Mr. Brooke, amid the roars of laughter, turned red, let his eye-glass fall, and looking about him confusedly, saw the image of himself, which had come nearer.  The next moment he saw it dolorously bespattered with eggs.  His spirit rose a little, and his voice too.

“Buffoonery, tricks, ridicule the test of truth—­all that is very well”—­here an unpleasant egg broke on Mr. Brooke’s shoulder, as the echo said, “All that is very well;” then came a hail of eggs, chiefly aimed at the image, but occasionally hitting the original, as if by chance.  There was a stream of new men pushing among the crowd; whistles, yells, bellowings, and fifes made all the greater hubbub because there was shouting and struggling to put them down.  No voice would have had wing enough to rise above the uproar, and Mr. Brooke, disagreeably anointed, stood his ground no longer.  The frustration would have been less exasperating if it had been less gamesome and boyish:  a serious assault of which the newspaper reporter “can aver that it endangered the learned gentleman’s ribs,” or can respectfully bear witness to “the soles of that gentleman’s boots having been visible above the railing,” has perhaps more consolations attached to it.

Mr. Brooke re-entered the committee-room, saying, as carelessly as he could, “This is a little too bad, you know.  I should have got the ear of the people by-and-by—­but they didn’t give me time.  I should have gone into the Bill by-and-by, you know,” he added, glancing at Ladislaw.  “However, things will come all right at the nomination.”

But it was not resolved unanimously that things would come right; on the contrary, the committee looked rather grim, and the political personage from Brassing was writing busily, as if he were brewing new devices.

“It was Bowyer who did it,” said Mr. Standish, evasively.  “I know it as well as if he had been advertised.  He’s uncommonly good at ventriloquism, and he did it uncommonly well, by God!  Hawley has been having him to dinner lately:  there’s a fund of talent in Bowyer.”

“Well, you know, you never mentioned him to me, Standish, else I would have invited him to dine,” said poor Mr. Brooke, who had gone through a great deal of inviting for the good of his country.

“There’s not a more paltry fellow in Middlemarch than Bowyer,” said Ladislaw, indignantly, “but it seems as if the paltry fellows were always to turn the scale.”

Will was thoroughly out of temper with himself as well as with his “principal,” and he went to shut himself in his rooms with a half-formed resolve to throw up the “Pioneer” and Mr. Brooke together.  Why should he stay?  If the impassable gulf between himself and Dorothea were ever to be filled up, it must rather be by his going away and getting into a thoroughly different position than by staying here and slipping into deserved contempt as an understrapper of Brooke’s.  Then came the young dream of wonders that he might do—­