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 hut 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.
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