be
shut up in prison," said the bishop.

"And suppose he is not to be shut up. Suppose they have been weak,
or untrue to their duty--and from what we know of the magistrates of
Barsetshire, there is too much reason to suppose that they will have
been so; suppose they have let him out, is he to go about like a
roaring lion--among the souls of the people?"

The bishop shook in his shoes. When Mrs. Proudie began to talk of the
souls of the people he always shook in his shoes. She had an eloquent
way of raising her voice over the word souls that was qualified
to make any ordinary man shake in his shoes. The bishop was a
conscientious man, and well knew that poor Mr. Crawley, even though he
might have become a thief under terrible temptation, would not roar
at Hogglestock to the injury of any man's soul. He was aware that
this poor clergyman had done his duty laboriously and efficiently,
and he was also aware that though he might have been committed by the
magistrates, and then let out upon bail, he should not be regarded
now, in these days before his trial, as a convicted thief. But to
explain all this to Mrs. Proudie was beyond his power. He knew well
that she would not hear a word in mitigation of Mr. Crawley's presumed
offence. Mr. Crawley belonged to the other party, and Mrs. Proudie was
a thorough-going partisan. I know a man,--an excellent fellow, who,
being himself a strong politician, constantly expresses a belief
that all politicians opposed to him are thieves, child-murderers,
parricides, lovers of incest, demons upon earth. He is a strong
partisan, but not, I think, so strong as Mrs. Proudie. He says that he
believes all evil of his opponents; but she really believed the evil.
The archdeacon had called Mrs. Proudie a she-Beelzebub; but that was
a simple ebullition of mortal hatred. He believed her to be simply
a vulgar, interfering, brazen-faced virago. Mrs. Proudie in truth
believed that the archdeacon was an actual emanation from Satan, sent
to these parts to devour souls,--as she would call it,--and that she
herself was an emanation of another sort, sent from another source
expressly to Barchester, to prevent such devouring, as far as it
might possibly be prevented by a mortal agency. The bishop knew it
all,--understood it all. He regarded the archdeacon as a clergyman
belonging to a party opposed to his party, and he disliked the man.
He knew that from his first coming into the diocese he had been
encounte