Chapter: Let the high Muse chant loves Olympian:
    We are but mortals, and must sing of man.


An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly
furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me
this pregnant little fact.  Your pier-glass or extensive surface of
polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and
multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a
lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will
seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round
that little sun.  It is demonstrable that the scratches are going
everywhere impartially and it is only your candle which produces the
flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with
an exclusive optical selection.  These things are a parable.  The
scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now
absent--of Miss Vincy, for example.  Rosamond had a Providence of her
own who had kindly made her more charming than other girls, and who
seemed to have arranged Fred's illness and Mr. Wrench's mistake in
order to bring her and Lydgate within effective proximity.  It would
have been to contravene these arrangements if Rosamond had consented to
go away to Stone Court or elsewhere, as her parents wished her to do,
especially since Mr. Lydgate thought the precaution needless.
Therefore, while Miss Morgan and the children were sent away to a
farmhouse the morning after Fred's illness had declared itself,
Rosamond refused to leave papa and mamma.

Poor mamma indeed was an object to touch any creature born of woman;
and Mr. Vincy, who doted on his wife, was more alarmed on her account
than on Fred's. But for his insistence she would have taken no rest:
her brightness was all bedimmed; unconscious of her costume which had
always been so fresh and gay, she was like a sick bird with languid eye
and plumage ruffled, her senses dulled to the sights and sounds that
used most to interest her.  Fred's delirium, in which he seemed to be
wandering out of her reach, tore her heart.  After her first outburst
against Mr. Wrench she went about very quietly: her one low cry was to
Lydgate.  She would follow him out of the room and put her hand on his
arm moaning out, "Save my boy."  Once she pleaded, "He has always been
good to me, Mr. Lydgate: he never had a hard word for his mother,"--as
if poor Fred's suffering were an accusation against him.  All the
deepest fibres of the mother's memory were stirred, and the young man
whose voice took a gentler tone when he spoke to her, was one with the
babe whom she had loved, with a love new to her, before he was born.

"I have good hope, Mrs. Vincy," Lydgate would say.  "Come down with me
and let us talk about the food."  In that way he led her to the parlor
where Rosamond was, and made a change for her, surprising her into
taking some tea or broth which had been prepared for her.  There was a
constant understanding between him and Rosamond on these matters.  He
almost always saw her before going to the sickroom, and she appealed to
him as to what she could do for mamma.  Her presence of mind and
adroitness in carrying out his hints were admirable, and it is not
wonderful that the idea of seeing Rosamond began to mingle itself with
his interest in the case.  Especially when the critical stage was
passed, and he began to feel confident of Fred's recovery.  In the more
doubtful time, he had advised calling in Dr. Sprague (who, if he could,
would rather have remained neutral on Wrench's account); but after two
consultations, the conduct of the case was left to Lydgate, and there
was every reason to make him assiduous.  Morning and evening he was at
Mr. Vincy's, and gradually the visits became cheerful as Fred became
simply feeble, and lay not only in need of the utmost petting but
conscious of it, so that Mrs. Vincy felt as if, after all, the illness
had made a festival for her tenderness.

Both father and mother held it an added reason for good spirits, when
old Mr. Featherstone sent messages by Lydgate, saying that Fred must
make haste and get well, as he, Peter Featherstone, could not do
without him, and missed his visits sadly.  The old man himself was
getting bedridden.  Mrs. Vincy told these messages to Fred when he
could listen, and he turned towards her his delicate, pinched face,
from which all the thick blond hair had been cut away, and in which the
eyes seemed to have got larger, yearning for some word about
Mary--wondering what she felt about his illness.  No word passed his
lips; but "to hear with eyes belongs to love's rare wit," and the
mother in the fulness of her heart not only divined Fred's longing, but
felt ready for any sacrifice in order to satisfy him.

"If I can only see my boy strong again," she said, in her loving folly;
"and who knows?--perhaps master of Stone Court! and he can marry
anybody he likes then."

"Not if they won't have me, mother," said Fred.  The illness had made
him childish, and tears came as he spoke.

"Oh, take a bit of jelly, my dear," said Mrs. Vincy, secretly
incredulous of any such refusal.

She never left Fred's side when her husband was not in the house, and
thus Rosamond was in the unusual position of being much alone.
Lydgate, naturally, never thought of staying long with her, yet it
seemed that the brief impersonal conversations they had together were
creating that peculiar intimacy which consists in shyness.  They were
obliged to look at each other in speaking, and somehow the looking
could not be carried through as the matter of course which it really
was.  Lydgate began to feel this sort of consciousness unpleasant and
one day looked down, or anywhere, like an ill-worked puppet.  But this
turned out badly: the next day, Rosamond looked down, and the
consequence was that when their eyes met again, both were more
conscious than before.  There was no help for this in science, and as
Lydgate did not want to flirt, there seemed to be no help for it in
folly.  It was therefore a relief when neighbors no longer considered
the house in quarantine, and when the chances of seeing Rosamond alone
were very much reduced.

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the
other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to
be done away with.  Talk about the weather and other well-bred topics
is apt to seem a hollow device, and behavior can hardly become easy
unless it frankly recognizes a mutual fascination--which of course need
not mean anything deep or serious.  This was the way in which Rosamond
and Lydgate slid gracefully into ease, and made their intercourse
lively again.  Visitors came and went as usual, there was once more
music in the drawing-room, and all the extra hospitality of Mr. Vincy's
mayoralty returned.  Lydgate, whenever he could, took his seat by
Rosamond's side, and lingered to hear her music, calling himself her
captive--meaning, all the while, not to be her captive.  The
preposterousness of the notion that he could at once set up a
satisfactory establishment as a married man was a sufficient guarantee
against danger.  This play at being a little in love was agreeable, and
did not interfere with graver pursuits.  Flirtation, after all, was not
necessarily a singeing process.  Rosamond, for her part, had never
enjoyed the days so much in her life before: she was sure of being
admired by some one worth captivating, and she did not distinguish
flirtation from love, either in herself or in another.  She seemed to
be sailing with a fair wind just whither she would go, and her thoughts
were much occupied with a handsome house in Lowick Gate which she hoped
would by-and-by be vacant.  She was quite determined, when she was
married, to rid herself adroitly of all the visitors who were not
agreeable to her at her father's; and she imagined the drawing-room in
her favorite house with various styles of furniture.

Certainly her thoughts were much occupied with Lydgate himself; he
seemed to her almost perfect: if he had known his notes so that his
enchantment under her music had been less like an emotional elephant's,
and if he had been able to discriminate better the refinements of her
taste in dress, she could hardly have mentioned a deficiency in him.
How different he was from young Plymdale or Mr. Caius Larcher!  Those
young men had not a notion of French, and could speak on no subject
with striking knowledge, except perhaps the dyeing and carrying trades,
which of course they were ashamed to mention; they were Middlemarch
gentry, elated with their silver-headed whips and satin stocks, but
embarrassed in their manners, and timidly jocose: even Fred was above
them, having at least the accent and manner of a university man.
Whereas Lydgate was always listened to, bore himself with the careless
politeness of conscious superiority, and seemed to have the right
clothes on by a certain natural affinity, without ever having to think
about them.  Rosamond was proud when he entered the room, and when he
approached her with a distinguishing smile, she had a delicious sense
that she was the object of enviable homage.  If Lydgate had been aware
of all the pride he excited in that delicate bosom, he might have been
just as well pleased as any other man, even the most densely ignorant
of humoral pathology or fibrous tissue: he held it one of the prettiest
attitudes of the feminine mind to adore a man's pre-eminence without
too precise a knowledge of what it consisted in.  But Rosamond was not
one of those helpless girls who betray themselves unawares, and whose
behavior is awkwardly driven by their impulses, instead of being
steered by wary grace and propriety.  Do you imagine that her rapid
forecast and rumination concerning house-furniture and society were
ever discernible in her conversation, even with her mamma?  On the
contrary, she would have expressed the prettiest surprise and
disapprobation if she had heard that another young lady had been
detected in that immodest prematureness--indeed, would probably have
disbelieved in its possibility.  For Rosamond never showed any
unbecoming knowledge, and was always that combination of correct
sentiments, music, dancing, drawing, elegant note-writing, private
album for extracted verse, and perfect blond loveliness, which made the
irresistible woman for the doomed man of that date.  Think no unfair
evil of her, pray: she had no wicked plots, nothing sordid or
mercenary; in fact, she never thought of money except as something
necessary which other people would always provide.  She was not in the
habit of devising falsehoods, and if her statements were no direct clew
to fact, why, they were not intended in that light--they were among
her elegant accomplishments, intended to please.  Nature had inspired
many arts in finishing Mrs. Lemon's favorite pupil, who by general
consent (Fred's excepted) was a rare compound of beauty, cleverness,
and amiability.

Lydgate found it more and more agreeable to be with her, and there was
no constraint now, there was a delightful interchange of influence in
their eyes, and what they said had that superfluity of meaning for
them, which is observable with some sense of flatness by a third
person; still they had no interviews or asides from which a third
person need have been excluded.  In fact, they flirted; and Lydgate was
secure in the belief that they did nothing else.  If a man could not
love and be wise, surely he could flirt and be wise at the same time?
Really, the men in Middlemarch, except Mr. Farebrother, were great
bores, and Lydgate did not care about commercial politics or cards:
what was he to do for relaxation?  He was often invited to the
Bulstrodes'; but the girls there were hardly out of the schoolroom; and
Mrs. Bulstrode's _naive_ way of conciliating piety and worldliness, the
nothingness of this life and the desirability of cut glass, the
consciousness at once of filthy rags and the best damask, was not a
sufficient relief from the weight of her husband's invariable
seriousness.  The Vincys' house, with all its faults, was the
pleasanter by contrast; besides, it nourished Rosamond--sweet to look
at as a half-opened blush-rose, and adorned with accomplishments for
the refined amusement of man.

But he made some enemies, other than medical, by his success with Miss
Vincy.  One evening he came into the drawing-room rather late, when
several other visitors were there.  The card-table had drawn off the
elders, and Mr. Ned Plymdale (one of the good matches in Middlemarch,
though not one of its leading minds) was in tete-a-tete with Rosamond.
He had brought the last "Keepsake," the gorgeous watered-silk
publication which marked modern progress at that time; and he
considered himself very fortunate that he could be the first to look
over it with her, dwelling on the ladies and gentlemen with shiny
copper-plate cheeks and copper-plate smiles, and pointing to comic
verses as capital and sentimental stories as interesting.  Rosamond was
gracious, and Mr. Ned was satisfied that he had the very best thing in
art and literature as a medium for "paying addresses"--the very thing
to please a nice girl.  He had also reasons, deep rather than
ostensible, for being satisfied with his own appearance.  To
superficial observers his chin had too vanishing an aspect, looking as
if it were being gradually reabsorbed.  And it did indeed cause him
some difficulty about the fit of his satin stocks, for which chins were
at that time useful.

"I think the Honorable Mrs. S. is something like you," said Mr. Ned.
He kept the book open at the bewitching portrait, and looked at it
rather languishingly.

"Her back is very large; she seems to have sat for that," said
Rosamond, not meaning any satire, but thinking how red young Plymdale's
hands were, and wondering why Lydgate did not come.  She went on with
her tatting all the while.

"I did not say she was as beautiful as you are," said Mr. Ned,
venturing to look from the portrait to its rival.

"I suspect you of being an adroit flatterer," said Rosamond, feeling
sure that she should have to reject this young gentleman a second time.

But now Lydgate came in; the book was closed before he reached
Rosamond's corner, and as he took his seat with easy confidence on the
other side of her, young Plymdale's jaw fell like a barometer towards
the cheerless side of change.  Rosamond enjoyed not only Lydgate's
presence but its effect: she liked to excite jealousy.

"What a late comer you are!" she said, as they shook hands.  "Mamma had
given you up a little while ago.  How do you find Fred?"

"As usual; going on well, but slowly.  I want him to go away--to Stone
Court, for example.  But your mamma seems to have some objection."

"Poor fellow!" said Rosamond, prettily.  "You will see Fred so
changed," she added, turning to the other suitor; "we have looked to
Mr. Lydgate as our guardian angel during this illness."

Mr. Ned smiled nervously, while Lydgate, drawing the "Keepsake" towards
him and opening it, gave a short scornful laugh and tossed up his
chin, as if in wonderment at human folly.

"What are you laughing at so profanely?" said Rosamond, with bland
neutrality.

"I wonder which would turn out to be the silliest--the engravings or
the writing here," said Lydgate, in his most convinced tone, while he
turned over the pages quickly, seeming to see all through the book in
no time, and showing his large white hands to much advantage, as
Rosamond thought.  "Do look at this bridegroom coming out of church:
did you ever see such a 'sugared invention'--as the Elizabethans used
to say?  Did any haberdasher ever look so smirking?  Yet I will answer
for it the story makes him one of the first gentlemen in the land."

"You are so severe, I am frightened at you," said Rosamond, keeping her
amusement duly moderate.  Poor young Plymdale had lingered with
admiration over this very engraving, and his spirit was stirred.

"There are a great many celebrated people writing in the 'Keepsake,' at
all events," he said, in a tone at once piqued and timid.  "This is the
first time I have heard it called silly."

"I think I shall turn round on you and accuse you of being a Goth,"
said Rosamond, looking at Lydgate with a smile.  "I suspect you know
nothing about Lady Blessington and L. E. L." Rosamond herself was not
without relish for these writers, but she did not readily commit
herself by admiration, and was alive to the slightest hint that
anything was not, according to Lydgate, in the very highest taste.

"But Sir Walter Scott--I suppose Mr. Lydgate knows him," said young
Plymdale, a little cheered by this advantage.

"Oh, I read no literature now," said Lydgate, shutting the book, and
pushing it away.  "I read so much when I was a lad, that I suppose it
will last me all my life.  I used to know Scott's poems by heart."

"I should like to know when you left off," said Rosamond, "because then
I might be sure that I knew something which you did not know."

"Mr. Lydgate would say that was not worth knowing," said Mr. Ned,
purposely caustic.

"On the contrary," said Lydgate, showing no smart; but smiling with
exasperating confidence at Rosamond.  "It would be worth knowing by the
fact that Miss Vincy could tell it me."

Young Plymdale soon went to look at the whist-playing, thinking that
Lydgate was one of the most conceited, unpleasant fellows it had ever
been his ill-fortune to meet.

"How rash you are!" said Rosamond, inwardly delighted.  "Do you see
that you have given offence?"

"What! is it Mr. Plymdale's book?  I am sorry.  I didn't think about
it."

"I shall begin to admit what you said of yourself when you first came
here--that you are a bear, and want teaching by the birds."

"Well, there is a bird who can teach me what she will.  Don't I listen
to her willingly?"

To Rosamond it seemed as if she and Lydgate were as good as engaged.
That they were some time to be engaged had long been an idea in her
mind; and ideas, we know, tend to a more solid kind of existence, the
necessary materials being at hand.  It is true, Lydgate had the
counter-idea of remaining unengaged; but this was a mere negative, a
shadow cast by other resolves which themselves were capable of
shrinking.  Circumstance was almost sure to be on the side of
Rosamond's idea, which had a shaping activity and looked through
watchful blue eyes, whereas Lydgate's lay blind and unconcerned as a
jelly-fish which gets melted without knowing it.

That evening when he went home, he looked at his phials to see how a
process of maceration was going on, with undisturbed interest; and he
wrote out his daily notes with as much precision as usual.  The
reveries from which it was difficult for him to detach himself were
ideal constructions of something else than Rosamond's virtues, and the
primitive tissue was still his fair unknown.  Moreover, he was
beginning to feel some zest for the growing though half-suppressed feud
between him and the other medical men, which was likely to become more
manifest, now that Bulstrode's method of managing the new hospital was
about to be declared; and there were various inspiriting signs that his
non-acceptance by some of Peacock's patients might be counterbalanced
by the impression he had produced in other quarters.  Only a few days
later, when he had happened to overtake Rosamond on the Lowick road and
had got down from his horse to walk by her side until he had quite
protected her from a passing drove, he had been stopped by a servant on
horseback with a message calling him in to a house of some importance
where Peacock had never attended; and it was the second instance of
this kind.  The servant was Sir James Chettam's, and the house was
Lowick Manor.



    1st Gent.  All times are good to seek your wedded home
                   Bringing a mutual delight.

    2d Gent.                          Why, true.
                   The calendar hath not an evil day
                   For souls made one by love, and even death
                   Were sweetness, if it came like rolling waves
                   While they two clasped each other, and foresaw
                   No life apart.


Mr. and Mrs. Casaubon, returning from their wedding journey, arrived at
Lowick Manor in the middle of January.  A light snow was falling as
they descended at the door, and in the morning, when Dorothea passed
from her dressing-room avenue the blue-green boudoir that we know of,
she saw the long avenue of limes lifting their trunks from a white
earth, and spreading white branches against the dun and motionless sky.
The distant flat shrank in uniform whiteness and low-hanging uniformity
of cloud.  The very furniture in the room seemed to have shrunk since
she saw it before: the stag in the tapestry looked more like a ghost in
his ghostly blue-green world; the volumes of polite literature in the
bookcase looked more like immovable imitations of books.  The bright
fire of dry oak-boughs burning on the logs seemed an incongruous
renewal of life and glow--like the figure of Dorothea herself as she
entered carrying the red-leather cases containing the cameos for Celia.

She was glowing from her morning toilet as only healthful youth can
glow: there was gem-like brightness on her coiled hair and in her hazel
eyes; there was warm red life in her lips; her throat had a breathing
whiteness above the differing white of the fur which itself seemed to
wind about her neck and cling down her blue-gray pelisse with a
tenderness gathered from her own, a sentient commingled innocence which
kept its loveliness against the crystalline purity of the outdoor snow.
As she laid the cameo-cases on the table in the bow-window, she
unconsciously kept her hands on them, immediately absorbed in looking
out on the still, white enclosure which made her visible world.

Mr. Casaubon, who had risen early complaining of palpitation, was in
the library giving audience to his curate Mr. Tucker.  By-and-by Celia
would come in her quality of bridesmaid as well as sister, and through
the next weeks there would be wedding visits received and given; all in
continuance of that transitional life understood to correspond with the
excitement of bridal felicity, and keeping up the sense of busy
ineffectiveness, as of a dream which the dreamer begins to suspect.
The duties of her married life, contemplated as so great beforehand,
seemed to be shrinking with the furniture and the white vapor-walled
landscape.  The clear heights where she expected to walk in full
communion had become difficult to see even in her imagination; the
delicious repose of the soul on a complete superior had been shaken
into uneasy effort and alarmed with dim presentiment.  When would the
days begin of that active wifely devotion which was to strengthen her
husband's life and exalt her own?  Never perhaps, as she had
preconceived them; but somehow--still somehow.  In this solemnly
pledged union of her life, duty would present itself in some new form
of inspiration and give a new meaning to wifely love.

Meanwhile there was the snow and the low arch of dun vapor--there was
the stifling oppression of that gentlewoman's world, where everything
was done for her and none asked for her aid--where the sense of
connection with a manifold pregnant existence had to be kept up
painfully as an inward vision, instead of coming from without in claims
that would have shaped her energies.--  "What shall I do?"  "Whatever you
please, my dear:" that had been her brief history since she had left
off learning morning lessons and practising silly rhythms on the hated
piano.  Marriage, which was to bring guidance into worthy and
imperative occupation, had not yet freed her from the gentlewoman's
oppressive liberty: it had not even filled her leisure with the
ruminant joy of unchecked tenderness.  Her blooming full-pulsed youth
stood there in a moral imprisonment which made itself one with the
chill, colorless, narrowed landscape, with the shrunken furniture, the
never-read books, and the ghostly stag in a pale fantastic world that
seemed to be vanishing from the daylight.

In the first minutes when Dorothea looked out she felt nothing but the
dreary oppression; then came a keen remembrance, and turning away from
the window she walked round the room.  The ideas and hopes which were
living in her mind when she first saw this room nearly three months
before were present now only as memories: she judged them as we judge
transient and departed things.  All existence seemed to beat with a
lower pulse than her own, and her religious faith was a solitary cry,
the struggle out of a nightmare in which every object was withering and
shrinking away from her.  Each remembered thing in the room was
disenchanted, was deadened as an unlit transparency, till her wandering
gaze came to the group of miniatures, and there at last she saw
something which had gathered new breath and meaning: it was the
miniature of Mr. Casaubon's aunt Julia, who had made the unfortunate
marriage--of Will Ladislaw's grandmother.  Dorothea could fancy that
it was alive now--the delicate woman's face which yet had a headstrong
look, a peculiarity difficult to interpret.  Was it only her friends
who thought her marriage unfortunate? or did she herself find it out to
be a mistake, and taste the salt bitterness of her tears in the
merciful silence of the night?  What breadths of experience Dorothea
seemed to have passed over since she first looked at this miniature!
She felt a new companionship with it, as if it had an ear for her and
could see how she was looking at it.  Here was a woman who had known
some difficulty about marriage.  Nay, the colors deepened, the lips and
chin seemed to get larger, the hair and eyes seemed to be sending out
light, the face was masculine and beamed on her with that full gaze
which tells her on whom it falls that she is too interesting for the
slightest movement of her eyelid to pass unnoticed and uninterpreted.
The vivid presentation came like a pleasant glow to Dorothea: she felt
herself smiling, and turning from the miniature sat down and looked up
as if she were again talking to a figure in front of her.  But the
smile disappeared as she went on meditating, and at last she said
aloud--

"Oh, it was cruel to speak so!  How sad--how dreadful!"

She rose quickly and went out of the room, hurrying along the corridor,
with the irresistible impulse to go and see her husband and inquire if
she could do anything for him.  Perhaps Mr. Tucker was gone and Mr.
Casaubon was alone in the library.  She felt as if all her morning's
gloom would vanish if she could see her husband glad because of her
presence.

But when she reached the head of the dark oak there was Celia coming
up, and below there was Mr. Brooke, exchanging welcomes and
congratulations with Mr. Casaubon.

"Dodo!" said Celia, in her quiet staccato; then kissed her sister,
whose arms encircled her, and said no more.  I think they both cried a
little in a furtive manner, while Dorothea ran down-stairs to greet her
uncle.

"I need not ask how you are, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, after kissing
her forehead.  "Rome has agreed with you, I see--happiness, frescos,
the antique--that sort of thing.  Well, it's very pleasant to have you
back again, and you understand all about art now, eh?  But Casaubon is
a little pale, I tell him--a little pale, you know.  Studying hard in
his holidays is carrying it rather too far.  I overdid it at one
time"--Mr. Brooke still held Dorothea's hand, but had turned his face
to Mr. Casaubon--"about topography, ruins, temples--I thought I had a
clew, but I saw it would carry me too far, and nothing might come of
it.  You may go any length in that sort of thing, and nothing may come
of it, you know."

Dorothea's eyes also were turned up to her husband's face with some
anxiety at the idea that those who saw him afresh after absence might
be aware of signs which she had not noticed.

"Nothing to alarm you, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, observing her
expression.  "A little English beef and mutton will soon make a
difference.  It was all very well to look pale, sitting for the
portrait of Aquinas, you know--we got your letter just in time.  But
Aquinas, now--he was a little too subtle, wasn't he?  Does anybody read
Aquinas?"

"He is not indeed an author adapted to superficial minds," said Mr.
Casaubon, meeting these timely questions with dignified patience.

"You would like coffee in your own room, uncle?" said Dorothea, coming
to the rescue.

"Yes; and you must go to Celia: she has great news to tell you, you
know.  I leave it all to her."

The blue-green boudoir looked much more cheerful when Celia was seated
there in a pelisse exactly like her sister's, surveying the cameos with
a placid satisfaction, while the conversation passed on to other topics.

"Do you think it nice to go to Rome on a wedding journey?" said Celia,
with her ready delicate blush which Dorothea was used to on the
smallest occasions.

"It would not suit all--not you, dear, for example," said Dorothea,
quietly.  No one would ever know what she thought of a wedding journey
to Rome.

"Mrs. Cadwallader says it is nonsense, people going a long journey when
they are married.  She says they get tired to death of each other, and
can't quarrel comfortably, as they would at home.  And Lady Chettam
says she went to Bath."  Celia's color changed again and again--seemed

    "To come and go with tidings from the heart,
     As it a running messenger had been."

It must mean more than Celia's blushing usually did.

"Celia! has something happened?" said Dorothea, in a tone full of
sisterly feeling.  "Have you really any great news to tell me?"

"It was because you went away, Dodo.  Then there was nobody but me for
Sir James to talk to," said Celia, with a certain roguishness in her
eyes.

"I understand.  It is as I used to hope and believe," said Dorothea,
taking her sister's face between her hands, and looking at her half
anxiously.  Celia's marriage seemed more serious than it used to do.

"It was only three days ago," said Celia.  "And Lady Chettam is very
kind."

"And you are very happy?"

"Yes.  We are not going to be married yet.  Because every thing is to
be got ready.  And I don't want to be married so very soon, because I
think it is nice to be engaged.  And we shall be married all our lives
after."

"I do believe you could not marry better, Kitty.  Sir James is a good,
honorable man," said Dorothea, warmly.

"He has gone on with the cottages, Dodo.  He will tell you about them
when he comes.  Shall you be glad to see him?"

"Of course I shall.  How can you ask me?"

"Only I was afraid you would be getting so learned," said Celia,
regarding Mr. Casaubon's learning as a kind of damp which might in due
time saturate a neighboring body.



    "I found that no genius in another could please me.  My
    unfortunate paradoxes had entirely dried up that source of
    comfort."--GOLDSMITH.


One morning, some weeks after her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea--but why
always Dorothea?  Was her point of view the only possible one with
regard to this marriage?  I protest against all our interest, all our
effort at understanding being given to the young skins that look
blooming in spite of trouble; for these too will get faded, and will
know the older and more eating griefs which we are helping to neglect.
In spite of the blinking eyes and white moles objectionable to Celia,
and the want of muscular curve which was morally painful to Sir James,
Mr. Casaubon had an intense consciousness within him, and was
spiritually a-hungered like the rest of us.  He had done nothing
exceptional in marrying--nothing but what society sanctions, and
considers an occasion for wreaths and bouquets.  It had occurred to him
that he must not any longer defer his intention of matrimony, and he
had reflected that in taking a wife, a man of good position should
expect and carefully choose a blooming young lady--the younger the
better, because more educable and submissive--of a rank equal to his
own, of religious principles, virtuous disposition, and good
understanding.  On such a young lady he would make handsome
settlements, and he would neglect no arrangement for her happiness: in
return, he should receive family pleasures and leave behind him that
copy of himself which seemed so urgently required of a man--to the
sonneteers of the sixteenth century.  Times had altered since then, and
no sonneteer had insisted on Mr. Casaubon's leaving a copy of himself;
moreover, he had not yet succeeded in issuing copies of his
mythological key; but he had always intended to acquit himself by
marriage, and the sense that he was fast leaving the years behind him,
that the world was getting dimmer and that he felt lonely, was a reason
to him for losing no more time in overtaking domestic delights before
they too were left behind by the years.

And when he had seen Dorothea he believed that he had found even more
than he demanded: she might really be such a helpmate to him as would
enable him to dispense with a hired secretary, an aid which Mr.
Casaubon had never yet employed and had a suspicious dread of.  (Mr.
Casaubon was nervously conscious that he was expected to manifest a
powerful mind.)  Providence, in its kindness, had supplied him with the
wife he needed.  A wife, a modest young lady, with the purely
appreciative, unambitious abilities of her sex, is sure to think her
husband's mind powerful.  Whether Providence had taken equal care of
Miss Brooke in presenting her with Mr. Casaubon was an idea which could
hardly occur to him.  Society never made the preposterous demand that a
man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a
charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy.  As
if a man could choose not only his wife but his wife's husband!  Or as
if he were bound to provide charms for his posterity in his own
person!--  When Dorothea accepted him with effusion, that was only
natural; and Mr. Casaubon believed that his happiness was going to
begin.

He had not had much foretaste of happiness in his previous life.  To
know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an
enthusiastic soul.  Mr. Casaubon had never had a strong bodily frame,
and his soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too
languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight; it
went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking
of its wings and never flying.  His experience was of that pitiable
kind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of all that it should be
known: it was that proud narrow sensitiveness which has not mass enough
to spare for transformation into sympathy, and quivers thread-like in
small currents of self-preoccupation or at best of an egoistic
scrupulosity.  And Mr. Casaubon had many scruples: he was capable of a
severe self-restraint; he was resolute in being a man of honor
according to the code; he would be unimpeachable by any recognized
opinion.  In conduct these ends had been attained; but the difficulty
of making his Key to all Mythologies unimpeachable weighed like lead
upon his mind; and the pamphlets--or "Parerga" as he called them--by
which he tested his public and deposited small monumental records of
his march, were far from having been seen in all their significance.
He suspected the Archdeacon of not having read them; he was in painful
doubt as to what was really thought of them by the leading minds of
Brasenose, and bitterly convinced that his old acquaintance Carp had
been the writer of that depreciatory recension which was kept locked in
a small drawer of Mr. Casaubon's desk, and also in a dark closet of his
verbal memory.  These were heavy impressions to struggle against, and
brought that melancholy embitterment which is the consequence of all
excessive claim: even his religious faith wavered with his wavering
trust in his own authorship, and the consolations of the Christian hope
in immortality seemed to lean on the immortality of the still unwritten
Key to all Mythologies.  For my part I am very sorry for him.  It is an
uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to
enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be
liberated from a small hungry shivering self--never to be fully
possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness
rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardor of a
passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and
uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dim-sighted. Becoming a
dean or even a bishop would make little difference, I fear, to Mr.
Casaubon's uneasiness.  Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that
behind the big mask and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be our
poor little eyes peeping as usual and our timorous lips more or less
under anxious control.

To this mental estate mapped out a quarter of a century before, to
sensibilities thus fenced in, Mr. Casaubon had thought of annexing
happiness with a lovely young bride; but even before marriage, as we
have seen, he found himself under a new depression in the consciousness
that the new bliss was not blissful to him.  Inclination yearned back
to its old, easier custom.  And the deeper he went in domesticity the
more did the sense of acquitting himself and acting with propriety
predominate over any other satisfaction.  Marriage, like religion and
erudition, nay, like authorship itself, was fated to become an outward
requirement, and Edward Casaubon was bent on fulfilling unimpeachably
all requirements.  Even drawing Dorothea into use in his study,
according to his own intention before marriage, was an effort which he
was always tempted to defer, and but for her pleading insistence it
might never have begun.  But she had succeeded in making it a matter of
course that she should take her place at an early hour in the library
and have work either of reading aloud or copying assigned her.  The
work had been easier to define because Mr. Casaubon had adopted an
immediate intention: there was to be a new Parergon, a small monograph
on some lately traced indications concerning the Egyptian mysteries
whereby certain assertions of Warburton's could be corrected.
References were extensive even here, but not altogether shoreless; and
sentences were actually to be written in the shape wherein they would
be scanned by Brasenose and a less formidable posterity.  These minor
monumental productions were always exciting to Mr. Casaubon; digestion
was made difficult by the interference of citations, or by the rivalry
of dialectical phrases ringing against each other in his brain.  And
from the first there was to be a Latin dedication about which
everything was uncertain except that it was not to be addressed to
Carp: it was a poisonous regret to Mr. Casaubon that he had once
addressed a dedication to Carp in which he had numbered that member of
the animal kingdom among the viros nullo aevo perituros, a mistake
which would infallibly lay the dedicator open to ridicule in the next
age, and might even be chuckled over by Pike and Tench in the present.

Thus Mr. Casaubon was in one of his busiest epochs, and as I began to
say a little while ago, Dorothea joined him early in the library where
he had breakfasted alone.  Celia at this time was on a second visit to
Lowick, probably the last before her marriage, and was in the
drawing-room expecting Sir James.

Dorothea had learned to read the signs of her husband's mood, and she
saw that the morning had become more foggy there during the last hour.
She was going silently to her desk when he said, in that distant tone
which implied that he was discharging a disagreeable duty--

"Dorothea, here is a letter for you, which was enclosed in one
addressed to me."

It was a letter of two pages, and she immediately looked at the
signature.

"Mr. Ladislaw!  What can he have to say to me?" she exclaimed, in a
tone of pleased surprise.  "But," she added, looking at Mr. Casaubon,
"I can imagine what he has written to you about."

"You can, if you please, read the letter," said Mr. Casaubon, severely
pointing to it with his pen, and not looking at her.  "But I may as
well say beforehand, that I must decline the proposal it contains to
pay a visit here.  I trust I may be excused for desiring an interval of
complete freedom from such distractions as have been hitherto
inevitable, and especially from guests whose desultory vivacity makes
their presence a fatigue."

There had been no clashing of temper between Dorothea and her husband
since that little explosion in Rome, which had left such strong traces
in her mind that it had been easier ever since to quell emotion than to
incur the consequence of venting it.  But this ill-tempered
anticipation that she could desire visits which might be disagreeable
to her husband, this gratuitous defence of himself against selfish
complaint on her part, was too sharp a sting to be meditated on until
after it had been resented.  Dorothea had thought that she could have
been patient with John Milton, but she had never imagined him behaving
in this way; and for a moment Mr. Casaubon seemed to be stupidly
undiscerning and odiously unjust.  Pity, that "new-born babe" which was
by-and-by to rule many a storm within her, did not "stride the blast"
on this occasion.  With her first words, uttered in a tone that shook
him, she startled Mr. Casaubon into looking at her, and meeting the
flash of her eyes.

"Why do you attribute to me a wish for anything that would annoy you?
You speak to me as if I were something you had to contend against.
Wait at least till I appear to consult my own pleasure apart from
yours."

"Dorothea, you are hasty," answered Mr. Casaubon, nervously.

Decidedly, this woman was too young to be on the formidable level of
wifehood--unless she had been pale and featureless and taken
everything for granted.

"I think it was you who were first hasty in your false suppositions
about my feeling," said Dorothea, in the same tone.  The fire was not
dissipated yet, and she thought it was ignoble in her husband not to
apologize to her.

"We will, if you please, say no more on this subject, Dorothea.  I have
neither leisure nor energy for this kind of debate."

Here Mr. Casaubon dipped his pen and made as if he would return to his
writing, though his hand trembled so much that the words seemed to be
written in an unknown character.  There are answers which, in turning
away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a
discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own
side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.

Dorothea left Ladislaw's two letters unread on her husband's
writing-table and went to her own place, the scorn and indignation
within her rejecting the reading of these letters, just as we hurl away
any trash towards which we seem to have been suspected of mean
cupidity.  She did not in the least divine the subtle sources of her
husband's bad temper about these letters: she only knew that they had
caused him to offend her.  She began to work at once, and her hand did
not tremble; on the contrary, in writing out the quotations which had
been given to her the day before, she felt that she was forming her
letters beautifully, and it seemed to her that she saw the construction
of the Latin she was copying, and which she was beginning to
understand, more clearly than usual.  In her indignation there was a
sense of superiority, but it went out for the present in firmness of
stroke, and did not compress itself into an inward articulate voice
pronouncing the once "affable archangel" a poor creature.

There had been this apparent quiet for half an hour, and Dorothea had
not looked away from her own table, when she heard the loud bang of a
book on the floor, and turning quickly saw Mr. Casaubon on the library
steps clinging forward as if he were in some bodily distress.  She
started up and bounded towards him in an instant: he was evidently in
great straits for breath.  Jumping on a stool she got close to his
elbow and said with her whole soul melted into tender alarm--

"Can you lean on me, dear?"

He was still for two or three minutes, which seemed endless to her,
unable to speak or move, gasping for breath.  When at last he descended
the three steps and fell backward in the large chair which Dorothea had
drawn close to the foot of the ladder, he no longer gasped but seemed
helpless and about to faint.  Dorothea rang the bell violently, and
presently Mr. Casaubon was helped to the couch: he did not faint, and
was gradually reviving, when Sir James Chettam came in, having been met
in the hall with the news that Mr. Casaubon had "had a fit in the
library."

"Good God! this is just what might have been expected," was his
immediate thought.  If his prophetic soul had been urged to
particularize, it seemed to him that "fits" would have been the
definite expression alighted upon.  He asked his informant, the butler,
whether the doctor had been sent for.  The butler never knew his master
to want the doctor before; but would it not be right to send for a
physician?

When Sir James entered the library, however, Mr. Casaubon could make
some signs of his usual politeness, and Dorothea, who in the reaction
from her first terror had been kneeling and sobbing by his side now
rose and herself proposed that some one should ride off for a medical
man.

"I recommend you to send for Lydgate," said Sir James.  "My mother has
called him in, and she has found him uncommonly clever.  She has had a
poor opinion of the physicians since my father's death."

Dorothea appealed to her husband, and he made a silent sign of
approval.  So Mr. Lydgate was sent for and he came wonderfully soon,
for the messenger, who was Sir James Chettam's man and knew Mr.
Lydgate, met him leading his horse along the Lowick road and giving his
arm to Miss Vincy.

Celia, in the drawing-room, had known nothing of the trouble till Sir
James told her of it.  After Dorothea's account, he no longer
considered the illness a fit, but still something "of that nature."

"Poor dear Dodo--how dreadful!" said Celia, feeling as much grieved as
her own perfect happiness would allow.  Her little hands were clasped,
and enclosed by Sir James's as a bud is enfolded by a liberal calyx.
"It is very shocking that Mr. Casaubon should be ill; but I never did
like him.  And I think he is not half fond enough of Dorothea; and he
ought to be, for I am sure no one else would have had him--do you
think they would?"

"I always thought it a horrible sacrifice of your sister," said Sir
James.

"Yes.  But poor Dodo never did do what other people do, and I think she
never will."

"She is a noble creature," said the loyal-hearted Sir James.  He had
just had a fresh impression of this kind, as he had seen Dorothea
stretching her tender arm under her husband's neck and looking at him
with unspeakable sorrow.  He did not know how much penitence there was
in the sorrow.

"Yes," said Celia, thinking it was very well for Sir James to say so,
but _he_ would not have been comfortable with Dodo.  "Shall I go to
her?  Could I help her, do you think?"

"I think it would be well for you just to go and see her before Lydgate
comes," said Sir James, magnanimously.  "Only don't stay long."

While Celia was gone he walked up and down remembering what he had
originally felt about Dorothea's engagement, and feeling a revival of
his disgust at Mr. Brooke's indifference.  If Cadwallader--if every
one else had regarded the affair as he, Sir James, had done, the
marriage might have been hindered.  It was wicked to let a young girl
blindly decide her fate in that way, without any effort to save her.
Sir James had long ceased to have any regrets on his own account: his
heart was satisfied with his engagement to Celia.  But he had a
chivalrous nature (was not the disinterested service of woman among the
ideal glories of old chivalry?): his disregarded love had not turned to
bitterness; its death had made sweet odors--floating memories that
clung with a consecrating effect to Dorothea.  He could remain her
brotherly friend, interpreting her actions with generous trustfulness.



    "Qui veut delasser hors de propos, lasse."--PASCAL.


Mr. Casaubon had no second attack of equal severity with the first, and
in a few days began to recover his usual condition.  But Lydgate seemed
to think the case worth a great deal of attention.  He not only used
his stethoscope (which had not become a matter of course in practice at
that time), but sat quietly by his patient and watched him.  To Mr.
Casaubon's questions about himself, he replied that the source of the
illness was the common error of intellectual men--a too eager and
monotonous application: the remedy was, to be satisfied with moderate
work, and to seek variety of relaxation.  Mr. Brooke, who sat by on one
occasion, suggested that Mr. Casaubon should go fishing, as Cadwallader
did, and have a turning-room, make toys, table-legs, and that kind of
thing.

"In short, you recommend me to anticipate the arrival of my second
childhood," said poor Mr. Casaubon, with some bitterness.  "These
things," he added, looking at Lydgate, "would be to me such relaxation
as tow-picking is to prisoners in a house of correction."

"I confess," said Lydgate, smiling, "amusement is rather an
unsatisfactory prescription.  It is something like telling people to
keep up their spirits.  Perhaps I had better say, that you must submit
to be mildly bored rather than to go on working."

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Brooke.  "Get Dorothea to play backgammon with you
in the evenings.  And shuttlecock, now--I don't know a finer game than
shuttlecock for the daytime.  I remember it all the fashion.  To be
sure, your eyes might not stand that, Casaubon.  But you must unbend,
you know.  Why, you might take to some light study: conchology, now: I
always think that must be a light study.  Or get Dorothea to read you
light things, Smollett--'Roderick Random,' 'Humphrey Clinker:'  they
are a little broad, but she may read anything now she's married, you
know.  I remember they made me laugh uncommonly--there's a droll bit
about a postilion's breeches.  We have no such humor now.  I have gone
through all these things, but they might be rather new to you."

"As new as eating thistles," would have been an answer to represent Mr.
Casaubon's feelings.  But he only bowed resignedly, with due respect to
his wife's uncle, and observed that doubtless the works he mentioned
had "served as a resource to a certain order of minds."

"You see," said the able magistrate to Lydgate, when they were outside
the door, "Casaubon has been a little narrow: it leaves him rather at a
loss when you forbid him his particular work, which I believe is
something very deep indeed--in the line of research, you know.  I would
never give way to that; I was always versatile.  But a clergyman is
tied a little tight.  If they would make him a bishop, now!--he did a
very good pamphlet for Peel.  He would have more movement then, more
show; he might get a little flesh.  But I recommend you to talk to Mrs.
Casaubon.  She is clever enough for anything, is my niece.  Tell her,
her husband wants liveliness, diversion: put her on amusing tactics."

Without Mr. Brooke's advice, Lydgate had determined on speaking to
Dorothea.  She had not been present while her uncle was throwing out
his pleasant suggestions as to the mode in which life at Lowick might
be enlivened, but she was usually by her husband's side, and the
unaffected signs of intense anxiety in her face and voice about
whatever touched his mind or health, made a drama which Lydgate was
inclined to watch.  He said to himself that he was only doing right in
telling her the truth about her husband's probable future, but he
certainly thought also that it would be interesting to talk
confidentially with her.  A medical man likes to make psychological
observations, and sometimes in the pursuit of such studies is too
easily tempted into momentous prophecy which life and death easily set
at nought.  Lydgate had often been satirical on this gratuitous
prediction, and he meant now to be guarded.

He asked for Mrs. Casaubon, but being told that she was out walking, he
was going away, when Dorothea and Celia appeared, both glowing from
their struggle with the March wind.  When Lydgate begged to speak with
her alone, Dorothea opened the library door which happened to be the
nearest, thinking of nothing at the moment but what he might have to
say about Mr. Casaubon.  It was the first time she had entered this
room since her husband had been taken ill, and the servant had chosen
not to open the shutters.  But there was light enough to read by from
the narrow upper panes of the windows.

"You will not mind this sombre light," said Dorothea, standing in the
middle of the room.  "Since you forbade books, the library has been out
of the question.  But Mr. Casaubon will soon be here again, I hope.  Is
he not making progress?"

"Yes, much more rapid progress than I at first expected.  Indeed, he is
already nearly in his usual state of health."

"You do not fear that the illness will return?" said Dorothea, whose
quick ear had detected some significance in Lydgate's tone.

"Such cases are peculiarly difficult to pronounce upon," said Lydgate.
"The only point on which I can be confident is that it will be
desirable to be very watchful on Mr. Casaubon's account, lest he should
in any way strain his nervous power."

"I beseech you to speak quite plainly," said Dorothea, in an imploring
tone.  "I cannot bear to think that there might be something which I
did not know, and which, if I had known it, would have made me act
differently."  The words came out like a cry: it was evident that they
were the voice of some mental experience which lay not very far off.

"Sit down," she added, placing herself on the nearest chair, and
throwing off her bonnet and gloves, with an instinctive discarding of
formality where a great question of destiny was concerned.

"What you say now justifies my own view," said Lydgate.  "I think it is
one's function as a medical man to hinder regrets of that sort as far
as possible.  But I beg you to observe that Mr. Casaubon's case is
precisely of the kind in which the issue is most difficult to pronounce
upon.  He may possibly live for fifteen years or more, without much
worse health than he has had hitherto."

Dorothea had turned very pale, and when Lydgate paused she said in a
low voice, "You mean if we are very careful."

"Yes--careful against mental agitation of all kinds, and against
excessive application."

"He would be miserable, if he had to give up his work," said Dorothea,
with a quick prevision of that wretchedness.

"I am aware of that.  The only course is to try by all means, direct
and indirect, to moderate and vary his occupations.  With a happy
concurrence of circumstances, there is, as I said, no immediate danger
from that affection of the heart, which I believe to have been the
cause of his late attack.  On the other hand, it is possible that the
disease may develop itself more rapidly: it is one of those cases in
which death is sometimes sudden.  Nothing should be neglected which
might be affected by such an issue."

There was silence for a few moments, while Dorothea sat as if she had
been turned to marble, though the life within her was so intense that
her mind had never before swept in brief time over an equal range of
scenes and motives.

"Help me, pray," she said, at last, in the same low voice as before.
"Tell me what I can do."

"What do you think of foreign travel?  You have been lately in Rome, I
think."

The memories which made this resource utterly hopeless were a new
current that shook Dorothea out of her pallid immobility.

"Oh, that would not do--that would be worse than anything," she said
with a more childlike despondency, while the tears rolled down.
"Nothing will be of any use that he does not enjoy."

"I wish that I could have spared you this pain," said Lydgate, deeply
touched, yet wondering about her marriage.  Women just like Dorothea
had not entered into his traditions.

"It was right of you to tell me.  I thank you for telling me the truth."

"I wish you to understand that I shall not say anything to enlighten
Mr. Casaubon himself.  I think it desirable for him to know nothing
more than that he must not overwork himself, and must observe certain
rules.  Anxiety of any kind would be precisely the most unfavorable
condition for him."

Lydgate rose, and Dorothea mechanically rose at the same time,
unclasping her cloak and throwing it off as if it stifled her.  He was
bowing and quitting her, when an impulse which if she had been alone
would have turned into a prayer, made her say with a sob in her voice--

"Oh, you are a wise man, are you not?  You know all about life and
death.  Advise me.  Think what I can do.  He has been laboring all his
life and looking forward.  He minds about nothing else.--  And I mind
about nothing else--"

For years after Lydgate remembered the impression produced in him by
this involuntary appeal--this cry from soul to soul, without other
consciousness than their moving with kindred natures in the same
embroiled medium, the same troublous fitfully illuminated life.  But
what could he say now except that he should see Mr. Casaubon again
to-morrow?

When he was gone, Dorothea's tears gushed forth, and relieved her
stifling oppression.  Then she dried her eyes, reminded that her
distress must not be betrayed to her husband; and looked round the room
thinking that she must order the servant to attend to it as usual,
since Mr. Casaubon might now at any moment wish to enter.  On his
writing-table there were letters which had lain untouched since the
morning when he was taken ill, and among them, as Dorothea well
remembered, there were young Ladislaw's letters, the one addressed to
her still unopened.  The associations of these letters had been made
the more painful by that sudden attack of illness which she felt that
the agitation caused by her anger might have helped to bring on: it
would be time enough to read them when they were again thrust upon her,
and she had had no inclination to fetch them from the library.  But now
it occurred to her that they should be put out of her husband's sight:
whatever might have been the sources of his annoyance about them, he
must, if possible, not be annoyed again; and she ran her eyes first
over the letter addressed to him to assure herself whether or not it
would be necessary to write in order to hinder the offensive visit.

Will wrote from Rome, and began by saying that his obligations to Mr.
Casaubon were too deep for all thanks not to seem impertinent.  It was
plain that if he were not grateful, he must be the poorest-spirited
rascal who had ever found a generous friend.  To expand in wordy thanks
would be like saying, "I am honest." But Will had come to perceive that
his defects--defects which Mr. Casaubon had himself often pointed
to--needed for their correction that more strenuous position which his
relative's generosity had hitherto prevented from being inevitable.  He
trusted that he should make the best return, if return were possible,
by showing the effectiveness of the education for which he was
indebted, and by ceasing in future to need any diversion towards
himself of funds on which others might have a better claim.  He was
coming to England, to try his fortune, as many other young men were
obliged to do whose only capital was in their brains.  His friend
Naumann had desired him to take charge of the "Dispute"--the picture
painted for Mr. Casaubon, with whose permission, and Mrs. Casaubon's,
Will would convey it to Lowick in person.  A letter addressed to the
Poste Restante in Paris within the fortnight would hinder him, if
necessary, from arriving at an inconvenient moment.  He enclosed a
letter to Mrs. Casaubon in which he continued a discussion about art,
begun with her in Rome.

Opening her own letter Dorothea saw that it was a lively continuation
of his remonstrance with her fanatical sympathy and her want of sturdy
neutral delight in things as they were--an outpouring of his young
vivacity which it was impossible to read just now.  She had immediately
to consider what was to be done about the other letter: there was still
time perhaps to prevent Will from coming to Lowick.  Dorothea ended by
giving the letter to her uncle, who was still in the house, and begging
him to let Will know that Mr. Casaubon had been ill, and that his
health would not allow the reception of any visitors.

No one more ready than Mr. Brooke to write a letter: his only
difficulty was to write a short one, and his ideas in this case
expanded over the three large pages and the inward foldings.  He had
simply said to Dorothea--

"To be sure, I will write, my dear.  He's a very clever young
fellow--this young Ladislaw--I dare say will be a rising young man.
It's a good letter--marks his sense of things, you know.  However, I
will tell him about Casaubon."

But the end of Mr. Brooke's pen was a thinking organ, evolving
sentences, especially of a benevolent kind, before the rest of his mind
could well overtake them.  It expressed regrets and proposed remedies,
which, when Mr. Brooke read them, seemed felicitously
worded--surprisingly the right thing, and determined a sequel which he
had never before thought of.  In this case, his pen found it such a pity
young Ladislaw should not have come into the neighborhood just at
that time, in order that Mr. Brooke might make his acquaintance more
fully, and that they might go over the long-neglected Italian drawings
together--it also felt such an interest in a young man who was starting
in life with a stock of ideas--that by the end of the second page it
had persuaded Mr. Brooke to invite young Ladislaw, since he could not
be received at Lowick, to come to Tipton Grange.  Why not?  They could
find a great many things to do together, and this was a period of
peculiar growth--the political horizon was expanding, and--in short,
Mr. Brooke's pen went off into a little speech which it had lately
reported for that imperfectly edited organ the "Middlemarch Pioneer."
While Mr. Brooke was sealing this letter, he felt elated with an influx
of dim projects:--a young man capable of putting ideas into form, the
"Pioneer" purchased to clear the pathway for a new candidate, documents
utilized--who knew what might come of it all?  Since Celia was going to
marry immediately, it would be very pleasant to have a young fellow at
table with him, at least for a time.

But he went away without telling Dorothea what he had put into the
letter, for she was engaged with her husband, and--in fact, these
things were of no importance to her.

 The famous pierglass analogy sets the theme of how egotism leads us to interpret things as we want to see them. A polished steel pierglass is scratched in all directions, but the scratches seem to arrange themselves in concentric circles when you hold up a candle flame as a center of illumination. Such is the situation of Rosamond Vincy who believes Fred's illness and all events are for her benefit. She uses the opportunity of Lydgate's visits to her brother to flirt with the doctor. Lydgate gives in to this, believing it is just a flirtation, for he is not ready to marry. In Rosamond's mind, they are as good as engaged. The narrator says she is not wicked, but she is an actress, and likes to excite jealousy with rivals. Lydgate appears to her a cut above the local beaux, and she goes after him. . We view the newly married couple, the Casaubons at home at Lowick after the honeymoon. It is January and dreary inside the dark old house. Dorothea is the only thing alive in the landscape. Her world closes in around her as she fully understands the distance between her and her husband. Celia visits with her announcement of her engagement to Sir James. . The narrator makes a point of announcing a switch to Casaubon's point of view; why should only Dorothea's view count? He is spiritually hungry too. He had picked a young wife, thinking she would be more submissive. He did not want to be lonely. She would be helpmeet and secretary. He never thought of making her happy, only that she should admire him. His soul is sensitive without enthusiasm. He is proud, self-centered, and not sympathetic. His Key to All Mythologies weighs on his mind constantly. The narrator feels sorry for his small shivering self. Marriage is just one more outward requirement. . Every day Dorothea copies or reads for her husband. Then a letter comes from Will Ladislaw proposing a visit to them with the finished portrait of Casaubon. A private letter to her is enclosed in the one to both of them. Casaubon is so upset that he forbids the visit and will not discuss it with Dorothea. She does not imagine his jealousy. He collapses in what appears to be a heart attack and Lydgate is sent for. . Lydgate prescribes moderate activity and some form of amusement to avoid strain. Dorothea's uncle, Mr. Brooke, who is the comic relief, visits and proposes Mr. Casaubon take up fishing or backgammon or even the novels of Smollet read out loud by his wife, for now Dorothea is married, "she may read anything." . Lydgate tells Dorothea her husband could live another fifteen years if careful. Dorothea cries to him from her heart to help her help Casaubon. Lydgate has never seen a woman like Dorothea or her devotion. . Dorothea asks her uncle to write to Will and tell him he may not visit because of Casaubon's illness. Mr. Brooke bungles it and invites Will to come stay with him at Tipton Grange and become the editor of the local newspaper, The Middlemarch Pioneer. . .

