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George Eliot
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After Lydgate leaves Stone Court, Bulstrode searches Raffles's pockets and takes comfort from bills showing he has kept away from Middlemarch since Christmas. He sits up with the patient, refuses brandy at first, gives opium by the doctor's scale, and inwardly separates his vow to obey orders from his wish that Raffles die and deliver him from exposure while he tells himself Providence may yet sanctify the night.
When Mrs. Abel begs for brandy against sinking, Bulstrode hands her the wine-cooler key through his bedroom door after weariness and fear invite disobedience, though Lydgate had forbidden alcohol for delirium tremens. Raffles dies before dawn; Bulstrode hides the opium phial and locks away the brandy. Lydgate returns, says it is all over, and receives a thousand-pound check that lifts his debts while a shadow crosses his joy at sudden rescue from the execution that morning.
Yesterday's bankruptcy sermon becomes today's generosity: Bulstrode asks whether a thousand pounds would free Lydgate entirely after learning of the execution in his house and Rosamond's pale collapse on the bed. The money binds as it rescues: healer indebted to the man at the bedside who handed the brandy key when orders failed. Lydgate thanks him for restoring the prospect of working with happiness and some chance of good, yet cannot tell Farebrother the loan's history when the Vicar asks if relief is another debt of honor tied to Stone Court's night.
Bulstrode still fears Lydgate suspects him; Lydgate plans surgery and apprenticeship while tasting professional hope on money the town will later read as bribe. Eliot stages rationalized complicity: intention argued, orders cited, desire supplying brandy and renaming outcomes while the narrator says he could not but see the death of Raffles and see in it his own deliverance. Dorothy should read LXX as the night Bulstrode's prayer and Lydgate's mortgage cross at Stone Court before gossip merges doctor, banker, and dead witness into one scandalous tale that Bambridge will soon feed at Bilkley, Hawley will force into the Hall, and Farebrother's question about debt of honor will linger unanswered in Lydgate's study while both men taste relief wrapped in diseased motive.
Debt relief can rescue you and still tie you to someone the town will suspect. Bulstrode gives the housekeeper the brandy key while Lydgate forbids alcohol, Raffles dies, and the doctor thanks him for a thousand pounds that feels like salvation and stain.
When money arrives after a death you attended, ask what story neighbors will tell before you spend a penny.
Five days after the funeral, Bambridge will mention Raffles at Bilkley, and gossip will run through Middlemarch until Hawley forces Bulstrode to face the town at the Hall Five days after Raffles's burial, Mr. Bambridge at the Green Dragon tells Frank Hawley he heard a story about Bulstrode from a man named Raffles at Bilkley, only to learn from the draper Hopkins that Raffles.
What this chapter proves — the pattern beneath the scene
In this chapter, the lesson is I Meant to Do It.
The card below names the pattern this chapter proves — carry it with you into the original text.
I Meant to Do It
Bulstrode sits with the dying Raffles while Lydgate treats him. Fear of exposure meets a doctor who needs money and rest. Compromise does not arrive as a villain's speech. It arrives as a slight delay, a practical exception, a call made in exhaustion.
Key Insight
Smart people deceive themselves by distributing guilt across small steps until each step seems too small to matter. If you can only defend a choice by listing how tiny it was, you are already in Bulstrode's sickroom.
Chapter 70
CHAPTER LXX. “Our deeds still travel with us from afar, And what we have been makes us what we are.” Bulstrode’s first object after Lydgate had left Stone Court was to examine Raffles’s pockets, which he imagined were sure to carry signs in the shape of hotel-bills of the places he had stopped in, if he had not told the truth in saying that he had come straight from Liverpool because he was ill and had no money. There were various bills crammed into his pocketbook, but none of a later date than Christmas at any other place, except one,…
Public-domain chapter text, formatted for reading.
Think of an area in your life where you've been making small compromises (work ethics, parenting rules, spending habits, relationship boundaries). Draw a simple map showing: where you started, each compromise you made, what you told yourself to justify it, and where you are now. Then identify the first warning sign you should have heeded.
Write about a time when you caught yourself making a compromise that didn't feel right. What stopped you from continuing down that path, or what would you do differently if you could go back?
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Other theme-by-theme analyses from this book.
Follow the Lowick wedding, the Vincy drawing room, and the Finale's three harvests: admiration, charm, and patience produce different lives.
See the Key to All Mythologies, the Hospital scheme, and Brooke's election: purpose that outruns judgment.
Sit with Garth's cold tea, Dorothea's belief when the town has voted, and the unhistoric acts of the Finale.
Track the Green Dragon, the Hospital board, and the neighbours who decide who may still be seen.
Follow Fred's bill, Lydgate's thousand pounds, and Bulstrode's hundred: a ledger that names who you married.
Deep diving the literary elements.
Guides, life skills, and the full library.More ways to read Middlemarch: guides, life skills, and the wider library.
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