 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 frescoes 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.
    »
