MIDDLEMARCH (Completed)

Chapter 35

"Non, je ne comprends pas de plus charmant plaisir

Que de voir d'heritiers une troupe affligee

Le maintien interdit, et la mine allongee,

Lire un long testament ou pales, etonnes

On leur laisse un bonsoir avec un pied de nez.

Pour voir au naturel leur tristesse profonde

Je reviendrais, je crois, expres de l'autre monde."

--REGNARD: Le Legataire Universel.

When the animals entered the Ark in pairs, one may imagine that allied

species made much private remark on each other, and were tempted

to think that so many forms feeding on the same store of fodder

were eminently superfluous, as tending to diminish the rations.

(I fear the part played by the vultures on that occasion would be too

painful for art to represent, those birds being disadvantageously

naked about the gullet, and apparently without rites and ceremonies.)

The same sort of temptation befell the Christian Carnivora who formed

Peter Featherstone's funeral procession; most of them having their minds

bent on a limited store which each would have liked to get the most of.

The long-recognized blood-relations and connections by marriage

made already a goodly number, which, multiplied by possibilities,

presented a fine range for jealous conjecture and pathetic hopefulness.

Jealousy of the Vincys had created a fellowship in hostility among

all persons of the Featherstone blood, so that in the absence of any

decided indication that one of themselves was to have more than

the rest, the dread lest that long-legged Fred Vincy should have

the land was necessarily dominant, though it left abundant feeling

and leisure for vaguer jealousies, such as were entertained towards

Mary Garth. Solomon found time to reflect that Jonah was undeserving,

and Jonah to abuse Solomon as greedy; Jane, the elder sister,

held that Martha's children ought not to expect so much as the

young Waules; and Martha, more lax on the subject of primogeniture,

was sorry to think that Jane was so "having." These nearest of kin

were naturally impressed with the unreasonableness of expectations

in cousins and second cousins, and used their arithmetic in reckoning

the large sums that small legacies might mount to, if there were

too many of them. Two cousins were present to hear the will,

and a second cousin besides Mr. Trumbull. This second cousin was

a Middlemarch mercer of polite manners and superfluous aspirates.

The two cousins were elderly men from Brassing, one of them