prompt:
Chapter: "Oh, sir, the loftiest hopes on earth
     Draw lots with meaner hopes: heroic breasts,
     Breathing bad air, ran risk of pestilence;
     Or, lacking lime-juice when they cross the Line,
     May languish with the scurvy."

Some weeks passed after this conversation before the question of the
chaplaincy gathered any practical import for Lydgate, and without
telling himself the reason, he deferred the predetermination on which
side he should give his vote.  It would really have been a matter of
total indifference to him--that is to say, he would have taken the more
convenient side, and given his vote for the appointment of Tyke without
any hesitation--if he had not cared personally for Mr. Farebrother.

But his liking for the Vicar of St. Botolph's grew with growing
acquaintanceship.  That, entering into Lydgate's position as a
new-comer who had his own professional objects to secure, Mr.
Farebrother should have taken pains rather to warn off than to obtain
his interest, showed an unusual delicacy and generosity, which
Lydgate's nature was keenly alive to.  It went along with other points
of conduct in Mr. Farebrother which were exceptionally fine, and made
his character resemble those southern landscapes which seem divided
between natural grandeur and social slovenliness.  Very few men could
have been as filial and chivalrous as he was to the mother, aunt, and
sister, whose dependence on him had in many ways shaped his life rather
uneasily for himself; few men who feel the pressure of small needs are
so nobly resolute not to dress up their inevitably self-interested
desires in a pretext of better motives.  In these matters he was
conscious that his life would bear the closest scrutiny; and perhaps
the consciousness encouraged a little defiance towards the critical
strictness of persons whose celestial intimacies seemed not to improve
their domestic manners, and whose lofty aims were not needed to account
for their actions.  Then, his preaching was ingenious and pithy, like
the preaching of the English Church in its robust age, and his sermons
were delivered without book.  People outside his parish went to hear
him; and, since to fill the church was always the most difficult part
of a clergyman's function, here was another ground for a careless sense
of superiority.  Besides, he was a likable man: sweet-tempered,
ready-witted, frank, without grins of suppressed bitterness or other
conversational flavors which make half of us an affliction to our
friends.  Lydgate liked him heartily, and wished for his friendship.

With this feeling uppermost, he continued to waive the question of the
chaplaincy, and to persuade himself that it was not only no proper
business of his, but likely enough never to vex him with a demand for
his vote.  Lydgate, at Mr. Bulstrode's request, was laying down plans
for the internal arrangements of the new hospital, and the two were
often in consultation.  The banker was always presupposing that he
could count in general on Lydgate as a coadjutor, but made no special
recurrence to the coming decision between Tyke and Farebrother.  When
the General Board of the Infirmary had met, however, and Lydgate had
notice that the question of the chaplaincy was thrown on a council of
the directors and medical men, to meet on the following Friday, he had
a vexed sense that he must make up his mind on this trivial Middlemarch
business.  He could not help hearing within him the distinct
declaration that Bulstrode was prime minister, and that the Tyke affair
was a question of office or no office; and he could not help an equally
pronounced dislike to giving up the prospect of office.  For his
observation was constantly confirming Mr. Farebrother's assurance that
the banker would not overlook opposition.  "Confound their petty
politics!" was one of his thoughts for three mornings in the meditative
process of shaving, when he had begun to feel that he must really hold
a court of conscience on this matter.  Certainly there were valid
things to be said against the election of Mr. Farebrother: he had too
much on his hands already, especially considering how much time he
spent on non-clerical occupations.  Then again it was a continually
repeated shock, disturbing Lydgate's esteem, that the Vicar should
obviously play for the sake of money, liking the play indeed, but
evidently liking some end which it served.  Mr. Farebrother contended
on theory for the desirability of all games, and said that Englishmen's
wit was stagnant for want of them; but Lydgate felt certain that he
would have played very much less but for the money.  There was a
billiard-room at the Green Dragon, which some anxious mothers and wives
regarded as the chief temptation in Middlemarch.  The Vicar was a
first-rate billiard-player, and though he did not frequent the Green
Dragon, there were reports that he had sometimes been there in the
daytime and had won money.  And as to the chaplaincy, he did not
pretend that he cared for it, except for the sake of the forty pounds.
Lydgate was no Puritan, but he did not care for play, and winning money
at it had always seemed a meanness to him; besides, he had an ideal of
life which made this subservience of conduct to the gaining of small
sums thoroughly hateful to him.  Hitherto in his own life his wants had
been supplied without any trouble to himself, and his first impulse was
always to be liberal with half-crowns as matters of no importance to a
gentleman; it had never occurred to him to devise a plan for getting
half-crowns.  He had always known in a general way that he was not
rich, but he had never felt poor, and he had no power of imagining the
part which the want of money plays in determining the actions of men.
Money had never been a motive to him.  Hence he was not ready to frame
excuses for this deliberate pursuit of small gains.  It was altogether
repulsive to him, and he never entered into any calculation of the
ratio between the Vicar's income and his more or less necessary
expenditure.  It was possible that he would not have made such a
calculation in his own case.

And now, when the question of voting had come, this repulsive fact told
more strongly against Mr. Farebrother than it had done before.  One
would know much better what to do if men's characters were more
consistent, and especially if one's friends were invariably fit for any
function they desired to undertake!  Lydgate was convinced that if
there had been no valid objection to Mr. Farebrother, he would have
voted for him, whatever Bulstrode might have felt on the subject: he
did not intend to be a vassal of Bulstrode's. On the other hand, there
was Tyke, a man entirely given to his clerical office, who was simply
curate at a chapel of ease in St. Peter's parish, and had time for
extra duty.  Nobody had anything to say against Mr. Tyke, except that
they could not bear him, and suspected him of cant.  Really, from his
point of view, Bulstrode was thoroughly justified.

But whichever way Lydgate began to incline, there was something to make
him wince; and being a proud man, he was a little exasperated at being
obliged to wince.  He did not like frustrating his own best purposes by
getting on bad terms with Bulstrode; he did not like voting against
Farebrother, and helping to deprive him of function and salary; and the
question occurred whether the additional forty pounds might not leave
the Vicar free from that ignoble care about winning at cards.
Moreover, Lydgate did not like the consciousness that in voting for
Tyke he should be voting on the side obviously convenient for himself.
But would the end really be his own convenience?  Other people would
say so, and would allege that he was currying favor with Bulstrode for
the sake of making himself important and getting on in the world.  What
then?  He for his own part knew that if his personal prospects simply
had been concerned, he would not have cared a rotten nut for the
banker's friendship or enmity.  What he really cared for was a medium
for his work, a vehicle for his ideas; and after all, was he not bound
to prefer the object of getting a good hospital, where he could
demonstrate the specific distinctions of fever and test therapeutic
results, before anything else connected with this chaplaincy?  For the
first time Lydgate was feeling the hampering threadlike pressure of
small social conditions, and their frustrating complexity.  At the end
of his inward debate, when he set out for the hospital, his hope was
really in the chance that discussion might somehow give a new aspect to
the question, and make the scale dip so as to exclude the necessity for
voting.  I think he trusted a little also to the energy which is
begotten by circumstances--some feeling rushing warmly and making
resolve easy, while debate in cool blood had only made it more
difficult.  However it was, he did not distinctly say to himself on
which side he would vote; and all the while he was inwardly resenting
the subjection which had been forced upon him.  It would have seemed
beforehand like a ridiculous piece of bad logic that he, with his
unmixed resolutions of independence and his select purposes, would find
himself at the very outset in the grasp of petty alternatives, each of
which was repugnant to him.  In his student's chambers, he had
prearranged his social action quite differently.

Lydgate was late in setting out, but Dr. Sprague, the two other
surgeons, and several of the directors had arrived early; Mr.
Bulstrode, treasurer and chairman, being among those who were still
absent.  The conversation seemed to imply that the issue was
problematical, and that a majority for Tyke was not so certain as had
been generally supposed.  The two physicians, for a wonder, turned out
to be unanimous, or rather, though of different minds, they concurred
in action.  Dr. Sprague, the rugged and weighty, was, as every one had
foreseen, an adherent of Mr. Farebrother.  The Doctor was more than
suspected of having no religion, but somehow Middlemarch tolerated this
deficiency in him as if he had been a Lord Chancellor; indeed it is
probable that his professional weight was the more believed in, the
world-old association of cleverness with the evil principle being still
potent in the minds even of lady-patients who had the strictest ideas
of frilling and sentiment.  It was perhaps this negation in the Doctor
which made his neighbors call him hard-headed and dry-witted;
conditions of texture which were also held favorable to the storing of
judgments connected with drugs.  At all events, it is certain that if
any medical man had come to Middlemarch with the reputation of having
very definite religious views, of being given to prayer, and of
otherwise showing an active piety, there would have been a general
presumption against his medical skill.

On this ground it was (professionally speaking) fortunate for Dr.
Minchin that his religious sympathies were of a general kind, and such
as gave a distant medical sanction to all serious sentiment, whether of
Church or Dissent, rather than any adhesion to particular tenets.  If
Mr. Bulstrode insisted, as he was apt to do, on the Lutheran doctrine
of justification, as that by which a Church must stand or fall, Dr.
Minchin in return was quite sure that man was not a mere machine or a
fortuitous conjunction of atoms; if Mrs. Wimple insisted on a
particular providence in relation to her stomach complaint, Dr. Minchin
for his part liked to keep the mental windows open and objected to
fixed limits; if the Unitarian brewer jested about the Athanasian
Creed, Dr. Minchin quoted Pope's "Essay on Man."  He objected to the
rather free style of anecdote in which Dr. Sprague indulged, preferring
well-sanctioned quotations, and liking refinement of all kinds: it was
generally known that he had some kinship to a bishop, and sometimes
spent his holidays at "the palace."

Dr. Minchin was soft-handed, pale-complexioned, and of rounded outline,
not to be distinguished from a mild clergyman in appearance: whereas
Dr. Sprague was superfluously tall; his trousers got creased at the
knees, and showed an excess of boot at a time when straps seemed
necessary to any dignity of bearing; you heard him go in and out, and
up and down, as if he had come to see after the roofing.  In short, he
had weight, and might be expected to grapple with a disease and throw
it; while Dr. Minchin might be better able to detect it lurking and to
circumvent it.  They enjoyed about equally the mysterious privilege of
medical reputation, and concealed with much etiquette their contempt
for each other's skill.  Regarding themselves as Middlemarch
institutions, they were ready to combine against all innovators, and
against non-professionals given to interference.  On this ground they
were both in their hearts equally averse to Mr. Bulstrode, though Dr.
Minchin had never been in open hostility with him, and never differed
from him without elaborate explanation to Mrs. Bulstrode, who had found
that Dr. Minchin alone understood her constitution.  A layman who pried
into the professional conduct of medical men, and was always obtruding
his reforms,--though he was less directly embarrassing to the two
physicians than to the surgeon-apothecaries who attended paupers by
contract, was nevertheless offensive to the professional nostril as
such; and Dr. Minchin shared fully in the new pique against Bulstrode,
excited by his apparent determination to patronize Lydgate.  The
long-established practitioners, Mr. Wrench and Mr. Toller; were just
now standing apart and having a friendly colloquy, in which they agreed
that Lydgate was a jackanapes, just made to serve Bulstrode's purpose.
To non-medical friends they had already concurred in praising the other
young practitioner, who had come into the town on Mr. Peacock's
retirement without further recommendation than his own merits and such
argument for solid professional acquirement as might be gathered from
his having apparently wasted no time on other branches of knowledge.
It was clear that Lydgate, by not dispensing drugs, intended to cast
imputations on his equals, and also to obscure the limit between his
own rank as a general practitioner and that of the physicians, who, in
the interest of the profession, felt bound to maintain its various
grades,--especially against a man who had not been to either of the
English universities and enjoyed the absence of anatomical and bedside
study there, but came with a libellous pretension to experience in
Edinburgh and Paris, where observation might be abundant indeed, but
hardly sound.

Thus it happened that on this occasion Bulstrode became identified with
Lydgate, and Lydgate with Tyke; and owing to this variety of
interchangeable names for the chaplaincy question, diverse minds were
enabled to form the same judgment concerning it.

Dr. Sprague said at once bluntly to the group assembled when he
entered, "I go for Farebrother.  A salary, with all my heart.  But why
take it from the Vicar?  He has none too much--has to insure his life,
besides keeping house, and doing a vicar's charities.  Put forty pounds
in his pocket and you'll do no harm.  He's a good fellow, is
Farebrother, with as little of the parson about him as will serve to
carry orders."

"Ho, ho!  Doctor," said old Mr. Powderell, a retired iron-monger of
some standing--his interjection being something between a laugh and a
Parliamentary disapproval; "we must let you have your say.  But what we
have to consider is not anybody's income--it's the souls of the poor
sick people"--here Mr. Powderell's voice and face had a sincere pathos
in them.  "He is a real Gospel preacher, is Mr. Tyke.  I should vote
against my conscience if I voted against Mr. Tyke--I should indeed."

"Mr. Tyke's opponents have not asked any one to vote against his
conscience, I believe," said Mr. Hackbutt, a rich tanner of fluent
speech, whose glittering spectacles and erect hair were turned with
some severity towards innocent Mr. Powderell.  "But in my judgment it
behoves us, as Directors, to consider whether we will regard it as our
whole business to carry out propositions emanating from a single
quarter.  Will any member of the committee aver that he would have
entertained the idea of displacing the gentleman who has always
discharged the function of chaplain here, if it had not been suggested
to him by parties whose disposition it is to regard every institution
of this town as a machinery for carrying out their own views?  I tax no
man's motives: let them lie between himself and a higher Power; but I
do say, that there are influences at work here which are incompatible
with genuine independence, and that a crawling servility is usually
dictated by circumstances which gentlemen so conducting themselves
could not afford either morally or financially to avow.  I myself am a
layman, but I have given no inconsiderable attention to the divisions
in the Church and--"

"Oh, damn the divisions!" burst in Mr. Frank Hawley, lawyer and
town-clerk, who rarely presented himself at the board, but now looked
in hurriedly, whip in hand.  "We have nothing to do with them here.
Farebrother has been doing the work--what there was--without pay, and
if pay is to be given, it should be given to him.  I call it a
confounded job to take the thing away from Farebrother."

"I think it would be as well for gentlemen not to give their remarks a
personal bearing," said Mr. Plymdale.  "I shall vote for the
appointment of Mr. Tyke, but I should not have known, if Mr. Hackbutt
hadn't hinted it, that I was a Servile Crawler."

"I disclaim any personalities.  I expressly said, if I may be allowed
to repeat, or even to conclude what I was about to say--"

"Ah, here's Minchin!" said Mr. Frank Hawley; at which everybody turned
away from Mr. Hackbutt, leaving him to feel the uselessness of superior
gifts in Middlemarch.  "Come, Doctor, I must have you on the right
side, eh?"

"I hope so," said Dr. Minchin, nodding and shaking hands here and
there; "at whatever cost to my feelings."

"If there's any feeling here, it should be feeling for the man who is
turned out, I think," said Mr. Frank Hawley.

"I confess I have feelings on the other side also.  I have a divided
esteem," said Dr. Minchin, rubbing his hands.  "I consider Mr. Tyke an
exemplary man--none more so--and I believe him to be proposed from
unimpeachable motives.  I, for my part, wish that I could give him my
vote.  But I am constrained to take a view of the case which gives the
preponderance to Mr. Farebrother's claims.  He is an amiable man, an
able preacher, and has been longer among us."

Old Mr. Powderell looked on, sad and silent.  Mr. Plymdale settled his
cravat, uneasily.

"You don't set up Farebrother as a pattern of what a clergyman ought to
be, I hope," said Mr. Larcher, the eminent carrier, who had just come
in.  "I have no ill-will towards him, but I think we owe something to
the public, not to speak of anything higher, in these appointments.  In
my opinion Farebrother is too lax for a clergyman.  I don't wish to
bring up particulars against him; but he will make a little attendance
here go as far as he can."

"And a devilish deal better than too much," said Mr. Hawley, whose bad
language was notorious in that part of the county.  "Sick people can't
bear so much praying and preaching.  And that methodistical sort of
religion is bad for the spirits--bad for the inside, eh?" he added,
turning quickly round to the four medical men who were assembled.

But any answer was dispensed with by the entrance of three gentlemen,
with whom there were greetings more or less cordial.  These were the
Reverend Edward Thesiger, Rector of St. Peter's, Mr. Bulstrode, and our
friend Mr. Brooke of Tipton, who had lately allowed himself to be put
on the board of directors in his turn, but had never before attended,
his attendance now being due to Mr. Bulstrode's exertions.  Lydgate was
the only person still expected.

Every one now sat down, Mr. Bulstrode presiding, pale and
self-restrained as usual.  Mr. Thesiger, a moderate evangelical, wished
for the appointment of his friend Mr. Tyke, a zealous able man, who,
officiating at a chapel of ease, had not a cure of souls too extensive
to leave him ample time for the new duty.  It was desirable that
chaplaincies of this kind should be entered on with a fervent
intention: they were peculiar opportunities for spiritual influence;
and while it was good that a salary should be allotted, there was the
more need for scrupulous watching lest the office should be perverted
into a mere question of salary.  Mr. Thesiger's manner had so much
quiet propriety that objectors could only simmer in silence.

Mr. Brooke believed that everybody meant well in the matter.  He had
not himself attended to the affairs of the Infirmary, though he had a
strong interest in whatever was for the benefit of Middlemarch, and was
most happy to meet the gentlemen present on any public question--"any
public question, you know," Mr. Brooke repeated, with his nod of
perfect understanding.  "I am a good deal occupied as a magistrate, and
in the collection of documentary evidence, but I regard my time as
being at the disposal of the public--and, in short, my friends have
convinced me that a chaplain with a salary--a salary, you know--is a
very good thing, and I am happy to be able to come here and vote for
the appointment of Mr. Tyke, who, I understand, is an unexceptionable
man, apostolic and eloquent and everything of that kind--and I am the
last man to withhold my vote--under the circumstances, you know."

"It seems to me that you have been crammed with one side of the
question, Mr. Brooke," said Mr. Frank Hawley, who was afraid of nobody,
and was a Tory suspicious of electioneering intentions.  "You don't
seem to know that one of the worthiest men we have has been doing duty
as chaplain here for years without pay, and that Mr. Tyke is proposed
to supersede him."

"Excuse me, Mr. Hawley," said Mr. Bulstrode.  "Mr. Brooke has been
fully informed of Mr. Farebrother's character and position."

"By his enemies," flashed out Mr. Hawley.

"I trust there is no personal hostility concerned here," said Mr.
Thesiger.

"I'll swear there is, though," retorted Mr. Hawley.

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Bulstrode, in a subdued tone, "the merits of the
question may be very briefly stated, and if any one present doubts that
every gentleman who is about to give his vote has not been fully
informed, I can now recapitulate the considerations that should weigh
on either side."

"I don't see the good of that," said Mr. Hawley.  "I suppose we all
know whom we mean to vote for.  Any man who wants to do justice does
not wait till the last minute to hear both sides of the question.  I
have no time to lose, and I propose that the matter be put to the vote
at once."

A brief but still hot discussion followed before each person wrote
"Tyke" or "Farebrother" on a piece of paper and slipped it into a glass
tumbler; and in the mean time Mr. Bulstrode saw Lydgate enter.

"I perceive that the votes are equally divided at present," said Mr.
Bulstrode, in a clear biting voice.  Then, looking up at Lydgate--

"There is a casting-vote still to be given.  It is yours, Mr. Lydgate:
will you be good enough to write?"

"The thing is settled now," said Mr. Wrench, rising.  "We all know how
Mr. Lydgate will vote."

"You seem to speak with some peculiar meaning, sir," said Lydgate,
rather defiantly, and keeping his pencil suspended.

"I merely mean that you are expected to vote with Mr. Bulstrode.  Do
you regard that meaning as offensive?"

"It may be offensive to others.  But I shall not desist from voting
with him on that account."  Lydgate immediately wrote down "Tyke."

So the Rev. Walter Tyke became chaplain to the Infirmary, and Lydgate
continued to work with Mr. Bulstrode.  He was really uncertain whether
Tyke were not the more suitable candidate, and yet his consciousness
told him that if he had been quite free from indirect bias he should
have voted for Mr. Farebrother.  The affair of the chaplaincy remained
a sore point in his memory as a case in which this petty medium of
Middlemarch had been too strong for him.  How could a man be satisfied
with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances?
No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he has chosen from
among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at
best with a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison.

But Mr. Farebrother met him with the same friendliness as before.  The
character of the publican and sinner is not always practically
incompatible with that of the modern Pharisee, for the majority of us
scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the
faultiness of our own arguments, or the dulness of our own jokes.  But
the Vicar of St. Botolph's had certainly escaped the slightest tincture
of the Pharisee, and by dint of admitting to himself that he was too
much as other men were, he had become remarkably unlike them in
this--that he could excuse others for thinking slightly of him, and
could judge impartially of their conduct even when it told against him.

"The world has been too strong for _me_, I know," he said one day to
Lydgate.  "But then I am not a mighty man--I shall never be a man of
renown.  The choice of Hercules is a pretty fable; but Prodicus makes
it easy work for the hero, as if the first resolves were enough.
Another story says that he came to hold the distaff, and at last wore
the Nessus shirt.  I suppose one good resolve might keep a man right if
everybody else's resolve helped him."

The Vicar's talk was not always inspiriting: he had escaped being a
Pharisee, but he had not escaped that low estimate of possibilities
which we rather hastily arrive at as an inference from our own failure.
Lydgate thought that there was a pitiable infirmity of will in Mr.
Farebrother.

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

completion: Lydgate wouldn't have cared much about the chaplain position at the new hospital if he hadn't gotten to be such good friends with Farebrother. One thing that continues to bother him about his new friend, though, is Farebrother's habit of playing cards or billiards for money. Lydgate has never wanted for money , and although he's not rich, he's never felt poor. So he doesn't understand Farebrother's desire to make small amounts of money at gambling, but he does kind of see where Bulstrode is coming from when he says that Farebrother isn't a model clergyman. But the trouble is, he likes Farebrother. He's a likeable guy! And no one likes Mr. Tyke. But Mr. Tyke is a model clergyman - no one has anything to say against him, other than that they kind of hate him. So Lydgate doesn't know how to vote. The two physicians, Dr. Sprague and Dr. Minchin, are for Farebrother and Tyke respectively. The other two surgeons, Mr. Wrench and Mr. Toller, haven't decided yet whether to vote for Tyke or Farebrother. But they have decided that they don't like Lydgate. Lydgate's a surgeon, as we explained in an earlier chapter. This means that he doesn't have an advanced degree, and he's lower in the profession than Dr. Sprague and Dr. Minchin, the physicians. Traditionally, surgeons were called on to prescribe medicine as well as to perform minor surgeries . But Lydgate thinks that it's bogus to prescribe medicine for any little ailment - surgeons and pharmacists often had little agreements about how to split the money they made off of their patients, and that led to over-prescribing. And Lydgate, as we know, is all about trying to reform the medical profession and make it more scientific and progressive. So Toller and Wrench think that Lydgate is an upstart, and is trying to be above his peers. The chapter continues with a discussion amongst all of these men about the relative merits of Tyke and Farebrother. Finally it gets called to a vote, and Lydgate ends up voting for Tyke. He's not sure whether Farebrother would have done a better job, but he still feels bad about not voting for his friend. And worse, he feels bad that he voted with Mr. Bulstrode, in part because it would be more convenient for himself to stay on Mr. Bulstrode's good side. Farebrother doesn't blame him, though.


prompt:
Chapter: "L' altra vedete ch'ha fatto alla guancia
     Della sua palma, sospirando, letto."
                              --Purgatorio, vii.

When George the Fourth was still reigning over the privacies of
Windsor, when the Duke of Wellington was Prime Minister, and Mr. Vincy
was mayor of the old corporation in Middlemarch, Mrs. Casaubon, born
Dorothea Brooke, had taken her wedding journey to Rome.  In those days
the world in general was more ignorant of good and evil by forty years
than it is at present.  Travellers did not often carry full information
on Christian art either in their heads or their pockets; and even the
most brilliant English critic of the day mistook the flower-flushed
tomb of the ascended Virgin for an ornamental vase due to the painter's
fancy.  Romanticism, which has helped to fill some dull blanks with
love and knowledge, had not yet penetrated the times with its leaven
and entered into everybody's food; it was fermenting still as a
distinguishable vigorous enthusiasm in certain long-haired German
artists at Rome, and the youth of other nations who worked or idled
near them were sometimes caught in the spreading movement.

One fine morning a young man whose hair was not immoderately long, but
abundant and curly, and who was otherwise English in his equipment, had
just turned his back on the Belvedere Torso in the Vatican and was
looking out on the magnificent view of the mountains from the adjoining
round vestibule.  He was sufficiently absorbed not to notice the
approach of a dark-eyed, animated German who came up to him and placing
a hand on his shoulder, said with a strong accent, "Come here, quick!
else she will have changed her pose."

Quickness was ready at the call, and the two figures passed lightly
along by the Meleager, towards the hall where the reclining Ariadne,
then called the Cleopatra, lies in the marble voluptuousness of her
beauty, the drapery folding around her with a petal-like ease and
tenderness.  They were just in time to see another figure standing
against a pedestal near the reclining marble: a breathing blooming
girl, whose form, not shamed by the Ariadne, was clad in Quakerish gray
drapery; her long cloak, fastened at the neck, was thrown backward from
her arms, and one beautiful ungloved hand pillowed her cheek, pushing
somewhat backward the white beaver bonnet which made a sort of halo to
her face around the simply braided dark-brown hair.  She was not
looking at the sculpture, probably not thinking of it: her large eyes
were fixed dreamily on a streak of sunlight which fell across the
floor.  But she became conscious of the two strangers who suddenly
paused as if to contemplate the Cleopatra, and, without looking at
them, immediately turned away to join a maid-servant and courier who
were loitering along the hall at a little distance off.

"What do you think of that for a fine bit of antithesis?" said the
German, searching in his friend's face for responding admiration, but
going on volubly without waiting for any other answer.  "There lies
antique beauty, not corpse-like even in death, but arrested in the
complete contentment of its sensuous perfection: and here stands beauty
in its breathing life, with the consciousness of Christian centuries in
its bosom.  But she should be dressed as a nun; I think she looks
almost what you call a Quaker; I would dress her as a nun in my
picture.  However, she is married; I saw her wedding-ring on that
wonderful left hand, otherwise I should have thought the sallow
Geistlicher was her father.  I saw him parting from her a good while
ago, and just now I found her in that magnificent pose.  Only think! he
is perhaps rich, and would like to have her portrait taken.  Ah! it is
no use looking after her--there she goes!  Let us follow her home!"

"No, no," said his companion, with a little frown.

"You are singular, Ladislaw.  You look struck together.  Do you know
her?"

"I know that she is married to my cousin," said Will Ladislaw,
sauntering down the hall with a preoccupied air, while his German
friend kept at his side and watched him eagerly.

"What! the Geistlicher? He looks more like an uncle--a more useful sort
of relation."

"He is not my uncle.  I tell you he is my second cousin," said
Ladislaw, with some irritation.

"Schon, schon.  Don't be snappish.  You are not angry with me for
thinking Mrs. Second-Cousin the most perfect young Madonna I ever saw?"

"Angry? nonsense.  I have only seen her once before, for a couple of
minutes, when my cousin introduced her to me, just before I left
England.  They were not married then.  I didn't know they were coming
to Rome."

"But you will go to see them now--you will find out what they have for
an address--since you know the name.  Shall we go to the post?  And you
could speak about the portrait."

"Confound you, Naumann!  I don't know what I shall do.  I am not so
brazen as you."

"Bah! that is because you are dilettantish and amateurish.  If you were
an artist, you would think of Mistress Second-Cousin as antique form
animated by Christian sentiment--a sort of Christian Antigone--sensuous
force controlled by spiritual passion."

"Yes, and that your painting her was the chief outcome of her
existence--the divinity passing into higher completeness and all but
exhausted in the act of covering your bit of canvas.  I am amateurish
if you like: I do _not_ think that all the universe is straining
towards the obscure significance of your pictures."

"But it is, my dear!--so far as it is straining through me, Adolf
Naumann: that stands firm," said the good-natured painter, putting a
hand on Ladislaw's shoulder, and not in the least disturbed by the
unaccountable touch of ill-humor in his tone.  "See now!  My existence
presupposes the existence of the whole universe--does it _not?_ and my
function is to paint--and as a painter I have a conception which is
altogether genialisch, of your great-aunt or second grandmother as a
subject for a picture; therefore, the universe is straining towards
that picture through that particular hook or claw which it puts forth
in the shape of me--not true?"

"But how if another claw in the shape of me is straining to thwart
it?--the case is a little less simple then."

"Not at all: the result of the struggle is the same thing--picture or
no picture--logically."

Will could not resist this imperturbable temper, and the cloud in his
face broke into sunshiny laughter.

"Come now, my friend--you will help?" said Naumann, in a hopeful tone.

"No; nonsense, Naumann!  English ladies are not at everybody's service
as models.  And you want to express too much with your painting.  You
would only have made a better or worse portrait with a background which
every connoisseur would give a different reason for or against.  And
what is a portrait of a woman?  Your painting and Plastik are poor
stuff after all.  They perturb and dull conceptions instead of raising
them.  Language is a finer medium."

"Yes, for those who can't paint," said Naumann.  "There you have
perfect right.  I did not recommend you to paint, my friend."

The amiable artist carried his sting, but Ladislaw did not choose to
appear stung.  He went on as if he had not heard.

"Language gives a fuller image, which is all the better for beings
vague.  After all, the true seeing is within; and painting stares at
you with an insistent imperfection.  I feel that especially about
representations of women.  As if a woman were a mere colored
superficies!  You must wait for movement and tone.  There is a
difference in their very breathing: they change from moment to
moment.--This woman whom you have just seen, for example: how would you
paint her voice, pray?  But her voice is much diviner than anything you
have seen of her."

"I see, I see.  You are jealous.  No man must presume to think that he
can paint your ideal.  This is serious, my friend!  Your great-aunt!
'Der Neffe als Onkel' in a tragic sense--ungeheuer!"

"You and I shall quarrel, Naumann, if you call that lady my aunt again."

"How is she to be called then?"

"Mrs. Casaubon."

"Good.  Suppose I get acquainted with her in spite of you, and find
that she very much wishes to be painted?"

"Yes, suppose!" said Will Ladislaw, in a contemptuous undertone,
intended to dismiss the subject.  He was conscious of being irritated
by ridiculously small causes, which were half of his own creation.  Why
was he making any fuss about Mrs. Casaubon?  And yet he felt as if
something had happened to him with regard to her.  There are characters
which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in
dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them.  Their
susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently
quiet.

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

completion: This chapter opens with a change of scene - we're now in Rome, Italy, where Dorothea and Mr. Casaubon are honeymooning. Will Ladislaw is there, too , to study art and travel. Will's friend, Naumann, sees Dorothea across a gallery in a museum, and thinks she's as lovely as the statues she's looking at. Will sees who it is, and isn't happy about it. Naumann wants to be introduced to them, because he wants to paint Dorothea's portrait . Will objects to the idea of trying to capture Dorothea's essence in painting. He doesn't like Dorothea much , but he thinks she's too complicated to try to capture in a painting.


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 crying alone in her hotel. Mr. Casaubon is working at the Vatican library and not likely to return for a while, so she has time for a good cry. She's not happy , and can't explain the reason to herself. Rome is too big, and the contrast between its glorious past and its poor present is jarring for her. Rome seems full of empty superstitions to her, and there's no one to explain the art and architecture to her in a way that would make it comprehensible to someone who's hardly seen any art. Basically, she's miserable because she's discovered that, far from opening up the world's knowledge to her, Mr. Casaubon is really just a stodgy old bookworm without any passion for anything. He's not interested in anything that she is, so there's not a lot of sympathy between them. She's an affectionate and passionate woman, and Mr. Casaubon doesn't return her affection with anything but stiff and cold formality. He's unfailingly polite, but that's it. She doesn't understand him, either - he's deeply insecure about his own project, which is why it's taken him so long to complete. He's always working on his notes and research, but never on writing the actual work. So when Dorothea asks him when he's going to sit down and write the darn thing, he becomes coldly angry, and she doesn't understand why. This is their first married spat and, to Dorothea, it's like the sky has fallen. It is soon after this argument that Naumann and Will see her in the gallery, staring off into space and looking as beautiful and motionless as the statues around her, and it is that argument that has made her go back to the hotel to cry by herself.


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: Dorothea has hardly finished her cry when Will Ladislaw shows up for a visit. She dries her eyes and goes down to meet him. Will is shy at first, but she quickly puts him at ease, and they begin to talk about art. Will reminds her of her "criticism" of his sketches when they first met in Casaubon's garden, and she repeats that she doesn't understand art. Will believes her this time, and they seem ready to be friends. But then the subject turns to Mr. Casaubon's work, and Dorothea can see that Will doesn't think much of it. Will is annoyed that Dorothea should seem to worship her boring old husband, so he decides to take the wind out of her sails a bit. He tells her that much of Mr. Casaubon's work has already been published in German, and when he sees how disappointed Dorothea is , he begins to understand her a bit. She's full of feeling, and wants desperately to be of use to her husband, and to the world. Will likes her more and more, and feels sorry for her. Mr. Casaubon comes home just then, and doesn't seem happy that Will is there, but he's polite anyway. Mr. Casaubon invites Will to come to dinner the next day. Will leaves, and Dorothea and Mr. Casaubon make up from their earlier argument. But Mr. Casaubon does it without much feeling, and Dorothea doesn't feel much better. He doesn't say anything to her about Will's visit - he doesn't want to come across as jealous, but he also wishes she wouldn't see him or allow his visits while he's not there.