“I wanted to ask you again about something you said the other day.  Perhaps it was half of it your lively way of speaking:  I notice that you like to put things strongly; I myself often exaggerate when I speak hastily.”

“What was it?” said Will, observing that she spoke with a timidity quite new in her.  “I have a hyperbolical tongue:  it catches fire as it goes.  I dare say I shall have to retract.”

“I mean what you said about the necessity of knowing German—­I mean, for the subjects that Mr. Casaubon is engaged in.  I have been thinking about it; and it seems to me that with Mr. Casaubon’s learning he must have before him the same materials as German scholars—­has he not?” Dorothea’s timidity was due to an indistinct consciousness that she was in the strange situation of consulting a third person about the adequacy of Mr. Casaubon’s learning.

“Not exactly the same materials,” said Will, thinking that he would be duly reserved.  “He is not an Orientalist, you know.  He does not profess to have more than second-hand knowledge there.”

“But there are very valuable books about antiquities which were written a long while ago by scholars who knew nothing about these modern things; and they are still used.  Why should Mr. Casaubon’s not be valuable, like theirs?” said Dorothea, with more remonstrant energy.  She was impelled to have the argument aloud, which she had been having in her own mind.

“That depends on the line of study taken,” said Will, also getting a tone of rejoinder.  “The subject Mr. Casaubon has chosen is as changing as chemistry:  new discoveries are constantly making new points of view.  Who wants a system on the basis of the four elements, or a book to refute Paracelsus?  Do you not see that it is no use now to be crawling a little way after men of the last century—­ men like Bryant—­and correcting their mistakes?—­living in a lumber-room and furbishing up broken-legged theories about Chus and Mizraim?”

“How can you bear to speak so lightly?” said Dorothea, with a look between sorrow and anger.  “If it were as you say, what could be sadder than so much ardent labor all in vain?  I wonder it does not affect you more painfully, if you really think that a man like Mr. Casaubon, of so much goodness, power, and learning, should in any way fail in what has been the labor of his best years.”  She was beginning to be shocked that she had got to such a point of supposition, and indignant with Will for having led her to it.

“You questioned me about the matter of fact, not of feeling,” said Will.  “But if you wish to punish me for the fact, I submit.  I am not in a position to express my feeling toward Mr. Casaubon:  it would be at best a pensioner’s eulogy.”

“Pray excuse me,” said Dorothea, coloring deeply.  “I am aware, as you say, that I am in fault in having introduced the subject.  Indeed, I am wrong altogether.  Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.”