Middlemarch

Will dines with the Casaubons the next day and is delightfully agreeable — managing Casaubon with such skill that he seems to draw him out rather than compete with him. What he says is "thrown in with such rapidity, and with such an unimportant air of saying something by the way, that it seemed a gay little chime after the great bell." He finds common ground on points of scholarship, appeals to Dorothea occasionally as if her opinion counted, and leaves Casaubon looking pleased. Will proposes a visit to Naumann's studio. When they arrive, the painter — who has already plotted this moment — asks Casaubon if his head might serve for the Saint Thomas Aquinas in his current picture. Casaubon is surprised and visibly flattered. Dorothea is happy: "nothing could have pleased her more, unless it had been a miraculous voice pronouncing Mr. Casaubon the wisest and worthiest among the sons of men." For the second sitting, Naumann asks Dorothea to stand as Santa Clara. Will, watching from the background, is "divided between the inclination to fall at the Saint's feet and kiss her robe, and the temptation to knock Naumann down while he was adjusting her arm." The result: Casaubon purchases the Saint Thomas Aquinas painting; the Santa Clara is declared not yet worthy by Naumann, and its fate left conditional — since, as Naumann notes afterwards, Casaubon cared far more for his own portrait than for his wife's. Will contrives to call on Dorothea alone the next day, at an hour when Casaubon is at the Library. She is examining cameos for Celia and receives him without ceremony. Their conversation about art is the heart of the chapter: Dorothea says she would like to make life beautiful for everyone, but the great expense of art pains her when most people are shut out from it. Will calls this "the fanaticism of sympathy" and argues that the best piety is to enjoy — "You are doing the most then to save the earth's character as an agreeable planet." She pushes back; he escalates — she will be "buried alive" at Lowick, he says, with savage energy. Then he says, "You are a poem." She presses him about the German scholarship remark. He confirms it, more explicitly: the subject Casaubon has chosen is like chemistry — constantly changing — and crawling after men of the last century while living in a "lumber-room" of broken-legged theories is of no use. Dorothea is distressed and indignant, and exacts a promise: he must never speak that way of Mr. Casaubon's work to anyone again. Will promises — and notes privately that this leaves him all the freer to hate Casaubon the more. He leaves without waiting for Casaubon. Dorothea tells her husband that evening that Will means to give up his dependence on Casaubon's generosity and return to England. Casaubon says: "I shall await his communication on the subject."