“Good gracious! what dreadful trifling with people’s constitutions!” said Mrs. Taft.

After this, it came to be held in various quarters that Lydgate played even with respectable constitutions for his own purposes, and how much more likely that in his flighty experimenting he should make sixes and sevens of hospital patients.  Especially it was to be expected, as the landlady of the Tankard had said, that he would recklessly cut up their dead bodies.  For Lydgate having attended Mrs. Goby, who died apparently of a heart-disease not very clearly expressed in the symptoms, too daringly asked leave of her relatives to open the body, and thus gave an offence quickly spreading beyond Parley Street, where that lady had long resided on an income such as made this association of her body with the victims of Burke and Hare a flagrant insult to her memory.

Affairs were in this stage when Lydgate opened the subject of the Hospital to Dorothea.  We see that he was bearing enmity and silly misconception with much spirit, aware that they were partly created by his good share of success.

“They will not drive me away,” he said, talking confidentially in Mr. Farebrother’s study.  “I have got a good opportunity here, for the ends I care most about; and I am pretty sure to get income enough for our wants.  By-and-by I shall go on as quietly as possible:  I have no seductions now away from home and work.  And I am more and more convinced that it will be possible to demonstrate the homogeneous origin of all the tissues.  Raspail and others are on the same track, and I have been losing time.”

“I have no power of prophecy there,” said Mr. Farebrother, who had been puffing at his pipe thoughtfully while Lydgate talked; “but as to the hostility in the town, you’ll weather it if you are prudent.”

“How am I to be prudent?” said Lydgate, “I just do what comes before me to do.  I can’t help people’s ignorance and spite, any more than Vesalius could.  It isn’t possible to square one’s conduct to silly conclusions which nobody can foresee.”

“Quite true; I didn’t mean that.  I meant only two things.  One is, keep yourself as separable from Bulstrode as you can:  of course, you can go on doing good work of your own by his help; but don’t get tied.  Perhaps it seems like personal feeling in me to say so—­ and there’s a good deal of that, I own—­but personal feeling is not always in the wrong if you boil it down to the impressions which make it simply an opinion.”

“Bulstrode is nothing to me,” said Lydgate, carelessly, “except on public grounds.  As to getting very closely united to him, I am not fond enough of him for that.  But what was the other thing you meant?” said Lydgate, who was nursing his leg as comfortably as possible, and feeling in no great need of advice.

“Why, this.  Take care—­experto crede—­take care not to get hampered about money matters.  I know, by a word you let fall one day, that you don’t like my playing at cards so much for money.  You are right enough there.  But try and keep clear of wanting small sums that you haven’t got.  I am perhaps talking rather superfluously; but a man likes to assume superiority over himself, by holding up his bad example and sermonizing on it.”