carcass which is to nourish
them for heaven. But," he added, smilingly, "I don't say that
Bulstrode's new hospital is a bad thing; and as to his wanting to oust
me from the old one--why, if he thinks me a mischievous fellow,
he is only returning a compliment.
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