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.

But the hour of publication came; and to half-a-dozen persons, described
as the learned world of two hemispheres, it became known that Grampus
was attacked. This might have been a small matter; for who or what on
earth that is good for anything is not assailed by ignorance, stupidity,
or malice--and sometimes even by just objection? But on examination it
appeared that the attack might possibly be held damaging, unless the
ignorance of the author were well exposed and his pretended facts shown
to be chimeras of that remarkably hideous kind begotten by imperfect
learning on the more feminine element of original incapacity. Grampus
himself did not immediately cut open the volume which Merman had been