siness. Nor can I suppose that when Mrs.
Casaubon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks after her wedding,
the situation will be regarded as tragic. Some discouragement, some
faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary,
is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what
is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of
frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of
mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we
had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be
like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we
should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it
is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.

However, Dorothea was crying, and if she had been required to state the
cause, she could only have done so in some such general words as I have
already used: to have been driven to be more particular would have been
like trying to give a history of the lights and shadows, for that new
real future which was replacing the imaginary drew its material from
the endless minutiae by which her view of Mr. Casaubon and her wifely
relation, now that she was married to him, was gradually changing with
the secret motion of a watch-hand from what it had been in her maiden
dream. It was too early yet for her fully to recognize or at least
admit the change, still more for her to have readjusted that
devotedness which was so necessary a part of her mental life that she
was almost sure sooner or later to recover it. Permanent rebellion,
the disorder of a life without some loving reverent resolve, was not
possible to her; but she was now in an interval when the very force of
her nature heightened its confusion. In this way, the early months of
marriage often are times of critical tumult--whether that of a
shrimp-pool or of deeper waters--which afterwards subsides into
cheerful peace.

But was not Mr. Casaubon just as learned as before? Had his forms of
expression changed, or his sentiments become less laudable? Oh
waywardness of womanhood! did his chronology fail him, or his ability
to state not only a theory but the names of those who held it; or his
provision for giving the heads of any subject on demand? And was not
Rome the place in all the world to give free play to such
accomplishments? Besides, had not Dorothea's enthusiasm especially