The Quack's Broken Promise — Jude the Obscure

On his walk home in the dark, Jude falls in with Physician Vilbert, an itinerant quack known throughout Wessex for coloured lard and life-drops. Jude strikes a deal: a fortnight of pill advertising across the neighbouring hamlets in exchange for Vilbert's old Latin and Greek grammars. He spends the two weeks going door-to-door, luminous with expectation. When they meet again, Vilbert has forgotten the bargain entirely. In a flash of clarity, Jude sees exactly what the man is made of and cries at a gate while his imaginary crown of laurel dissolves.

Without money or connections, Jude devises a second plan: when Phillotson's piano is shipped back to Christminster, he slips a letter inside the packing crate asking for second-hand grammars. He rises before his aunt every morning for weeks to intercept the post. A small packet finally arrives; he takes it to a felled elm and opens it alone.

The books are old and scrawled over by a previous owner. Far worse: there is no cipher. Every word of Latin and Greek must be individually committed to memory, thousands of words, across years of plodding. There is no shortcut, and the shortcut was the entire premise of the plan. Jude flings the books down, covers his face with his hat, and wishes he had never been born. Hardy closes with a bleak observation: somebody might have come along and cheered him by saying his expectations were more advanced than the grammarian's. But nobody did come, because nobody does.