the words, "Decide, and woe to me if your reason be your judge and not
your love." In this duel of Puck and Theseus, the latter felt he had won
and pressed his advantage, offering to let her free and adding warnings
to the blind, "Without great sacrifices on both sides, the possibility
of our union is an empty dream." At the eleventh hour, when, in her own
words, she was "married past redemption," he wrote, "If you judge fit, I
will take you to my heart this very week. If you judge fit, I will this
very week forswear you for ever;" and replied to her request that her
widowed mother might live under their wedded roof in terms that might
have become Petruchio: "It may be stated in a word. The man should bear
rule in the house, not the woman. This is an eternal axiom, the law of
nature which no mortal departs from unpunished. . . . Will your mother
consent to make me her guardian and director, and be a second wife to her
daughter's husband!"

Was ever woman in this humour woo'd,
Was ever woman in this humour won?

Miss Welsh at length reluctantly agreed to come to start life at
Scotsbrig, where his family had migrated; but Carlyle pushed another
counter: "Your mother must not visit mine: the mere idea of such a visit
argued too plainly that you _knew nothing_ of the family circle in which
for my sake you were willing to take a place." It being agreed that Mrs.
Welsh was to leave Haddington, where the alliance was palpably unpopular,
Carlyle proposed to begin married life in his mother-in-law's vacant
house, saying in effect to his fiancee that as for intrusive visitors he
had "nerve enough" to kick her old friends out of doors. At this point,
however, her complaisance had reached its limit. The bridegroom-elect had
to soothe his sense of partial retreat by a scolding letter. As regards
difficulties of finance he pointed out that he had L200 to start with,