 Book 4 of Pierre or the Ambiguities by Herman Melville. This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Retrospective, Chapter 1. In their precise tracings out and subtle causations, the strongest and fireiest emotions of life defy all analytical insight. We see the cloud and feel its bolt, but meteorology only idly assays a critical scrutiny as to how that cloud became charged and how this bolt so stuns. The metaphysical writers confess that the most impressive sudden and overwhelming event as well as the minutest is but the product of an infinite series of infinitely involved and untraceable foregoing occurrences. Just so with every motion of the heart, why this cheat kindles with a noble enthusiasm, why that lip curls in scorn, these are things not wholly imputable to the immediate apparent cause which is only one link in the chain, but to a long line of dependencies whose further part is lost in the mid-regions of the impalpable air, idle then would it be to attempt by any winding way so to penetrate into the heart and memory and in most life and nature of Pierre, as to show why it was that a piece of intelligence which in the natural course of things, many amiable gentlemen, both young and old, had been known to receive with a momentary feeling of surprise. And then a little curiosity to know more, and at last an entire unconcern, idle would it be to attempt to show how to Pierre it rolled down on his soul like melted lava and left so deep a deposit of desolation that all his subsequent endeavors never restored the original temples to the soil nor all his culture completely revived its buried bloom. Yet some random hints may suffice to deprive a little of its strangeness that tumultuous mood into which so small a note had thrown him. There had long stood a shrine in the fresh foliageed heart of Pierre, up to which he ascended by many tabulated steps of remembrance, and around which annually he had hung fresh reeds of a sweet and holy affection, made one green bower of that last by such successive votive offerings of his being. This shrine seemed and was indeed a place for the celebration about Jason Joy, rather than for any melancholy rites. But though thus mantled and tangled with garlands, this shrine was of marble, a niched pillar, deemed solid and eternal, and from whose top radiated all those innumerable sculptural scrolls and branches, which supported the entire one pillar temple of his moral life, as in some beautiful gothic oratories, one central pillar trunk-like upholds the roof. In this shrine, in this niche of this pillar stood the perfect marble form of his departed father, without blemish, unclouded snow-white, and serene. Others found personification of perfect human goodness and virtue. Before this shrine, Pierre poured out the fullness of all young life's most reverential thoughts and beliefs. Not to God had Pierre ever gone in his heart, unless by ascending the steps of that shrine, and so making it the vestibule of his abstractist religion. Buried and glorified in his tomb beyond Prince Mausolus is that mortal sire who, after an honorable pure course of life, dies and is buried as in a choice fountain in the filial breast of a tender-hearted and intellectually appreciative child. For at that period the Solomonic insights have not poured their turbid tributaries into the pure flowing well of the childish life. Rare preservative virtue, too, have those heavenly waters thrown into that fountain all sweet recollections become marbleized, so that things which in themselves were evanescent thus became unchangeable and eternal. So some rare waters in Darby's Shire will petrify bird's nests, but if fate preserves the father to a later time, too often the filial obsequies are less profound, the canonization less ethereal. The expanded boy perceives or vaguely thinks he perceives slight specks and flaws in the character he once so wholly reverenced. When Pierre was twelve years old his father had died, leaving behind him in the general voice of the world a marked reputation as a gentleman and a Christian. In the heart of his wife a green memory of many healthy days of unclouded and joyful wedded light, and in the inmost soul of Pierre the impression of a bodily form of rare manly beauty and benignity only rivaled by the supposed perfect mold in which his virtuous heart had been cast. Of pence of evenings by the wide winter fire or in summer in the southern piazza, when that mystical night silence so peculiar to the country would summon up in the minds of Pierre and his mother long trains of the images of the past. Leading all that spiritual procession majestically and holily walked the venerated form of the departed husband and father. Then their talk would be reminiscent and serious but sweet, and again and again still deep and deeper was stamped in Pierre's soul the cherished conceit that his virtuous father so beautiful on earth was now uncorruptively sainted in heaven. So choicely and in some degree secludedly nurtured Pierre, though now arrived at the age of nineteen, had never yet become so thoroughly initiated into that darker, though truer aspect of things which an entire residence in the city from the earliest period of life almost inevitably engraves upon the mind of any keenly observant and reflective youth of Pierre's present years, so that up to this period in his breast all remained as it had been, and to Pierre his father's shrine seemed spotless and still knew as the marble of the tomb of Arimathea. Judge then how all desolating and withering the blast that for Pierre in one night stripped his holiest shrine of all overlaid bloom and buried the mild statue of the saint beneath the prostrated ruins of the soul's temple itself. As the vine flourishes and the grape in purples close up to the very walls and mausoles of cannon-erren bright-stein, so do the sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of his perils. But his life indeed a thing for all infidel levities and we its misdeemed beneficiaries so utterly fools and infatuate that what we take to be our strongest tower of delight only stands at the caprice of the minutest event. The falling of a leaf, the hearing of a voice, or the receipt of one little bit of paper scratched over with a few small characters by a sharpened feather. Are we so entirely insecure that that casket wherein we have placed our holiest and most final joy in which we have secured by a lock of infinite deafness can that casket be picked and desecrated at the mirror stranger's touch when we think that we alone hold the only and chosen key? Pierre, thou art foolish, rebuild. No, not that, for thy shrine still stands. It stands, Pierre, firmly stands. Smellest thou not, it's yet undeparted, embowering bloom. Such a note as thine can be easily enough written, Pierre. Impostors are not unknown in this curious world or the brisk novelist, Pierre, will write the fifty such notes and so steel gushing tears from his reader's eyes even as thy note so strangely made thine own manly eyes so arid so glazed and so arid, Pierre, foolish Pierre. Oh, mock not the ponyarded heart, the stabbed man knows the steel, pray not to him that it is only a tickling feather, feels he not the interior gash, what does this blood on my vesture and what does this pang in my soul? And here again not unreasonably might invocations go up to those three weird ones that tend life's moon. Again, we might ask them what threads were those of ye weird ones that ye wove in the years foregone that now, to Pierre, they so unerringly conduct electric presentiments that his woe is woe, his father no more a saint, and Isabel a sister indeed. Ah, fathers and mothers, all the world round be heedful, give heed, thy little one may not now comprehend the meaning of those words and those signs by which in its innocent presence thou thinkest to disguise the sinister thing ye would hint. Not now he knows, not very much even of the externals he consciously remarks, but if in afterlife fate puts the chemic key of the cipher into his hands, then how swiftly and how wonderfully he reads all the obscurest and most obliterate inscriptions he finds in his memory, yea, and rummages himself all over for still hidden writings to read. O darkest lessons of life have thus been read, all faith and virtue been murdered, and youth gives itself up to an infidel scorn. But not thus altogether was it now with Pierre, yet so like in some points that the above true warning may not misplacidly stand. His father had died of a fever, and as is not uncommon in such maladies toward his end, he at intervals lowly wandered in his mind. At such times by unobserved but subtle arts devoted family attendants had restrained his wife from being present at his side. But little Pierre, whose fond filial love drew him ever to that bed, they heeded not innocent little Pierre when his father was delirious. And so one evening when the shadows intermingled with the curtains, and all the chamber was hushed, and Pierre but dimly saw his father's face and the fire on the hearth lay in a broken temple of wonderful coals. Then a strange, plaintive, infinitely pitiable, low voice stole forth from the tested bed. And Pierre heard my daughter, my daughter, he wanders again said the nurse, dear, dear father, sub the child, thou hast not a daughter, but here is thy own little Pierre. But again, the unregardful voice in the bed was heard. And now in a sudden peeling whale, my daughter, God, God, my daughter, the child snatched the dying man's hand. It faintly grew to his grasp. But on the other side of the bed, the other hand now also emptyly lifted itself and emptyly caught, as if at some other childish fingers. Then both hands dropped on the sheet and in the twinkling shadows of the evening, little Pierre seemed to see that while the hand which he held were a faint feverish flush, the other empty one was as she white as a lepers. It is past whispered the nurse, he will wander so no more now till midnight, that is his want. And then in her heart, she wondered how it was that so excellent a gentleman and so thoroughly good a man should wander so ambiguously in his mind and tremble to think of that mysterious thing in the soul which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction. But in spite of the individual's own innocent self, we'll still dream horrid dreams and mother unmentionable thoughts. And into Pierre's Austrian childish soul, there entered a kindred, though still more nebulous conceit. But it belonged to the spheres of the impalpable ether, and the child soon through other and sweeter remembrances over it and covered it up and at last it was blended with all other dim things and imaginings of dimness and so seemed to survive to no real life in Pierre. But though through many long years, the henbane showed no leaves in his soul, yet the sunken seed was there. And the first glimpse of Isabelle's letter caused it to spring forth as by magic. Then again, the long hushed, planted and infinitely pitiable voice was heard, my daughter, my daughter, followed by the compunctious God, God. And to Pierre, once again, the empty hand lifted itself and once again, the ashy hand fell. Chapter three. In the cold courts of justice, the dull head demands oaths, and holy writ proofs. But in the warm halls of heart, one single untested memory's spark shall suffice to enkindle such a blaze of evidence that all the corners of conviction are suddenly lighted up as a midnight city by a burning building, which on every side whirls its reddened brands. In a locked round windowed closet, connecting with the chamber of Pierre, and whether he had always been wont to go, in those sweetly awful hours when the spirit cried to the spirit, come into solitude with me, twin brother, come away, a secret have I, let me whisper to the aside in this closet, sacred to the Tadmore privacy's and repose of the sometimes solitary Pierre, there hung by long cords from the cornice a small portrait in oil before which Pierre had many a time transedly stood. Had this painting hung in any annual public exhibition, and in its term been described in print by the casual glance and critics, they would probably have described it thus and truthfully. An impromptu portrait of a fine looking, gay-hearted, youthful gentleman, he is lightly and as it were early and but grazingly seated in a rather flittingly tenetting an old fashioned chair of Malacca. One arm confining his hat and cane is loungingly thrown over the back of the chair, while the fingers of the other hand play with his gold watch, seal, and key. The free temple head is sideways turned with a peculiarly bright and carefree morning expression. He seems as if just dropped in for a visit upon some familiar acquaintance. Altogether the painting is exceedingly clever and cheerful with a fine offhanded expression about it, undoubtedly a portrait and no fancy piece, and to hazard a vague conjecture by an amateur. So bright and so cheerful then, so trim and so young, so singularly healthful and handsome, what subtle element could so steep this whole portrait that to the wife of the original, it was namelessly unpleasant and repelling. The mother, Pierre, could never abide this picture, which she had always asserted, did signally belie her husband. Her fond memories of the departed refused to hang one single wreath around it. It is not he she would emphatically and almost indignantly exclaim when more urgently besought to reveal the cause for so unreasonable a dissent from the opinion of nearly all the other connections and relatives of the deceased. But the portrait, which she held to do justice to her husband correctly to convey his features in detail and more especially their truest and finest and noblest combined expression. This portrait was a much larger one, and in the great drawing room below occupied the most conspicuous and honorable place on the wall. Even to Pierre, these two paintings that always seem strangely dissimilar, and as the larger one had been painted many years after the other, and therefore brought the original pretty nearly within his own childish recollections, therefore he himself could not redeem it by far the more truthful and lifelike presentation of his father. So that the mere preference of his mother, however strong was not at all surprising to him, but rather coincided with his own conceit. Yet not for this must the other portrait be so decidedly rejected, because in the first place there was a difference in time, and some difference of costume to be considered, and the wide difference of the styles of the respective artiste, and the wide difference of those respective semi-reflected ideal faces, which even in the presence of the original, a spiritual artist will rather choose to draw from than from the fleshy face, however brilliant and fine. Moreover, while the larger portrait was that of a middle-aged married man, and seemed to possess all the nameless and slightly portly tranquillities incident to that condition when a felicitous one, the smaller portrait painted a brisk, unentangled young bachelor, gaily ranging up and down in the world, light-hearted in a very little bladish perhaps, and charged through the lips with the first uncloying mourning, fullness, and freshness of life. Here certainly large allowance was to be made in any careful candid estimation of these portraits to Pierre. This conclusion had become well-nigh irresistible when he placed side-by-side two portraits of himself, one taken in his early childhood, a frocked and belted boy of four years old, and the other a grown youth of sixteen, except an indestructible alt surviving something in the eyes and on the temples, Pierre could hardly recognize the loud laughing boy in the tall and pensively smiling youth. If a few years then can have in me made all this difference, why not in my father thought Pierre? Besides all this, Pierre considered the history, and so to speak the family legend of the smaller painting. In his fifteenth year, it was made a present to him by an old maiden aunt who resided in the city and who cherished the memory of Pierre's father with all that wonderful amaranthine devotion which in advance maiden sister ever feels for the idea of a beloved younger brother now dead and irrevocably gone. As the only child of that brother, Pierre, was an object of the warmest and most extravagant attachment on the part of this lonely aunt who seemed to see, transformed into youth once again, the likeness and the very soul of her brother in the fair inheriting brow of Pierre. Though the portrait we speak of was inordinately prized by her, yet at length the strict canon of her romantic and imaginative love asserted the portrait to be Pierre's. For Pierre was not only his father's only child, but his name's sake, so soon as Pierre should be old enough to value a right so holy and inestimable a treasure. She had accordingly sent it to him trebly boxed and finally covered with a waterproof cloth and it was delivered at Saddle Meadows by an express confidential messenger, an old gentleman of leisure, once her forlorn because rejected gallant, but now her contented and chatty neighbor. Henceforth, before gold-framed in gold-litid ivory miniature, a fraternal gift on Dorothea now offered up her mourning and her evening rites to the memory of the noblest and handsomest of brothers. Yet an annual visit to the far closet of Pierre, no slight undertaking now for once so strickening years in every way and form attested the earnestness of that strong sense of duty, that painful renunciation of self, which had induced her voluntarily to part with the precious memorial. Chapter 4. Tell Me Aunt, the child Pierre had early said to her, long before the portrait became his, tell me aunt how this chair portrait, as you call it, was painted. Who painted it? Whose chair was this? Have you the chair now? I don't see it in your room here. What is papa looking at so strangely? I should like to know now what papa was thinking of then. You now, dear aunt, tell me all about this picture, so that when it is mine, as you promise me, I shall know its whole history. Sit down then and be very still and attentive, my dear child, said aunt Dorothea, while she a little averted her head and tremulously and inaccurately sought her pocket. Dear little Pierre cried, why aunt, the story of the picture is not in any little book, is it, that you are going to take out and read to me? My handkerchief, my child, why aunt, here it is at your elbow, here on the table, here aunt, take it, do, oh don't tell me anything about the picture now, I won't hear it. Be still my darling Pierre, said his aunt, taking the handkerchief, draw the curtain a little, dearest, the light hurts my eyes. Now go into the closet and bring me my dark shawl, take your time. There, thank you Pierre. Now sit down again and I will begin. The picture was painted long ago, my child, you were not born then. Not born, cried little Pierre, not born, said his aunt. Well go on aunt, but don't tell me again that once upon a time I was not little Pierre at all and yet my father was alive, go on aunt, do, do. Why, how nervous you are getting my child, be patient, I'm very old Pierre and old people never like to be hurried. Now my own dear aunt Dorothea, do forgive me this once and go on with your story. When your poor father was quite a young man, my child, and was on one of his long autumnal visits to his friends in this city, he was rather intimate at times with a cousin of his, Ralph Winwin, who was about his own age, a fine youth he was to Pierre. I never saw him aunt, pray, where is he now? Interrupted Pierre, does he live in the country now as mother and I do? Yes, my child, but far away beautiful country, I hope he's in heaven, I trust. Dead, sad little Pierre, go on aunt. Now cousin Ralph had a great love for painting my child and he spent many hours in a room hung all round with pictures and portraits and there he had his easel and brushes and much liked to paint his friends and hang their faces on his walls. So that when all alone by himself he yet had plenty of company who always wore their best expressions to him and never once ruffled him by ever getting cross or ill- natured little Pierre. Often he had besought your father to sit to him saying that his silent circle of friends would never be complete till your father consented to join them. But in those days my childhood father was always in motion it was hard for me to get him to stand still while I tied his cravat. For he never came to anyone but me for that, so he was always putting off and putting off cousin Ralph some other time cousin not today, tomorrow perhaps or next week. And so at last cousin Ralph began to despair but I'll catch him yet cried sly cousin Ralph so now he said nothing more to your father about the matter of painting him. But every pleasant morning kept his easel and brushes and everything in readiness so as to be ready the first moment your father should chance to drop in upon him from his long strolls for it was now and then your father's want to pay flying little visits to cousin Ralph in his painting room but my child you may draw back the curtain now it's getting very dim here seems to me well I thought so all along aunt said little Pierre obeying but didn't you say the light hurt your eyes but it does not now little Pierre well well go on go on aunt you can't think how interested I am said little Pierre drawing his stool close up to the quilted satin hem of his good aunt Dorothy's dress I will my child but first let me tell you that about this time they arrived in the port a cabin full of French immigrants of quality poor people Pierre who were forced to fly from their native land because of the cruel bloodshedding times there but you have read all that in the little history I gave you a good while ago I know all about it the French Revolution said little Pierre what a famous little scholar you are my dear child said aunt Dorothy faintly smiling among those poor but noble immigrants there was a beautiful young girl who said fate afterward made a great noise in the city and made many eyes to eat but in vain for she never was heard of any more how how aunt I don't understand did she disappear then aunt I was a little before my story child yes she did disappear and never was heard of again but that was afterward sometime afterward my child I'm very sure it was I could take my oath of that Pierre why dear aunt said little Pierre how earnestly you talk after what your voice is getting very strange do now don't talk that way you frightened me so aunt perhaps it is this bad cold I have today it makes my voice a little hoarse I fear Pierre but I will try not talk so hoarsely again well my child sometime before this beautiful young lady disappeared indeed it was only shortly after the poor immigrants landed your father made her acquaintance and with many other humane gentlemen of the city provided for the wants of the strangers for they were very poor indeed having been stripped of everything save a little trifling jewelry which could not go very far at last the friends of your father endeavored to dissuade him from visiting these people so much they were fearful that as the young lady was so very beautiful and a little inclined to be intriguing so some said your father might be tempted to marry her which would not have been a wise thing in him for the young lady might have been very beautiful and good hearted yet no one on this side the water certainly knew her history and she was a foreigner it would not have made so suitable an excellent a match for your father as your dear mother afterward did my child but for myself I who always knew your father very well in all his intentions and he was very confidential with me too I for my part never credited that he would do so unwise a thing as marry this strange young lady at any rate he had last discontinued his visits to the immigrants and it was after this that the young lady disappeared some said that she must have voluntarily but secretly returned into her own country and others declared that she must have been kidnapped by French emissaries for after her disappearance rumor began to hint that she was of the noblest birth and some ways allied to the royal family and then again there were some who shook their heads darkly and muttered of drownings and other dark things which one always hears hinted when people disappear and no one can find them but third year father and many other gentlemen moved heaven and earth to find trace of her yet as I said before my child she never reappeared the poor French lady side little pier aunt I'm afraid she was murdered poor lady there is no telling set us out but listen for I'm coming to the picture again now at the time your father was so often visiting the immigrants my child cousin Ralph was one of those who a little fancy that your father was courting her but cousin Ralph being a quite young man and a scholar not well acquainted with what is wise or what is foolish in the great world cousin Ralph would not have been at all mortified had your father really wedded with a refugee young lady so vainly thinking as I told you that your father was courting her he fancied it would be a very fine thing if he could paint your father as her wooer that is paint him just after is coming from his daily visits to the immigrants so he watched his chance everything being ready in his painting room as I told you before and one morning sure enough and dropped your father from his walk but before he came into the room cousin Ralph had spied him from the window and when your father entered cousin Ralph had the sitting chair ready drawn out back of his easel but still fronting toward him and pretended to be very busy painting he said to your father glad to see you cousin pier I'm just about something here sit right down there now and tell me the news and I'll sell it out with you presently and tell us something of the immigrants cousin pier he slightly added wishing you see to get your father's thoughts running that supposed wooing way so that he might catch some sort of corresponding expression you see little pier I don't know that I precisely understand on but go on I'm so interested do go on do on well by many little cunning shifts and contrivances cousin Ralph captured father there sitting and sitting in the chair rattling and rattling away and so self-loat grateful to that he never heated that all the while sly cousin Ralph was painting and painting just as fast as ever he could and only making believe laugh at your father's wit in short cousin Ralph was stealing his portrait my child not stealing it I hope said pier that would be very wicked well then we won't call it stealing since I'm sure that cousin Ralph kept your father all the time off from him and so could not have possibly picked his pocket though indeed he slightly picked his portrait so to speak and if indeed it was stealing or anything of that sort yet seeing how much comfort that portrait has been to me pier and how much it will yet be to you I hope I think we must very hardly forgive cousin Ralph for what he then did yes I think we must indeed chime in little pier now eagerly I'm the very portrait in question which hung over the mantle whereby catching your father two or three times more in that way cousin Ralph at last finished the painting and when it was all framed in every way completed he would have surprised your father by hanging it boldly up in his room among his other portraits had not your father one morning suddenly come to him while indeed the very picture itself was placed face down on the table and cousin Ralph fixing the cord to it came to him and frightened cousin Ralph by quietly saying that now that he thought of it it seemed to him that cousin Ralph had been playing tricks with him but he hoped it was not so what do you mean said cousin Ralph a little flurried you have not been hanging my portrait up here have you cousin Ralph said your father glancing along the walls I'm glad I don't see it it is my whim cousin Ralph and perhaps it is a very silly one but if you have been lately painting my portrait I want you to destroy it at any rate don't show it to anyone keep it out of sight what's that you have there cousin Ralph cousin Ralph was now more and more fluttered not knowing what to make as indeed to this day I don't completely myself of your father's strange manner but he rallied and said this cousin pier is a secret portrait I have here you must be aware that we portrait painters are sometimes called upon to paint such I therefore cannot show it to you or tell you anything about it have you been painting my portrait or not cousin Ralph said your father very suddenly and pointedly I've painted nothing that looks as you there look said cousin Ralph evasively observing in your father's face a fierce like expression which he had never seen there before and more than that your father could not get from him and what then said little pier why not much my child only your father never so much as caught one glimpse of that picture indeed never knew for certain whether there was such a painting in the world cousin Ralph secretly gave it to me knowing how tenderly I loved your father making me solemnly promise never to expose it anywhere where your father could ever see it or any way hear of it this promise I faithfully kept and it was only after your father's death that I hung it in my chamber there pier you now have the story of the chair portrait and a very strange one it is a pier and so interesting I shall never forget it aunt I hope you never will my child now ring the bell and we will have a little fruit cake and I will take a glass of wine pier do you hear my child the bell ring it why what do you do standing there pier why didn't papa want to have cousin Ralph paint his picture aunt how these children's minds do run exclaimed old aunt Dorothea staring at little pier an amazement that indeed is more than I can tell you little pier but cousin Ralph had a foolish fancy about it he used to tell me that being in your father's room some few days after the last scene I described he noticed there a very wonderful work on physiognomy as they call it in which the strangest and shadowiest rules were laid down for detecting people's in the most secrets by studying their faces and so foolish cousin Ralph always flattered himself that the reason your father did not want his portrait taken was because he was secretly in love with their french young lady and did not want his secret published in a portrait since the wonderful work on physiognomy had as it were indirectly warned him against running that rears but cousin Ralph being such a retired and solitary sort of a youth he always had such curious whimsies about things for my part I don't believe your father ever had any such ridiculous ideas on this subject to be sure I myself cannot tell you why he did not want his picture taken but when you get to be as old as I am little pier you will find that everyone even the best of us at times is apt to act very clearly and unaccountably indeed some things we do we cannot entirely explain the reason of even to ourselves little pier but you will know all about these strange matters by and by I hope I shall aunt said little pier but your aunt I thought Martin was to bring in some fruit cake ring the bell for him then my child oh I forgot said little pier doing her bidding bye and bye while the aunt was sipping her wine in the boy eating his cake and both their eyes were fixed on the portrait in question little pier pushing his stool near the picture exclaimed now aunt did papa really look exactly like that did you ever see him in that same buff vest and huge figure neck cloth I remember the ceiling key pretty well and it was only a week ago that I saw mama take them out of a little locked drawer in a wardrobe but I don't remember the queer whiskers nor the buff vest nor the huge white-figured neck cloth did you ever see papa in that very neck cloth aunt my child it was I that shows the stuff for that neck cloth yes and hemmed it for him and worked PG in one corner but that ain't in the picture it is an excellent likeness my child neck cloth and all as he looked at that time while little pier sometimes I sit here all alone by myself gazing and gazing and gazing at that face till I begin to think your father's looking at me and smiling at me and nodding at me and saying Dorothea Dorothea how strange said little pier I think it begins to look at me now aunt hark aunt it's so silent all around in this old fashioned room that I think I hear a little jingling in the picture as if the watch seal was striking against the key hark aunt bless me don't talk so strangely my child I heard mama say once but she did not say it so to me that for her part she did not like aunt Dorothea's picture it was not a good likeness so she said why don't mama like the picture aunt my child you ask very queer questions if you're a mama don't like the picture it is for a very plain reason she has a much larger and finer one at home which she had painted for herself yes and paid I don't know how many hundred dollars for it and that too is an excellent likeness that must be the reason little pier and thus the old aunt and the little child ran on each thinking the other very strange and both thinking the picture is still stranger and the face in the picture still looked at them frankly and cheerfully as if there was nothing kept concealed and yet again a little ambiguously and mockingly as if slowly winking to some other picture to mark what a foolish old sister and what a very silly little son were growing so monstrously grave and speculative about a huge white-figured neck cloth above best and a very gentleman-like and amiable countenance and so after this scene as usual one by one the fleet years ran on till little child pier had grown up to be the tall master pier and could call the picture his own and now in the privacy of his own little closet could stand or lean or sit before it all day long if he pleased and keep thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking till by and by all thoughts were blurred and at last there were no thoughts at all before the picture was sent to him in his 15th year it had been only through the inadvertence of his mother or rather through a casual passing into a parlor by pier that he had anyway learned that his mother did not approve of the picture because as then pier was still young and the picture was the picture of his father and the cherished property of a most excellent and dearly beloved affectionate aunt therefore the mother with an intuitive delicacy had refrained from knowingly expressing her peculiar opinion in the presence of little pier and this judicious though half unconscious delicacy and the mother had been perhaps somewhat singularly answered by a like nicety of sentiment in the child for children of a naturally refined organization and a gentle nurture sometimes possess a wonderful and often undreamed of daintyness of propriety and thoughtfulness and forbearance and matters esteemed a little subtle even by their elders and self-elected betters the little pier never disclosed to his mother that he had through another person become aware of her thoughts concerning aunt Dorothy as portrait he seemed to possess an intuitive knowledge of the circumstance that from the difference of their relationship to his father and for other minute reasons he could in some things with the greater propriety be more inquisitive concerning him with his aunt then with his mother especially touching the matter of the chair portrait and aunt Dorothy his reasons accounting for his mother's distaste long continued satisfactory or at least not insufficiently explanatory and when the portrait arrived at the meadows it's so chance that his mother was abroad and so pier silently hung it up in his closet and when after a day or two his mother returned he said nothing to her about its arrival being still strangely alive to that certain mild mystery which invested it and whose sacredness now he was fearful of violating by provoking any discussion with his mother about aunt Dorothy as gift or by permitting himself to be improperly curious concerning the reasons of his mother's private and self-reserved opinions of it but the first time and it was not long after the arrival of the portrait that he knew of his mother's having entered his closet then when he next saw her he was prepared to hear what she should voluntarily say about the late addition to his embellishments but as she omitted all mention of anything of that sort he on obtrusively scanned her countenance to mark whether any little clouding emotion might be discoverable there but he could discern now and as all genuine delicacies are about their nature accumulated therefore this reverential mutual but only tacit forbearance of the mother and some ever after continued uninvaded and it was another sweet and sanctified and sanctifying bond between them for whatever some lovers may sometimes say love does not always abhor a secret as nature said to a poor of vacuum love is built upon secrets as lovely Venice upon invisible and incorruptible piles in the sea loves secrets being mysteries ever pertain to the transcendent and the infinite and so they are as airy bridges by which our further shadows pass over into the regions of the golden mists and exhalations when it's all poetical lovely thoughts are engendered and drop into us as though pearls should drop from rainbows as time went on the chasteness and pure virginity of this mutual reservation only served to dress the portrait in sweeter because still more mysterious attractions and to fling as it were fresh fennel and rosemary around the revered memory of the father though indeed as previously recounted Pierre now and then loved to present to himself for some fanciful solution the penultimate secret of the portrait in so far as that involved his mother's distaste yet the cunning analysis in which such a mental procedure would involve him never voluntarily transgressed that sacred limit where his mother's peculiar repugnance began to shade off into ambiguous considerations touching any unknown possibilities in the character and early life of the original not that he had altogether forbidden his fancy to range in such fields of speculation but all such imaginings must be contributory to that pure exalted ideal of his father which in his soul was based upon the known acknowledged facts of his father's life chapter five if when the mind roams up and down in the ever elastic regions of evanescent invention any definite form or feature can be assigned to the multitude in his shapes it creates out of the incessant dissolvings of its own prior creations then might we here attempt to hold and define the least shadowy of those reasons which about the period of adolescence we now treat up more frequently occurred to pierre whenever he is saved to account for his mother's remarkable distaste for the portrait yet will we venture one sketch yes sometimes dimly thought pierre who knows but cousin Ralph after all may have been not so very far from the truth when he surmised that at one time my father did indeed cherish some passing emotion for the beautiful young french woman and this portrait being painted at that precise time and indeed with the precise purpose of perpetuating some shadowy testification of the fact in the countenance of the original therefore its expression is not congenial is not familiar is not altogether agreeable to my mother because not only did my father's features never looked so to her since it was afterward that she first became acquainted with him but also that certain womanliness of women that thing I should perhaps call a tender jealousy a fastidious vanity in any other lady enables her to perceive that the glance of the face in the portrait is not in some nameless way dedicated to herself but to some other and unknown object and therefore is she impatient of it and it is repelling to her for she must naturally be intolerant of any imputed reminiscence of my father which is not in some way connected with her own recollections of him whereas the larger and more expansive portrait in the great drawing room taken in the prime of life during the best and rosiest days of their wedded union at the particular desire of my mother and by a celebrated artist of her own election and costumed after her own taste and all all hams considered to be by those who know a singularly happy likeness at the period I believe spiritually reinforced by my own dim infantile remembrances for all these reasons this drawing room portrait possesses an inescapable charm to her there she indeed beholds her husband as he had really appeared to her she does not vacantly gaze upon an unfamiliar phantom called up from the distant and to her well now fabulous days of my father's bachelor life but in that other portrait she sees rehearsed to her fond eyes the latter tales and legends of his devoted wedded love yes I think now that I plainly see it must be so and yet ever new conceits come vaporing up in me as I look on the strange chair portrait which though so very much more unfamiliar to me than it can possibly be to my mother still sometimes seems to say Pierre believe not the drawing room painting that is not my father or at least is not all of thy father consider thy mind Pierre whether v2 paintings may not make only one faithful wives are ever over fond to a certain imaginary image of their husbands and faithful widows are ever over reverential to a certain imagined ghost of that same imagined image Pierre look again I am thy father as he more truly was in mature life the world overlays and varnishes us Pierre the thousand proprieties and polished finesses and grimaces intervene Pierre then we as it were advocate ourselves and taken to us another self Pierre in youth we are Pierre but in age we seem look again I am thy real father so much the more truly as thou thinkest thou recognizes me not Pierre do their young children fathers are not want to unfold themselves entirely Pierre there are a thousand and one odd little youthful pack of dillows that we think we may as well not divulge to them Pierre consider this strange ambiguous smile Pierre more narrowly regard this mouth behold what is this to ardent and as it were unchastened light in these eyes Pierre I am thy father boy there was once a certain obit to lovely young French woman Pierre youth is hot and temptation strong Pierre and in the minutest moment momentous things are irrevocably done Pierre and time sweeps on and the thing is not always carried down by its stream but may be left stranded on his bank away beyond in the young green countries Pierre look again death thy mother dislike me for not consider do not all her spontaneous loving impressions ever strive to magnify and spiritualize and deify her husband's memory Pierre then why does she cast despite upon me and never speak to the of me and why does thou thyself keep silence before her Pierre consider is there no little mystery here probe a little Pierre never fear never fear no matter for that father now look do I not smile yes I'm with an unchangeable smile and thus have I unchangeably smiled for many long years gone by Pierre oh it is a permanent smile thus I smiled to cousin Ralph and thus in thy dear old Aunt Dorothy is parlor Pierre and just so I smile here to thee and even thus in thy father's later life when his body may have been in grief still in no way in Aunt Dorothy as secretary I thus smiled as before and just so I'd smile where I now hung up in the deepest dungeon of the Spanish Inquisition Pierre though suspended in outer darkness still would I smile with this smile though then not a soul should be near consider for a smile is the chosen vehicle for all ambiguities Pierre when we would deceive we smile and we are hatching any nice little artifice Pierre only just a little gratifying our own sweet little appetites Pierre then watch us and out comes the odd little smile once upon a time there was a lovely young French woman Pierre have you carefully and analytically and psychologically and metaphysically considered her belongings and surroundings and all her incidentals Pierre oh a strange sort of story that thy dear old Aunt Dorothy once told thee Pierre I once knew a credulous old soul Pierre probe probe a little see there seems one little crack there Pierre a wedge a wedge something ever comes of all persistent inquiry we are not so continually curious for nothing Pierre not for nothing do we so intrigue and become wily diplomatists and closers with our own minds Pierre and afraid of following the Indian trail from the open plain into the dark thickets Pierre but enough a word to the wise thus sometimes in the mystical outer quietude of the long country knights either when the hushed mansion was banked round by the thick fall and December snows are banked round by the immovable white august moonlight in the haunted repose of a wide story tentanted only by himself and sentinel ring his own little closet and standing guard as it were before the mystical tent of the picture and ever watching the strangely concealed lights of the meanings that so mysteriously moved to and fro within thus sometimes to appear before the portrait of his father unconsciously throwing himself open to all those ineffable hints and ambiguities and undefined half suggestions which now and then people the soul's atmosphere as thickly as in a soft steady snowstorm the snowflakes people the air yet is often starting from these reveries and trances Pierre would regain the assured element of consciously bidden and self-propelled thought and then in a moment the air all cleared not a snowflake descended and Pierre operating himself for a self-indulgent infatuation the promise never again to fall into a midnight reverie before the chair portrait of his father nor did the streams of these reveries seem to leave any conscious sediment in his mind they were so light and so rapid that they rolled their own alluvial along and seemed to leave all Pierre's thought channels as clean and dry as the never any alluvial stream had rolled there at all and so still in his sober cherished memories his father's beatification remained untouched and all the strangeness of the portrait only served to invest his idea with a fine legendary romance the essence whereof was that very mystery which at other times was so subtly and evilly significant but now now Isabelle's letter read swift as the first light that slides from the sun Pierre saw all preceding ambiguities all mysteries ripped open as if with a keen sword and fourth troop thickening phantoms of an infinite gloom now as remotest infantile reminiscences the wandering mind of his father the empty hand in the ashen the strange story of Aunt d'Orthea the mystical midnight suggestions of the portrait itself and above all his mother's intuitive aversion all all overwhelmed him with reciprocal testimonies and now by irresistible intuitions all that had been inexplicably mysterious to him in the portrait and all that had been inexplicably familiar in the face most magically these now coincided the mariness of the one not in harmonies with the mournfulness of the other but by some ineffable correlativeness they reciprocally identified each other and as it were it melted into each other and thus interpenetratingly uniting presented lineaments of an added supernaturalness on all sides the physical world of solid objects now slidingly displaced itself from around him and he floated into an aether of visions and starting to his feet with clenched hands and out staring eyes at the transfixed face in the air he ejaculated that wonderful verse from Dante descriptive of the two mutually absorbing shapes in the inferno ah how dust about change agnella see thou art not double now nor only one into book four book five of pierre or the ambiguity's by herman melville this liberal box recording is in the public domain book five misgivings and preparations chapter one it was long after midnight when pierre returned to the house he had rushed forth in that complete abandonment of soul which in so ardent a temperament attends the first stages of any sudden and tremendous affliction but now he returned in pallid composure for the calm spirit of the night and the then risen moon and the late reveal stars had all at last become as a strange subduing melody to him which though at first trampled and scorned yet by degrees had stolen into the windings of his heart and so shed abroad its own quietude in him now from his height of composure he firmly gazed abroad upon the charred landscape within him as the timber man of canada forced to fly from the conflagration of his forest comes back again when the fires have waned and unblinkingly eyes the immeasurable fields of firebrands that here and there glow beneath the wide canopy of smoke it has been said that always been pierre would seek solitude in its material shelter and walled isolation then the closet communicating with his chamber was his elected haunt so going to his room he took up the now dim burning lamp he had left there and instinctively entered that retreat seating himself with folded arms and bowed head in the accustomed dragon-footed old chair with leaden feet and heart now changing from iciness to a strange sort of indifference and a numbing sensation stealing over him he sat there a while till like the resting traveler in snows he began to struggle against this inertness as the most treacherous and deadliest of symptoms he looked up and found himself fronted by the no longer holy enigmatic but still ambiguously smiling picture of his father instantly all his consciousness and his anguish returned but still without power to shake the grim tranquility which possessed him yet endure the smiling portrait he could not and obeying an irresistible nameless impulse he rose and without unhanging it reversed the picture on the wall this brought to sight the defaced and dusty back with some wrinkled tattered paper over the joints which had become loosened from the paste oh symbol of that reversed idea in my soul grown pierre thou shalt not hang thus rather cast the utterly out then conspicuously insult thee so i won't no more have a father he removed the picture wholly from the wall and the closet and concealed it in a large chest covered with blue gents and locked it up there but still in a square space of slightly discolored wall the picture still left it shadowy but vacant and desolate trace he now strove to banish the least trace of his altered father as fearful that at present all thoughts concerning him were not only entirely vain but would prove fatally distracting and incapacitating to a mind which was now loudly called upon not only to endure a signal grief but immediately to act upon it wild and cruel case youth ever thinks but mistakenly for experience well knows that action though it seems an aggravation of woe is really an alleviative though permanently to alleviate pain we must first dart some added pangs nor now though profoundly sensible that his whole previous moral being was overturned and that for him the fair structure of the world must in some then unknown way be entirely rebuild it again from the lower most cornerstone up nor now did peer torment himself with the thought of that last desolation and how the desperate place was to be made flourishing again he seemed to feel that in his deepest soul lurked an indefinite but potential faith which could rule in the interregnum of all hereditary beliefs and circumstantial persuasions not holy he felt was his soul in anarchy the indefinite regent had assumed the scepter as its right and pier was not entirely given up to his griefs utter pillage and sack to a less enthusiastic heart than pier's the foremost question in respect to isabel which would have presented itself would have been what must i do but such a question never presented itself to pier the spontaneous responsiveness of his being left no shadow of dubiousness as to the direct point he must aim at but if the object was plain not so the path to it how must i do it was a problem for which at first there seemed no chance of solution but without being entirely aware that himself pier was one of those spirits which not in a determinate and sordid scrutiny of small pros and cons but in an impulsive subservience to the godlike dictation of events themselves finds at length the surest solution of perplexities and the brightest prerogative of command and as for him what must i do was a question already answered by the inspiration of the difficulty itself so now he as it were unconsciously discharged his mind for the present of all distracting considerations concerning how he should do it assured that the coming interview with isabel could not but unerringly inspire him there still the inspiration which had thus far directed him had not been entirely mute and undivulging as to many very bitter things which pier foresaw in the wide sea of trouble into which he was plunged if it be the sacred province and by the wisest deemed the inestimable compensation of the heavier woes that they both purged the soul of gay-hearted errors and replenish it with a saddened truth that holy office is not so much accomplished by any covertly inductive reasoning process whose original motive is received from the particular affliction as it is the magical effect of the admission into man's inmost spirit of a before unexperienced and wholly inexplicable element which like electricity suddenly received into any sultry atmosphere of the dark in all directions splits itself into nimble lances of purifying light which at one and the same instant discharge all the air of sluggishness and inform it with an illuminating property so that objects which before in the uncertainty of the dark assumed shadowy and romantic outlines now are lighted up in their substantial realities so that in these flashing revelations of grief's wonderful fire we see all things as they are and though when the electric element is gone the shadows once more descend and the false outlines of the objects again return yet not with their former power to deceive for now even in the presence of the false and staspex we still retain the impressions of their immovable true ones though indeed once more concealed thus with pierre in the joyous young times air his great grief came upon him all the objects which surrounded him were concealingly deceptive not only was the long cherished image of his rather now transfigured before him from a green foliage tree into a blasted trunk but every other image in his mind attested the universality of that electoral light which had darted into his soul not even his lovely immaculate mother remained entirely untouched unaltered by the shock at her changed aspect when first revealed to him pierre had gazed in a panic and now when the electrical storm had gone by he retained in his mind that so suddenly revealed image with an infinite mournfulness she who in her less splendid but finer and more spiritual part had ever seemed to pierre not only as a beautiful saint before whom to offer up his daily horizons but also as a gentle lady counselor and confessor and a revered chamber as a soft satin hung cabinet and confessional his mother was no longer this all alluring thing no more he too keenly felt could he go to his mother as to one who entirely sympathized with him as to one before whom he could almost unreservedly unbosom himself as to one capable of pointing out to him the true path where he seemed most beset wonderful indeed was that electric insight which fate had now given him into the vital character of his mother she well might have stood all ordinary tests but when pierre thought of the touchstone of his immense straight applied to her spirit he felt profoundly assured that she would crumble into nothing before it she was a noble creature but formed chiefly for the gilded prosperities of life and hitherto mostly used to its unruffled serenities bred and expanded in all developments under the sole influence of hereditary forms and world usages not his refined courtly loving equitable mother pierre felt could unreservedly and like a heaven's heroine meet the shock of his extraordinary emergency and applaud to his heart's echo a sublime resolve whose execution should call down the astonishment and the jeers of the world my mother dearest mother god hath given me a sister and unto thee a daughter and covered her with the world's extremist infamy and scorned that so I am bow thou my mother might as gloriously own her and acknowledge her and nay nay grown pierre never never could subcilibles be one instant tolerated by her then high up and towering and all forbidding before pierre grew the before unthought of wonderful edifice of his mother's immense pride her pride of birth her pride of affluence her pride of purity and all the pride of high born refined and wealthy life and all the semi-ramian pride of woman then he staggered back upon himself and only found support in himself then pierre felt that deep in him lurked a divine unidentifiableness that owned no earthly kith or kin yet was this feeling entirely lonesome and orphan like feigned then for one moment would he have recalled the thousand sweet illusions of life though purchased at the price of life's truth so that once more he might not feel himself driven out an infant ishmael into the desert with no maternal haigar to accompany and comfort him still were these emotions without prejudice to his own love for his mother and without the slightest bitterness respecting her and least of all there was no shallow disdain toward her of superior virtue he too plainly saw that not his mother had made his mother but the infinite haughtiness had first fashioned her and then the haughty world had further molded her nor had a haughty ritual omitted to finish her wonderful indeed we repeated was the electrical insight which pierre now had into the character of his mother for not even the vivid recalling of her lavish love for him could suffice to gain say his sudden persuasion love me she doth thought pierre but how loveth she me with the love past all understanding that love which in the loved one's behalf would still calmly confront all hate whose most triumphing him triumphs only by swelling above all opposing taunts and despite loving mother here have I a loved but world infamous sister to own and if thou loveth me mother thy love will love her too and in the proudest drawing room take her so much the more proudly by the hand and as pierre thus infancy led isabel before his mother and infancy led her away and felt his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth with her trans fixing look of incredulous scornful horror then pierre's enthusiastic heart sunk in and in and cave clean away in him as he so poignantly felt his first feeling of the dreary heart vacancies of the conventional life oh heartless proud ice gilded world how I hate thee he thought that thy tyrannous insatiate grasp thus now in my bitterest need thus doth rob me even of my mother thus doth make me now doubly an orphan without a green grave to be due my tears could I reap them must now be wept in the desolate places now to me is it as though both father and mother had gone on distant voyages and returning died in unknown seas she loveth me I but why had I been cast in a cripple's mold how then now do I remember then in her most caressing leather ever gleamed some scaly glittering folds of pride me she loveth with pride's love in me she thinks she seeth her own curled and hearty beauty before my glass she stands pride's priestess and to her mirrored image not to me she offers up her offerings of kisses oh small thanks I owe the favorable goddess that disclothed this form with all the beauty of a man that so thou mightest hide from me all the truth of a man now I see that in his beauty a man is snared and made stone blind as the worm within its silk welcome them be ugliness and poverty and infamy and all ye other crafty ministers of truth that beneath the hoods and rags of beggars hide yet the belts and crowns of kings and then be all beauty that most own the clay and then be all wealth and all the light and all the annual prosperity's of earth that but gild the links and stud with diamonds the base rivets and the chains of lies oh now me thinks I a little see why of old the men of truth went barefoot girded with a rope and ever moving under mournfulness as underneath a canopy I remember now those first wise words where with our savior Christ first spoke in his first speech to men blessed are the poor in spirit and blessed they that mourn oh hitherto I have but piled up words bought books and bought some small experiences and building me in libraries now I sit down and read oh now I know the night and comprehend the sorceries of the moon and all the dark persuadings that have their birth in storms and winds oh not long will joy abide when truth doth come nor grief her laggard be well made this head hang on my breast it holds too much well may my heart knock at my ribs prisoner impatient of his iron bars oh men are jailers all jailers of themselves and in opinions world ignorantly hold their noblest part a captive to their vilest as disguised royal charles when caught by peasants the heart the heart tis God's anointed let me pursue the heart chapter two but if the presentiment in pierre of his mother's pride as bigotedly hostile to the noble design he cherished if this feeling was so wretched to him far more so was the thought of another and a deeper hostility arising from her more spiritual part for her pride would not be so scornful as her wedded memories reject with horror the unmentionable imputation involved in the mere fact of isabel's existence in what galleries of conjecture among what horrible haunting toads and scorpions would such a revelation lead her when pierre thought of this the idea of it all divulging his secret to his mother not only was made repelling by its hopelessness as an infirm attack upon her citadel of pride but was made in the last degree inhuman as torturing her in her tendress recollections and desecrating the whitest altar in her sanctuary though the conviction that he must never disclose his secret to his mother was originally and unmeditated and as it were and inspired one yet now he was almost painstaking in scrutinizing the entire circumstances of the matter in order that nothing might be overlooked for already he vaguely felt that upon the concealment or the disclosure of this thing with reference to his mother hinged his whole future course of conduct his whole earthly wheel and isabel's but the more and the more that he pondered upon it the more and the more fixed became his original conviction he considered that in the case about disclosure all human probability pointed to his mother's scornful rejection of his suit as a pleader for isabel's honorable admission into the honorable mansion of the gland innings then in that case unconsciously thought pier I shall have given the deep poison of a miserable truth to my mother without benefit to any and positive harm to all and through pier's mind there then darted a baleful thought how that the truth should not always be paraded how that sometimes a lie is heavenly and truth infernal feelially infernal truly thought pier if I should buy one vile breath of truth blast my father's blessed memory in the bosom of my mother and plant the sharpest dagger of grief in her soul I will not do it but as this resolution in him opened up so dark and wretched a background to his view he strove to think no more of it now but postpone it until the interview with isabel should have in some way more definitely shaped his purposes for when suddenly encountering the shock of new and unanswerable revelations which he feels must revolutionize all the circumstances of his life man at first ever seeks to shun all conscious definiteness in his thoughts and purposes has assured that the lines that shall precisely define his present misery and thereby lay out his future path these can only be defined by sharp stakes that cut into his heart chapter three most melancholy of all the hours of earth is that one long gray hour which to the watcher by the lamp intervenes between the night and day when both lamp and watcher overtasked gross sickly in the pallid light and the watcher seeking for no gladness in the dawn sees not but garish vapors there and almost invokes a curse upon the public day that shall invade his lonely night of sufferance the one small window of his closet looked forth upon the meadow and across the river and far away to the distant heights storied with the great deeds of the grand innings many a time had Pierre sought this window before sunrise to behold the blood red out flinging dawn that would wrap those purple hills as with a banner but now the morning dawned in mist and rain and came drizzlingly upon his heart it as the day advanced and once more showed to him the accustomed features of his room by that natural light which till this very moment had never lighted him but to his joy now that the day and not the night was witnessed to his woe now first the dread reality came appallingly upon him a sense of horrible falorness feebleness impotence and infinite eternal desolation possessed him it was not merely mental but corporeal also he could not stand and when he tried to sit his arms fell forwards as tied to leaden weights dragging his ball and chain he fell upon his bed for when the mind is cast down only in sympathetic proneness can the body rest whence the bed is often grief's first refuge half stupefied as with opium he fell into the profoundest sleep in an hour he awoke instantly recalling all the previous night and now finding himself a little strengthened and lying so quietly and silently there almost without bodily consciousness but is so unobtrusively alert careful not to break the spell by the least movement of a limb or the least turning of his head pierce that vastly faced his grief and looked deep down into its eyes and thoroughly and calmly and summarily comprehended it now so at least he thought in what it demanded from him and what he must quickly do in its more immediate sequences and what that course of conduct was which he must pursue in the coming unevatable breakfast interview with his mother and what for the present must be his plan with lucy his time of thought was brief rising from his bed he steadied himself up right a moment and then going to his writing desk in a few at first faltering but at length unlagging lines trace the following note I must ask pardon of you lucy for so strangely absentee myself last night but you know me well enough to be very sure that I would not have done so without important cause I was in the street approaching your cottage when a message reached me imperatively calling me away it is a matter which will take up all my time and attention for possibly two or three days I tell you this now that you may be prepared for it and I know that however unwelcome this may be to you you will yet bear with it for my sake for indeed and indeed lucy dear I would not dream of staying from you so long unless irresistibly coerced to it do not come to the mansion until I come to you and do not manifest any curiosity or anxiety about me should you chance in the interval to see my mother in any other place keep just as cheerful as if I were by you all the time do this now I conjure you and so farewell he folded the note and was about sealing it when he hesitated a moment and instantly unfolding it read it to himself but he could not adequately comprehend his own writing for a sudden cloud came over him this past and taking his pen hurriedly again he added the following post script lucy this note may seem mysterious but if it shall I did not mean to make it so nor do I know that I could have helped it but the only reason is this lucy the matter which I've alluded to is of such a nature that for the present I stand virtually pledged not to disclose it to any person but those more directly involved in it but where one cannot reveal the thing itself it only makes it the more mysterious to write round it this way so merely know me entirely unmenaced in person and eternally faithful to you and so be at rest till I see you then seeing the note and ringing the bell he gave it in strict charge to a servant with directions to deliver it at the earliest practicable moment and not wait for any answer but as the messenger was departing the chamber he called him back and taking the sealed note again and hollowing it in his hand scrawled inside of it in pencil the following words don't write me don't inquire for me and then returned it to the man who quitted him leaving Pierre rooted in thought in the middle of the room but he soon roused himself and left the mansion and seeking the cool refreshing matter stream where it formed a deep and shady pool he bathed and returning invigorated to his chamber changed his entire dress in the little trifling concernments of his toilet striving utterly to banish all thought of that weight upon his soul never did he array himself with more solicitude for effect it was one of his fond mother's whims to perfume the lighter contents of his wardrobe and it was one of his own little femininesses of the sort sometimes curiously observable in very robust body and big soul men as Muhammad for example to be very partial to all pleasant essences so that when once more he left the mansion in order to freshen his cheek anew to meet the king glance of his mother to whom the secret of his possible power could not be divulged Pierre went forth all redolent but alas his body only the embalming sermons of his buried dead within chapter four his stroll was longer than he meant and when he returned up the linden walk leading to the breakfast room and ascended the piazzas steps and glanced into the wide window there he saw his mother seated not far from the table her face turned toward his own and heard her gay voice and peculiarly light and buoyant laugh accusing him and not her being the morning's laggard now dates was busy among some spoons and napkins at a side stand summoning all possible cheerfulness to his face Pierre entered the room remembering his carefulness and bathing and dressing and knowing that there is no air so calculated to give bloom to the cheek as that of a damply fresh cool and misty morning Pierre persuaded himself that small trace would now be found on him of his long night of watching good morning sister such a famed stroll I've been all the way to where good heavens where for such a look is that why Pierre Pierre what ails the dates I will touch the bell presently as the good servitor fumbled for a moment among the napkins as if I'm willing to stir so summarily from his accustomed duty and not without some of a well and long tried old domestic vague intermittent murmuring at being wholly excluded from a matter of family interest Mrs. Glendening kept her fixed eye on Pierre who unmindful that the breakfast was not yet entirely ready seating himself at the table began helping himself though but nervously enough to the cream and sugar the moment the door closed on dates the mother sprang to her feet and threw her arms around her son but in that embrace Pierre miserably felt that their two hearts beat not together in such unison as before what haggard thing possesses thee my son speak this is incomprehensible Lucy not she no love quarrel there speak speak my darling boy my dear sister began Pierre sister me not now Pierre I am thy mother well then dear mother thou art quite as incomprehensible to me as I to talk faster Pierre this calmness freezes me tell me for by my soul something most wonderful must have happened to thee thou art my son and I command thee it is not Lucy it is something else tell me my dear mother said Pierre impulsively moving his chair backward from the table if thou wits only believe me when I say it I have really nothing to tell thee thou knowest that sometimes when I happen to feel very foolishly studious and philosophical I sit up late in my chamber and then regardless of the hour foolishly run out into the air for a long stroll across the meadows I took such a stroll last night and had but little time left for napping afterward and what nap I had I was none the better for but I won't be so silly again soon so do dearest mother stop looking at me and let us do breakfast dates touch the bell there sister stay Pierre there is a heaviness in this hour I feel I know that thou art deceiving me perhaps I heard in seeking to rest my secret from thee but believe me my son I never thought thou hast any secret thing from me except that first love for Lucy and that my own womanhood tells me was most pardonable and right but now what can it be Pierre Pierre consider well before thou determinist upon withholding confidence from me I am thy mother it may prove a fatal thing can that be good and virtuous Pierre which shrinks from a mother's knowledge let us not loose hands so Pierre thy confidence from me mine goes from thee now shall I touch the bell Pierre who had thus far been vainly seeking to occupy his hands with his cap and spoon he now paused and unconsciously fastened a speechless glance of mournfulness upon his mother again he felt presentiments of his mother's newly revealed character he foresaw the supposed indignation of her wounded pride her gradually estranged affections there upon he knew her firmness and her exaggerated ideas of the inalienable allegiance of a son he troubled to think that now indeed was come the first initial moment of his heavy trial but though he knew all the significance of his mother's attitude as she stood before him intently eyeing him with one hand upon the bell court and though he felt that the same opening of the door that should now admit dates could not but give eternal exit to all confidence between him and his mother and though he felt to that this was his mother's latent thought nevertheless he was girded up in his well considered resolution Pierre Pierre shall I touch the mother's day yes do sister the bell was rung and at the summons dates entered and looking with some significance that Mrs. Glendening said his reverence has come my mistress and is now in the west parlor show mr falls grave in here immediately and bring up the coffee did I not tell you I expected him to breakfast this morning yes my mistress but I thought that just then glancing alarmedly from mother to son oh my good days nothing has happened cried Mrs. Glendening lightly and with a bitter smile looking toward her son show mr falls grave in Pierre I did not see thee to tell thee last night but mr falls grave breakfast with us by invitation I was at the parsonage yesterday to see him about that wretched affair of deli and we are finally to settle upon what is to be done this morning but my mind is made up concerning Ned no such profligate shall pollute this place nor shall the disgraceful deli fortunately the abrupt entrance of the clergyman here turned away attention from the southern parlor appears countenance and afforded him time to rally good morning madam good morning sir said mr falls grave in a singularly mild flute like voice turning to Mrs. Glendening and her son the lady receiving him with answering cordiality but peer to embarrass just then to be equally polite as for one brief moment mr falls grave stood before the pair air taking the offered chair from dates his aspect was eminently attractive there are certain ever to be cherished moments in the life of almost any man when a variety of little foregoing circumstances all unite to make him temporarily oblivious of whatever it may be hard and bitter in his life and also to make him most amiably and rudderly disposed when the scene and company immediately before him are highly agreeable and if at such a time he chance involuntarily to put himself into a scenically favorable bodily posture then in that posture however transient thou shalt catch the noble stature of his better angel catch a heavenly glimpse of the latent heavenliness of man it was so with mr falls grave now not a house within a circuit of 50 miles that he preferred entering before the mansion house of saddle meadows and though the business upon which he had that morning come was anything but relishable to him yet that subject was not in his memory then before him stood united in one person the most exalted lady and the most storied beauty of all the country round and the finest most intellectual and most congenial youth he knew before him also stood the generous founders and the untiring patroness of the beautiful little marble church consecrated by the good bishop not four years gone by before him also stood though in polite disguise the same untiring benefactors from whose purse he could not help suspecting came a great part of his salary nominally supplied by the rental of the pews even invited to breakfast a meal which in a well-appointed country family is the most cheerful circumstance of daily life he smelled all java spices in the aroma from the silver coffee urn and well he knew what liquid deliciousness would soon come from it besides all this and many more minutenesses of the kind he was conscious that mrs glendening entertained a particular partiality for him though not enough to marry him as he ten times knew by very bitter experience and that pier was not behind hand in his esteem and the clergyman was well worthy of it nature had been royally bountiful to him in his person in his happier moments as the present his face was radiant with a courtly but mild benevolence his person was nobly robust and dignified while the remarkable smallness of his feet in the almost infantile delicacy and vivid whiteness and purity of his hands strikingly contrasted with his fine girth and stature foreign countries like america where there is no distinct hereditary cast of gentlemen whose order is factitiously perpetuated as race horses and lords are in kingly lands and especially in those agricultural districts where of a hundred hands that drop a ballot for the presidency 99 shall be of the brownest and the brawniest in such districts this daintiness of the fingers when united with a generally manly aspect assumes a remarkableness unknown in european nations this most prepossessing form of the clergyman lost nothing by the character of his manners which were polished and unobtrusive but peculiarly insinuating without the least appearance of craftiness or affectation heaven had given him his fine silver keyed person for a flute to play on in this world and he was nearly the perfect master of it his graceful motions had the undulatoriness of melodious sounds you almost thought you heard not saw him so much the wonderful yet natural gentleman he seemed that more than once mrs glendening had held him up to pier as a splendid example of the polishing and gentlemanizing influences of christianity upon the mind and manners declaring that extravagant as it might seem she had always been of his father's fancy that no man could be a complete gentleman and preside with dignity at his own table unless he partook of the church's sacraments nor mr fall grave's case was this maxim entirely absurd the child of a poor northern farmer who had wedded a pretty seamstress the clergyman had no heraldic line of ancestry to show as warrant an explanation of his handsome person and gentle manners the first being the willful partiality nature and the second the consequence of a scholastic life a tempered by a taste for the choice of female society however small which he always regarded as the best relish of existence if now his manners thus responded to his person his mind answered to them both and was their finest illustration besides his eloquent persuasiveness in the pulpit various fugitive papers upon subjects of nature art and literature attested not only his refined affinity to all beautiful things visible or invisible but likewise that he possessed a genius for celebrating such things which are not less indolent and more ambitious nature would have been sure to have gained a fair poet's name ere now for this mr falls grave was just hovering upon his prime of years a period which in such a man is the sweetest and to a mature woman by far the most attractive of manly life youth has not yet completely gone with his beauty grace and strength nor his age at all come with its decrepitudes though the finest undraught parts of it its mildness and its wisdom have gone on before as decorous chamberlains precede the sedan of some crutched king such was this mr falls grave who now sat at mrs lindenings breakfast table a corner of one of that lady's generous napkin so inserted into his snowy bosom that its folds almost invested him as far down as the table's edge and he seemed a sacred priest indeed breakfasting in his surplus pray mr falls grave said mrs glendening break me off a bit of that role whether or not his saser dodal experiences had strangely refined and spiritualized so simple a process as breaking bread or whether it was from the spotless aspect of his hands certain it is that mr falls grave acquitted himself on this little occasion in a manner that beheld of oba leonardo might have given that artist no despicable hint touching his celestial painting as pier regarded him sitting there so mild and meek such an image of white browed and white-handed and napkin immaculateness and as he felt the gentle humane radiations which came from the clergyman's manly and rounded beautifulness and as he remembered all the good that he knew of this man and all the good that he had heard of him and could recall no blemish in his character and as in his own conceal misery and fullness he contemplated the open benevolence and beaming excellent heartedness of mr falls grave the thought darted through his mind that if any living being was capable of giving him worthy counsel in his straight and if to anyone he could go with christian propriety and some small hopefulness that person was the one before him pray mr glendening said the clergyman pleasantly as pier was silently offering to help him to some time don't let me rob you of it pardon me but you seem to have very little yourself this morning i think an executable pond i know but turning toward mrs glendening when one is made to feel very happy one is somehow apt to say very silly things happiness and silliness ah it's a suspicious coincidence mr falls grave said the hostess your cup is empty dates we were talking yesterday mr falls grave concerning that vile fellow ned well madam responded the gentleman a very little uneasily he shall not stay on any ground of mind my mind is made up sir infamous man did he not have a wife as virtuous and beautiful now as when i first gave her away at your altar it was the sheerest and most gratuitous prophecy the clergyman mournfully and assentingly moved his head such men continued the lady flushing with the sincerest indignation far too my way of thinking more detestable than murderers that is being a little hard upon them my dear madam said mr falls grave mildly do you not think so appear now said the lady turning earnestly upon her son is not the man who has sinned like that ned worse than a murderer has he not sacrificed one woman completely and given infamy to another to both of them for their portion if his own legitimate boy should now hate him i could hardly blame him my dear madam said the clergyman whose eyes having followed mrs glendonings to her son's countenance and marking a strange trepidation there had thus far been earnestly scrutinizing peers not wholly repressible emotion my dear madam he said slightly bending over his stately episcopal looking person virtue has perhaps an over ardent champion in you you grow too warm but mr glendoning here he seems to grow too cold pray favor us with your views mr glendoning i will not think now of the man said pierce slowly and looking away from both his auditors let us speak of deli and her infant she has or had one i've loosely heard their case is miserable indeed the mother deserves it said the lady inflexibly and the child reverend sir what are the words of the bible the sins of the father shall be visited around the children to the third generation said mr falls grave with some slight reluctance in his tones but madam that does not mean that the community is in any way to take the infamy of the children into their own voluntary hands as the conscious delegated stewards of god's inscrutable dispensations because it is declared that the infamous consequences of sin shall be hereditary it does not follow that our personal and active loathing of sin should descend from the sinful sinner to his sinless child i understand you sir said mrs glendoning coloring slightly you think me too sensorious but if we entirely forget the parentage of the child in every way receive the child as we would any other feel for it in all respects the same and attach no sign of ignominy to it how then is the bible dispensation to be fulfilled do we not then put ourselves in the way of his fulfillment and is that holy free from impiety here it was the clergyman's term to color a little and there was a just perceptible tremor of the under lip pardon me continued the lady courteously but if there is any one blemish in the character of the reverend mr falls grave it is that the benevolence of his heart too much warps in him the holy rigor of our church's doctrines for my part as i loathe the man i loathe the woman and never desired to behold the child a pause ensued during which it was fortunate for pierre that by the social sorcery of such occasions as the present the eyes of all three were intent upon the claw all three for the moment giving loose to their own distressful meditations upon the subject in debate and mr falls grave vexedly thinking that the scene was becoming a little embarrassing pierre was the first who spoke as before he steadfastly kept his eyes away from both his auditors but though he did not designate his mother something in the tone of his voice showed that what he said was addressed more particularly to her since we seem to have been strangely drawn into the ethical aspect of this melancholy matter said he suppose we go further in it and let me ask how it should be between the legitimate and the illegitimate child children of one father when they shall have passed their childhood here the clergyman quickly raising his eyes looked as surprised and searching there at pierre as his politeness per permit upon my word said mrs glendening hardly less surprised and making no attempt at disguising it this is an odd question you put you have been more attentive to the subject than i have fancy but what do you mean pierre i did not entirely understand you should the legitimate child shun the illegitimate when one father is father to both rejoin pierre bending his head still further over his plate the clergyman looked a little down again and was silent but still turned his head slightly sideways toward his hostess as if awaiting some reply to pierre from her ask the world pierre said mrs glendening warmly and ask your own heart my own heart i will met him said pierre now looking upstead vastly and what do you think mr falls grave letting his glance drop again should the one shun the other should the one refuse his highest sympathy and perfect love for the other especially if that other be deserted by all the rest of the world what think you would have been our blessed saviour's thoughts on such a matter and what was that he so mildly said to the adulterous a swift color passed over the clergyman's countenance diffusing even his expanded brow he slightly moved in his chair and looked uncertainly from pierre to his mother he seemed as a shrewd benevolent minded man placed between opposite opinions merely opinions who with a full and doubly differing persuasion in himself still refrains from uttering it because of an irresistible dislike to manifesting an absolute dissent from the honest convictions of any person whom he both socially and morally esteems well what do you reply to my son said mrs glendening at last madam and sir said the clergyman now regaining his entire self-possession it is one of the social disadvantages which we of the pulpit labor under that we are supposed to know more of the moral obligations of humanity and other people and it is a still more serious disadvantage to the world that our unconsidered conversational opinions on the most complex problems of ethics are too apt to be considered authoritative as indirectly proceeding from the church itself now nothing can be more erroneous than such notions and nothing so embarrasses me and deprives me of that entire serenity which is indispensable to the delivery of a careful opinion on moral subjects than when sudden questions of this sort are put to me in company pardon this long preamble for I have little more to say it is not every question however direct mr glendening which can be conscientiously answered without yes or no millions of circumstances modify all moral questions so that the conscience may possibly dictate freely in any known special case yet by one universal maxim to embrace all moral contingencies this is not only impossible but the attempt to me seems foolish at this instant the surplus like napkin dropped from the clergyman's bosom showing a minute but exquisitely cut cameo of brooch representing the allegorical union of the serpent and dove it had been the gift of an appreciative friend and was sometimes worn on secular occasions like the present I agree with you sir sir pier bowing I fully agree with you and now madam let us talk of something else you madam me very punctiliously this morning mr glendening said his mother half bitterly smiling and half openly offended but still more surprised appears frigid demeanor honor that father and mother said pier both father and mother he unconsciously added and now that it strikes me mr falls grave and now that we have become so strangely polemical this morning let me say that as that command is justly said to be the only one with a promise so it seems to be without any contingency in the application it would seem would it not serve that the most deceitful and hypocritical fathers should be equally honored by the sun as the purest so it would certainly seem according to the strict letter of the decalogue certainly and do you think sir that it should be so held and so applied in actual life for instance should i honor my father if i knew him to be a seducer pier pier said his mother profoundly coloring and half rising there is no need of these argumentative assumptions you very immensely forget yourself this morning it is merely the interest of the general question madam return pier coldly i'm sorry if your former objection does not apply here mr falls grave will you favor me with an answer to my question there you are again mr glendening said the clergyman thankful for pier's hint that is another question in morals absolutely incapable of a definite answer which shall be universally applicable again the surplus like napkin chance to drop i'm tacitly rebuked again then sir said pier slowly but i admit that perhaps you are again in the right and now madam since mr falls grave and yourself have a little business together to which my presence is not necessary it may possibly prove quite dispensable permit me to leave you i'm going off on a long ramble so you need not wait dinner for me good morning mr falls grave good morning madam looking toward his mother as the door closed upon him mr falls grave spoke mr glendening looks a little pale today has he been ill not that i know i've answered the lady indifferently but did you ever see young gentleman so stately as he was extraordinary she murmured what can this mean madam madam but your cup is empty again sir reaching forth her hand no more no more madam said the clergyman madam pray don't madam be anymore mr falls grave i've taken a sudden hatred to that title shall it be your majesty then said the clergyman gallantly the made queens are so stout and so should be the queens of october here the lady laugh comes said she let us go into another room and settle the affair of that infamous ned and that miserable deli chapter five the swiftness and unrepellableness of the billow which with his first shock had so profoundly wound pier had not only poured into his solar tumult of entirely new images and emotions before the time it almost entirely drove out of him all previous ones the things that anyway bore directly upon the pregnant fact of isabel these things were all animate and vividly present to him but the things which bore more upon himself in his own personal condition as now forever involved with his sisters these things were not so animate and present to him the conjectured past of isabel took mysterious hold of his father therefore the idea of his father tyrannized over his imagination and the possible future visible as so essentially though indirectly compromisable by whatever course of conduct his mother might hereafter ignorantly pursue with regard to himself as henceforth through isabel forever altered to her these considerations brought his mother with blazing prominence before him heaven after all have been a little merciful to the miserable man not entirely untempered to human nature are the most direful blasts of fate wind on all sides a sail by prospects of disaster whose final ends are in terror in from it the soul of man either as instinctively convinced that it cannot battle with the whole host at once or else benevolently blinded to the larger arc of the circle which menacingly hams it in whichever be the truth the soul of man thus surrounded cannot and does never intelligently confront the totality of its wretchedness the bitter drug is divided into separate drafts for him today he takes one part of his woe tomorrow he takes more and so on till the last drop is drunk not that in the despotism of other things the fault of lucy and the unconjecturable suffering into which she might so soon be plunged owing to the threatening uncertainty of the state of his own future as now in great part and at all hazards dedicated to isabel not that this thought had thus far been aiming to him icy cold and serpent like it had overlayingly crawled in upon his other shuddering imaginings but those other thoughts would as often upheave again and absorb it into themselves so that it would in that way soon disappear from his cotemporary apprehension the prevailing thoughts connected with isabel he now could front with prepared and open eyes but the occasional thought of lucy when that started up before him he could only cover his bewildered eyes with his bewildered hands nor was this the cowardice of selfishness but the infinite sensitiveness of his soul he could bear the agonizing thought of isabel because he was immediately resolved to help her and to his wage a fellow being's greed but as yet he could not bear the thought of lucy because the very resolution that promised balm to isabel obscurely involved the everlasting piece of lucy and therefore aggravatingly threatened to far more than fellow beings happiness well for pier was that the penciling presentiments of his mind concerning lucy as quickly erased as painted their tormenting images standing half befogged upon the mountain of his fate all that part of the wide panorama was wrapped in clouds to him but anon those concealings slid aside or rather quick rent was made in them disclosing far below half veiled in the lower mist the winding tranquil veil and stream of lucy's previous happy life through the swift cloud rent he caught one glimpse of her expectant and angelic face peeping from the honey-suckled window of her cottage and the next instant the stormy opinions of the clouds locked themselves over it again and all was hidden as before and all went confused and whirling rack and vapours before only by unconscious inspiration caught from the agency's invisible demand had he been enabled to write that first obscurely announcing no to lucy wherein the collectedness and the mildness and the calmness were but the natural though insidious precursors of the stunning bolts on bolts to follow the wild dust for the most part wrapped from his consciousness and vision still the condition of his lucy as so deeply affected now was still more and more disentangling and defining itself from out of its nearer mist and even beneath the general upper fog for when unfathomably stirred the supper elements of man do not always reveal themselves in the concocting act but as with all other potencies show themselves chiefly in their ultimate resolveings and results strange wild work and awfully symmetrical and reciprocal was that now going on within the self-apparently chaotic breast of pierre as in his own conscious determinations the mournful is about was being snatched from her captivity of worldwide abandonment so deeper down in the more secret chambers of his unsuspecting soul the smiling lucy now is dead and ashy pale was being bound a ransom for isabel salvation eye for eye and truth for two eternally inexorable and unconcerned is fate a mere heartless traitor in men's joys and woes nor was this general and spontaneous self-concealment of all the most momentous interests of his love as irretrievably involved with isabel and his resolution respecting her there was this unbidden thing in him unseconded by the prompting of his own conscious judgment when in the tyranny of the master vented self that judgment was permitted some infrequent play he could not but be aware that all meditation on lucy now was worse than useless how could he now map out his and her young life chart when all was yet besty white with creamy breakers still more divinely dedicated as he felt himself to be with divine commands upon him to be friend and champion isabel through all conceivable contingencies of time and chance how could he ensure himself against the insidious inroads of self-interest and hold intact all his unselfish magnanimities if once he should permit the distracting thought of lucy to dispute with isabel's the pervading possession of his soul and if though but unconsciously as yet he was almost superhumanly prepared to make a sacrifice of all objects dearest to him and cut himself away from his last hopes of common happiness should they cross his grand enthusiast resolution if this was so with him then how light as gossamer and thinner and more impalpable than areas threads of cause did he hold all common conventional regardings his hereditary duty to his mother his pledge worldly faith and honor to the hand and seal of his affiancement not that at present all these things did thus present themselves to pierre but these things were fetally forming in him impregnations from high enthusiasm he had received and the now incipient offspring which so stirred with such painful vague vibrations in his soul this in its mature development when it should at last come forth and living deeds which scorn all personal relationship with pierre and hold his heart's dearest interest for naught thus in the enthusiast to duty the heaven begot christ is born and will not own a mortal parent and spurns and wrens all mortal bonds chapter six one night one day and a small part of the one ensuing evening have been given to pierre to prepare for the momentous interview with isabel now thank god thought pierre the night has passed the night of chaos and of doom the day only and the skirt of evening now remain may heaven new string my soul and confirm me in the christlike feeling i first felt may i in all my least shapeful thoughts still square myself by the inflexible rule of holy rite let no unmanly mean temptation cross my path this day let no base don't lie in it this day i will forsake the censuses of men and seek the suffrages of the godlike population of the trees which now seem to me unnobler race the man their high foliage shall drop heavenliness upon me my feet in contact with her mighty roots immortal vigor shall so steal into me guide me gird me guard me this day ye sovereign powers bind me in bonds i cannot break remove all sinister allurings from me eternally this day to face in me the detested and distorted images of all the convenient lies and duty subterfuges of the diving and ducking moralities of this earth fill me with consuming fire for them to my life's muzzle cram me with your own intent let no world siren come to sing to me this day and weedle from me my undauntedness i cast my eternal die this day ye powers all my strong faith in ye invisibles i stake three whole felicities and three whole lives this day if ye forsake me now farewell to faith farewell to truth farewell to god exile for i from god and man i shall declare myself an equal power with boat free to make war on night and day and all thoughts and things of mind and matter which the upper and the nether firmaments to clasp chapter seven but pierre though charged with the fire of all divineness his containing thing was made of clay our muskets the gods have made to carry infinite combustions and yet made them of clay saved me from being bound to truth liege lord as i am now how shall i steal yet further into pierre and show how this heavenly fire was helped to be contained in him by mere contingent things and things that he knew not but i shall follow the endless winding way the flowing river in the cave of man careless wither i'd be led reckless where i land was not the face though mutely mournful beautiful bewitchingly how unfathomable those most wondrous eyes of supernatural life in those charmed depths grief and beauty plunged and dived together so beautiful so mystical so bewilderingly alluring speaking of a mournfulness infinitely sweeter and more attractive than all mirthfulness that face a glorious suffering that face of touching loveliness that face was pierre's own sisters that face was isabelle's that face pierre had visibly seen into those same supernatural eyes our pierre had looked thus already and ere the proposed encounter he was assured that in a transcendent degree womanly beauty and not womanly ugliness invited him to champion the right be not concealed in this book of sacred truth how if accosted in some squatted lane a humped and crippled hideous girl should have snatched is garment's hem with save me pierre let me own me brother i am thy sister ah if man were holy made in heaven why catch we hell glimpses why in the noblest marble pillar that stands beneath the all-comprising vault ever should we describe the sinister vein we lie in nature very close to god and though further on the stream may be corrupted by the banks it flows through yet at the fountain's rim where mankind's stent bear the stream infallibly bespeaks the fountain so let no sensorious word be here hinted of mortal pierre easy for me to slowly hide these things and always put him before the eye as perfect as immaculate unsusceptible to the inevitable nature and the lot of common men i am more frank with pierre than the best men are with themselves i'm all unguarded and magnanimous with pierre therefore you see his weakness and therefore only in reserves men build imposing characters not in revelations he who shall be wholly honest though nobler than Ethan Allen that man shall stand in danger of the meanest mortals scorn end of book five