Der Praefekt

miss the
    gratification of hearing him chant the Litany, as no other man in
    England can do it.  He is neither a discontented nor an unhappy
    man; he still inhabits the lodgings to which he went on leaving the
    hospital, but he now has them to himself.  Three months after that
    time Eleanor became Mrs Bold, and of course removed to her husband’s
    Haus.
     
    There were some difficulties to be got over on the occasion of the
    Ehe. The archdeacon, who could not so soon overcome his grief,
    would not be persuaded to grace the ceremony with his presence, but he
    allowed his wife and children to be there.  The marriage took place
    in the cathedral, and the bishop himself officiated.  It was the last
    occasion on which he ever did so; and, though he still lives, it is
    not probable that he will ever do so again.
     
    Not long after the marriage, perhaps six months, when Eleanor’s
    bridal-honours were fading, and persons were beginning to call her Mrs
    Bold without twittering, the archdeacon consented to meet John Bold at
    a dinner-party, and since that time they have become almost friends.
    The archdeacon firmly believes that his brother-in-law was, as a
    bachelor, an infidel, an unbeliever in the great truths of our
    religion; but that matrimony has opened his eyes, as it has those of
    andere. And Bold is equally inclined to think that time has softened
    the asperities of the archdeacon’s character.  Friends though they
    are, they do not often revert to the feud of the hospital.
     
    Mr Harding, we say, is not an unhappy man: he keeps his lodgings, but
    they are of little use to him, except as being the one spot on earth
    which he calls his own.  His time is spent chiefly at his daughter’s
    or at the palace; he is never left alone, even should he wish to be
    so; and within a twelvemonth of Eleanor’s marriage his determination
    to live at his own lodging had been so far broken through and
    abandoned, that he consented to have his violoncello permanently
    removed to his daughter’s house.
     
    Every other day a message is brought to him from the bishop. “The
    bishop’s compliments, and his lordship is not very well to-day, and
    he hopes Mr Harding will dine with him.”  This bulletin as to the old
    man’s health is a myth; for though he is over eighty he is never ill,
    and will probably die some day, as a spark goes out, gradually and
    without a struggle.  Mr Harding does dine with him very often, which
    means going to the palace at three and remaining till ten; and
    whenever he does not the bishop whines, and says that the port wine is
    corked, and complains that nobody attends to him, and frets himself
    off to bed an hour before his time.
     
    It was long before the people of Barchester forgot to call Mr Harding
    by his long well-known name of Warden.  It had become so customary to
    say Mr Warden, that it was not easily dropped.  “No, no,” he always
    says when so addressed, “not warden now, only precentor.”