The Nicene Creed for Whisky — Jude the Obscure

Morning after the chalked wall, Jude laughs at his conceit, then re-reads Tetuphenay and feels chilled. Blocked from study and from Sue, he sits all day in a low tavern up a court, money gone, one biscuit eaten. Tinker Taylor, two Gothic masons, a pair of gownless undergraduates, and women nicknamed Bower o' Bliss and Freckles gather. He boasts he would lick any master of arts on their own ground. Uncle Joe asks if he can say the Creed in Latin.

He refuses, then trades the recitation for a small Scotch. He delivers the Nicene steadily while men who cannot tell a word cheer the Amen. A second glass gets him through. Then the fumes lift. He calls them a pack of fools who would not know the Ratcatcher's Daughter in double Dutch, slams the door, and walks to Lumsdon.

Sue opens with a candle, pulls off his boots, and will not despise him. At dawn he cannot face her knowing the worst and slips out. A dismissal note waits at his lodging. He walks nearly twenty miles, pawns his waistcoat at Alfredston, sleeps under a rick, and sits by the Marygreen well thinking what a poor Christ he makes. In his old room it is the hell of conscious failure, deeper than the first abyss. Curate Highridge hears the theological side of the wreck and offers a licentiate's path if he can leave strong drink. Jude could avoid that easily enough, he says, if he had any kind of hope.