him afterwards?" said Rosamond, with some
interest.

"Oh, he had a good deal of fighting to the last. And they did
exasperate him enough at one time to make him burn a good deal of his
work. Then he got shipwrecked just as he was coming from Jerusalem to
take a great chair at Padua. He died rather miserably."

There was a moment's pause before Rosamond said, "Do you know, Tertius,
I often wish you had not been a medical man."

"Nay, Rosy, don't say that," said Lydgate, drawing her closer to him.
"That is like saying you wish you had married another man."

"Not at all; you are clever enough for anything: you might easily have
been something else. And your cousins at Quallingham all think that
you have sunk below them in your choice of a profession."

"The cousins at Quallingham may go to the devil!" said Lydgate, with
scorn. "It was like their impudence if they said anything of the sort
to you."

"Still," said Rosamond, "I do _not_ think it is a nice profession,
dear." We know that she had much quiet perseverance in her opinion.

"It is the grandest profession in the world, Rosamond," said Lydgate,
gravely. "And to say that you love me without loving the medical man
in me, is the same sort of thing as to say that you like eating a peach
but don't like its flavor. Don't say that again, dear, it pains me."

"Very well, Doctor Grave-face," said Rosy, dimpling, "I will declare in
future that I dote on skeletons, and body-snatchers, and bits of things
in phials, and quarrels with everybody, that end in your dying
miserably."

"No, no, not so bad as that," said Lydgate, giving up remonstrance and
petting her resignedly.

CHAPTER XLVI.

Pues no podemos haber aquello que queremos, queramos
aquello que podremos.

Since we cannot get what we like, let us like
what we can get.
--Spanish Proverb.

While Lydgate, safely married and with the Hospital under his command,
felt himself struggling for Medical Reform against Middlemarch,
Middlemarch was becoming more and more conscious of the national
struggle for another kind of Reform.

By the time that Lord John Russell's measure was being debated in the
House of Commons, there was a new political animation in Middlemarch,
and a new definition of parties which might show a decided change of
balance if a new election came. And there were some who already
predicted this event, declaring that a Reform Bi