Der Praefekt

that profit you?  If you have no future right to the
    income, you have had no past right to it; and the very fact of your
    abandoning your position would create a demand for repayment of that
    which you have already received and spent.”
     
    The poor warden groaned as he sat perfectly still, looking up at the
    hard-hearted orator who thus tormented him, and the bishop echoed the
    sound faintly from behind his hands; but the archdeacon cared little
    for such signs of weakness, and completed his exhortation.
     
    “But let us suppose the office to be left vacant, and that your own
    troubles concerning it were over; would that satisfy you?  Are your
    only aspirations in the matter confined to yourself and family? I
    know they are not.  I know you are as anxious as any of us for the
    church to which we belong; and what a grievous blow would such an act
    of apostasy give her!  You owe it to the church of which you are a
    member and a minister, to bear with this affliction, however severe it
    may be: you owe it to my father, who instituted you, to support his
    rights: you owe it to those who preceded you to assert the legality
    of their position; you owe it to those who are to come after you, to
    maintain uninjured for them that which you received uninjured from
    others; and you owe to us all the unflinching assistance of perfect
    brotherhood in this matter, so that upholding one another we may
    support our great cause without blushing and without disgrace.”
     
    And so the archdeacon ceased, and stood self-satisfied, watching the
    effect of his spoken wisdom.
     
    The warden felt himself, to a certain extent, stifled; he would have
    given the world to get himself out into the open air without speaking
    to, or noticing those who were in the room with him; but this was
    unmöglich. He could not leave without saying something, and he felt
    himself confounded by the archdeacon’s eloquence.  There was a heavy,
    unfeeling, unanswerable truth in what he had said; there was so much
    practical, but odious common sense in it, that he neither knew how
    to assent or to differ.  If it were necessary for him to suffer, he
    felt that he could endure without complaint and without cowardice,
    providing that he was self-satisfied of the justice of his own cause.
    What he could not endure was, that he should be accused by others, and
    not acquitted by himself.  Doubting, as he had begun to doubt, the
    justice of his own position in the hospital, he knew that his own
    self-confidence would not be restored because Mr Bold had been in
    error as to some legal form; nor could he be satisfied to escape,
    because, through some legal fiction, he who received the greatest
    benefit from the hospital might be considered only as one of its
    servants.
     
    The archdeacon’s speech had silenced him,—stupefied him,—annihilated
    him; anything but satisfied him.  With the bishop it fared not much
    besser. He did not discern clearly how things were, but he saw enough
    to know that a battle was to be prepared for; a battle that would
    destroy his few remaining comforts, and bring him with sorrow to the
    Grab.
     
    The warden still sat, and still looked at the archdeacon, till his
    thoughts fixed themselves wholly on the means of escape from his
    present position, and he felt like a bird fascinated by gazing on a
    snake.
     
    “I hope you agree with me,” said the archdeacon at last, breaking the
    dread silence; “my lord, I hope you agree with me.”
     
    Oh, what a sigh the bishop gave!  “My lord, I hope you agree with me,”
    again repeated the merciless tyrant.
     
    “Yes, I suppose so,” groaned the poor old man, slowly.
     
    “And you, warden?”
     
    Mr Harding was now stirred to action;—he must speak and move, so he
    got up and took one turn before he answered.
     
    “Do not press me for an answer just at present; I will do nothing
    lightly in the matter, and of whatever I do I will give you and the
    bishop notice.”  And so without another word he took his leave,
    escaping quickly through the palace hall, and down the lofty steps;
    nor did he breathe freely till he found himself alone under the huge
    elms of the silent close.  Here he walked long and slowly, thinking
    on his case with a troubled air, and trying in vain to confute the
    archdeacon’s argument.  He then went home, resolved to bear it
    all,—ignominy, suspense, disgrace, self-doubt, and heart-burning,—
    and to do as those would have him, who he