It was from Vienna that Hebbel sent Elise his decision, and the variegated Southern capital was to be his home till his death. In 1846 he met Christine Enghausen, an actress of power and a warm admirer of his work. In this woman of feminine devotion and deep insight he found one who could foster his art as well as his nature. From their marriage began sweeter days for him. Her own earnings at the theatre relieved his immediate want; and it speaks the more for the proud man that he could take what was freely given with no sense of dependence. More than ever now he needed domestic happiness, for his relations with the Viennese were not of the best. He did not sympathise with their revolution or fall in with their polished manners. His own laconisms were hardly complimentary or attractive, and his strong Northern accent ruffled Southern ears. But with a noble wife at his side he could afford to be shut in on himself. It meant a grip on his thought-world and an absence of corrosive compromise. At this time there appeared _Julia_, _The Ruby_, and _A Tragedy in Sicily_. They show that for the time at least his equilibrium was upset by his estrangement from the outer world. It is hardly a reflection on contemporary taste that _Julia_ was unappreciated. Berlin declared that it did not suit the public; Vienna had doubts as to its moral and aesthetic value. Any new and good art meets these objections, yet there are cases where they apply. It has a fantastic plot which finds a halting solution. Moral it is, as Hebbel sharply pointed out, but the “problem” is hardly thinkable, the motives are bizarre, and the turgid language betrays a straining mind. If no other point be taken, a comparison between the grim father in this play and that of _Maria Magdalena_ will show that here he has substituted the remarkable for the terrible. In _The Ruby_ he essayed humour, a quality he lacked. The servants, for instance, in _Herod and Mariamne_, and the Persian in _Gyges_, make elephantine fun which depends rather on verbal antitheses than on genuine situation. In _The Ruby_ he missed the fascinating topsy-turvydom of the fairy tale; and there is a certain oriental nonchalance of the wonderful which was quite outside his province.