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