‘I’m sure he has, my dear.’

’Well;—­let us hope so.  And if he has a conscience, what must be his feelings when he hears that this creature whom he has brought into the diocese has been committed to gaol along with common felons.’

‘Not with felons, my dear; at least, I should think not.’

’I say with common felons!  A downright robbery of twenty pounds, just as though he had broken into the bank!  And so he did, with sly artifice, which is worse in such hands than a crowbar.  And now what are we to do?  Here is Thursday, and something must be done before Sunday for the souls of those poor benighted creatures at Hogglestock.’  Mrs Proudie was ready for the battle, and was even now sniffing the blood far off.  ’I believe it’s a hundred and thirty pounds a year,’ she said, before the bishop had collected his thought sufficiently for a reply.

’I think we must find out, first of all, whether he is really to be shut up in prison,’ said the bishop.

’And suppose he is not to be shut up.  Suppose they have been weak, or untrue to their duty—­and from what we know of the magistrates of Barsetshire, there is too much reason to suppose they will have been so; suppose they have let him out, is he to go about like a roaring lion—­among the souls of the people?’

The bishop shook in his shoes.  When Mrs Proudie began to talk of the souls of the people he always shook in his shoes.  She had an eloquent way of raising her voice over the word souls that was qualified to make any ordinary man shake in his shoes.  The bishop was a conscientious man, and well knew that poor Mr Crawley, even, would not roar at Hogglestock to the injury of any man’s soul.  He was aware that this poor clergyman had done his duty laboriously and efficiently, and he was also aware that though he might have been committed by the magistrates, and then let out upon bail, he should not be regarded now, in these days before trial, as a convicted thief.  But to explain all this to Mrs Proudie was beyond his power.  He knew well that she would not hear a word in mitigation of Mr Crawley’s presumed offence.  Mr Crawley belonged to the other party, and Mrs Proudie was a thorough-going partisan.  I know a man—­an excellent fellow, who, being himself a strong politician, constantly expressed a belief that all politicians opposed to him are thieves, child-murderers, parricides, lovers of incest, demons upon earth.  He is a strong partisan, but not, I think, so strong as Mrs Proudie.  He says that he believes all evil of his opponents; but she really believed the evil.  The archdeacon had called Mrs Proudie a she-Beelzebub; but that was a simple ebullition of mortal hatred.  He believed her to be simply a vulgar, interfering, brazen-faced virago.  Mrs Proudie in truth believed that the archdeacon was an actual emanation from Satan, sent to these parts to devour souls—­as she would call it—­and that she herself was an emanation of another sort,