ule
that he must do or see done that which he believed best for the life
committed to him, would have been the point on which he would have been
the sturdiest. As it was, he had rested in the consideration that
disobedience to his orders, however it might have arisen, could not be
considered a crime, that in the dominant opinion obedience to his
orders was just as likely to be fatal, and that the affair was simply
one of etiquette. Whereas, again and again, in his time of freedom, he
had denounced the perversion of pathological doubt into moral doubt and
had said--"the purest experiment in treatment may still be
conscientious: my business is to take care of life, and to do the best
I can think of for it. Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma.
Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a
contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive." Alas! the
scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of money
obligation and selfish respects.

"Is there a medical man of them all in Middlemarch who would question
himself as I do?" said poor Lydgate, with a renewed outburst of
rebellion against the oppression of his lot. "And yet they will all
feel warranted in making a wide space between me and them, as if I were
a leper! My practice and my reputation are utterly damned--I can see
that. Even if I could be cleared by valid evidence, it would make
little difference to the blessed world here. I have been set down as
tainted and should be cheapened to them all the same."

Already there had been abundant signs which had hitherto puzzled him,
that just when he had been paying off his debts and getting cheerfully
on his feet, the townsmen were avoiding him or looking strangely at
him, and in two instances it came to his knowledge that patients of his
had called in another practitioner. The reasons were too plain now.
The general black-balling had begun.

No wonder that in Lydgate's energetic nature the sense of a hopeless
misconstruction easily turned into a dogged resistance. The scowl
which occasionally showed itself on his square brow was not a
meaningless accident. Already when he was re-entering the town after
that ride taken in the first hours of stinging pain, he was setting his
mind on remaining in Middlemarch in spite of the worst that could be
done against him. He would not retreat before calumny, as if he
submitted to it. He would face it to the utmost, and no