; and they had the effect of
making the famous Mr Merdle, in going down the street, appear to leap,
and waltz, and gyrate, as if he were possessed of several Devils.

CHAPTER 25. The Chief Butler Resigns the Seals of Office

The dinner-party was at the great Physician's. Bar was there, and in
full force. Ferdinand Barnacle was there, and in his most engaging
state. Few ways of life were hidden from Physician, and he was oftener
in its darkest places than even Bishop. There were brilliant ladies
about London who perfectly doted on him, my dear, as the most charming
creature and the most delightful person, who would have been shocked to
find themselves so close to him if they could have known on what sights
those thoughtful eyes of his had rested within an hour or two, and near
to whose beds, and under what roofs, his composed figure had stood. But
Physician was a composed man, who performed neither on his own trumpet,
nor on the trumpets of other people. Many wonderful things did he see
and hear, and much irreconcilable moral contradiction did he pass his
life among; yet his equality of compassion was no more disturbed than
the Divine Master's of all healing was. He went, like the rain,
among the just and unjust, doing all the good he could, and neither
proclaiming it in the synagogues nor at the corner of streets.

As no man of large experience of humanity, however quietly carried
it may be, can fail to be invested with an interest peculiar to the
possession of such knowledge, Physician was an attractive man. Even the
daintier gentlemen and ladies who had no idea of his secret, and
who would have been startled out of more wits than they had, by the
monstrous impropriety of his proposing to them 'Come and see what I
see!' confessed his attraction. Where he was, something real was. And
half a grain of reality, like the smallest portion of some other scarce
natural productions, will flavour an enormous quantity of diluent.

It came to pass, therefore, that Physician's little dinners always
presented people in their least conventional lights. The guests said to
themselves, whether they were conscious of it or no, 'Here is a man who
really has an acquaintance with us as we are, who is admitted to some
of us every day with our wigs and paint off, who hears the wanderings of
our minds, and sees the undisguised expression of our faces, when both
are past our control; we may as well make an approach to reality with
hi