to the houses of neighbouring squires, to whom his reputation as a
magistrate, conjoined with his solemn exterior, made him one of
those oracles by which men consent to be awed on condition that the awe is
not often inflicted. And though he opened his house three times a week,
it was only to a select few, whom he first fed and then biologized.
Electro-biology was very naturally the special entertainment of a man whom
no intercourse ever pleased in which his will was not imposed upon others.
Therefore he only invited to his table persons whom he could stare into
the abnegation of their senses, willing to say that beef was lamb, or
brandy was coffee, according as he willed them to say. And, no doubt, the
persons asked would have said anything he willed, so long as they had, in
substance, as well as in idea, the beef and the brandy, the lamb and the
coffee. I did not, then, often meet Mr. Vigors at the houses in which I
occasionally spent my evenings. I heard of his enmity as a man safe in
his home hears the sough of a wind on a common without. If now and then
we chanced to pass in the streets, he looked up at me (he was a small man
walking on tiptoe) with a sullen scowl of dislike; and from the height of
my stature, I dropped upon the small man and sullen scowl the affable
smile of supreme indifference.




CHAPTER IV.

I had now arrived at that age when an ambitious man, satisfied with
his progress in the world without, begins to feel in the cravings of
unsatisfied affection the void of a solitary hearth. I resolved to marry,
and looked out for a wife. I had never hitherto admitted into my life the
passion of love. In fact, I had regarded that passion, even in my earlier