Der Praefekt

most
    self-indulgent of the rich were crowded into this abode.  Here the
    reader was introduced to the demon of the book, the Mephistopheles of
    the drama.  What story was ever written without a demon?  What novel,
    what history, what work of any sort, what world, would be perfect
    without existing principles both of good and evil?  The demon of “The
    Almshouse” was the clerical owner of this comfortable abode.  He was
    a man well stricken in years, but still strong to do evil: he was one
    who looked cruelly out of a hot, passionate, bloodshot eye; who had a
    huge red nose with a carbuncle, thick lips, and a great double, flabby
    chin, which swelled out into solid substance, like a turkey-cock’s
    comb, when sudden anger inspired him: he had a hot, furrowed, low
    brow, from which a few grizzled hairs were not yet rubbed off by
    the friction of his handkerchief: he wore a loose unstarched white
    handkerchief, black loose ill-made clothes, and huge loose shoes,
    adapted to many corns and various bunions: his husky voice told
    tales of much daily port wine, and his language was not so decorous
    as became a clergyman.  Such was the master of Mr Sentiment’s
    “Almshouse.”  He was a widower, but at present accompanied by two
    daughters, and a thin and somewhat insipid curate.  One of the young
    ladies was devoted to her father and the fashionable world, and she of
    course was the favourite; the other was equally addicted to Puseyism
    and the curate.
     
    The second chapter of course introduced the reader to the more
    especial inmates of the hospital.  Here were discovered eight old
    men; and it was given to be understood that four vacancies remained
    unfilled, through the perverse ill-nature of the clerical gentleman
    with the double chin.  The state of these eight paupers was touchingly
    dreadful: sixpence-farthing a day had been sufficient for their diet
    when the almshouse was founded; and on sixpence-farthing a day were
    they still doomed to starve, though food was four times as dear,
    and money four times as plentiful.  It was shocking to find how the
    conversation of these eight starved old men in their dormitory shamed
    that of the clergyman’s family in his rich drawing-room. Die absolute
    words they uttered were not perhaps spoken in the purest English, and
    it might be difficult to distinguish from their dialect to what part
    of the country they belonged; the beauty of the sentiment, however,
    amply atoned for the imperfection of the language; and it was really a
    pity that these eight old men could not be sent through the country as
    moral missionaries, instead of being immured and starved in that
    wretched almshouse.
     
    Bold finished the number; and as he threw it aside, he thought that
    that at least had no direct appliance to Mr Harding, and that the
    absurdly strong colouring of the picture would disenable the work from
    doing either good or harm.  He was wrong.  The artist who paints for
    the million must use glaring colours, as no one knew better than Mr
    Sentiment when he described the inhabitants of his almshouse; and the
    radical reform which has now swept over such establishments has owed
    more to the twenty numbers of Mr Sentiment’s novel, than to all the
    true complaints which have escaped from the public for the last half
    Jahrhunderts.
     
     
     
     
    Chapter XVI
     
    A LONG DAY IN LONDON
     
     
    The warden had to make use of all his very moderate powers of intrigue
    to give his son-in-law the slip, and get out of Barchester without
    being stopped on his road.  No schoolboy ever ran away from school
    with more precaution and more dread of detection; no convict, slipping
    down from a prison wall, ever feared to see the gaoler more entirely
    than Mr Harding did to see his son-in-law as he drove up in the pony
    carriage to the railway station, on the morning of his escape to
    London.
     
    The evening before he went he wrote a note to the archdeacon,
    explaining that he should start on the morrow on his journey; that
    it was his intention to see the attorney-general if possible, and to
    decide on his future plans in accordance with what he heard from that
    gentleman; he excused himself for giving Dr Grantly no earlier notice,
    by stating that his resolve was very sudden; and having entrusted this
    note to Eleanor, with the perfect, though not expressed, understanding
    that it was to be sent over to Plumstead Episcopi without haste, he
    took his departure.
     
    He also