“What is the matter, Proteus?”

“A great matter, Julia.  That fellow Grampus, whose book is cried up as a revelation, is all wrong about the Magicodumbras and the Zuzumotzis, and I have got hold of the right clue.”

“Good gracious! does it matter so much?  Don’t drag the clothes, dear.”

“It signifies this, Julia, that if I am right I shall set the world right; I shall regenerate history; I shall win the mind of Europe to a new view of social origins; I shall bruise the head of many superstitions.”

“Oh no, dear, don’t go too far into things.  Lie down again.  You have been dreaming.  What are the Madicojumbras and Zuzitotzums?  I never heard you talk of them before.  What use can it be troubling yourself about such things?”

“That is the way, Julia—­that is the way wives alienate their husbands, and make any hearth pleasanter to him than his own!”

“What do you mean, Proteus?”

“Why, if a woman will not try to understand her husband’s ideas, or at least to believe that they are of more value than she can understand—­if she is to join anybody who happens to be against him, and suppose he is a fool because others contradict him—­there is an end of our happiness.  That is all I have to say.”

“Oh no, Proteus, dear.  I do believe what you say is right That is my only guide.  I am sure I never have any opinions in any other way:  I mean about subjects.  Of course there are many little things that would tease you, that you like me to judge of for myself.  I know I said once that I did not want you to sing ‘Oh ruddier than the cherry,’ because it was not in your voice.  But I cannot remember ever differing from you about subjects.  I never in my life thought any one cleverer than you.”

Julia Merman was really a “nice little woman,” not one of the stately Dians sometimes spoken of in those terms.  Her black silhouette had a very infantine aspect, but she had discernment and wisdom enough to act on the strong hint of that memorable conversation, never again giving her husband the slightest ground for suspecting that she thought treasonably of his ideas in relation to the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis, or in the least relaxed her faith in his infallibility because Europe was not also convinced of it.  It was well for her that she did not increase her troubles in this way; but to do her justice, what she was chiefly anxious about was to avoid increasing her husband’s troubles.

Not that these were great in the beginning.  In the first development and writing out of his scheme, Merman had a more intense kind of intellectual pleasure than he had ever known before.  His face became more radiant, his general view of human prospects more cheerful.  Foreseeing that truth as presented by himself would win the recognition of his contemporaries, he excused with much liberality their rather rough treatment of other theorists whose basis was less perfect.  His own periodical criticisms had never before been so amiable:  he was sorry for that unlucky majority whom the spirit of the age, or some other prompting more definite and local, compelled to write without any particular ideas.  The possession of an original theory which has not yet been assailed must certainly sweeten the temper of a man who is not beforehand ill-natured.  And Merman was the reverse of ill-natured.