ances,
but from the second consciousness underlying those annoyances, of
wasted energy and a degrading preoccupation, which was the reverse of
all his former purposes. "_This_ is what I am thinking of; and _that_
is what I might have been thinking of," was the bitter incessant murmur
within him, making every difficulty a double goad to impatience.

Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general
discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their
great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self
and an insignificant world may have its consolations. Lydgate's
discontent was much harder to bear: it was the sense that there was a
grand existence in thought and effective action lying around him, while
his self was being narrowed into the miserable isolation of egoistic
fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that might allay such fears.
His troubles will perhaps appear miserably sordid, and beneath the
attention of lofty persons who can know nothing of debt except on a
magnificent scale. Doubtless they were sordid; and for the majority,
who are not lofty, there is no escape from sordidness but by being free
from money-craving, with all its base hopes and temptations, its
watching for death, its hinted requests, its horse-dealer's desire to
make bad work pass for good, its seeking for function which ought to be
another's, its compulsion often to long for Luck in the shape of a wide
calamity.

It was because Lydgate writhed under the idea of getting his neck
beneath this vile yoke that he had fallen into a bitter moody state
which was continually widening Rosamond's alienation from him. After
the first disclosure about the bill of sale, he had made many efforts
to draw her into sympathy with him about possible measures for
narrowing their expenses, and with the threatening approach of
Christmas his propositions grew more and more definite. "We two can do
with only one servant, and live on very little," he said, "and I shall
manage with one horse." For Lydgate, as we have seen, had begun to
reason, with a more distinct vision, about the expenses of living, and
any share of pride he had given to appearances of that sort was meagre
compared with the pride which made him revolt from exposure as a
debtor, or from asking men to help him with their money.

"Of course you can dismiss the other two servants, if you like," said
Rosamond; "but I should have thought it would