The miserables who would pause on the remoter bridge were of a politer stamp.  They included bankrupts, hypochondriacs, persons who were what is called “out of a situation” from fault or lucklessness, the inefficient of the professional class—­shabby-genteel men, who did not know how to get rid of the weary time between breakfast and dinner, and the yet more weary time between dinner and dark.  The eye of this species were mostly directed over the parapet upon the running water below.  A man seen there looking thus fixedly into the river was pretty sure to be one whom the world did not treat kindly for some reason or other.  While one in straits on the townward bridge did not mind who saw him so, and kept his back to the parapet to survey the passers-by, one in straits on this never faced the road, never turned his head at coming footsteps, but, sensitive to his own condition, watched the current whenever a stranger approached, as if some strange fish interested him, though every finned thing had been poached out of the river years before.

There and thus they would muse; if their grief were the grief of oppression they would wish themselves kings; if their grief were poverty, wish themselves millionaires; if sin, they would wish they were saints or angels; if despised love, that they were some much-courted Adonis of county fame.  Some had been known to stand and think so long with this fixed gaze downward that eventually they had allowed their poor carcases to follow that gaze; and they were discovered the next morning out of reach of their troubles, either here or in the deep pool called Blackwater, a little higher up the river.

To this bridge came Henchard, as other unfortunates had come before him, his way thither being by the riverside path on the chilly edge of the town.  Here he was standing one windy afternoon when Durnover church clock struck five.  While the gusts were bringing the notes to his ears across the damp intervening flat a man passed behind him and greeted Henchard by name.  Henchard turned slightly and saw that the corner was Jopp, his old foreman, now employed elsewhere, to whom, though he hated him, he had gone for lodgings because Jopp was the one man in Casterbridge whose observation and opinion the fallen corn-merchant despised to the point of indifference.

Henchard returned him a scarcely perceptible nod, and Jopp stopped.

“He and she are gone into their new house to-day,” said Jopp.

“Oh,” said Henchard absently.  “Which house is that?”

“Your old one.”

“Gone into my house?” And starting up Henchard added, “My house of all others in the town!”

“Well, as somebody was sure to live there, and you couldn’t, it can do ’ee no harm that he’s the man.”

It was quite true:  he felt that it was doing him no harm.  Farfrae, who had already taken the yards and stores, had acquired possession of the house for the obvious convenience of its contiguity.  And yet this act of his taking up residence within those roomy chambers while he, their former tenant, lived in a cottage, galled Henchard indescribably.