 Book 22 of Pierre or the Ambiguities by Hermann Melville. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The flower curtain lifted from before a tropical author with some remarks on the transcendental flesh brush philosophy. Some days passed after the fatal tidings from the meadows, and at length somewhat mastering his emotions, Pierre again sits down in his chamber, for grieve how he will, yet work he must, and now day succeeds day, and week follows week, and Pierre still sits in his chamber. The long rows of cooled brick kilns around him scares no of the change, but from the fair fields of his great-great-great grandfather's manner, summer hath flown like a swallow-guest. The perfidious white autumn hath peeped in at the groves of the maple, and under pretense of clothing them, in rich russet and gold, hath stripped them at last of the slightest rag, and then ran away laughing. Prophetic icicles depended from the arbor's roundabout the old, menorial mansion, now locked up and abandoned, and the little round marble table in the viney summer house, where of July mornings he had sat chatting and drinking negus with his gay mother is now spread with a shivering napkin of frost. The varnish hath encrusted that once-gay mother's grave, preparing it for his final sermons of wrapping snow upon snow, wild howl, the winds in the woods it is winter, sweet summer is done, and autumn is done, but the book, like the bitter winter, is yet to be finished. That season's weed is long garnered, Pierre, that season's ripe apples and grapes are in, no crop, no plant, no fruit is out, the whole harvest is done. Oh, woe to that belated winter overtaken plant, which the summer could not bring, to maturity, the drifting winter snow shall well met, think, Pierre, doth not thy plant, belong to some other, and tropical climb. Though transplanted to northern Maine, the orange tree of the Florida's will put forth leaves in that parsimony as summer, and show some few tokens of fruitage, yet November will find no golden globes thereon, and the passionate old lumberman, December, shall peel the whole tree, wrench it off at the ground, and toss it for a faggot to some lime kiln. Ah, Pierre, Pierre, make haste, make haste, force thy fruitage, lest the winter force thee. Watch, yawn, little toddler, how long it is learning to stand by itself, first it shrieks and implores, and will not try to stand at all, unless both father and mother uphold it. Then a little more bold it must at least feel one parental hand, else again the cry and the tremble. Long time is it ere by degrees this gel comes to stand, without any support, by and by grown up to man's estate it shall leave the very mother that bore it, and the father that begot it, and cross the seas perhaps, or settle in far Oregon lands. There now do you see the soul in its germ on all sides, it is closely folded by the world, as the husk folds the tenderest fruit, then it is born from the world husk, but still now outwardly clings to it, still clamors for the support of its mother the world, and its father the deity, but it shall yet learn to stand independent, though not without many a bitter wail, and many a miserable fall. That hour of the life of a man, when first the help of humanity fails him, and he learns that in his obscurity and indigence humanity holds him a dog, and no man, that hour is a hard one, but not the hardest, there is still another hour which follows, when he learns that in his infinite comparative minuteness, and abjectness the gods do likewise despise him, and own him not of their clan, divinity and humanity then are equally willing that he should starve in the street for all that either will do for him. Now cruel father and mother have both let go his hand, and the little soul toddler now you shall hear his shriek, and his wail, and often his fall. When at saddle meadows Pierre had wavered and trembled in those first wretched hours ensuing upon the receipt of Isabel's letter, then humanity had let go the hand of Pierre, and therefore his cry. But when at last and near to this Pierre was seated at his book, willing that humanity should desert him so long as he thought he felt a far higher support, then ere long he began to feel the utter loss of that other support too, ah, even the paternal gods themselves did now desert Pierre, the toddler was toddling entirely alone, and not without shrieks. It man must wrestle perhaps it is well that it should be on the naked as possible plain. The three chambers of Pierre at the apostles were connecting once, the first having a little retreat where Deli slept was used for the more exacting domestic purposes, here also their meals were taken. The second was the chamber of Isabel, the third was the closet of Pierre, in the first the dining room as they called it, there was a stove which boiled the water for their coffee and tea, and where Deli concocted their light-repast. This was their only fire, for it warned again and again to economize to the uttermost, Pierre did not dare to purchase any additional warmth, but by prudent management a very little warmth may go a great way. In the present case it went some forty feet or more, a horizontal pipe, after elbowing away from above the stove in the dining room pierced the partition wall, and passing straight through Isabel's chamber entered the closet of Pierre at one corner and then abruptly disappeared into the wall, where all further caloric if any went up through the chimney into the air to help warm the December sun. Now the great distance of Pierre's caloric stream from its fountain sadly impaired it, and weakened it, it hardly had the flavor of heat it would have had, but very inconsiderable influence in raising the depressed spirits of the most mercurial thermometer, certainly it was not very elevating to the spirits of Pierre. Besides this caloric stream, small as it was, did not flow through the room, but only entered it to elbow right out of it, as some coquettish maidens entered the heart. Moreover, it was in the furthest corner from the only place where, with a judicious view to the light, Pierre's desk barrels and board could advantageously stand. Often Isabel insisted upon his having a separate stove to himself that Pierre would not listen to such a thing, then Isabel would offer her own room to him, saying it was of no indispense were used to her by day, she could easily spend her time in the dining room, but Pierre would not listen to such a thing, he would not deprive her of the comfort of a continually accessible privacy. Besides he was now used to his own room and must sit by that particular window there, and no other, then Isabel would insist upon keeping her connecting door open while Pierre was employed at his desk, that so the heat of her room might bodily go into his, but Pierre would not listen to such a thing, because he must be religiously locked up while at work, outer love and hate must alike be excluded then. In vain Isabel said she would make not the slightest noise and muffled the point of the very needle she used, all in vain Pierre was inflexible here. Yes, he was resolved to battle it out in his own solitary closet, though a strange transcendental conceit of one of the more erratic and non-conforming apostles who was also at this time engaged upon a profound work above stairs, and who denied himself his full sufficiency of food in order to ensure an abundant fire. The strange conceit of this apostle Isaiah accidentally communicated to Pierre that through all the kingdoms of nature, Chloric was the great universal producer of Vivafire and could not be prudently excluded from the spot where great books were in the act of creation, and therefore he, the apostle for one, was resolved to plant his head in a hot bed of stove-warmed air and sowed forces' brain to germinate and blossom and bud and put forth the eventual crowning Victoria's flower, though indeed this conceit rather staggered Pierre, for in truth, there was no small smack of plausible analogy in it, in one thought of his purse, would wholly expel the unwelcome intrusion and reinforce his own previous resolve. However lofty and magnificent the movements of the stars, whatever celestial melodies they may thereby beget, yet the astronomers assures that they are the most rigidly methodical of all the things that exist. No old housewife goes for a daily domestic round with one millionth part the precision of the great planet Jupiter in his stated and unalterable revolutions. He has found his orbit and stays in it. He has timed himself and adheres to his periods. So in some degree with Pierre, now revolving in the troubled orbit of his book. Pierre rose moderately early and the better to enure himself to the permanent chill of his room and to defy and beard to his face the cruelest cold of the outer air, he would behind the curtain throw down the upper sash of his window and on a square of old painted canvas, formally wrapping some bale of goods in the neighborhood, treat his limbs of those early December mornings to a copious ablution in water thickened with incipient ice. Nor in this stoic performance was he at all without company, not present, but adjoiningly sympathetic for scarce an apostle in all those scores and scores of chambers, but undeviatingly took his daily December bath. Pierre had only two peep out of his pain and glance round the multi windowed in closing walls of the quadrangle to catch plentiful half glimpses all round him of many a lean philosophical nudity, refreshing his meager bones with crashed towel and cold water. Quick be the play was their motto, lively are elbows and limbo all art annuities. Oh, the dismal equings of the raspings of flesh brushes perverted to the filing and polishing of the mirrors ribs. Oh, the shuttersome splashing of pales of ice water over feverish heads, not unfamiliar with aches. Oh, the rheumatical cracklings of rusted joints in that defied air of December for every thick frosted sash was down and every lean nudity courted the Zephyr. Among all the innate hyena-like repellents to the reception of any set form of our spiritually-minded and pure archetypical faith, there is nothing so potent in its skeptical tendencies as that inevitable perverse ridiculousness which so often bestreaks some of the essentially finest and noblest aspirations of those men who disgusted with the common conventional quackerees striving their clogged terrestrial humanities after some imperfectly discerned but heavenly ideals. Ideals not only imperfectly discerned in themselves, but the path to them so little traceable that no two minds will entirely agree upon it. Hardly a new light apostle, but who in super addition to his revolutionary scheme for the minds and philosophies of men entertained some insane heterodoxical notions about the economy of his body is so introduced by the gentlemanly gods into the supernal society practically rejects that most sensible maximum of men of the world who chants seem to gain the friendship of any great character, never make that the ground of boring him with the supplemental acquaintance of their next friend who perhaps is some miserable nanny. Love me, love my dog, is only an addict for the old country women who affectionately kiss their cows. The gods love the soul of the man, often they will frankly accost it, but they abominate his body and will forever cut it dead, both here and hereafter. So if thou wits go to the gods, leave thy dog of a body behind thee, and most impotently thou strives with thy purifying co-baths and thy diligent scrubbings with flesh brushes to prepare it as a meat offering for their altar. Nor shall all thy Pythagorean and Shellian dietings on apple pairings, dried prunes and crumbs of oatmeal cracker ever fit thy body for heaven. Feed all things with food convenient for them, that is, if the food be procurable, the food of thy soul is light in space, feed it then on light in space, but the food of thy body is champagne and oysters, feed it then on champagne and oysters, and so shall it merit a joyful resurrection if there is a need to be. Say wits thou rise with a lantern jaw and a spay vine knee, rise with brawn on thee and a most royal co-operation before thee, so shalt thou in that day claim respectful attention. Know this that while many a consumptive dieterian has but produced the merest literary flatulence east of the world, convivial authors have a like given utterance to the sublimest wisdom and created the least grossed in most ethereal forms. And for men of demonstrative muscle and action, consider that right royal epitaph which Cyrus the Great caused to be engraved on his tomb, I could drink a great deal of wine and it deemed me a great deal of good. Ah foolish to think that by starving thy body, thou shalt fatten thy soul, is yonder ox fatted because yonder lean fox starves in the winter wood and pray not of despising thy body while still thou flourisheth thy flesh brush. The finest houses are most cared for within. The outer walls are freely left to the dust and the soot, put venison in thee and so which shall come out of thee. It is one thing in the milk but another in the sack. Now it was the continual quadrangular example of those forlorn fellows, the apostles, who in this period of his half developments and transitions had diluted pier into the flesh brush philosophy and had almost tempted him into the apple pairings dialectics. For all the long wards, corridors and multitudinous chambers of the apostles were scattered with the stems of the apples, the stems of prunes and the shells of peanuts. They went about huskily muttering the Kantian categories through teeth and lips dry and dusty as any millers with the crumbs of graham crackers. A tumbler of cold water was the utmost welcome to their reception rooms at the grand supposed Sanhedrim presided over by one of the deputies of Plotinus, Plin Lemon, a huge jug of Adam's ale and a bushel basket of graham crackers were the only conviviales. Continually bits of cheese were dropping from their pockets and old shiny apple parchment were ignorantly exhibited every time they drew out a manuscript to read you. Some were curious in the vintages of water and in three glass decanters set before you, Ferro-Mont, Quotant and Conchituit, they held that Quotant was the most potent Ferramont of gentletonic and continued the modest and least inebriating of all. Take some more of the Quotant, my dear sir, be brisk with the Ferramont. Why stops the Quotant? So on their philosophical tables went round their port, their sherry and their claret. Some further danced, rejected mere water in the bath as altogether two cores and element and so took to the vapor baths and steamed their lean ribs every morning. The smoke which issued from their heads and overspread their pages was prefigured in the mist that issued from under their doorseals and out of their windows. Some could not sit down of a morning until after first applying the vapor bath outside and then thoroughly rinsing out their interiors with five cups of cold Quotant, they were as faithfully replenished by our buckets and could they standing in one cordon have consecutively pumped themselves into each other than the great fire of 1835 had been far less widespread and disastrous. Ah ye poor lean ones ye wretched so kites and vaporites have not your niggardly fortunes enough rinsed ye out and wizened ye but ye must still be dragging the hose pipe and throwing still more cold Quotant on yourselves in the world. Ah, attach the screw of your hose pipe to some fine old butt of Madeira, pump us some sparkling wine into the world. See, see, already from all eternity, two thirds of it have lain helplessly soaking. Chapter two, with cheek rather pale, then and lips rather blue, Pierre sits down to his plank. But his Pierre packed in the mail for St. Petersburg this morning over his boots or his moccasins over his ordinary coat is his sore tooth and over that a cloak of Isabel's. Now he is square to his plank and out of his hint, the affection of Isabel gently pushes his chair closer to it for he is so muffled he can hardly move of himself. Madeira comes in with bricks hot from the stove and now Isabel and she with devoted solicitude pack away these comforting stones in the folds of an old blue cloak, a military garment of the grandfather Pierre and tenderly arrange it both over and under his feet by putting the warm flagging beneath. Then Deli brings still another hot brick to put under his ink stand to prevent the ink from thickening. Then Isabel drags the camp bedstead near to him on which are the two or three books he may possibly have occasion to refer to that day with a biscuit or two and some water and a clean towel and a basin. Then she leans against the plank by the elbow of Pierre, a quick-ended stick, is Pierre a shepherd or a bishop or a cripple? No, but he has an effect reduced himself to the miserable condition of the last. With a quick-ended cane, Pierre unable to rise without sadly impairing his manifold entrenchments and admitting the cold air into their innermost nooks, Pierre, if in his solitude he should chance to meet anything beyond the reach of his arm, then the quick-ended cane drags it to his immediate vicinity. Pierre glances slowly all around him, everything seems to be right. He looks up with a grateful melancholy satisfaction that Isabel a tear gathers in her eye, but she conceals it from him by coming very close to him, stooping over and kissing his brow. Tis her lips that leave the warm moisture there, not her tears, she says. I suppose I must go now, Pierre. Now don't, don't be so long today. I will call thee at half past four. Thou shalt not strain thine eyes in the twilight. We will see about that, says Pierre, with an unobserved attempt of a very sad pun. Come, thou must go, leave me, and there he is left. Pierre's young heaven gave him the divinest, freshest form of a man, put light into his eye and fire into his blood, and brawn into his arm, and a joyous, jubilant, overflowing, up bubbling, universal light in him everywhere. Now look around in that most miserable room and at that most miserable of all, the pursuits of a man, and say if here be the place and this be the trade that God intended him for. A rickety chair, two hollow barrels, a plank, paper, pens, an infernally black ink, four leprosy, dingy white walls, no carpet, a cup of water, and a dry biscuit or two. Oh, I hear the leap of the Texan Comanche. As at this moment he goes crashing like a wild deer through the green underbrush. I hear his glorious whoop of savage and untameable health. And then I look in at Pierre, if physical, practical, unreasoned, make the savage, which is he? Civilization, philosophy, ideal virtue, behold your victim. Chapter three, some hours pass, let us peep over the shoulder of Pierre and see what it is he is writing there in that most melancholy closet. Here, topping the reeking paw by his side, is the last sheet from his hand, the frenzied ink not yet entirely dry. It is much to our purpose for in this sheet he seemed to have directly plagiarized from his own experiences to fill out the mood of his apparent author hero, Vivia, who thus soliloquizes a deep, down, unutterable mournfulness is in me. Now I drop all humors or indifferent disguises and all philosophical pretensions. I own myself a brother of the Claude, a child of the primeval gloom. Hopelessness and despair are over me as Paul on Paul, away ye chattering apes of a sub-famoral ream, spinosa and playtoe, who wants this all, but delude me that the night was day and pain only a tickle. Explain this darkness, exercise this devil ye cannot. Tell me not thou inconceivable coxcomb of a girder that the universe cannot spare thee and thy immortality so long as, like a hired raider thou makest thyself generally useful. Already the universe gets on without thee and could still spare a million more of the same identical kidney. Corporations have no souls, and thy pantheism, what was that? Thou wert but the pretensions, heartless part of a man, lo, I hold thee in this hand, and thou art crushed in it, like an egg from which the meat hath been sucked. Here is a slip from the floor, whence flowed the pannet gyrocal melodies that precede the march of these heroes, from what but from a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. And here is a second, cast thy eye in there on vivia. Tell me why those four limbs should be clapped in a dismal jail, day out, day in, week out, weekend, month out, month in, and himself the voluntary jailer. Is this the end of philosophy? This the larger and spiritual life, this your boasted empyrean. Is it for this that a man should grow wise and leave off his most excellent and culminated folly? And here is a third, cast thy eye in there on vivia. He, who in the pursuit of the highest health of virtue and truth, shows but a pallid cheat. Waze hard in thy hand, thou gold-laced virtuoso girder, and tell me whether it does not exceed thy standard rate. And here is a fourth, O God, that man should spoil and rust on the stalk and be wilted and thrushed, ere the harvest hath come. And, O God, that men that call themselves men should still insist on the laugh, I hate the world and could trample all lungs of mankind as grapes and heal them out of their breath to think of the woe and the camp, to think of the truth and the lie. O blessed be the 21st day of December, and cursed be the 21st day of June. From these random slips it would seem that Pierre is quite conscious of much that is so anomalously hard and bitter in his lot of much that is so black and terrific in his soul. Yet that knowing his fatal condition does not, one wit, enable him to change or better his condition, conclusive proof that he has no power over his condition, for in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men. Well enough they know they are in peril, well enough they know the causes of that peril, nevertheless the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown. Chapter four, from eight o'clock in the morning till half past four in the evening, Pierre sits there in his room, eight hours and a half. From throbbing, neck bands and swinging belly bands of gay-hearted horses, the sleigh bells timingly jingle, but Pierre sits there in his room. Thanksgiving comes with its glad thanks and crisp turkeys, but Pierre sits there in his room. Soft through the snows on tinted Indian moccasin, Merry Christmas comes stealing, but Pierre sits there in his room. It is New Year's and like a great flag in the vast city over brims that all curb stones, wharfs and piers with bubbling jubilations, but Pierre sits there in his room. Nor jingling sleigh bells at throbbing neck band or swinging belly band, nor glad thanks, and crisp turkeys of Thanksgiving, nor tinted Indian moccasin, or Merry Christmas softly stealing through the snows, nor New Year's curb stones, wharfs and piers over brimming with bubbling jubilations, nor jingling sleigh bells, nor glad thanksgiving nor Merry Christmas, nor jubilating New Year's nor bell, thang, cries, year, none of these are for Pierre. In the midst of the merrimints of the mutations of time, Pierre hath ringed himself in with the grief of eternity. Pierre is a peak and flexible in the heart of time as the Isle Peak packer stands unassaltable in the midst of waves. He will not be called to, he will not be stirred, sometimes the intent ear of Isabel in the next room overhears the alternate silence, and then the long lonely scratch of his pen. It is as if she heard the busy claw of some midnight mole in the ground. Sometimes she hears a low coffin, sometimes the scrape of his crook handled cane. Here surely is a wonderful stillness of eight hours and a half, repeated day after day in the heart of such silence. Surely something is at work, is it creation or destruction? Bill's Pierre, the noble world of a new book, or does the pale haggardness unbuild the lungs and the life in him? Unhonorable that a man should be thus. When in the meridian flush of the day we recall the black apex of night, then night seems impossible. This sun can never grow down. Oh, that the memory of the uttermost gloom as an already tasted thing to the drake should be no security against its return. One may be passably well one day, but the next he may sup at black broth with pluto. Is there then all this work to one book which shall be read in a very few hours and far more frequently utterly skipped in one second and which in the end, whatever it be must undoubtedly go to the worms? Not so that which now absorbs the time and the life of Pierre is not the book, but the primitive elementalizing of the strange stuff which in the act of attempting that book have upheaved and upgushed in his soul, two books are being ripped of which the world shall only see one and that the bungled one, the larger book and the infinitely better is for Pierre's own private shelf. That it is whose unfathomable cravings drink his blood, the other only demands his ink. But circumstances have so decreed that the one cannot be composed on the paper only as the other is ripped down in his soul and the one of the soul is elephantinely sluggish and will not budge at a breath. Thus Pierre is fastened on by two leeches. How then can the life appear last? Though he is fitting himself for the highest life by thinning his blood and collapsing his heart, he is learning how to live by rehearsing the part of death. Who shall tell all the thoughts and feelings of Pierre in that desolate and shivering room when at last the idea uptrooted that the wiser and the profounder he should grow, the more and the more he lessened the chances for bread? That could he now hurl his deep book out of the window and fall to on some shallow nothing of a novel composable in a month at the longest? Then could he reasonably hope for it both appreciation and cash? But the devouring profundities now opened up in him, consume all his vigor, witty he could not now be entertainingly and profitably shallow in some Pellucid and merry romance. Now he sees that with every accession of the personal divine to him, some great landslide of the general surrounding divine has slipped from him and falls crashing away. Said I not that the gods as well as mankind had unhanded themselves from this Pierre, so now in him you behold the baby toddler I spoke of forced now to stand and toddler alone. Now and then he turns to the camp bed and readying his towel in the basin, presses it against his brow. Now he leans back in his chair as if to give up, but again bends over and plods. Twilight draws on, the summons of Isabelle has heard from the door, the poor frozen blue lipped, so shivering traveler for St. Petersburg is unpacked. And for a moment stands toddling on the floor, then his hat and his cane and out he sallies for fresh air, a most comfortless staggering of a stroll, people gaze at him passing as that some imprudent sick man willfully burst from his bed. If an acquaintance has met and would say a pleasant newsmonger's word in his ear, that acquaintance turns from him, affronted at his heart aspect of icy discourtesy, bad-hearted mutters the man and goes on. He comes back to his chambers and sits down at the neat table of deli and Isabelle soothingly eyes him and presses him to eat and be strong, but his is the famishing, which loathes all food. He cannot eat but by force, he has assassinated the natural day, how then can he eat with an appetite? If he lays him down, he cannot sleep, his weight, the infinite weightfulness in him, then how can he slumber? Still his book like a vast lumbering planet revolves in his aching head. He cannot command the thing out of its orbit. Fain would he behead himself to gain one night's repose. At last the heavy hours move on and sheer exhaustion overtakes him and he lies still. Not asleep as children and day laborers sleep, but he lies still from his throbbing, and for that interval holdingly she's the beak of the vulture in his hand and lets it not enter his heart. Morning comes, begin the dropped sage, the icy water, the flesh brush, the breakfast, the hot bricks, the ink, the pen, from eight o'clock to half past four, and the whole general inclusive hell of the same departed day. Ah, shivering thus day after day in his wrappers and cloaks, is this the warm lad that once sung to the world of the tropical summer. End of book 22. Book 23 of Pierre for the Ambiguities by Herman Melville. This liver box recording is in the public domain. A letter from Pierre, Isabelle, a rival of Lucy, Ziesel, and Trunks at the Apostles. Chapter one. If a frontier man be seized by wild Indians and carried far and deep into the wilderness and they're held captive with no slightest probability of eventual deliverance, then the wisest thing for that man is to exclude from his memory by every possible method the least images of those beloved objects now forever reft from him. For the more delicious they were to him in the now departed possession, so much the more agonizing shall they be in the present recalling. And though a strong man may sometimes succeed in strangling such tormenting memories, yet if in the beginning permitted to encroach upon him unchecked, the same man shall in him become as an idiot. With a continent and an ocean between him and his wife, thus sundered from her by whatever imperative cause for a term of long years, the husband if passionately devoted to her and by nature broodingly sensitive of soul is wise to forget her till he embrace her again, is wise never to remember her if he hear of her death. And those such complete suicidal forgittings prove practically impossible, yet is it the shallow and ostentatious affections alone which are busting in the offices of obituary and memories. The love deep as death, what mean those five words, but that such love cannot live and be continually remembering that the loved one is no more. If it be thus then in cases where entire unremorsfulness as regards the beloved absent objects is presumed, how much more intolerable when the knowledge of their hopeless wretchedness occurs attended by the visitations of before latent upbratings in the rememberer as having been anyway, even unwillingly the producers of their sufferings. There seems no other sane recourse for some moody organizations on whom such things under such circumstances intrude but right and left to flee them whatever be tied. If little or nothing hitherto has been said of Lucy Tartan in reference to the condition of Pierre after his departure from the Meadows, it has only been because her image did not willingly occupy his soul. It's driven his utmost to banish it dense. And only once on receiving the tidings of Glenn's renewed attentions did he remit the intensity of those strivings or rather feel them as impetuous in him in that hour of his manifold and overwhelming prostration. Not that the pale form of Lucy swooning on her snow white bed, not that the inexpressible anguish of the shriek, my heart, my heart would not now at times force themselves upon him and cause his whole being to thrill with a nameless horror and terror but the very thrillingness of the phantom made him to shun it with all remaining might of his spirit. Nor were their wanting still other and far more wonderful though but dimly conscious influences in the breast of Pierre to meet as repellents the imploring form. Not to speak of his being devoured by the all exacting theme of his book, there were sinister preoccupations in him of a still subtler and more fearful sort of which some Inglings have already been given. It was while seated solitaire in his room one morning his flagging faculty seeking a momentary respite, his head sideways turned toward the naked floor following the seams in it which as wires led straight from where he sat to the connecting door and disappeared beneath it into the chamber of Isabel. That he started at a tap at that very door followed by the wanted low sweet voice. Pierre, a letter for thee, does thou hear a letter? May I come in? At once he fell to dart of surprise and apprehension for he was precisely in that general condition with respect to the outer world that he could not reasonably look for any tidings but disastrous or at least unwelcome ones. He assented and Isabel entered holding out the billet in her hand. It is from some lady, Pierre, who can it be? Not thy mother, though, of that I am certain. The expression of her face as seen by me, not at all answering to the expression of this handwriting here. My mother from my mother, mother, Pierre, in wild vacancy. No, no, it can scarce be from her. Oh, she writes no more, even in her own private tablets. Now, death hath stolen the last leaf and rubbed all out to scribble his own in a faceable hick yacket there. Pierre, write Isabel, in a fright. Give it me, he shouted vehemently, extending his hand. Forgive me, sweet, sweet Isabel. I've wandered in my mind. This book makes me mad. There, I have it now in a tone of indifference. Now, leave me alone again. It is from some pretty aunt or cousin, I suppose, carelessly balancing the letter in his hand. Isabel quitted the room the moment the door closed upon her. Pierre eagerly split open the letter and read chapter two. This morning, I vowed at my own dearest, dearest Pierre, I feel stronger today. For today, I've still more thought of thine own superhuman, angelical strength, which so has a very little been transferred to me. Oh, Pierre, Pierre, with what word shall I write thee now? Now, when still knowing nothing, yet something of thy secret eye as a seer suspect. Grief, deep unspeakable grief, have made me this seer. I could murder myself, Pierre, when I think of my previous blindness, but that only came from my swoon. It was horrible and most murdersome, but now I see that word right, in being so instantaneous with me, and in never afterward writing to me, Pierre, yes, now I see it and adored thee the more. Ah, thou too noble and angelical, Pierre, now I feel that a being like thee can possibly have no love as other men love, but thou lovest as angels do, not for thyself, but holy for others. But still are we one, Pierre, thou art sacrificing thyself, and I hasten to retie myself to thee, that so I may catch thy fire and all the multitudinous arms of our common flames may embrace. I will ask of thee nothing, Pierre, thou shalt tell me no secret, very right word thou, Pierre, when in that ride to the hills, thou wouldst not swear the fond foolish oath I demanded. Very right, very right, now I see it. If then I solemnly bow, never to seek from thee any slightest thing, which thou wouldst not willingly have me know, if ever I, in all outward actions, shall recognize, just as thou dost, the peculiar position of that mysterious and ever-sacred being, then may I not come and live with thee. I will be no encumbrance to thee, I know just where thou art and how thou art living, and only just there, Pierre, and only just so is any further life indurable or possible for me. She will never know, for thus far I am sure, thou thyself has never disclosed it to her, what I once was to thee, let it seem as though I were some non-like cousin immovably vowed to dwell with thee in thy strange exile, show not to me never show more any visible conscious token of love, I will never to thee our mortal lives, O my heavenly Pierre, shall henceforth be one mute and wooing of each other with no declaration, no bridal, till we meet in the pure realms of God's final blessedness for us, till we meet where the ever-interrupting and ever-marring world cannot and shall not come, where all thy hidden glorious unselfishness shall be gloriously revealed in the full splendor of that heavenly light, where no more force to these cruelest disguises, she, she too shall assume her own glorious place, nor take it hard, but rather feel the more blessed, when there thy sweet heart shall be openly and unreservedly mine. Pierre, Pierre, my Pierre, only this thought, this hope, this sublime faith now supports me, well was it that the swoon in which thou didst lead me, that long eternity ago, well was it, dear Pierre, that though I came out of it to stare and grope, yet it was only to stare and grope, and then I swooned again, and then groped again, and then again swooned, but all this was vacancy, little I clutched, nothing I knew, it was less than a dream, my Pierre, I had no conscious thought of thee love, but felt an utter blank, a vacancy, for work thou not then utterly gone from me. And what could there then be left of poor Lucy, but now this long, long swoon is past? I come out again into life and light, but how could I come out? How could I anyway be, my Pierre, if not in thee? So the moment I came out of the long, long swoon, straightway came to me the immortal faith in thee, which though it could offer no one slight as possible argument of mere sense in thy behalf, yet was it only the more mysteriously imperative for that, my Pierre, no then, dear Pierre, that with every most glaring earthly reason to disbelieve in thy love, I do yet wholly give myself up to the unshakable belief in it, for I feel that always is love, love, and cannot know change, Pierre, I feel that heaven hath called me to a wonderful office toward thee, by throwing me into that long, long swoon, during which Martha tells me I hardly ate altogether three ordinary meals, by that heaven I feel now was preparing me for the superhuman office I speak of, was wholly estranging me from this earth, even while I yet lingered in it, was fitting me for a celestial mission in terrestrial elements. O give to me of thine own dear strength, and but a poor weak girl, dear Pierre, one that did once lovely, but too fondly, and with earthly frailty, but now I shall be wafted far upward from that, shall soar up to thee, where thou sittest in thine own calm, sublime heaven of heroism. O seek not to dissuade me, Pierre, which thou slay me and slay me a million times more, and never have done with murdering me, I must come, I must come, God himself cannot stay me, for it is he that commands me, I know all that will follow my flight to thee, my amazed mother, my enraged brothers, the whole taunting and despising world, but thou art my mother and my brothers in all the world and all heaven and all the universe to me, thou art my Pierre, one only being does this soul in me serve, and that is thee, Pierre, so I am coming to thee, Pierre, and quickly, tomorrow it shall be, and nevermore will I quit thee, Pierre, speak thou immediately to her about me, thou shalt know best what to say, is there not some connection between our families, Pierre? I've heard my mother sometimes trace such a thing out, some indirect cousinship, if thou approvest then, thou shalt say to her, I am thy cousin, Pierre, thy resolved and immovable, none like cousin, vowed to dwell with thee forever, to serve thee and her, to guard thee and her without end, prepare some little corner for me somewhere, but let it be very near ere I come, I shall send a few little things, the tools I shall work by, Pierre, and so contribute to the welfare of all. Look for me then, I am coming, I am coming, my Pierre, for a deep, deep voice assures me that all noble as thou art, Pierre, some terrible jeopardy involves thee, which my continual presence only can drive away, I am coming, I am coming, Lucy. Chapter three, when surrounded by the base and mercenary crew, man too long wanted to eye his race, with a suspicious disdain, suddenly is brushed by some angelical plume of humanity, and the human accents of superhuman love, and the human eyes of superhuman beauty and glory, suddenly burst in his being, then how wonderful and fearful the shock, it is as if the sky-coupe were rent, and from the black belly of Jehoshaphat, he caught upper glimpses of the seraphim in the visible act of adoring. He held the artless, angelical letter in his unrealizing hand, he started and gazed round his room, and out at the window, commanding the bear, desolate, all-forbidding quadrangle, and then asked himself whether this was the place that an angel should choose for its visit to earth. Then he felt a vast, out-swelling triumphant-ness that the girl whose rare merits his intuitive soul had, once so clearly and passionately discerned, should indeed in this most tremendous of all trials, have acquitted herself with such infinite majesty. Then again he sunk utterly down from her, as in a bottomless gulf, and ran shuddering through hideous galleries of despair, in pursuit of some vague white shape and loathe, two unfathomable dark eyes met his, and Isabel stood mutely and mournfully, yet all ravishingly before him. He started up from his plank, cast off his manifold wrappings and crossed the floor to remove himself from the spot where such sweet, such sublime, such terrific revelations had been made him. Then a timid little rap was heard at the door, Pierre, Pierre, now that thou art risen, may I not come in just for a moment, Pierre, come in, Isabel. She was approaching him in her wanted, most strange and sweetly mournful manner, when he retreated a step from her and held out his arm, not seemingly to invite, but rather, as if to warn. She looked fixedly in his face and stood rooted. Isabel, another, is coming to me. Thou dost not speak, Isabel. She is coming to dwell with us so long as we live, Isabel. Thou dost not speak. The girl still stood rooted, the eyes which she had first fixed on him still remained wide openly riveted. Thou dost not speak, Isabel, said Pierre, terrified at her frozen, immovable aspect, yet too terrified to manifest his own terror to her and still coming slowly near her. She slightly raised one arm as if to grasp some support, then turned her head slowly sideways toward the door by which she had entered, then her dry lips slowly parted. My bed lay me, lay me. The verbal effort broke her stiffening enchantment of frost, her thawed form sloped side long into the air, but Pierre caught her and bore her into her own chamber and later there on the bed, fan me, fan me. He fan the fainting flame of her life by and by. She turned slowly toward him. Oh, that feminine word from thy mouth, dear Pierre, that she, that she, Pierre, sat silent fanning her. Oh, I want none in the world but thee, my brother, but thee, but thee, and oh God, am I, not enough for thee. Bear earth with my brother, we're all heaven for me, but all my life, all my full soul, contents, not my brother. Pierre spoke not, but he listened, a terrible burning curiosity was in him that made him as heartless, but still all that she had said thus far was ambiguous. Had I known, had I but known it before, oh bitterly cruel to reveal it now, that she, that she, she raised herself suddenly and almost fiercely confronted him, either thou hast told thy secret or she is not worthy, the commonest love of man. Speak, Pierre, which the secret is still a secret, Isabel. Then is she worthless, Pierre, whoever she be, foolishly, madly fond, doth not the world know me for thy wife, she shall not come for a foul blot on thee and me. She shall not come, one look from me shall murder her, Pierre. This is madness, Isabel, look. Now reason with me, did I not before opening the letter say to thee that doubtless it was from some pretty young aunt or cousin? Speak quick, a cousin, a cousin, Isabel, yet, yet, that is not holy out of the degree I've heard. Tell me more and quicker, more, more. A very strange cousin, Isabel, almost a nun, in her notions, hearing of our mysterious exile, she, without knowing the cause, hath yet as mysteriously bowed herself ours, not so much mine, Isabel, as ours, ours to serve us, and by some sweet heavenly fancy, to guide us and guard us here. Then possibly it may be all very well, Pierre, my brother, my brother, I can say that now, any, all words are thine, Isabel, words and worlds, with all their containings shall be slaves to thee, Isabel. She looked eagerly and inquiringly at him, then dropped her eyes and touched his hand, then gazed again, speak so more to me, Pierre, thou art my brother, art thou not my brother, but tell me now more of her. It is all newness and utter estrangeness to me, Pierre. I've said, my sweetest sister, that she has this wild, non-like notion in her, she is willful in it, in this letter, she bowed, she must, and will come, and nothing on earth shall stay her, do not have any sisterly jealousy than my sister, thou wilt find her a most gentle, unobtrusive, ministering girl, Isabel. She will never name the not to be named things to thee, nor hint of them, because she knows them not, still without knowing the secret, she yet hath the big unspecializing sensation of the secret, the mystical presentment somehow of the secret, and her divineness hath drowned all womanly curiosity in her, so that she desires not in any way to verify the presentiment, content with the big presentiment only, for in that she thinks the heavenly summons to come to us lies, even there in that, Isabel, dost thou now comprehend me? I comprehend nothing, Pierre. There's nothing these eyes have ever looked upon, Pierre, that this so comprehended, ever, as now, do I go all a group amid the wide mysteriousness of things? Yes, she shall come. It is only one mystery, the more, that she, talking her sleep here, would it be well if I slept with her, my brother? On thy account, wishful for thy sake, to leave thee incommodated, and not knowing precisely how things really are, she probably anticipates and desires otherwise my sister. She gaze steadfastly at his outwardly firm, but not interiorly, unfolding aspect, and then dropped her glance in silence. Yes, she shall come, my brother, she shall come, but it weaves its thread into the general riddle. My brother has she that which they call the memory, Pierre, the memory, hath she that? We all have the memory, my sister. Not all, not all, poor Belle, hath but very little, Pierre, I have seen her in some dreams. She is fair-haired, blue eyes, she is not quite so tall as I, yet a very little slider. Pierre started that has seen Lucy Tartan at Saddle Meadows. Is Lucy Tartan the name? Perhaps, perhaps. But also in the dream, Pierre, she came with her blue eyes, turned beseechingly on me. She seemed as if persuading me from thee. I thought she was then more than thy cousin. Me thought she was that good angel, which some say hovers over every human soul. And me thought, oh, me thought that I was thy other, thy other angel. Pierre, look, see these eyes, this hair, near this cheek, all dark, dark, dark, and she, the blue eye, the fair-haired, oh, once the red cheeked. She tossed her ebony tresses over her, she fixed her ebony eyes on him. Say, Pierre, doth not of funerialness invest me, was ever hers so plumbed, oh, God, that I had been born with blue eyes and fair hair. Those make the livery of heaven, hergy ever yet of a good angel with dark eyes, Pierre. No, no, no, all blue, blue, blue, heaven's own blue, the clear, vivid, unspeakable blue, which we see in June skies when all clouds are swept by, but the good angel shall come to thee, Pierre. Then both will be close by thee, my brother, and thou mayest perhaps elect, elect. She shall come, she shall come. When is it to be, dear Pierre? Tomorrow, Isabelle, so it is here written. She fixed her eye on the crumpled billet in his hand. It were vowed to ask, but not wrong to suppose, the asking, Pierre, no, I need not sit, what's thou? No, I would not let thee read it, my sister. I would not, because I have no right to. No right, no right, that is it. No, I have no right, I will burn it this instant, Isabelle. He stepped from her into the adjoining room, threw the billet into the stove, and watching his last ashes return to Isabelle, she looked with endless intimations upon him. It is burnt, but not consumed. It is gone, but not lost, through stove, pipe, and flue, if hath mounted in flame, and gone as a scroll to heaven. It shall appear again, my brother. Woe is me, woe, woe, woe is me, oh, woe. Do not speak to me, Pierre, leave me now. She shall come, the bad angel shall tend the good. She shall dwell with us, Pierre. Miss, trust me not, her considerateness to me shall be outdone by mine to her. Let me be alone now, my brother. Chapter four. Though by the unexpected petition to enter his privacy, a petition he could scarce ever deny to Isabelle, since she so religiously abstained from preferring it, unless for some very reasonable cause, Pierre, in the midst of those conflicting secondary motions, immediately following the first wonderful effect of Lucy's strange letter, have been forced to put on toward Isabelle some air of assurance and understanding concerning its contents. Yet at bottom, he was still a prey to all manner of devouring mysteries. Soon now, as he left the chamber of Isabelle, these mysteriousnesses remastered him completely, and as he mechanically sat down in the dining room chair, gently offered him by deli for the silent girl saw that some strangeness, that salt stillness was in him. Pierre's mind was revolving how it was possible or any way conceivable that Lucy should have been inspired with such seemingly wonderful presentiments of something assumed or disguising or non substantial somewhere and somehow in his present most singular apparent position in the eye of world. The wild words of Isabelle, yet rang in his ears, it were an outrage upon all womanhood to imagine that Lucy, however, yet devoted to him in her hidden heart should be willing to come to him so long as she supposed with the rest of the world that Pierre was an ordinarily married man. But how, what possible reason, what possible intimation could she have had to suspect the contrary or to suspect anything unsound for neither at this present time nor at any subsequent period did Pierre or could Pierre possibly imagine that in her marvelous presentiments of love she had any definite conceit of the precise nature of the secret which so unrevealingly and enchantedly wrapped him but a peculiar thought passingly recurred to him here. Within his social recollections, there was a very remarkable case of a youth who while all but a fiance to a beautiful girl when returning his own throbbing withincipient passion became somehow casually and momentarily portrayed into an imprudent manifested tenderness toward a second lady. Or else that second lady's deeply concerned friends caused it to be made known to the poor youth that such committal tenderness toward her he had displayed nor had it failed to exert its natural effect upon her. Certain it is this second lady drooped and drooped and came nigh to dying all the while raving of the cruel infidelity of her supposed lover so that those agonizing appeals from so really lovely a girl that seemed dying of grief for him at last so moved the youth that morbidly disregardful of the fact that is as much as two ladies claimed him the prior lady had the best title to his hand his conscience insanely upgraded him concerning the second lady he thought that eternal woe would surely overtake him both here and hereafter if he did not renounce his first love terrible as the effort would be both to him and her and wed with the second lady which he accordingly did while through his whole subsequent life, delicacy and honor toward his thus wedded wife forbade that by explaining to his first love how it was with him in this matter he should tranquilize her heart and therefore in her complete ignorance she believed that he was willfully and heartlessly false to her and so came to a lunatic's debt on his account. This strange story of real life Pierre knew to be also familiar to Lucy for they had several times conversed upon it and the first love of the demented youth had been a schoolmate of Lucy's had counted upon standing up with her as bridesmaid. Now the passing idea was self suggested to Pierre whether into Lucy's mind some such conceit as this concerning himself and Isabel might not possibly have stolen but then again such a supposition proved wholly untenable in the end for it did by no means suffice for a satisfactory solution of the absolute motive of the extraordinary proposed step of Lucy nor indeed by any ordinary law of propriety did it all seem to justify that step. Therefore he know not what to think hardly what to dream wonders nay downright miracles and no less were sung about love but here was the absolute miracle itself the out active miracle for infallibly certain he inwardly felt that whatever her strange conceit whatever her enigmatic delusion whatever her most secret and inexplicable motive still Lucy and her own virgin heart remained transparently immaculate without shadow of flaw or vain nevertheless what inconceivable conduct this was in her which she in her letter so passionately proposed altogether it amazed him it confounded him now that big fearful feeling stolen to him that rail as all atheists will there is that mysterious inscrutable divinous in the world a God a being positively present everywhere nay he is now in this room the air did part when I hear sat down I displaced the spirit then condensed it a little off from this spot he looked apprehensively around him he felt overjoyed at the sight of the humanness of deli while he was thus plunged into this mysteriousness a knock was heard at the door deli hesitating rose shall I let anyone in sir I think it is Mr. mill Thorpe's knock go and see go and see said Pierre vacantly the moment the door was open mill Thorpe for it was he catching a glimpse of Pierre's seated form brushed past deli and loudly entered the room haha well my boy how comes on the inferno that is it you are writing one is apt to look black while writing infernos you always love Dante my lad I have finished 10 metaphysical treatises argued five cases before the court attended all our society's meetings accompanied our great professor monsieur of all the lecture through his circuit in the philosophical saloons sharing all the honors of his illustrious triumph and by the way let me tell you Valvoun secretly gives me even more credit than is my due for upon my soul I did not help write more than one half at most of his lectures edited anonymously though I learned scientific work on the precise cause of the modifications in the undulatory motion and ways a posthumous work of a poor fellow fine lad he was too a friend of mine yes here I have been doing all this while you still are hammering away at that one poor plaguey inferno or there's a secret in dispatching these things patience patience you will let learn the secret time time I can't teach it to you my boy but time can I wish I could but I can't there was another knock at the door oh cried milthorpe suddenly turning round to it I forgot my boy I came to tell you that there is a porter with some queer things inquiring for you I happened to meet him downstairs in the quarters and I told him to follow me up I would show him the road here he is let him in let him in good deli my girl thus far the rattlings of milthorpe if producing any effect at all had but stunned the avert of pier but now he started to his feet a man with his hat on stood in the door holding an easel before him is this mr glendening's room gentlemen oh come in come in cried milthorpe all right I was that you sir well well then and the man sat down the easel well my boy exclaimed milthorpe to pier you are in the inferno dream yet look that's what people call an easel my boy an easel an easel not a weasel you look at it as though you thought it a weasel come wake up wake up you ordered it I suppose and here it is going to paint and illustrate the inferno as you go along I suppose well my friends tell me it is a great pity my own things ain't illustrated but I can't afford it there now is that him to the Niger which I threw into a pigeon hall a year or two ago that would be fine for illustrations is it for mr glendening you inquire set pier now in a slow icy tone to the porter mr glendening sir all right ain't it perfectly set pier mechanically and casting another strange wrapped bewildered glance at the easel but something seems strangely wanting here I now I see I see it villain the vines thou has torn the green heartstrings thou has but left the cold skeleton of the sweet arbor wherein she once nestled thou besotted heartless hind and fiend that does thou so much as dream in that shriveled liver of the eternal mischief thou has done restore thou the green vines untrampled them thou accursed oh my god my god trampled vines pounded and crushed in all fibers how can they live over again even though they be replanted curse thee thou nay nay he added mootily I was but wandering to myself then rapidly and mockingly pardon pardon porter I must humbly crave thy most hearty pardon then imperiously come stir thy self man thou has more below bring all up as the astounded porter turned he whispered to melthorpe is he safe shall I bring him oh certainly smile melthorpe I'll look out for him he's never really dangerous when I'm present there go two trunks now followed with LT blurredly marked upon the ends is that all my manse appear as the trunks were being put down before him well how much that moment his eyes first caught the blurred letters prepaid sir but no objection to more pierced of mute and unmindful still fixedly eyeing the blurred letters his body contorted and one side grouping as though that moment halfway down stricken with paralysis and yet unconscious of the stroke his two companions momentarily stood motionless in those respective attitudes in which they had first caught sight of the remarkable change that had come over him but as if ashamed of having been thus affected melthorpe summoning a loud merry voice advanced toward pier and tapping his shoulder cried wake up wake up my boy he says he is prepared but no objection to more prepaid what's that go go and jabber to apes a curious young gentleman is he not said melthorpe likely to the porter looky my boy I'll repeat he says he's prepaid but no objection to more ah take that then sepia vacantly putting something into the porter's hand and what shall I do with this sir said the porter staring drink a health but not mine that were mockery with a key sir this is a key you gave me ah well you at least shall not have the thing that unlocks me give me the key and take this I here's the chink thank you sir thank you this will drink I ain't called up porter for nothing stops the words 2151 is my number any jobs calling me do you ever caught a coffin my man sepia upon my soul cried melthorpe galey laughing if you ain't writing an inferno then but never mind porter this gentleman is under medical treatment present you'd better um you understand squat your late porter there my boy he's gone understand how to manage these fellas there's a trick in it my boy an off-handed sort of what do you call it you understand the trick the trick the whole world's a trick know the trick of it all's right don't know all's wrong ha ha the porter's gone then sepia calm me well mister melthorpe you will have the goodness to follow him rare joke admirable good morning sir ha ha and with his unrufflable hilariousness melthorpe quitted the room but hardly had the door closed upon him nor had he yet removed his hand from his outer knot when suddenly it swung half open again and thrusting his fair curly head within melthorpe cry by the way my boy I have a word for you you know that greasy fellow who has been done in you so of late well be at rest there he's paid I was suddenly made flush yesterday regular flood tide you can return it any day you know no hurry that's all but by the way as you look as though you were going to have company here just send for me in case you want to use me any bedstead to put up or heavy things to be lifted about don't you and the women do it now mind that's all again adios my boy take care of yourself stay quiet here reaching forth one hand but moving neither foot stay in the midst of all his prior emotions struck by these singular traits in melthorpe but the door was abruptly closed and singing falala melthorpe and his seedy coat went tripping down the corridor plus heart minus head mutter pierre his eyes fixed on the door now by heaven the god that made melthorpe was both a better and a greater than the god that made near polian or byron plus head minus heart paw the brains grow maggoty without a heart but the heart's the preserving salt itself and can keep sweet without the head deli sir my cousin miss tartan is coming here to live with us deli that easel those drunks are hers good heavens coming here your cousin miss tartan yes i thought you must have heard of her me but it was broken off deli sir sir i have no explanation deli and from you i must have no amazement my cousin mine my cousin miss tartan is coming to live with us the next room to this on the other side there is an occupied that room shall be hers you must wait upon her to deli certainly sir certainly i will do anything said deli trembling but but does mrs glenn din din does my mistress know this my wife knows all sepia is storming i will go down and get the key of the room and you must sweep it out what is to be put into it sir said deli miss tartan why she is used to all sorts of fine things rich carpets wardrobes mirrors curtains why why why look sepia touching an old rug with his foot here's a bit of carpet drag that into a room here's a chair put that in and for a bed i i met her to himself i have made it for her and she ignorantly lies on it now as made so lie oh god heart our mistress is calling cry deli moving toward the opposite room stay cry pier grasping her shoulder it both called it one time from these opposite chambers and both were swooning which door would you first fly to the girl gazed at him uncomprehendingly and a fright at a moment and then said this one sir out of mere confusion perhaps putting her hand on isabel's latch it is well now go he stood in an intent unchanged attitude till deli return how is my wife now again startled by the peculiar emphasis placed on the magical word wife deli who had long before this been occasionally struck with the infrequency of his using that term she looked at him perplexedly and said half unconsciously your wife sir is she not god grant that she be oh it is most cruel to ask that of poor poor deli sir tough for thy tears never denied again then i swear to heaven she is with these wild words pier seized his hat and departed the room muttering something about bringing the key of the additional chamber as the door closed on him deli dropped on her knees she lifted her head toward the ceiling but dropped it again as if tyrannically odd downward and bent it low over till her whole form tremulously cringed to the floor god that made me and that was not so hard to me as wicked deli deserved god that made me i pray to thee ward it off for me if it be coming to me be not deaf to me these stony walls valkans tear through them pity pity mercy my god if they are not married if i pen attentionally seeking to be pure i'm now but the servant to a greater sin than i myself committed them pity pity pity pity oh god that made me see me see me here what can deli do if i go hence none will take me in but villains if i stay then for stay i must and they be not married then pity pity pity pity pity end of book 23 chapter 24 of pier for the ambiguities by herman melville this liver box recording is in the public domain lucy at the apostles chapter 1 next morning the recently appropriated room adjoining on the other side of the dining room presented a different aspect from that which met the eye of deli upon first unlocking it with pier on the previous evening two squares of faded carpeting of different patterns covered the middle of the floor leaving toward the surbase a wide blank margin around them a small glass hung in the pier beneath that a little stand with a photo too of carpet before it in one corner was a cot neatly equipped with bedding at the outer side of the cot another strip of carpeting was placed lucy's delicate feet should not shiver on the naked floor pier isabel and deli were standing in the room isabel's eyes were fixed on the cot i think it will be pretty cozy now said deli paley glancing all around and then adjusting the pillow anew there's no warmth though said isabel pier there's no stove in the room she will be very cold the pipe can we not send it this way and she looked more intently at him than the question seemed to warrant let the pipe stay where it is isabel said pier answering her own pointed gaze the dining room door can stand open she never liked sleeping in a heated room let all be it is well a but there is a great here i see i will buy coals yes yes that can be easily done a little fire of a morning the expense will be nothing stay we will have a little fire here now for a welcome she shall always have fire better change the pipe pier said isabel that would be permanent and save the coals it shall not be done isabel death not that pipe and that warmth go into thy room shall i rob my wife good deli even to benefit my most devoted and true hearted cousin oh i should say not sir not at all said deli hysterically a triumphant fire flashed in isabel's eye her fore bosom arched out but she was silent she may be here now at any moment isabel said pier come we won't meet her in the dining room that is our reception place thou knowest so the three went into the dining room chapter two they had not been there long when pier who had been pacing up and down suddenly paused as if struck by some laggard thought which had just occurred to him at the eleventh hour first he looked toward deli as if about to bid her quit the apartment while he should say something private to isabel but as if on a second thought holding the contrary of this procedure most advisable he without preface at once addressed isabel in his ordinary conversational tone so that deli could not but plainly hear him whether she would or no my dear isabel though as i said to thee before my cousin miss tartan that strange and real fault none like girl is at all hazards mystically resolved to come and live with us yet it must be quite impossible that her friends can improve in her such a singular step a step even more singular isabel than thou in thy unsophisticatedness canst it all imagine i shall be immensely deceived if they do not to their very utmost drive against it now what i'm going to add may be quite unnecessary but i cannot avoid speaking it for all that isabel with empty hands sat silent but intently and expectantly eyeing him while behind her chair deli was bending her face low over her knitting which she had seized so soon as pier had begun speaking and with trembling fingers was nervously twitching the points of her long needles it was plain that she awaited pier's accents with hardly much less eagerness than isabel marking well this expression in deli and apparently not unpleased with it pier continued but by no slightest outward tone or look seemed addressing his remarks to anyone but isabel now what i mean dear isabel is this if that very probable hostility on the part of miss tartan's friends to her fulfilling her strange resolution if any of that hostility should chance to be manifested under thine eye then thou certainly will know how to account for it and i certainly will draw no inference from it in the minutest conceivable degree involving anything sinister of me now i'm sure thou wilt not my dearest isabel for understand me regarding the strange mood in my cousin as a thing wholly above my comprehension and indeed regarding my poor cousin herself as a rapt enthusiast in some while mystery utterly unknown to me and unwilling ignorantly to interfere in what almost seems some supernatural thing i shall not repulse her coming however violently her friends may seek to stay it i shall not repulse as certainly as i have not invited but a neutral attitude sometimes seems a suspicious one now what i mean is this let all such vague suspicions of me if any be confined to luci's friends but let not such absurd misgivings come near my dearest isabel to give the least uneasiness isabel tell me have i not now said enough to make plain what i mean or indeed is not all i have said wholly unnecessary seeing that when one feels deeply conscientious one is often apt to seem superfluously and indeed and pleasantly and unbeseemingly scrupulous speak my own isabel and he stepped nearer to her reaching forth his arm thy hand is the caster's ladle pier which holds me entirely fluid into thy forms and slightest moves of thought thou pours me and i there solidify do that form and take it on and then forth wear it till once more thou moldest me anew if what thou tell us meet be thy thought then how can i help its being mine my pier the gods made thee of a holy day when all the common world was done and shaped thee leisurely in elaborate hours thou paragon so saying in a burst of admiring love and wonder pierr paced the room while isabel sat silent leaning on her hand and have bailed with her hair deli's nervous stitches became less convulsive she seemed soothed some dark and big conceit seemed driven out of her by something either directly expressed by pier or inferred from his expressions chapter three pierre pierre quick quick they are dragging me back oh quick dear pierre what is that swiftly quite isabel rising to her feet and amazingly glancing toward the door leading into the corridor but pierre darted from the room prohibiting anyone from following him halfway down the stairs a slight airy almost unearthly figure was clinging to the baluster and two young men one in naval uniform were vainly seeking to remove the two thin white hands without hurting them they were glen stanley and fredrick the elder brother of lucy in a moment pierre's hands were among the rest billen dam be quite fredrick and letting go the hand of his sister he struck fiercely up here but the blow was intercepted by pierre thou hast bewitched thou damn juggler the sweetest angel defend thyself nay nay quite glen catching the drawn rapier of the frantic brother and holding him in his powerful grasp he is unarmed this is no time or place to settle our feud with him thy sister sweet lucy let us save her first and then what thou wilt pierre glendini if thou art but the little finger of a man begone with thee from hence thy depravity thy pollutedness is that of a fiend thou canst not desire this thing the sweet girl is mad pierre stepped back a little and looked paly and haggardly at all three I render no accounts I am what I am this sweet girl this angel whom ye too defile by your touches she is of age by the law she is her own mistress by the law and now I swear she shall have her will unhand the girl let her stand alone see she will faint let her go I say and again his hands were among them suddenly as they all for the one instant beg they struggled the pale girl drooped and fell sideways toward pierre and unprepared for this the two opposite champions unconsciously relinquished their hold tripped and stumbled against each other and both fell on the stairs snatching lucy in his arms pierre darted from them gained the door drove before him isabel and deli who were frightened had been lingering there and bursting into the prepared chamber laid lucy on her cot then swiftly turned out of the room and locked them all three in and so swiftly like lightning was this whole thing done that not till the lock clicked did he find glenn and frederick fiercely fronting him gentlemen it is all over this store's lock she is in women's hands stand back as the two infuriated young men now caught at him to hurl him aside several of the apostles rapidly entered having been attracted by the noise dragged them off from me quite here they are trespassers dragged them all immediately glenn and frederick were opinion by 20 hands and in obedience to a sign from pierre were dragged out of the room and dragged downstairs and given into the custody of a passing officer as two disorderly youths invading the sanctuary of a private retreat in vain they fiercely expostulated but at last as if now aware that nothing farther could be done without some previous legal action they most reluctantly and chafeingly declared themselves ready to depart accordingly they were let go but not without a terrible menace of swift retribution directed to pierre chapter four happy is the dumb man in the hour of passion he makes no impulsive threats and therefore seldom falsifies himself in the transition from collar to calm proceeding into the thoroughfare after leaving the apostles it was not very long air glenn and frederick concluded between themselves that lucy could not so easily be rescued by threat or force the pale and screwtable determinateness and flinchless intrepidity of pierre now began to domineer upon them for any social unusualness or greatness is sometimes most impressive in the retrospect what pierre had said concerning lucy's being her own mistress in the eye of the law this now recurred to them after much tribulation of thought the more collected glenn proposed that frederick's mother should visit the rooms of pierre the imagine that though insensible to their own united intimidations lucy might not prove death to the maternal prayers had mrs tartan been a different woman than she was had she indeed any disinterested agonies about generous heart and not mere matchmaking mortifications however poignant then the hope of frederick and glenn might have had more likelihood in it nevertheless the experiment was tried but signally failed in the combined presence of her mother pierre isabel and deli and addressing pierre and isabel as mr mrs glenn denning lucy took the most solemn vows upon herself to reside with her present host and hostess until they should cast her off in vain her by turns suppliant and exasperated mother went down on her knees to her or seemed almost on the point of smiting her in vain she painted all the scorn and the loathing sideways hinted of the handsome and gallant glenn threatened her that in case she persisted her entire family would renounce her and though she should be starving would not bestow one morsel upon such a recreate and then infinitely worse than dishonorable girl to all this lucy now entirely unmenaced in person replied in the gentlest and most heavenly manner yet without collectiveness and steadfastness from which there was nothing to hope what she was doing was not of herself she had been moved to it by all encompassing influences above around and beneath she felt no pain for her own condition her only suffering was sympathetic she looked for no reward the essence of well-doing was the consciousness of having done well without the least hope of reward concerning the loss of worldly wealth and sumptuousness and all the brocaded applause as a drawing rooms these were no loss to her for they had always been valueless nothing was she now renouncing but enacting upon her present inspiration she was inheriting everything indifferent to scorn she craved no pity as to the question of her sanity that matter she referred to the verdict of angels and not to the sordid opinions of man if anyone protested that she was defying the sacred councils of her mother she had nothing to answer but this that her mother possessed all her daughterly deference but her unconditional obedience was elsewhere due let all hope of moving her be immediately and once for all abandoned one only thing could move her and that would only move her to make her forever immovable that thing was death such wonderful strength and such wonderful sweetness such in flexibility in one so fragile would have been matter for marvel to any observer but to her mother it was very much more for like many other superficial observers forming her previous opinion of lucy upon the slightness of her person and the dulcetness of her temper mrs tartan had always imagined that her daughter was quite incapable of any such daring act as if sterling heavenliness were incompatible with heroicness these two are never found apart nor though prior knew more of lucy than anyone else did this most singular behavior in her failed to amaze him seldom even had the mystery of isabel fascinated him more with the fascination partaking of the terrible the mere bodily aspect of lucy as changed by her more recent life filled him with the most powerful and novel emotions that unsullied complexion of bloom was now entirely gone without being any way replaced by salamence as as usual in similar instances and as if her body indeed were the temple of god and marvel indeed were the only fit material for so holy her shrine a brilliant supernatural whiteness now gleamed in her cheek her head sat on her shoulders as a chiseled statue's head and the soft firm light in her eyes seemed as much a prodigy as though a chiseled statue should give token of vision and intelligence isabel also was most strangely moved by this sweet unearthliness in the aspect of lucy but it did not so much persuade her by any common appeals to her heart as irrespectively commend her by the very signet of heaven in the deference with which she ministered to lucy's little occasional wants there was more of blank spontaneousness than compassionate voluntariness and when it's so chanced that owing perhaps to some momentary jarring of the distant and lonely guitar as lucy was so mildly speaking in the presence of her mother a sudden just audible submissively answering musical string tone came through the open door from the adjoining chamber then isabel as if seized by some spiritual awe fell on her knees before lucy and made a rapid gesture of homage yet still somehow as it were without evidence of voluntary will finding all her most ardent efforts ineffectual Mrs. Thornton now distressedly motioned to pier and isabel to quit the chamber that she might urge her in treaties and menaces in private but lucy gently wait them to stay and then turn to her mother henceforth she had no secrets but those which would also be secrets in heaven whatever was publicly known in heaven should be publicly known on earth there was no slightest secret between her and her mother wholly confounded by this inscrutableness of her so alienated and infatuated daughter mrs. Thornton turned inflamedly upon pier and bad and follow her forth but again lucy said nay there were no secrets between her mother and pier she would anticipate everything there calling for pen and paper and a book to hold on her knee and right she traced the following lines and reach them to her mother i am lucy tartan i've come to dwell during their pleasure with mr and mrs pier glendenning of my own unsolicited free will if they desire it i shall go but no other power shall remove me except by violence and against any violence i have the ordinary appeal to the law read this madame said mrs tartan tremblingly handing it to isabel and eyeing her with a passionate and disdainful significance i have read it said isabel quietly after a glance and handing it to pier as if by that act to show that she had no separate decision in the matter and do you serve to indirectly connive said mrs tartan to pier when he had read it i render no accounts madame this seems to be the written and final calm will of your daughter as such your best respected and depart mrs tartan glanced despairingly and insensibly about her then fixing her eyes on her daughter spoke girl here where i stand i forever cast the off nevermore shall thou be vexed by my maternal entreaties i shall instruct thy brothers to disown thee i shall instruct glenn stanley to banish thy worthless image from his heart if banished thence it be not already by thine own incredible folly and depravity for thee mr monster the judgment of god will overtake thee for this and for thee madame i have no words for the woman who will connivingly permit her own husband's paramour to dwell beneath her roof for thee frail one to deli now needest no amplification a nest of violence and now surely whom god himself have abandoned forever a mother may quit nevermore to revisit this parting maternal malediction seemed to work no visibly corresponding effect upon lucy already she was so marvel white that fear could no more blancher if indeed fear was then at all within her heart for as the highest and purest and thinnest ether remains unvexed by all the two months of the inferior air so that transparent ether of her cheek that clear mild azure of her eye showed no sign of passion as her terrestrial mother stormed love helpings she had from unsteering arms glimpses she caught of aid invisible sustained she was by those high powers of immortal love that once siding with the weakest read which the utmost tempest tosses then that utmost tempest shall be broken down before the irresistible resistings of that weakest read end of book 24 chapter 25 part one of pierre or the ambiguities by herman melville this the revox recording is in the public domain lucy isabel and pierre pierre and his book and cheladas chapter one a day or two after the arrival of lucy when she had quite recovered from any possible ill effects of recent events events conveying such a shock to both pierre and isabel though to each in a quite different way but not apparently at least moving lucy so intensely as they were all three sitting at coffee lucy expressed her intention to practice her crayon art professionally it would be so pleasant and employment for her besides contributing to their common fund pierre well knew her expertness in catching likenesses and judiciously and truthfully beautifying them not by altering the features so much as by steeping them in a beautifying atmosphere for even so said lucy thrown into the lagoon and there beheld as i've heard the roughest stones without transformation put on the softest aspects if pierre would only take a little trouble to bring sitters to her room she doubted not a fine harvest of heads might easily be secured certainly among the numerous inmates of the old church pierre must know many who would have no objections to being sketched moreover though as yet she had had small opportunity to to see them yet among such a remarkable company of poets philosophers and mystics of all sorts there must be some striking heads in conclusion she expressed her satisfaction at the chamber prepared for her in as much as having been formerly the studio of an artist one window had been considerably elevated while by a singular arrangement of the interior shutters the light could in any direction be thrown about at will already pierre had anticipated something of this sort the first sight of the easel having suggested it to him his reply was therefore not wholly unconsidered he said that so far she herself was concerned the systematic practice of her art at present would certainly be a great advantage in supplying her with a very delightful occupation but since she could hardly hope for any patronage from her mother's fashionable and wealthy associates indeed as such a thing must be very far from her own desires and as it was only from the apostles she could for some time to come at least reasonably anticipate sitters and as those apostles were almost universally a very forlorn and panelist set though in truth there were some wonderfully rich looking heads among them therefore lucy must not look for much immediate pecuniary emolument ere long she might indeed do something very handsome but at the outset it was well to be moderate in her expectations this admonishment came modifiably from that certain stoic dogged mood of pier born of his recent life which taught him never to expect any good from anything but always to anticipate ill however not in unreadiness to meet the contrary and then if good came so much the better he added that he would that very morning go among the rooms and corridors of the apostles familiarly announcing that his cousin a lady artist in crayons occupied a room adjoining his where she would be very happy to receive any sitters and now lucy what shall be the terms that is a very important point though noist i suppose pier they must be very low said lucy looking at him meditatively very low lucy very low indeed well ten dollars them ten banks of england lucy exclaimed pier by lucy that were almost a quarter's income for some of the apostles four dollars pier i will tell you now lucy but first how long does it take to complete one portrait two sittings and two mornings work by myself pier and let me see what are thy materials they are not very costly i believe does not like cutting glass thy tools must not be pointed with diamonds lucy see pier said lucy holding out her little palm see this handful of charcoal a bit of bread a crayon or two and a square of paper that is all well then they'll shout charge 175 for a portrait only 175 pier i'm half afraid now we have set it far too high lucy that must not be extravagant look if thy terms were ten dollars and thou did scray on on trust then thou wits have plenty of sitters but small returns but if thou putest thy terms right down and also say as thou must have thy cash right down too don't start so at that cash then not so many sitters to be sure but more returns thou understandest it shall be just as thou sayest pier well then i will write a card for thee stating thy terms and put it up conspicuously in thy room so that every apostle may know what he has to expect thank thee thank the cousin pier said lucy rising i rejoice at thy pleasant and not entirely unhopeful view of my poor little plan but i must be doing something i must be earning money see i've eaten ever so much bread this morning but have not earned one penny with a humorous sadness pier measured the large remainder of the one only piece she had touched and then would have spoken bantringly to her but she had slid away into her own room he was presently roused from the strange reverie into which the conclusion of this scene had thrown him by the touch of isabel's hand upon his knee and her large expressive glance upon his face during all the foregoing colloquy she had remained entirely silent but an unoccupied observer would perhaps have noticed that some new and very strong emotions were restrainedly stirring within her pier she said intently bending over toward him well well isabel stammeringly replied pier while a mysterious color suffused itself over his whole face neck and brow and involuntarily he started a little back from her self-proffering form arrested by this movement isabel eyed him fixedly then slowly rose and with immense mournful statelyness drew herself up and said if thy sister can ever come to nigh to thee pier till thy sister so beforehand for the september sun draws not up the valley vapor more jealously from the disdainful earth than my secret god shall draw me up from thee if ever i can come to nigh to thee thus speaking one hand was on her bosom as if resolutely feeling of something deadly there concealed but riveted by her general manner more than by her particular gesture pier at the instant did not so particularly note the all-significant movement of the hand upon her bosom though afterward he recalled it and darkly and thoroughly comprehended its meaning to nigh to me isabel sun adieu thou fertilized this to me can sunbeams or drops of dew come to nigh the thing they warm and water then sit down by me isabel and sit close wine in within my ribs if so thou canst that my one frame may be the continent of two fine feathers make fine birds so i have heard said isabel most bitterly but do fine sayings always make fine deeds pier thou didst but just now draw away from me when we would most duly embrace we first throw back our arms isabel i've drew away to draw so much the closer to thee well all words are errant skirmishers deeds are the army's self be it as thou sayest i yet trust to thee pier my breath waits thine what is it isabel i've been more blockish than a block i am mad to think of it more mad than her great sweetness should first remind me of mine own stupidity but she shall not get the start of me pier some way i must work with thee see i will sell this hair have these teeth pulled out but some way i will earn money for thee pier now eyed her startled lay touches of a determinant meaning shown in her some hidden thing was deeply wounded in her an affectionate soothing syllable was on his tongue his arm was out when shifting his expression he whisperingly and alarmedly exclaimed hark she is coming be still but rising boldly isabel threw open the connecting door exclaiming half hysterically look lucy here's the strangest husband fearful of being caught speaking to his wife with an artist's little box before her whose right wing perhaps has startled pier lucy was sitting midway in a room opposite the open door so that at that moment both pier and isabel were plainly visible to her the singular tone of isabel's voice instantly caused her to look up intently at once a sudden irradiation of some subtle intelligence but whether welcome to her or otherwise could not be determined shot over her whole aspect she murmured some vague random reply and then bent low over her box saying she was very busy isabel closed the door and sat down again by pier her countenance for a mixed and writhing impatient look she seemed as one in whom the most powerful emotion of life is caught in inextricable toils of circumstances and while longing to disengage itself still knows that all struggles will prove worse than vain and so for the moment grows madly reckless and defiant of all obstacles pier trembled as he gazed upon her but soon the mood passed from her her old sweet mournfulness returned again the clear unfathomableness was in her mystic eye pier our now air i ever knew thee i've done mad things which i've never been conscious of but in the dim recalling a whole such things no things of mine what i now remember as just now done was one of them thou hast done nothing but shown thy strength while i have shown my weakness isabel yes to the whole world thou art my wife to her too thou art my wife have i not told her so myself i was weaker than a kitten isabel and thou strong as those high things angelical from which utmost beauty takes not strength pier once such syllables from thee were all refreshing and be doing to me now though they drop as warmly and as fluidly from the yet falling through another and an intercepting zone they freeze on the way and clatter on my heart like hail pier thou didst not speak thus to her she is not isabel the girl gazed at him with a quick and piercing scrutiny then looked quite calm and spoke my guitar pier thou noticed how complete a mistress i am of it now before thou get us sitters for the portrait sketcher thou shall get pupils for the music teacher wilt thou and she looked at him with a persuasiveness and touchingness which to pier seemed more than mortal my poor poor isabel cry pier thou art the mistress of the natural sweetness of the guitar not of its invented regulated artifices and these are all that the silly pupil will pay for learning and what thou hast cannot be taught ah thy sweet ignorance is all transporting to me my sweet my sweet dear divine girl and impulsively he caught her in his arms while the first fire of his feeling plainly glowed upon him but air he had yet caught her to him isabel had backward glided close to the connecting door which at the instant of his embrace suddenly opened as by its own volition before the eyes of seated lucy pier and isabel stood locked pier's lips upon her cheek chapter two notwithstanding the maternal visit of mrs tartan and the peremptoriness with which it had been closed by her declared departure never to return and her vow to teach all lucy's relatives and friends and lucy's own brothers and her suitor to disown her and forget her yet pier fancied that he knew too much in general of the human heart and too much in particular of the character of both glenn and fredry to remain entirely untouched by disquiet to concerning what those two fiery youths might now be plotting against him as the imagined monster by whose infernal tricks lucy tartan was supposed to have been seduced from every earthly seamliness not happily but only so much the more gloomily did he auger from the fact that mrs tartan had come to lucy unattended and that glenn and fredry had let eight and forty hours and more go by without giving the slightest hostile or neutral sign at first he thought that bridling their impulsive fierceness they were resolved to take the slower but perhaps the sure method to rest lucy back to them by instituting some legal process but this idea was repulsed by more than one consideration not only was fredrick of that sort of temper peculiar to military men which would prompt him in so closely personal and intensely private and family a matter to scorn the harling publicity of the laws lingering on and impel him as by the furiousness of fire to be his own rider and avenger for in him it was perhaps quite as much the feeling of an outrageous family affront to himself through lucy as her own presumed separate wrong however black which stung him to the quick not only were these things so respecting fredry but concerning glenn pierre well knew that be glenn heartless as he might to do a deed of love glenn was not heartless to do a deed of hate that though on that memorable night of his arrival in the city glenn had heartlessly closed his door upon him yet now glenn might heartfully burst pierre is open if by that he had all believed that permanent success would crown the fray besides pierre knew this that so invincible is the natural untamable latent spirit of a courageous manliness in man that though now socially educated for thousands of years in an arbitrary homage to the law as the one only appointed redress for every injured person yet immemorially and universally among all gentlemen of the spirit wants to have uttered independent personal threats of personal vengeance against your foe and then after that to fall back slinking into a court and hire was sobs a pack of yelping pedophogers to fight the battle so valiantly proclaimed this on the surface is ever deemed very decorous and very prudent a most wise second thought but at bottom a miserably ignoble thing frederick was not the watery man for that glenn had more grapey blood in him moreover it seemed quite clear to pierre that only by making out lucy absolutely mad and striving to prove it by a thousand despicable little particulars could the law succeed in tearing her from the refuge she had voluntarily sought a course equally important to all the parties possibly to be concerned on either side what then with those two boiling bloods do perhaps they would patrol the streets and at the first glimpse of lonely lucy kidnap her home or if pierre were with her then smite him down by hook or crook fair player foul and then away with lucy or if lucy systematically kept a room then fall on pierre in the most public way fell him and cover him from all decent recognition beneath heaps on heaps of hate and insult so that broken on the wheel of such dishonor pierre might feel himself unstrung and basically yield the prize not the gibbering of ghosts in any old haunted house no sulfur yours and portentous sign it might be held in heaven will so make the hair to stand as when a proud and honorable man is revolving in his soul the possibilities of some gross public and corporeal disgrace it is not fear it is a pride horror which is more terrible than any fear than by tremendous imagery the murderer's mark of cane is felt burning on the bra and they already acquitted knife blood rusts in the clutch of the anticipating hand certain that those two youths must be plotting something furious against him with the echoes of their scorning curses on the stairs still ringing in his ears curses whose swift responses from himself he at the time had had much ado to check thoroughly alive to the supernaturalism of that mad frothing hate which a spirited brother forks forth at the insulted of a sister's honor beyond doubt the most uncompromising of all the social passions known to man and not blind to the anomalous fact that if such a brother stabs though at his own mother's table all people and all juries would bear him out accounting everything allowable to a noble soul made mad by a sweet sister's shame caused by a damned seducer imagining to himself his own feelings if he were actually in the position which Frederick so vividly fancied to be his remembering that in love matters jealousy is as an adder and that the jealousy of Glenn was double-attered by the extraordinary malice of the apparent circumstances under which Lucy had spurned Glenn's arms and fled to his always successful and now married rival as if wantonly and shamelessly to nestle there remembering all these intense incitements of both those foes of his Pierre could not but look forward to wild work very soon to come nor was the storm of passion in his soul unratified by the decision of his cool as possible hour storm and calm both said to him look to thyself oh Pierre murders are done by maniacs but the earnest thoughts of murder these are the collected desperados Pierre was such fate or what you will had made him such but such he was and when these things now swam before him when he thought of all the ambiguities which hemmed him in the stony walls all round that he could not overleap the million aggravations of his most malicious lot the last lingering hope of happiness licked up from him as by flames of fire and his one only prospect a black bottomless gulf of guilt upon whose verge he immanently teetered every hour then the utmost hate of Glenn and Frederick were jubilantly welcome to him and murder done in the actor warding off their ignominious public blow seemed the one only congenial sequel to such a desperate career chapter three as a statue planted on a revolving pedestal shows now this limb now that now front now back now side continually changing to its general profile so does the pivoted statute soul of man when turned by the hand of truth lies only never very look for a note in variable bonus in pier nor does any canting showman here stand by to announce his phases as he revolves catch his phases as your insight may another day passed on Glenn and Frederick still absenting themselves and Pierre and Isabelle and Lucy all dwelling together the domestic presence of Lucy had begun to produce a remarkable effect upon Pierre sometimes to the covertly watchful eye of Isabelle he would seem to look upon Lucy with an expression illy befitting their singular and so supposed merely cousinly relation and yet again with another expression still more unaccountable to her one of fear and awe not unmixed with impatience but his general detailed manner toward Lucy was that of the most delicate and affectionate considerateness nothing more he was never alone with her though as before at times alone with Isabelle Lucy seemed entirely undesirous of usurping any place about him manifested no slightest unwelcome curiosity as to Pierre and no painful embarrassment as to Isabelle nevertheless more and more did she seem hour by hour to be somehow inexplicably sliding between them without touching them Pierre felt that some strange heavenly influence was near him to keep him from some utter most harm Isabelle was alive to some untraceable displacing agency though when all three were together the marvelous serenity and sweetness and utter unsuspectingness of Lucy obviated anything like a common embarrassment yet if there was any embarrassment at all beneath that roof it was sometimes when Pierre was alone with Isabelle after Lucy would innocently quit them meantime Pierre was still going on with his book every moment becoming still the more sensible of the intensely inauspicious circumstances of all sorts under which that labor was proceeding and as the now advancing and centering enterprise demanded more and more compacted bigger from him he felt that he was having less and less to bring to it for not only was it the signal misery of Pierre to be invisibly though but accidentally goaded in the hour of mental immaturity to the attempt of a mature work a circumstance sufficiently lamentable in itself but also in the hour of his clamors banalessness he was additionally goaded into an enterprise long and protracted in the execution and of all things least calculated for pecuniary profit in the end how these things were so once they originated might be thoroughly and very beneficially explained but space and time here forbid at length domestic matters rent and bread had come to such a pass with him that whether or no the first pages must go to the printer and thus was added still another tribulation because the printed pages now dictated to the following manuscript and said to all subsequent thoughts and inventions appear thus and thus and so and so else and your match therefore was his book already limited bound over and committed to imperfection even before it had come to any confirmed form or conclusion at all oh who shall reveal the horrors of poverty in authorship that is high while the silly mill Thorpe was railing against his delay of a few weeks and months how bitterly did unreplying Pierre feel in his heart that to most of the great works of humanity their authors had given not weeks and months not years and years but their holy surrendered and dedicated lives on either hand clung to by a girl who would have laid down her life for him Pierre nevertheless in his deepest highest part was utterly without sympathy from anything divine human brute or vegetable one in a city of hundreds of thousands of human beings Pierre was solitary as at the pole and the great will of all was this that all these things were unsuspected without and undibulgable from within the very daggers that stabbed him were joked up by imbecility ignorance blockheadedness self complacency and the universal blurriness and besottedness around him now he began to feel that in him the thues of a titan were forestallingly cut by the scissors of fate he felt as a moose hamstrung all things that think or move or lie still seemed as created to mock and torment him he seemed gifted with loftiness merely that it might be dragged down to the mud still the profound willfulness in him would not give up against the breaking heart and that bursting head against all the dismal lassitude and deathful faintness and sleeplessness and whirlingness and craziness still he like a demigod bore up his soul's ship foresaw the inevitable rocks but resolved to sail on and make her courageous wreck now he gave jeer for jeer and taunted the apes that jibed him with the soul of an atheist he wrote down the godliest things with the feeling of misery and death in him he created forms of gladness and light for the pangs in his heart he put down hoots on the paper in everything else he disguised under the so conveniently adjustable drapery of all stretchable philosophy for the more and the more that he wrote and the deeper and the deeper that he dived pierce of the everlasting elusiveness of truth the universal lurking in sincerity of even the greatest and purest written thoughts like navy's cars the leaves of all great books were covertly packed he was but packing one set the more and that a very poor jaded set and packed indeed so that there was nothing he more spurned than his own aspirations nothing he more abhorred than the loftiest part of himself the brightest success now seemed intolerable to him since he so plainly saw that the brightest success could not be the soul offspring of merit but of merit for the one thousandth part and nine hundred and ninety nine combining and uptailing accidents for the rest end of chapter twenty five part one