Not that this inward amazement of Dorothea's was anything very

exceptional: many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out among

incongruities and left to "find their feet" among them, while their

elders go about their business. Nor can I suppose that when Mrs.

Casaubon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks after her wedding,

the situation will be regarded as tragic. Some discouragement, some

faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary,

is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what

is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of

frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of

mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we

had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be

like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we

should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it

is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.

However, Dorothea was crying, and if she had been required to state the

cause, she could only have done so in some such general words as I have

already used: to have been driven to be more particular would have been

like trying to give a history of the lights and shadows, for that new

real future which was replacing the imaginary drew its material from

the endless minutiae by which her view of Mr. Casaubon and her wifely

relation, now that she was married to him, was gradually changing with

the secret motion of a watch-hand from what it had been in her maiden

dream. It was too early yet for her fully to recognize or at least

admit the change, still more for her to have readjusted that

devotedness which was so necessary a part of her mental life that she

was almost sure sooner or later to recover it. Permanent rebellion,

the disorder of a life without some loving reverent resolve, was not

possible to her; but she was now in an interval when the very force of

her nature heightened its confusion. In this way, the early months of

marriage often are times of critical tumult--whether that of a

shrimp-pool or of deeper waters--which afterwards subsides into

cheerful peace.

But was not Mr. Casaubon just as learned as before? Had his forms of

expression changed, or his sentiments become less laudable? Oh

waywardness of womanhood! did his chronology fail him, or his ability

to state not only a theory but the names of those who held it; or his

provision for giving the heads of any subject on demand? And was not

Rome the place in all the world to give free play to such

accomplishments? Besides, had not Dorothea's enthusiasm especially

dwelt on the prospect of relieving the weight and perhaps the sadness

with which great tasks lie on him who has to achieve them?-- And that

such weight pressed on Mr. Casaubon was only plainer than before.




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