prompt:
Chapter: "A child forsaken, waking suddenly,
     Whose gaze afeard on all things round doth rove,
     And seeth only that it cannot see
     The meeting eyes of love."

Two hours later, Dorothea was seated in an inner room or boudoir of a
handsome apartment in the Via Sistina.

I am sorry to add that she was sobbing bitterly, with such abandonment
to this relief of an oppressed heart as a woman habitually controlled
by pride on her own account and thoughtfulness for others will
sometimes allow herself when she feels securely alone.  And Mr.
Casaubon was certain to remain away for some time at the Vatican.

Yet Dorothea had no distinctly shapen grievance that she could state
even to herself; and in the midst of her confused thought and passion,
the mental act that was struggling forth into clearness was a
self-accusing cry that her feeling of desolation was the fault of her
own spiritual poverty.  She had married the man of her choice, and with
the advantage over most girls that she had contemplated her marriage
chiefly as the beginning of new duties: from the very first she had
thought of Mr. Casaubon as having a mind so much above her own, that he
must often be claimed by studies which she could not entirely share;
moreover, after the brief narrow experience of her girlhood she was
beholding Rome, the city of visible history, where the past of a whole
hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral
images and trophies gathered from afar.

But this stupendous fragmentariness heightened the dreamlike
strangeness of her bridal life.  Dorothea had now been five weeks in
Rome, and in the kindly mornings when autumn and winter seemed to go
hand in hand like a happy aged couple one of whom would presently
survive in chiller loneliness, she had driven about at first with Mr.
Casaubon, but of late chiefly with Tantripp and their experienced
courier.  She had been led through the best galleries, had been taken
to the chief points of view, had been shown the grandest ruins and the
most glorious churches, and she had ended by oftenest choosing to drive
out to the Campagna where she could feel alone with the earth and sky,
away-from the oppressive masquerade of ages, in which her own life too
seemed to become a masque with enigmatical costumes.

To those who have looked at Rome with the quickening power of a
knowledge which breathes a growing soul into all historic shapes, and
traces out the suppressed transitions which unite all contrasts, Rome
may still be the spiritual centre and interpreter of the world.  But
let them conceive one more historical contrast: the gigantic broken
revelations of that Imperial and Papal city thrust abruptly on the
notions of a girl who had been brought up in English and Swiss
Puritanism, fed on meagre Protestant histories and on art chiefly of
the hand-screen sort; a girl whose ardent nature turned all her small
allowance of knowledge into principles, fusing her actions into their
mould, and whose quick emotions gave the most abstract things the
quality of a pleasure or a pain; a girl who had lately become a wife,
and from the enthusiastic acceptance of untried duty found herself
plunged in tumultuous preoccupation with her personal lot.  The weight
of unintelligible Rome might lie easily on bright nymphs to whom it
formed a background for the brilliant picnic of Anglo-foreign society;
but Dorothea had no such defence against deep impressions.  Ruins and
basilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present,
where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep
degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer but
yet eager Titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings; the
long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold the
monotonous light of an alien world: all this vast wreck of ambitious
ideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed confusedly with the signs of
breathing forgetfulness and degradation, at first jarred her as with an
electric shock, and then urged themselves on her with that ache
belonging to a glut of confused ideas which check the flow of emotion.
Forms both pale and glowing took possession of her young sense, and
fixed themselves in her memory even when she was not thinking of them,
preparing strange associations which remained through her after-years.
Our moods are apt to bring with them images which succeed each other
like the magic-lantern pictures of a doze; and in certain states of
dull forlornness Dorothea all her life continued to see the vastness of
St. Peter's, the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the
attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics
above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading
itself everywhere like a disease of the retina.

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 course 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.

All these are crushing questions; but whatever else remained the same,
the light had changed, and you cannot find the pearly dawn at noonday.
The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose nature you are
acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few
imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity of
married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse than
what you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogether
the same.  And it would be astonishing to find how soon the change is
felt if we had no kindred changes to compare with it.  To share
lodgings with a brilliant dinner-companion, or to see your favorite
politician in the Ministry, may bring about changes quite as rapid: in
these cases too we begin by knowing little and believing much, and we
sometimes end by inverting the quantities.

Still, such comparisons might mislead, for no man was more incapable of
flashy make-believe than Mr. Casaubon: he was as genuine a character as
any ruminant animal, and he had not actively assisted in creating any
illusions about himself.  How was it that in the weeks since her
marriage, Dorothea had not distinctly observed but felt with a stifling
depression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air which she had
dreamed of finding in her husband's mind were replaced by anterooms and
winding passages which seemed to lead nowhither?  I suppose it was that
in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and
the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee
delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal.  But
the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on
the present.  Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is
impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not
within sight--that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.

In their conversation before marriage, Mr. Casaubon had often dwelt on
some explanation or questionable detail of which Dorothea did not see
the bearing; but such imperfect coherence seemed due to the brokenness
of their intercourse, and, supported by her faith in their future, she
had listened with fervid patience to a recitation of possible arguments
to be brought against Mr. Casaubon's entirely new view of the
Philistine god Dagon and other fish-deities, thinking that hereafter
she should see this subject which touched him so nearly from the same
high ground whence doubtless it had become so important to him.  Again,
the matter-of-course statement and tone of dismissal with which he
treated what to her were the most stirring thoughts, was easily
accounted for as belonging to the sense of haste and preoccupation in
which she herself shared during their engagement.  But now, since they
had been in Rome, with all the depths of her emotion roused to
tumultuous activity, and with life made a new problem by new elements,
she had been becoming more and more aware, with a certain terror, that
her mind was continually sliding into inward fits of anger and
repulsion, or else into forlorn weariness.  How far the judicious
Hooker or any other hero of erudition would have been the same at Mr.
Casaubon's time of life, she had no means of knowing, so that he could
not have the advantage of comparison; but her husband's way of
commenting on the strangely impressive objects around them had begun to
affect her with a sort of mental shiver: he had perhaps the best
intention of acquitting himself worthily, but only of acquitting
himself.  What was fresh to her mind was worn out to his; and such
capacity of thought and feeling as had ever been stimulated in him by
the general life of mankind had long shrunk to a sort of dried
preparation, a lifeless embalmment of knowledge.

When he said, "Does this interest you, Dorothea?  Shall we stay a
little longer?  I am ready to stay if you wish it,"--it seemed to her
as if going or staying were alike dreary.  Or, "Should you like to go
to the Farnesina, Dorothea?  It contains celebrated frescos designed or
painted by Raphael, which most persons think it worth while to visit."

"But do you care about them?" was always Dorothea's question.

"They are, I believe, highly esteemed.  Some of them represent the
fable of Cupid and Psyche, which is probably the romantic invention of
a literary period, and cannot, I think, be reckoned as a genuine
mythical product.  But if you like these wall-paintings we can easily
drive thither; and you will then, I think, have seen the chief works of
Raphael, any of which it were a pity to omit in a visit to Rome.  He is
the painter who has been held to combine the most complete grace of
form with sublimity of expression.  Such at least I have gathered to be
the opinion of cognoscenti."

This kind of answer given in a measured official tone, as of a
clergyman reading according to the rubric, did not help to justify the
glories of the Eternal City, or to give her the hope that if she knew
more about them the world would be joyously illuminated for her.  There
is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than
that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in
a blank absence of interest or sympathy.

On other subjects indeed Mr. Casaubon showed a tenacity of occupation
and an eagerness which are usually regarded as the effect of
enthusiasm, and Dorothea was anxious to follow this spontaneous
direction of his thoughts, instead of being made to feel that she
dragged him away from it.  But she was gradually ceasing to expect with
her former delightful confidence that she should see any wide opening
where she followed him.  Poor Mr. Casaubon himself was lost among small
closets and winding stairs, and in an agitated dimness about the
Cabeiri, or in an exposure of other mythologists' ill-considered
parallels, easily lost sight of any purpose which had prompted him to
these labors.  With his taper stuck before him he forgot the absence of
windows, and in bitter manuscript remarks on other men's notions about
the solar deities, he had become indifferent to the sunlight.

These characteristics, fixed and unchangeable as bone in Mr. Casaubon,
might have remained longer unfelt by Dorothea if she had been
encouraged to pour forth her girlish and womanly feeling--if he would
have held her hands between his and listened with the delight of
tenderness and understanding to all the little histories which made up
her experience, and would have given her the same sort of intimacy in
return, so that the past life of each could be included in their mutual
knowledge and affection--or if she could have fed her affection with
those childlike caresses which are the bent of every sweet woman, who
has begun by showering kisses on the hard pate of her bald doll,
creating a happy soul within that woodenness from the wealth of her own
love.  That was Dorothea's bent.  With all her yearning to know what
was afar from her and to be widely benignant, she had ardor enough for
what was near, to have kissed Mr. Casaubon's coat-sleeve, or to have
caressed his shoe-latchet, if he would have made any other sign of
acceptance than pronouncing her, with his unfailing propriety, to be of
a most affectionate and truly feminine nature, indicating at the same
time by politely reaching a chair for her that he regarded these
manifestations as rather crude and startling.  Having made his clerical
toilet with due care in the morning, he was prepared only for those
amenities of life which were suited to the well-adjusted stiff cravat
of the period, and to a mind weighted with unpublished matter.

And by a sad contradiction Dorothea's ideas and resolves seemed like
melting ice floating and lost in the warm flood of which they had been
but another form.  She was humiliated to find herself a mere victim of
feeling, as if she could know nothing except through that medium: all
her strength was scattered in fits of agitation, of struggle, of
despondency, and then again in visions of more complete renunciation,
transforming all hard conditions into duty.  Poor Dorothea! she was
certainly troublesome--to herself chiefly; but this morning for the
first time she had been troublesome to Mr. Casaubon.

She had begun, while they were taking coffee, with a determination to
shake off what she inwardly called her selfishness, and turned a face
all cheerful attention to her husband when he said, "My dear Dorothea,
we must now think of all that is yet left undone, as a preliminary to
our departure.  I would fain have returned home earlier that we might
have been at Lowick for the Christmas; but my inquiries here have been
protracted beyond their anticipated period.  I trust, however, that the
time here has not been passed unpleasantly to you.  Among the sights of
Europe, that of Rome has ever been held one of the most striking and in
some respects edifying.  I well remember that I considered it an epoch
in my life when I visited it for the first time; after the fall of
Napoleon, an event which opened the Continent to travellers.  Indeed I
think it is one among several cities to which an extreme hyperbole has
been applied--'See Rome and die:' but in your case I would propose an
emendation and say, See Rome as a bride, and live henceforth as a happy
wife."

Mr. Casaubon pronounced this little speech with the most conscientious
intention, blinking a little and swaying his head up and down, and
concluding with a smile.  He had not found marriage a rapturous state,
but he had no idea of being anything else than an irreproachable
husband, who would make a charming young woman as happy as she deserved
to be.

"I hope you are thoroughly satisfied with our stay--I mean, with the
result so far as your studies are concerned," said Dorothea, trying to
keep her mind fixed on what most affected her husband.

"Yes," said Mr. Casaubon, with that peculiar pitch of voice which makes
the word half a negative.  "I have been led farther than I had
foreseen, and various subjects for annotation have presented themselves
which, though I have no direct need of them, I could not pretermit.
The task, notwithstanding the assistance of my amanuensis, has been a
somewhat laborious one, but your society has happily prevented me from
that too continuous prosecution of thought beyond the hours of study
which has been the snare of my solitary life."

"I am very glad that my presence has made any difference to you," said
Dorothea, who had a vivid memory of evenings in which she had supposed
that Mr. Casaubon's mind had gone too deep during the day to be able to
get to the surface again.  I fear there was a little temper in her
reply.  "I hope when we get to Lowick, I shall be more useful to you,
and be able to enter a little more into what interests you."

"Doubtless, my dear," said Mr. Casaubon, with a slight bow.  "The notes
I have here made will want sifting, and you can, if you please, extract
them under my direction."

"And all your notes," said Dorothea, whose heart had already burned
within her on this subject, so that now she could not help speaking
with her tongue.  "All those rows of volumes--will you not now do what
you used to speak of?--will you not make up your mind what part of them
you will use, and begin to write the book which will make your vast
knowledge useful to the world?  I will write to your dictation, or I
will copy and extract what you tell me: I can be of no other use."
Dorothea, in a most unaccountable, darkly feminine manner, ended with a
slight sob and eyes full of tears.

The excessive feeling manifested would alone have been highly
disturbing to Mr. Casaubon, but there were other reasons why Dorothea's
words were among the most cutting and irritating to him that she could
have been impelled to use.  She was as blind to his inward troubles as
he to hers: she had not yet learned those hidden conflicts in her
husband which claim our pity.  She had not yet listened patiently to
his heartbeats, but only felt that her own was beating violently.  In
Mr. Casaubon's ear, Dorothea's voice gave loud emphatic iteration to
those muffled suggestions of consciousness which it was possible to
explain as mere fancy, the illusion of exaggerated sensitiveness:
always when such suggestions are unmistakably repeated from without,
they are resisted as cruel and unjust.  We are angered even by the full
acceptance of our humiliating confessions--how much more by hearing in
hard distinct syllables from the lips of a near observer, those
confused murmurs which we try to call morbid, and strive against as if
they were the oncoming of numbness!  And this cruel outward accuser was
there in the shape of a wife--nay, of a young bride, who, instead of
observing his abundant pen-scratches and amplitude of paper with the
uncritical awe of an elegant-minded canary-bird, seemed to present
herself as a spy watching everything with a malign power of inference.
Here, towards this particular point of the compass, Mr. Casaubon had a
sensitiveness to match Dorothea's, and an equal quickness to imagine
more than the fact.  He had formerly observed with approbation her
capacity for worshipping the right object; he now foresaw with sudden
terror that this capacity might be replaced by presumption, this
worship by the most exasperating of all criticism,--that which sees
vaguely a great many fine ends, and has not the least notion what it
costs to reach them.

For the first time since Dorothea had known him, Mr. Casaubon's face
had a quick angry flush upon it.

"My love," he said, with irritation reined in by propriety, "you may
rely upon me for knowing the times and the seasons, adapted to the
different stages of a work which is not to be measured by the facile
conjectures of ignorant onlookers.  It had been easy for me to gain a
temporary effect by a mirage of baseless opinion; but it is ever the
trial of the scrupulous explorer to be saluted with the impatient scorn
of chatterers who attempt only the smallest achievements, being indeed
equipped for no other.  And it were well if all such could be
admonished to discriminate judgments of which the true subject-matter
lies entirely beyond their reach, from those of which the elements may
be compassed by a narrow and superficial survey."

This speech was delivered with an energy and readiness quite unusual
with Mr. Casaubon.  It was not indeed entirely an improvisation, but
had taken shape in inward colloquy, and rushed out like the round
grains from a fruit when sudden heat cracks it.  Dorothea was not only
his wife: she was a personification of that shallow world which
surrounds the appreciated or desponding author.

Dorothea was indignant in her turn.  Had she not been repressing
everything in herself except the desire to enter into some fellowship
with her husband's chief interests?

"My judgment _was_ a very superficial one--such as I am capable of
forming," she answered, with a prompt resentment, that needed no
rehearsal.  "You showed me the rows of notebooks--you have often spoken
of them--you have often said that they wanted digesting.  But I never
heard you speak of the writing that is to be published.  Those were
very simple facts, and my judgment went no farther.  I only begged you
to let me be of some good to you."

Dorothea rose to leave the table and Mr. Casaubon made no reply, taking
up a letter which lay beside him as if to reperuse it.  Both were
shocked at their mutual situation--that each should have betrayed anger
towards the other.  If they had been at home, settled at Lowick in
ordinary life among their neighbors, the clash would have been less
embarrassing: but on a wedding journey, the express object of which is
to isolate two people on the ground that they are all the world to each
other, the sense of disagreement is, to say the least, confounding and
stultifying.  To have changed your longitude extensively and placed
yourselves in a moral solitude in order to have small explosions, to
find conversation difficult and to hand a glass of water without
looking, can hardly be regarded as satisfactory fulfilment even to the
toughest minds.  To Dorothea's inexperienced sensitiveness, it seemed
like a catastrophe, changing all prospects; and to Mr. Casaubon it was
a new pain, he never having been on a wedding journey before, or found
himself in that close union which was more of a subjection than he had
been able to imagine, since this charming young bride not only obliged
him to much consideration on her behalf (which he had sedulously
given), but turned out to be capable of agitating him cruelly just
where he most needed soothing.  Instead of getting a soft fence against
the cold, shadowy, unapplausive audience of his life, had he only given
it a more substantial presence?

Neither of them felt it possible to speak again at present.  To have
reversed a previous arrangement and declined to go out would have been
a show of persistent anger which Dorothea's conscience shrank from,
seeing that she already began to feel herself guilty.  However just her
indignation might be, her ideal was not to claim justice, but to give
tenderness.  So when the carriage came to the door, she drove with Mr.
Casaubon to the Vatican, walked with him through the stony avenue of
inscriptions, and when she parted with him at the entrance to the
Library, went on through the Museum out of mere listlessness as to what
was around her.  She had not spirit to turn round and say that she
would drive anywhere.  It was when Mr. Casaubon was quitting her that
Naumann had first seen her, and he had entered the long gallery of
sculpture at the same time with her; but here Naumann had to await
Ladislaw with whom he was to settle a bet of champagne about an
enigmatical mediaeval-looking figure there.  After they had examined
the figure, and had walked on finishing their dispute, they had parted,
Ladislaw lingering behind while Naumann had gone into the Hall of
Statues where he again saw Dorothea, and saw her in that brooding
abstraction which made her pose remarkable.  She did not really see the
streak of sunlight on the floor more than she saw the statues: she was
inwardly seeing the light of years to come in her own home and over the
English fields and elms and hedge-bordered highroads; and feeling that
the way in which they might be filled with joyful devotedness was not
so clear to her as it had been.  But in Dorothea's mind there was a
current into which all thought and feeling were apt sooner or later to
flow--the reaching forward of the whole consciousness towards the
fullest truth, the least partial good.  There was clearly something
better than anger and despondency.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Dorothea is in shock by the combination of lately having become a wife, being in a place so foreign to her as Rome, and being completely alone, with the absence of her husband due to his study. Dorothea appeals to her husband to let her help, so that he may get his work finished and published; in her desperation for some emotional response, she sobs, which immediately makes Casaubon even more remote. Casaubon wants her support and affection, which she is giving him, but not in the way he wishes. They have a fundamental communication block, which upsets both of them, especially since it is their honeymoon. Casaubon continues his studies, and nothing is resolved.


prompt:
Chapter: "Hire facounde eke full womanly and plain,
     No contrefeted termes had she
     To semen wise."
                        --CHAUCER.

It was in that way Dorothea came to be sobbing as soon as she was
securely alone.  But she was presently roused by a knock at the door,
which made her hastily dry her eyes before saying, "Come in." Tantripp
had brought a card, and said that there was a gentleman waiting in the
lobby.  The courier had told him that only Mrs. Casaubon was at home,
but he said he was a relation of Mr. Casaubon's: would she see him?

"Yes," said Dorothea, without pause; "show him into the salon." Her
chief impressions about young Ladislaw were that when she had seen him
at Lowick she had been made aware of Mr. Casaubon's generosity towards
him, and also that she had been interested in his own hesitation about
his career.  She was alive to anything that gave her an opportunity for
active sympathy, and at this moment it seemed as if the visit had come
to shake her out of her self-absorbed discontent--to remind her of her
husband's goodness, and make her feel that she had now the right to be
his helpmate in all kind deeds.  She waited a minute or two, but when
she passed into the next room there were just signs enough that she had
been crying to make her open face look more youthful and appealing than
usual.  She met Ladislaw with that exquisite smile of good-will which
is unmixed with vanity, and held out her hand to him.  He was the elder
by several years, but at that moment he looked much the younger, for
his transparent complexion flushed suddenly, and he spoke with a
shyness extremely unlike the ready indifference of his manner with his
male companion, while Dorothea became all the calmer with a wondering
desire to put him at ease.

"I was not aware that you and Mr. Casaubon were in Rome, until this
morning, when I saw you in the Vatican Museum," he said.  "I knew you
at once--but--I mean, that I concluded Mr. Casaubon's address would be
found at the Poste Restante, and I was anxious to pay my respects to
him and you as early as possible."

"Pray sit down.  He is not here now, but he will be glad to hear of
you, I am sure," said Dorothea, seating herself unthinkingly between
the fire and the light of the tall window, and pointing to a chair
opposite, with the quietude of a benignant matron.  The signs of
girlish sorrow in her face were only the more striking.  "Mr. Casaubon
is much engaged; but you will leave your address--will you not?--and
he will write to you."

"You are very good," said Ladislaw, beginning to lose his diffidence in
the interest with which he was observing the signs of weeping which had
altered her face.  "My address is on my card.  But if you will allow me
I will call again to-morrow at an hour when Mr. Casaubon is likely to
be at home."

"He goes to read in the Library of the Vatican every day, and you can
hardly see him except by an appointment.  Especially now.  We are about
to leave Rome, and he is very busy.  He is usually away almost from
breakfast till dinner.  But I am sure he will wish you to dine with us."

Will Ladislaw was struck mute for a few moments.  He had never been
fond of Mr. Casaubon, and if it had not been for the sense of
obligation, would have laughed at him as a Bat of erudition.  But the
idea of this dried-up pedant, this elaborator of small explanations
about as important as the surplus stock of false antiquities kept in a
vendor's back chamber, having first got this adorable young creature to
marry him, and then passing his honeymoon away from her, groping after
his mouldy futilities (Will was given to hyperbole)--this sudden
picture stirred him with a sort of comic disgust: he was divided
between the impulse to laugh aloud and the equally unseasonable impulse
to burst into scornful invective.

For an instant he felt that the struggle, was causing a queer
contortion of his mobile features, but with a good effort he resolved
it into nothing more offensive than a merry smile.

Dorothea wondered; but the smile was irresistible, and shone back from
her face too.  Will Ladislaw's smile was delightful, unless you were
angry with him beforehand: it was a gush of inward light illuminating
the transparent skin as well as the eyes, and playing about every curve
and line as if some Ariel were touching them with a new charm, and
banishing forever the traces of moodiness.  The reflection of that
smile could not but have a little merriment in it too, even under dark
eyelashes still moist, as Dorothea said inquiringly, "Something amuses
you?"

"Yes," said Will, quick in finding resources.  "I am thinking of the
sort of figure I cut the first time I saw you, when you annihilated my
poor sketch with your criticism."

"My criticism?" said Dorothea, wondering still more.  "Surely not.  I
always feel particularly ignorant about painting."

"I suspected you of knowing so much, that you knew how to say just what
was most cutting.  You said--I dare say you don't remember it as I
do--that the relation of my sketch to nature was quite hidden from you.
At least, you implied that."  Will could laugh now as well as smile.

"That was really my ignorance," said Dorothea, admiring
Will's good-humor. "I must have said so only because I never could see
any beauty in the pictures which my uncle told me all judges thought
very fine.  And I have gone about with just the same ignorance in Rome.
There are comparatively few paintings that I can really enjoy.  At
first when I enter a room where the walls are covered with frescos, or
with rare pictures, I feel a kind of awe--like a child present at great
ceremonies where there are grand robes and processions; I feel myself
in the presence of some higher life than my own.  But when I begin to
examine the pictures one by one the life goes out of them, or else is
something violent and strange to me.  It must be my own dulness.  I am
seeing so much all at once, and not understanding half of it.  That
always makes one feel stupid.  It is painful to be told that anything
is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine--something like
being blind, while people talk of the sky."

"Oh, there is a great deal in the feeling for art which must be
acquired," said Will.  (It was impossible now to doubt the directness
of Dorothea's confession.) "Art is an old language with a great many
artificial affected styles, and sometimes the chief pleasure one gets
out of knowing them is the mere sense of knowing.  I enjoy the art of
all sorts here immensely; but I suppose if I could pick my enjoyment to
pieces I should find it made up of many different threads.  There is
something in daubing a little one's self, and having an idea of the
process."

"You mean perhaps to be a painter?" said Dorothea, with a new direction
of interest.  "You mean to make painting your profession?  Mr. Casaubon
will like to hear that you have chosen a profession."

"No, oh no," said Will, with some coldness.  "I have quite made up my
mind against it.  It is too one-sided a life.  I have been seeing a
great deal of the German artists here: I travelled from Frankfort with
one of them.  Some are fine, even brilliant fellows--but I should not
like to get into their way of looking at the world entirely from the
studio point of view."

"That I can understand," said Dorothea, cordially.  "And in Rome it
seems as if there were so many things which are more wanted in the
world than pictures.  But if you have a genius for painting, would it
not be right to take that as a guide?  Perhaps you might do better
things than these--or different, so that there might not be so many
pictures almost all alike in the same place."

There was no mistaking this simplicity, and Will was won by it into
frankness.  "A man must have a very rare genius to make changes of that
sort.  I am afraid mine would not carry me even to the pitch of doing
well what has been done already, at least not so well as to make it
worth while.  And I should never succeed in anything by dint of
drudgery.  If things don't come easily to me I never get them."

"I have heard Mr. Casaubon say that he regrets your want of patience,"
said Dorothea, gently.  She was rather shocked at this mode of taking
all life as a holiday.

"Yes, I know Mr. Casaubon's opinion.  He and I differ."

The slight streak of contempt in this hasty reply offended Dorothea.
She was all the more susceptible about Mr. Casaubon because of her
morning's trouble.

"Certainly you differ," she said, rather proudly.  "I did not think of
comparing you: such power of persevering devoted labor as Mr.
Casaubon's is not common."

Will saw that she was offended, but this only gave an additional
impulse to the new irritation of his latent dislike towards Mr.
Casaubon.  It was too intolerable that Dorothea should be worshipping
this husband: such weakness in a woman is pleasant to no man but the
husband in question.  Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out
of their neighbor's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no
murder.

"No, indeed," he answered, promptly.  "And therefore it is a pity that
it should be thrown away, as so much English scholarship is, for want
of knowing what is being done by the rest of the world.  If Mr.
Casaubon read German he would save himself a great deal of trouble."

"I do not understand you," said Dorothea, startled and anxious.

"I merely mean," said Will, in an offhand way, "that the Germans have
taken the lead in historical inquiries, and they laugh at results which
are got by groping about in woods with a pocket-compass while they have
made good roads.  When I was with Mr. Casaubon I saw that he deafened
himself in that direction: it was almost against his will that he read
a Latin treatise written by a German.  I was very sorry."

Will only thought of giving a good pinch that would annihilate that
vaunted laboriousness, and was unable to imagine the mode in which
Dorothea would be wounded.  Young Mr. Ladislaw was not at all deep
himself in German writers; but very little achievement is required in
order to pity another man's shortcomings.

Poor Dorothea felt a pang at the thought that the labor of her
husband's life might be void, which left her no energy to spare for the
question whether this young relative who was so much obliged to him
ought not to have repressed his observation.  She did not even speak,
but sat looking at her hands, absorbed in the piteousness of that
thought.

Will, however, having given that annihilating pinch, was rather
ashamed, imagining from Dorothea's silence that he had offended her
still more; and having also a conscience about plucking the
tail-feathers from a benefactor.

"I regretted it especially," he resumed, taking the usual course from
detraction to insincere eulogy, "because of my gratitude and respect
towards my cousin.  It would not signify so much in a man whose talents
and character were less distinguished."

Dorothea raised her eyes, brighter than usual with excited feeling, and
said in her saddest recitative, "How I wish I had learned German when I
was at Lausanne!  There were plenty of German teachers.  But now I can
be of no use."

There was a new light, but still a mysterious light, for Will in
Dorothea's last words.  The question how she had come to accept Mr.
Casaubon--which he had dismissed when he first saw her by saying that
she must be disagreeable in spite of appearances--was not now to be
answered on any such short and easy method.  Whatever else she might
be, she was not disagreeable.  She was not coldly clever and indirectly
satirical, but adorably simple and full of feeling.  She was an angel
beguiled.  It would be a unique delight to wait and watch for the
melodious fragments in which her heart and soul came forth so directly
and ingenuously.  The Aeolian harp again came into his mind.

She must have made some original romance for herself in this marriage.
And if Mr. Casaubon had been a dragon who had carried her off to his
lair with his talons simply and without legal forms, it would have been
an unavoidable feat of heroism to release her and fall at her feet.
But he was something more unmanageable than a dragon: he was a
benefactor with collective society at his back, and he was at that
moment entering the room in all the unimpeachable correctness of his
demeanor, while Dorothea was looking animated with a newly roused alarm
and regret, and Will was looking animated with his admiring speculation
about her feelings.

Mr. Casaubon felt a surprise which was quite unmixed with pleasure, but
he did not swerve from his usual politeness of greeting, when Will rose
and explained his presence.  Mr. Casaubon was less happy than usual,
and this perhaps made him look all the dimmer and more faded; else, the
effect might easily have been produced by the contrast of his young
cousin's appearance.  The first impression on seeing Will was one of
sunny brightness, which added to the uncertainty of his changing
expression.  Surely, his very features changed their form, his jaw
looked sometimes large and sometimes small; and the little ripple in
his nose was a preparation for metamorphosis.  When he turned his head
quickly his hair seemed to shake out light, and some persons thought
they saw decided genius in this coruscation.  Mr. Casaubon, on the
contrary, stood rayless.

As Dorothea's eyes were turned anxiously on her husband she was perhaps
not insensible to the contrast, but it was only mingled with other
causes in making her more conscious of that new alarm on his behalf
which was the first stirring of a pitying tenderness fed by the
realities of his lot and not by her own dreams.  Yet it was a source of
greater freedom to her that Will was there; his young equality was
agreeable, and also perhaps his openness to conviction.  She felt an
immense need of some one to speak to, and she had never before seen any
one who seemed so quick and pliable, so likely to understand everything.

Mr. Casaubon gravely hoped that Will was passing his time profitably as
well as pleasantly in Rome--had thought his intention was to remain in
South Germany--but begged him to come and dine to-morrow, when he could
converse more at large: at present he was somewhat weary.  Ladislaw
understood, and accepting the invitation immediately took his leave.

Dorothea's eyes followed her husband anxiously, while he sank down
wearily at the end of a sofa, and resting his elbow supported his head
and looked on the floor.  A little flushed, and with bright eyes, she
seated herself beside him, and said--

"Forgive me for speaking so hastily to you this morning.  I was wrong.
I fear I hurt you and made the day more burdensome."

"I am glad that you feel that, my dear," said Mr. Casaubon.  He spoke
quietly and bowed his head a little, but there was still an uneasy
feeling in his eyes as he looked at her.

"But you do forgive me?" said Dorothea, with a quick sob.  In her need
for some manifestation of feeling she was ready to exaggerate her own
fault.  Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on
its neck and kiss it?

"My dear Dorothea--'who with repentance is not satisfied, is not of
heaven nor earth:'--you do not think me worthy to be banished by that
severe sentence," said Mr. Casaubon, exerting himself to make a strong
statement, and also to smile faintly.

Dorothea was silent, but a tear which had come up with the sob would
insist on falling.

"You are excited, my dear. And I also am feeling some unpleasant
consequences of too much mental disturbance," said Mr. Casaubon.  In
fact, he had it in his thought to tell her that she ought not to have
received young Ladislaw in his absence: but he abstained, partly from
the sense that it would be ungracious to bring a new complaint in the
moment of her penitent acknowledgment, partly because he wanted to
avoid further agitation of himself by speech, and partly because he was
too proud to betray that jealousy of disposition which was not so
exhausted on his scholarly compeers that there was none to spare in
other directions.  There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little
fire: it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp
despondency of uneasy egoism.

"I think it is time for us to dress," he added, looking at his watch.
They both rose, and there was never any further allusion between them
to what had passed on this day.

But Dorothea remembered it to the last with the vividness with which we
all remember epochs in our experience when some dear expectation dies,
or some new motive is born.  Today she had begun to see that she had
been under a wild illusion in expecting a response to her feeling from
Mr. Casaubon, and she had felt the waking of a presentiment that there
might be a sad consciousness in his life which made as great a need on
his side as on her own.

We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder
to feed our supreme selves: Dorothea had early begun to emerge from
that stupidity, but yet it had been easier to her to imagine how she
would devote herself to Mr. Casaubon, and become wise and strong in his
strength and wisdom, than to conceive with that distinctness which is
no longer reflection but feeling--an idea wrought back to the
directness of sense, like the solidity of objects--that he had an
equivalent centre of self, whence the lights and shadows must always
fall with a certain difference.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Just as Dorothea is beginning to despair again, Will Ladislaw comes to visit her. Will is surprised to find that she is nice, friendly, and far better than his dried-up old cousin could ever deserve; Will's bad first impression is proven completely wrong. They discuss art, which Dorothea can't understand; Will admits that he has not found his calling in art, and Dorothea is bewildered by his ability to be at leisure all the time. Will also realizes that Dorothea holds Casaubon in unnaturally high regard; he resents this, and wants to get her to realize how she is mistaken. Casaubon returns home, and is not pleased by his cousin's presence. Nevertheless, he invites Will back, and Dorothea senses that she has found a valuable friend.


prompt:
Chapter: "Nous causames longtemps; elle etait simple et bonne.
     Ne sachant pas le mal, elle faisait le bien;
     Des richesses du coeur elle me fit l'aumone,
     Et tout en ecoutant comme le coeur se donne,
     Sans oser y penser je lui donnai le mien;
     Elle emporta ma vie, et n'en sut jamais rien."
                                         --ALFRED DE MUSSET.

Will Ladislaw was delightfully agreeable at dinner the next day, and
gave no opportunity for Mr. Casaubon to show disapprobation.  On the
contrary it seemed to Dorothea that Will had a happier way of drawing
her husband into conversation and of deferentially listening to him
than she had ever observed in any one before.  To be sure, the
listeners about Tipton were not highly gifted!  Will talked a good deal
himself, but what he said was thrown in with such rapidity, and with
such an unimportant air of saying something by the way, that it seemed
a gay little chime after the great bell.  If Will was not always
perfect, this was certainly one of his good days.  He described touches
of incident among the poor people in Rome, only to be seen by one who
could move about freely; he found himself in agreement with Mr.
Casaubon as to the unsound opinions of Middleton concerning the
relations of Judaism and Catholicism; and passed easily to a
half-enthusiastic half-playful picture of the enjoyment he got out of
the very miscellaneousness of Rome, which made the mind flexible with
constant comparison, and saved you from seeing the world's ages as a
set of box-like partitions without vital connection.  Mr. Casaubon's
studies, Will observed, had always been of too broad a kind for that,
and he had perhaps never felt any such sudden effect, but for himself
he confessed that Rome had given him quite a new sense of history as a
whole: the fragments stimulated his imagination and made him
constructive.  Then occasionally, but not too often, he appealed to
Dorothea, and discussed what she said, as if her sentiment were an item
to be considered in the final judgment even of the Madonna di Foligno
or the Laocoon.  A sense of contributing to form the world's opinion
makes conversation particularly cheerful; and Mr. Casaubon too was not
without his pride in his young wife, who spoke better than most women,
as indeed he had perceived in choosing her.

Since things were going on so pleasantly, Mr. Casaubon's statement that
his labors in the Library would be suspended for a couple of days, and
that after a brief renewal he should have no further reason for staying
in Rome, encouraged Will to urge that Mrs. Casaubon should not go away
without seeing a studio or two.  Would not Mr. Casaubon take her?  That
sort of thing ought not to be missed: it was quite special: it was a
form of life that grew like a small fresh vegetation with its
population of insects on huge fossils.  Will would be happy to conduct
them--not to anything wearisome, only to a few examples.

Mr. Casaubon, seeing Dorothea look earnestly towards him, could not but
ask her if she would be interested in such visits: he was now at her
service during the whole day; and it was agreed that Will should come
on the morrow and drive with them.

Will could not omit Thorwaldsen, a living celebrity about whom even Mr.
Casaubon inquired, but before the day was far advanced he led the way
to the studio of his friend Adolf Naumann, whom he mentioned as one of
the chief renovators of Christian art, one of those who had not only
revived but expanded that grand conception of supreme events as
mysteries at which the successive ages were spectators, and in relation
to which the great souls of all periods became as it were
contemporaries.  Will added that he had made himself Naumann's pupil
for the nonce.

"I have been making some oil-sketches under him," said Will.  "I hate
copying.  I must put something of my own in.  Naumann has been painting
the Saints drawing the Car of the Church, and I have been making a
sketch of Marlowe's Tamburlaine Driving the Conquered Kings in his
Chariot.  I am not so ecclesiastical as Naumann, and I sometimes twit
him with his excess of meaning.  But this time I mean to outdo him in
breadth of intention.  I take Tamburlaine in his chariot for the
tremendous course of the world's physical history lashing on the
harnessed dynasties.  In my opinion, that is a good mythical
interpretation."  Will here looked at Mr. Casaubon, who received this
offhand treatment of symbolism very uneasily, and bowed with a neutral
air.

"The sketch must be very grand, if it conveys so much," said Dorothea.
"I should need some explanation even of the meaning you give.  Do you
intend Tamburlaine to represent earthquakes and volcanoes?"

"Oh yes," said Will, laughing, "and migrations of races and clearings
of forests--and America and the steam-engine. Everything you can
imagine!"

"What a difficult kind of shorthand!" said Dorothea, smiling towards
her husband.  "It would require all your knowledge to be able to read
it."

Mr. Casaubon blinked furtively at Will.  He had a suspicion that he was
being laughed at.  But it was not possible to include Dorothea in the
suspicion.

They found Naumann painting industriously, but no model was present;
his pictures were advantageously arranged, and his own plain vivacious
person set off by a dove-colored blouse and a maroon velvet cap, so
that everything was as fortunate as if he had expected the beautiful
young English lady exactly at that time.

The painter in his confident English gave little dissertations on his
finished and unfinished subjects, seeming to observe Mr. Casaubon as
much as he did Dorothea.  Will burst in here and there with ardent
words of praise, marking out particular merits in his friend's work;
and Dorothea felt that she was getting quite new notions as to the
significance of Madonnas seated under inexplicable canopied thrones
with the simple country as a background, and of saints with
architectural models in their hands, or knives accidentally wedged in
their skulls.  Some things which had seemed monstrous to her were
gathering intelligibility and even a natural meaning: but all this was
apparently a branch of knowledge in which Mr. Casaubon had not
interested himself.

"I think I would rather feel that painting is beautiful than have to
read it as an enigma; but I should learn to understand these pictures
sooner than yours with the very wide meaning," said Dorothea, speaking
to Will.

"Don't speak of my painting before Naumann," said Will.  "He will tell
you, it is all pfuscherei, which is his most opprobrious word!"

"Is that true?" said Dorothea, turning her sincere eyes on Naumann, who
made a slight grimace and said--

"Oh, he does not mean it seriously with painting.  His walk must be
belles-lettres. That is wi-ide."

Naumann's pronunciation of the vowel seemed to stretch the word
satirically.  Will did not half like it, but managed to laugh: and Mr.
Casaubon, while he felt some disgust at the artist's German accent,
began to entertain a little respect for his judicious severity.

The respect was not diminished when Naumann, after drawing Will aside
for a moment and looking, first at a large canvas, then at Mr.
Casaubon, came forward again and said--

"My friend Ladislaw thinks you will pardon me, sir, if I say that a
sketch of your head would be invaluable to me for the St. Thomas
Aquinas in my picture there.  It is too much to ask; but I so seldom
see just what I want--the idealistic in the real."

"You astonish me greatly, sir," said Mr. Casaubon, his looks improved
with a glow of delight; "but if my poor physiognomy, which I have been
accustomed to regard as of the commonest order, can be of any use to
you in furnishing some traits for the angelical doctor, I shall feel
honored.  That is to say, if the operation will not be a lengthy one;
and if Mrs. Casaubon will not object to the delay."

As for Dorothea, nothing could have pleased her more, unless it had
been a miraculous voice pronouncing Mr. Casaubon the wisest and
worthiest among the sons of men.  In that case her tottering faith
would have become firm again.

Naumann's apparatus was at hand in wonderful completeness, and the
sketch went on at once as well as the conversation.  Dorothea sat down
and subsided into calm silence, feeling happier than she had done for a
long while before.  Every one about her seemed good, and she said to
herself that Rome, if she had only been less ignorant, would have been
full of beauty: its sadness would have been winged with hope.  No nature
could be less suspicious than hers: when she was a child she believed
in the gratitude of wasps and the honorable susceptibility of sparrows,
and was proportionately indignant when their baseness was made manifest.

The adroit artist was asking Mr. Casaubon questions about English
polities, which brought long answers, and, Will meanwhile had perched
himself on some steps in the background overlooking all.

Presently Naumann said--"Now if I could lay this by for half an hour
and take it up again--come and look, Ladislaw--I think it is perfect so
far."

Will vented those adjuring interjections which imply that admiration is
too strong for syntax; and Naumann said in a tone of piteous regret--

"Ah--now--if I could but have had more--but you have other
engagements--I could not ask it--or even to come again to-morrow."

"Oh, let us stay!" said Dorothea.  "We have nothing to do to-day except
go about, have we?" she added, looking entreatingly at Mr. Casaubon.
"It would be a pity not to make the head as good as possible."

"I am at your service, sir, in the matter," said Mr. Casaubon, with
polite condescension.  "Having given up the interior of my head to
idleness, it is as well that the exterior should work in this way."

"You are unspeakably good--now I am happy!" said Naumann, and then went
on in German to Will, pointing here and there to the sketch as if he
were considering that.  Putting it aside for a moment, he looked round
vaguely, as if seeking some occupation for his visitors, and afterwards
turning to Mr. Casaubon, said--

"Perhaps the beautiful bride, the gracious lady, would not be unwilling
to let me fill up the time by trying to make a slight sketch of
her--not, of course, as you see, for that picture--only as a single
study."

Mr. Casaubon, bowing, doubted not that Mrs. Casaubon would oblige him,
and Dorothea said, at once, "Where shall I put myself?"

Naumann was all apologies in asking her to stand, and allow him to
adjust her attitude, to which she submitted without any of the affected
airs and laughs frequently thought necessary on such occasions, when
the painter said, "It is as Santa Clara that I want you to
stand--leaning so, with your cheek against your hand--so--looking at
that stool, please, so!"

Will was divided between the inclination to fall at the Saint's feet
and kiss her robe, and the temptation to knock Naumann down while he
was adjusting her arm.  All this was impudence and desecration, and he
repented that he had brought her.

The artist was diligent, and Will recovering himself moved about and
occupied Mr. Casaubon as ingeniously as he could; but he did not in the
end prevent the time from seeming long to that gentleman, as was clear
from his expressing a fear that Mrs. Casaubon would be tired.  Naumann
took the hint and said--

"Now, sir, if you can oblige me again; I will release the lady-wife."

So Mr. Casaubon's patience held out further, and when after all it
turned out that the head of Saint Thomas Aquinas would be more perfect
if another sitting could be had, it was granted for the morrow.  On the
morrow Santa Clara too was retouched more than once.  The result of all
was so far from displeasing to Mr. Casaubon, that he arranged for the
purchase of the picture in which Saint Thomas Aquinas sat among the
doctors of the Church in a disputation too abstract to be represented,
but listened to with more or less attention by an audience above.  The
Santa Clara, which was spoken of in the second place, Naumann declared
himself to be dissatisfied with--he could not, in conscience, engage
to make a worthy picture of it; so about the Santa Clara the
arrangement was conditional.

I will not dwell on Naumann's jokes at the expense of Mr. Casaubon that
evening, or on his dithyrambs about Dorothea's charm, in all which Will
joined, but with a difference.  No sooner did Naumann mention any
detail of Dorothea's beauty, than Will got exasperated at his
presumption: there was grossness in his choice of the most ordinary
words, and what business had he to talk of her lips?  She was not a
woman to be spoken of as other women were.  Will could not say just
what he thought, but he became irritable.  And yet, when after some
resistance he had consented to take the Casaubons to his friend's
studio, he had been allured by the gratification of his pride in being
the person who could grant Naumann such an opportunity of studying her
loveliness--or rather her divineness, for the ordinary phrases which
might apply to mere bodily prettiness were not applicable to her.
(Certainly all Tipton and its neighborhood, as well as Dorothea
herself, would have been surprised at her beauty being made so much of.
In that part of the world Miss Brooke had been only a "fine young
woman.")

"Oblige me by letting the subject drop, Naumann.  Mrs. Casaubon is not
to be talked of as if she were a model," said Will.  Naumann stared at
him.

"Schon!  I will talk of my Aquinas.  The head is not a bad type, after
all.  I dare say the great scholastic himself would have been flattered
to have his portrait asked for.  Nothing like these starchy doctors for
vanity!  It was as I thought: he cared much less for her portrait than
his own."

"He's a cursed white-blooded pedantic coxcomb," said Will, with
gnashing impetuosity.  His obligations to Mr. Casaubon were not known
to his hearer, but Will himself was thinking of them, and wishing that
he could discharge them all by a check.

Naumann gave a shrug and said, "It is good they go away soon, my dear.
They are spoiling your fine temper."

All Will's hope and contrivance were now concentrated on seeing
Dorothea when she was alone.  He only wanted her to take more emphatic
notice of him; he only wanted to be something more special in her
remembrance than he could yet believe himself likely to be.  He was
rather impatient under that open ardent good-will, which he saw was her
usual state of feeling.  The remote worship of a woman throned out of
their reach plays a great part in men's lives, but in most cases the
worshipper longs for some queenly recognition, some approving sign by
which his soul's sovereign may cheer him without descending from her
high place.  That was precisely what Will wanted.  But there were
plenty of contradictions in his imaginative demands.  It was beautiful
to see how Dorothea's eyes turned with wifely anxiety and beseeching to
Mr. Casaubon: she would have lost some of her halo if she had been
without that duteous preoccupation; and yet at the next moment the
husband's sandy absorption of such nectar was too intolerable; and
Will's longing to say damaging things about him was perhaps not the
less tormenting because he felt the strongest reasons for restraining
it.

Will had not been invited to dine the next day.  Hence he persuaded
himself that he was bound to call, and that the only eligible time was
the middle of the day, when Mr. Casaubon would not be at home.

Dorothea, who had not been made aware that her former reception of Will
had displeased her husband, had no hesitation about seeing him,
especially as he might be come to pay a farewell visit.  When he
entered she was looking at some cameos which she had been buying for
Celia.  She greeted Will as if his visit were quite a matter of course,
and said at once, having a cameo bracelet in her hand--

"I am so glad you are come.  Perhaps you understand all about cameos,
and can tell me if these are really good.  I wished to have you with us
in choosing them, but Mr. Casaubon objected: he thought there was not
time.  He will finish his work to-morrow, and we shall go away in three
days.  I have been uneasy about these cameos.  Pray sit down and look
at them."

"I am not particularly knowing, but there can be no great mistake about
these little Homeric bits: they are exquisitely neat.  And the color is
fine: it will just suit you."

"Oh, they are for my sister, who has quite a different complexion.  You
saw her with me at Lowick: she is light-haired and very pretty--at
least I think so.  We were never so long away from each other in our
lives before.  She is a great pet and never was naughty in her life.  I
found out before I came away that she wanted me to buy her some cameos,
and I should be sorry for them not to be good--after their kind."
Dorothea added the last words with a smile.

"You seem not to care about cameos," said Will, seating himself at some
distance from her, and observing her while she closed the cases.

"No, frankly, I don't think them a great object in life," said Dorothea

"I fear you are a heretic about art generally.  How is that?  I should
have expected you to be very sensitive to the beautiful everywhere."

"I suppose I am dull about many things," said Dorothea, simply.  "I
should like to make life beautiful--I mean everybody's life.  And then
all this immense expense of art, that seems somehow to lie outside life
and make it no better for the world, pains one.  It spoils my enjoyment
of anything when I am made to think that most people are shut out from
it."

"I call that the fanaticism of sympathy," said Will, impetuously.  "You
might say the same of landscape, of poetry, of all refinement.  If you
carried it out you ought to be miserable in your own goodness, and turn
evil that you might have no advantage over others.  The best piety is
to enjoy--when you can.  You are doing the most then to save the
earth's character as an agreeable planet.  And enjoyment radiates.  It
is of no use to try and take care of all the world; that is being taken
care of when you feel delight--in art or in anything else.  Would you
turn all the youth of the world into a tragic chorus, wailing and
moralizing over misery?  I suspect that you have some false belief in
the virtues of misery, and want to make your life a martyrdom."  Will
had gone further than he intended, and checked himself.  But Dorothea's
thought was not taking just the same direction as his own, and she
answered without any special emotion--

"Indeed you mistake me.  I am not a sad, melancholy creature.  I am
never unhappy long together.  I am angry and naughty--not like Celia: I
have a great outburst, and then all seems glorious again.  I cannot
help believing in glorious things in a blind sort of way.  I should be
quite willing to enjoy the art here, but there is so much that I don't
know the reason of--so much that seems to me a consecration of ugliness
rather than beauty.  The painting and sculpture may be wonderful, but
the feeling is often low and brutal, and sometimes even ridiculous.
Here and there I see what takes me at once as noble--something that I
might compare with the Alban Mountains or the sunset from the Pincian
Hill; but that makes it the greater pity that there is so little of the
best kind among all that mass of things over which men have toiled so."

"Of course there is always a great deal of poor work: the rarer things
want that soil to grow in."

"Oh dear," said Dorothea, taking up that thought into the chief current
of her anxiety; "I see it must be very difficult to do anything good.
I have often felt since I have been in Rome that most of our lives
would look much uglier and more bungling than the pictures, if they
could be put on the wall."

Dorothea parted her lips again as if she were going to say more, but
changed her mind and paused.

"You are too young--it is an anachronism for you to have such
thoughts," said Will, energetically, with a quick shake of the head
habitual to him.  "You talk as if you had never known any youth.  It is
monstrous--as if you had had a vision of Hades in your childhood, like
the boy in the legend.  You have been brought up in some of those
horrible notions that choose the sweetest women to devour--like
Minotaurs. And now you will go and be shut up in that stone prison at
Lowick: you will be buried alive.  It makes me savage to think of it!
I would rather never have seen you than think of you with such a
prospect."

Will again feared that he had gone too far; but the meaning we attach
to words depends on our feeling, and his tone of angry regret had so
much kindness in it for Dorothea's heart, which had always been giving
out ardor and had never been fed with much from the living beings
around her, that she felt a new sense of gratitude and answered with a
gentle smile--

"It is very good of you to be anxious about me.  It is because you did
not like Lowick yourself: you had set your heart on another kind of
life.  But Lowick is my chosen home."

The last sentence was spoken with an almost solemn cadence, and Will
did not know what to say, since it would not be useful for him to
embrace her slippers, and tell her that he would die for her: it was
clear that she required nothing of the sort; and they were both silent
for a moment or two, when Dorothea began again with an air of saying at
last what had been in her mind beforehand.

"I wanted to ask you again about something you said the other day.
Perhaps it was half of it your lively way of speaking: I notice that
you like to put things strongly; I myself often exaggerate when I speak
hastily."

"What was it?" said Will, observing that she spoke with a timidity
quite new in her.  "I have a hyperbolical tongue: it catches fire as it
goes.  I dare say I shall have to retract."

"I mean what you said about the necessity of knowing German--I mean,
for the subjects that Mr. Casaubon is engaged in.  I have been thinking
about it; and it seems to me that with Mr. Casaubon's learning he must
have before him the same materials as German scholars--has he not?"
Dorothea's timidity was due to an indistinct consciousness that she was
in the strange situation of consulting a third person about the
adequacy of Mr. Casaubon's learning.

"Not exactly the same materials," said Will, thinking that he would be
duly reserved.  "He is not an Orientalist, you know.  He does not
profess to have more than second-hand knowledge there."

"But there are very valuable books about antiquities which were written
a long while ago by scholars who knew nothing about these modern
things; and they are still used.  Why should Mr. Casaubon's not be
valuable, like theirs?" said Dorothea, with more remonstrant energy.
She was impelled to have the argument aloud, which she had been having
in her own mind.

"That depends on the line of study taken," said Will, also getting a
tone of rejoinder.  "The subject Mr. Casaubon has chosen is as changing
as chemistry: new discoveries are constantly making new points of view.
Who wants a system on the basis of the four elements, or a book to
refute Paracelsus?  Do you not see that it is no use now to be crawling
a little way after men of the last century--men like Bryant--and
correcting their mistakes?--living in a lumber-room and furbishing up
broken-legged theories about Chus and Mizraim?"

"How can you bear to speak so lightly?" said Dorothea, with a look
between sorrow and anger.  "If it were as you say, what could be sadder
than so much ardent labor all in vain?  I wonder it does not affect you
more painfully, if you really think that a man like Mr. Casaubon, of so
much goodness, power, and learning, should in any way fail in what has
been the labor of his best years." She was beginning to be shocked that
she had got to such a point of supposition, and indignant with Will for
having led her to it.

"You questioned me about the matter of fact, not of feeling," said
Will.  "But if you wish to punish me for the fact, I submit.  I am not
in a position to express my feeling toward Mr. Casaubon: it would be at
best a pensioner's eulogy."

"Pray excuse me," said Dorothea, coloring deeply.  "I am aware, as you
say, that I am in fault in having introduced the subject.  Indeed, I am
wrong altogether.  Failure after long perseverance is much grander than
never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure."

"I quite agree with you," said Will, determined to change the
situation--"so much so that I have made up my mind not to run that
risk of never attaining a failure.  Mr. Casaubon's generosity has
perhaps been dangerous to me, and I mean to renounce the liberty it has
given me.  I mean to go back to England shortly and work my own
way--depend on nobody else than myself."

"That is fine--I respect that feeling," said Dorothea, with returning
kindness.  "But Mr. Casaubon, I am sure, has never thought of anything
in the matter except what was most for your welfare."

"She has obstinacy and pride enough to serve instead of love, now she
has married him," said Will to himself.  Aloud he said, rising--

"I shall not see you again."

"Oh, stay till Mr. Casaubon comes," said Dorothea, earnestly.  "I am so
glad we met in Rome.  I wanted to know you."

"And I have made you angry," said Will.  "I have made you think ill of
me."

"Oh no.  My sister tells me I am always angry with people who do not
say just what I like.  But I hope I am not given to think ill of them.
In the end I am usually obliged to think ill of myself for being so
impatient."

"Still, you don't like me; I have made myself an unpleasant thought to
you."

"Not at all," said Dorothea, with the most open kindness.  "I like you
very much."

Will was not quite contented, thinking that he would apparently have
been of more importance if he had been disliked.  He said nothing, but
looked dull, not to say sulky.

"And I am quite interested to see what you will do," Dorothea went on
cheerfully.  "I believe devoutly in a natural difference of vocation.
If it were not for that belief, I suppose I should be very narrow--there
are so many things, besides painting, that I am quite ignorant
of.  You would hardly believe how little I have taken in of music and
literature, which you know so much of.  I wonder what your vocation
will turn out to be: perhaps you will be a poet?"

"That depends.  To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that
no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment
is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of
emotion--a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling,
and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.  One may have
that condition by fits only."

"But you leave out the poems," said Dorothea.  "I think they are wanted
to complete the poet.  I understand what you mean about knowledge
passing into feeling, for that seems to be just what I experience.  But
I am sure I could never produce a poem."

"You _are_ a poem--and that is to be the best part of a poet--what
makes up the poet's consciousness in his best moods," said Will,
showing such originality as we all share with the morning and the
spring-time and other endless renewals.

"I am very glad to hear it," said Dorothea, laughing out her words in a
bird-like modulation, and looking at Will with playful gratitude in her
eyes.  "What very kind things you say to me!"

"I wish I could ever do anything that would be what you call kind--that
I could ever be of the slightest service to you. I fear I shall never
have the opportunity."  Will spoke with fervor.

"Oh yes," said Dorothea, cordially.  "It will come; and I shall
remember how well you wish me.  I quite hoped that we should be friends
when I first saw you--because of your relationship to Mr. Casaubon."
There was a certain liquid brightness in her eyes, and Will was
conscious that his own were obeying a law of nature and filling too.
The allusion to Mr. Casaubon would have spoiled all if anything at that
moment could have spoiled the subduing power, the sweet dignity, of her
noble unsuspicious inexperience.

"And there is one thing even now that you can do," said Dorothea,
rising and walking a little way under the strength of a recurring
impulse.  "Promise me that you will not again, to any one, speak of
that subject--I mean about Mr. Casaubon's writings--I mean in that
kind of way.  It was I who led to it.  It was my fault.  But promise
me."

She had returned from her brief pacing and stood opposite Will, looking
gravely at him.

"Certainly, I will promise you," said Will, reddening however.  If he
never said a cutting word about Mr. Casaubon again and left off
receiving favors from him, it would clearly be permissible to hate him
the more.  The poet must know how to hate, says Goethe; and Will was at
least ready with that accomplishment.  He said that he must go now
without waiting for Mr. Casaubon, whom he would come to take leave of
at the last moment.  Dorothea gave him her hand, and they exchanged a
simple "Good-by."

But going out of the porte cochere he met Mr. Casaubon, and that
gentleman, expressing the best wishes for his cousin, politely waived
the pleasure of any further leave-taking on the morrow, which would be
sufficiently crowded with the preparations for departure.

"I have something to tell you about our cousin Mr. Ladislaw, which I
think will heighten your opinion of him," said Dorothea to her husband
in the course of the evening.  She had mentioned immediately on his
entering that Will had just gone away, and would come again, but Mr.
Casaubon had said, "I met him outside, and we made our final adieux, I
believe," saying this with the air and tone by which we imply that any
subject, whether private or public, does not interest us enough to wish
for a further remark upon it.  So Dorothea had waited.

"What is that, my love?" said Mr Casaubon (he always said "my love"
when his manner was the coldest).

"He has made up his mind to leave off wandering at once, and to give up
his dependence on your generosity.  He means soon to go back to
England, and work his own way.  I thought you would consider that a
good sign," said Dorothea, with an appealing look into her husband's
neutral face.

"Did he mention the precise order of occupation to which he would
addict himself?"

"No. But he said that he felt the danger which lay for him in your
generosity.  Of course he will write to you about it.  Do you not think
better of him for his resolve?"

"I shall await his communication on the subject," said Mr. Casaubon.

"I told him I was sure that the thing you considered in all you did for
him was his own welfare.  I remembered your goodness in what you said
about him when I first saw him at Lowick," said Dorothea, putting her
hand on her husband's.

"I had a duty towards him," said Mr. Casaubon, laying his other hand on
Dorothea's in conscientious acceptance of her caress, but with a glance
which he could not hinder from being uneasy.  "The young man, I
confess, is not otherwise an object of interest to me, nor need we, I
think, discuss his future course, which it is not ours to determine
beyond the limits which I have sufficiently indicated." Dorothea did
not mention Will again.

BOOK III.

WAITING FOR DEATH.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Will impresses Dorothea with the way he is able to listen to Casaubon and make him feel at ease; Will is also able to engage Dorothea in the conversation, and draw some statements out of her that make Casaubon proud of his well-spoken wife. Will gets Casaubon to agree to bring Dorothea to the studio; once there, Naumann gets Casaubon to sit as a model for Thomas Aquinas, which allows Naumann to also paint Dorothea without Casaubon feeling slighted. Will goes to visit Dorothea later, when Casaubon is not at home; they speak, and Will tells her plainly that she will not be happy with Casaubon, and that her piety is completely unnatural.