"I don't care for such aims," he said. "A _mere_ popular preacher I would not be, and as for preferment it doesn't depend much on me, but for the most part on purely accidental causes. All I care for at present is to be useful and happy. Obscurity is no trial to me; neither success nor failure can make me different from what I am." "Well then, at least, write a book or something to keep yourself in men's memory." "I don't feel inclined. There are too many books in the world, and I have nothing particular to say. Besides, the annoyance and spite to which an author subjects himself are endless--to hear ignorant and often malicious criticisms, to see his views misrepresented, his motives calumniated, and his name aspersed. No, for the present, I prefer the peace and the dignity of silence." "What on earth will you find to do, then, if you have no ambition?" "Nay, I don't want you to think that I'm so virtuous or so phlegmatic as to have no ambition. I _have_ a passionate ambition, whether known or unknown, so to live as to lead on the coming golden age, and prepare the next generation to be truer and wiser than ours. If it be my destiny never to be called to a wider sphere of work than Elstan, I shall be content to do it there." "And how will you occupy your time?" asked Mr Admer, who had long loved Julian too well even to smile at what were to himself mere unintelligible enthusiasms. "Oh, no fear on that score. My profession will give me plenty of work; besides, what is the use of education, if it be not to render it _impossible_ for a man to know the meaning of the word ennui? Put me alone in the waiting-room of some little wayside station to wait three hours for a train, and I should still be perfectly happy, even if there were no such thing as a book to be got for miles." "Well, well, if you must vanish to Elstan, do. At any rate, remember your old Camford friends, and let us hear of you sometimes? I suppose you'll keep on your Fellowship at least for a year?" "Insidious questioner!" said Julian; "no, I hope to be married very soon. You shall come down and see love in a cottage." "Aha, I see it all now," said Mr Admer, with a sigh. "Nay, you mustn't sigh. I expect to be congratulated, not pitied," said Julian, gaily. "A wife will sweeten all the cares and sorrows of life, and instead of withering away my prime in selfish isolation, and spending these still half-youthful years in loneliness, and without a real home, I shall feel myself complete in the materials of happiness. After all, ambition such as yours is a loveless bride." So Julian accepted Elstan, and Lillyston went with him to London to help him in selecting furniture for the vicarage which was so soon to receive a bride. "Are you really going to venture on matrimony with only 200 pounds a year?" asked Lillyston.