“I perceive that the votes are equally divided at present,” said Mr. Bulstrode, in a clear biting voice.  Then, looking up at Lydgate—­

“There is a casting-vote still to be given.  It is yours, Mr. Lydgate:  will you be good enough to write?”

“The thing is settled now,” said Mr. Wrench, rising.  “We all know how Mr. Lydgate will vote.”

“You seem to speak with some peculiar meaning, sir,” said Lydgate, rather defiantly, and keeping his pencil suspended.

“I merely mean that you are expected to vote with Mr. Bulstrode.  Do you regard that meaning as offensive?”

“It may be offensive to others.  But I shall not desist from voting with him on that account.”  Lydgate immediately wrote down “Tyke.”

So the Rev. Walter Tyke became chaplain to the Infirmary, and Lydgate continued to work with Mr. Bulstrode.  He was really uncertain whether Tyke were not the more suitable candidate, and yet his consciousness told him that if he had been quite free from indirect bias he should have voted for Mr. Farebrother.  The affair of the chaplaincy remained a sore point in his memory as a case in which this petty medium of Middlemarch had been too strong for him.  How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances?  No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he has chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at best with a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison.

But Mr. Farebrother met him with the same friendliness as before.  The character of the publican and sinner is not always practically incompatible with that of the modern Pharisee, for the majority of us scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the faultiness of our own arguments, or the dulness of our own jokes.  But the Vicar of St. Botolph’s had certainly escaped the slightest tincture of the Pharisee, and by dint of admitting to himself that he was too much as other men were, he had become remarkably unlike them in this—­that he could excuse others for thinking slightly of him, and could judge impartially of their conduct even when it told against him.

“The world has been to strong for me, I know,” he said one day to Lydgate.  “But then I am not a mighty man—­I shall never be a man of renown.  The choice of Hercules is a pretty fable; but Prodicus makes it easy work for the hero, as if the first resolves were enough.  Another story says that he came to hold the distaff, and at last wore the Nessus shirt.  I suppose one good resolve might keep a man right if everybody else’s resolve helped him.”

The Vicar’s talk was not always inspiriting:  he had escaped being a Pharisee, but he had not escaped that low estimate of possibilities which we rather hastily arrive at as an inference from our own failure.  Lydgate thought that there was a pitiable infirmity of will in Mr. Farebrother.