 Book XI of Pierre, or the Ambiguities, by Herman Melville. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. He crosses the Rubicon. Chapter I. Sucked within the maelstrom, man must go round, strike at one end, the longest conceivable row of billiard balls in close contact, and the furthermost ball will start forth while all the rest stands still, and yet that last ball was not struck at all. So, through long previous generations, whether of births or thoughts, fate strikes the present man. Idly, he disowns the blow's effect because he felt no blow, and indeed received no blow. Pierre was not arguing fixed fate and free will, now fixed fate and free will were arguing him, and fixed fate got the better in the debate. The peculiarities of those influences which on the night and early morning following the last interview with Isabelle persuaded Pierre to the adoption of his final resolve did now irresistibly impel him to a remarkable instantaneousness in his actions, even as before he had proved a lager. Without being consciously that way pointed through the desire of anticipating any objections on the part of Isabelle to the assumption of a marriage between himself and her, Pierre was now impetuously hurried into an act which should have the effective virtue of such an executed intention without its corresponding motive. Because as the primitive resolve so deplorably involved Lucie, her image was then prominent in his mind, and hence because he felt all eagerness to hold her no longer in suspense but by a certain sort of charity of cruelty at once to pronounce to her her fate, therefore it was among his first final thoughts that morning to go to Lucie and to this undoubtedly so trifling a circumstance as for it being nearer to him geographically than Isabelle must have contributed some added though unconscious influence in his present fateful frame of mind. On the previous undetermined days Pierre had solicitously sought to disguise his emotions from his mother by a certain carefulness and choiceness in his dress, but now since his very soul was forced to wear a mask he would wear no paltry palliatives and disguisements on his body. He went to the cottage of Lucie as disordered in his person as haggard in his face. Chapter 2 She was not risen yet, so the strange imperious instantaneous-ness in him impelled him to go straight to her chamber door and in a voice of mild invincible-ness demand immediate audience for the matter pressed. Already namelessly concerned and alarmed for her lover, now eight and forty hours absent on some mysterious and undisclosable affair, Lucie at this surprising summons was overwhelmed with sudden terror, and an oblivion of all ordinary proprieties responded to Pierre's call by an immediate assent. Opening the door he advanced slowly and deliberately toward her and as Lucie caught his pale determined figure she gave a cry of groping misery which knew not the pang that caused it and lifted herself trembling in her bed but without uttering one word. Pierre sat down on the bedside and his set eyes met her terrified and virgin aspect. Decked in snow white and pale of cheek, thou indeed art fitted for the altar, but not that one of which thy fond heart didst dream so fair a victim. Pierre tis the last cruelty of tyrants to make their enemies slay each other. My heart, my heart, nay, Lucie, I am married. The girl was no more pale but white as any leper, the bedclothes trembled to the concealed shudderings of all her limbs. One moment she sat looking vacantly into the blank eyes of Pierre and then fell over toward him in a swoon. Swift madness mounted into the brain of Pierre all the past seemed as a dream and all the present an unintelligible horror. He lifted her and extended her motionless form upon the bed and stamped for succor. The maid Martha came running into the room and beholding those two inexplicable figures shrieked and turned in terror. But Pierre's repeated cry rallied Martha from this and darting out of the chamber she returned with a sharp restorative which at length brought Lucie back to life. Martha now murmured Lucie in a scarce audible whispering and shuddering in the maid's own shuddering arms. Quick, quick, come to me, drive it away, wake me, wake me. Nay, pray God to sleep again cried Martha bending over her and embracing her and half turning upon Pierre with a glance of loathing indignation. In God's holy name, sir, what may this be? How came you here accursed? Accursed it is well. Is she herself again, Martha? Thou hast somehow murdered her, how then be herself again. My sweet mistress, oh my young mistress, tell me, tell me, and she bent low over her. Pierre now advanced toward the bed making a gesture for the maid to leave them. But soon as Lucie recalled his hygrid form she whisperingly wailed again, Martha, Martha, drive it away, there, there, him, him, and shut her eyes convulsively with arms abhorrently outstretched. Monster incomprehensible fiend cried the anew terror smitten maid, depart, see, she dies away at the sight of thee, be gone, which thou murder her afresh, be gone. Starched and frozen by his own emotion, Pierre silently turned and quitted the chamber and heavily descending the stairs, tramped heavily as a man slowly bearing a great burden, through a long narrow passage leading to a wing in the rear of the cottage and knocking at Miss Lanallan's door, summoned her to Lucie, who he briefly set had fainted. Then without waiting for any response left the house and went directly to the mansion. Chapter 3. Is my mother up yet, said he to dates whom he met in the hall? Not yet, sir, heaven, sir, are you sick? To death, let me pass. Looking toward his mother's chamber he heard a coming step and met her on the great middle landing of the stairs, wherein an ample niche, a marble group of the temple polluting Aquan, and his two innocent children caught in inextricable snarls of snakes writhed in eternal torments. Mother, go back with me to thy chamber. He eyed his son's presence with a dark but repressed foreboding, drew herself up haughtily and repellingly, and with a quivering lip said, Pierre, thou thyself hast denied me thy confidence, and thou shalt not force me back to it so easily. Speak, what is that now between thee and me? I am married, mother, great God, to whom? Not to Lucy, tart mother, that thou merely sayest is not Lucy without saying who indeed it is. This is good proof she is something vile. Does Lucy know thy marriage? I am but just from Lucy's. Thus far Mrs. Glendening's rigidity had been slowly relaxing. Now she clutched the baluster, bent over, and trembled for a moment, then erected all her haughtiness again, and stood before Pierre in incurious, unappeasable grief and scorn for him. My dark soul prophesied something dark, if already thou hast not found other lodgment and other table, then this house supplies, then seek it straight. With my roof and at my table, he who was once Pierre Glendening no more puts himself. She turned from him, and with a tottering step climbed the winding stairs and disappeared from him. While in the baluster he held, Pierre seemed to feel the sudden thrill running down to him from his mother's convulsive grasp. He stared about him with an idiot eye, staggered to the floor below to dumbly quit the house, but as he crossed its threshold, his foot tripped upon its raised ledge. He pitched forward upon the stone portico and fell. He seemed as jeeringly hurled from beneath his own ancestral roof. CHAPTER IV Passing through the broad courtyard's poster and Pierre closed it after him, and then turned and leaned upon it, his eyes fixed upon the great central chimney of the mansion from which a light blue smoke was breathing gently into the morning air. The hearthstone from which thou risest never more, I inly feel, will these feet press. O God, what callest thou that which has thus made Pierre a vagabond? He walked slowly away and passing the windows of Lucy looked up and saw the white curtains closely drawn, the white cottage profoundly still and a white saddle horse tied before the gate. I would enter, but again would her apparent wail's repel. What more can I now say or do to her? I cannot explain. She knows all I propose to disclose. I, but thou didst cruelly burst upon her with it, thy impetuousness, thy instantaneousness, hath killed her, Pierre, nay, nay, nay, cruel tidings who can gently break, if to stab be inevitable, then instant be the dagger. Those curtains are close drawn upon her, so let me upon her sweet image draw the curtains of my soul. Sleep, sleep, sleep, thou angel, wake no more to Pierre. To thyself, my Lucy. Passing on now hurriedly and blindly, he jostled against some oppositely going wayfarer. The man paused amazed and looking up, Pierre recognized the domestic of the mansion. That instantaneousness, which now impelt him in all his actions, again seized the ascendancy in him, ignoring the dismayed expression of the man, at thus encountering his young master, Pierre commanded him to follow him. Going straight to the black swan, the little village in, he entered the first vacant room, and bidding the man be seated, sought the keeper of the house, and ordered pen and paper. If fit opportunity offer in the hour of unusual affliction, minds of a certain temperament find a strange hysterical relief in a wild perverse humorsness, the more alluring from its entire unsuitableness to the occasion, although they seldom manifest this trait toward those individuals more immediately involved in the cause or the effect of their suffering. The cool sensoriousness of the mere philosopher would denominate sub-conduct as nothing short of temporary madness, and perhaps it is since in the inexorable and inhuman eye of mere undiluted reason, all grief, whether on our own account or that of others, is the sheerest unreason and insanity. The note now written was the following, for that fine old fellow dates, dates my old boy, besture thyself now, go to my room dates and bring me down my mahogany strong box and lock up the thing covered with blue chints, strap it very carefully my sweet dates, it is rather heavy and set it just without the post turn. Then back and bring me down my writing desk and set that to just without the post turn. Then back yet again and bring me down the old camp bed, see that all the parts be there and bind the case well with a cord. Then go to the left corner little drawer in my wardrobe and I will find my visiting cards tack one on the chest and the desk and the camp bed case. Then get all my clothes together and pack them in trunks, not forgetting the two old military cloaks my boy and tack cards on them also my good dates. Then fly round three times indefinitely my good dates and wipe a little of the perspiration off and then let me see then my good dates, what then why this much pick up all papers of all sorts that may be lying around my chamber and see them burned and then have a white hoof put to the lightest farm wagon and send the chest and the desk and the camp bed and the trunks to the black swan where I shall call for them when I'm ready and not before sweet dates. So God bless thee my fine old imperturbable dates and adieu thy old young master Pierre. Nota bene marquel though dates should my mother possibly interrupt thee say that it is my orders and mention what it is I send for but on no account show this to thy mistress do you hear Pierre again folding this scrawl into a grotesque shape Pierre ordered the man to take it forthwith to dates but the man all perplexed hesitated turning the billet over in his hand till Pierre loudly and violently bat him be gone but as the man was then rapidly departing in a panic Pierre called him back and retracted his rude words but as the servant now lingered again perhaps thinking to avail himself of this repentant mood in Pierre to say something in sympathy or remonstrance to him Pierre ordered him off with augmented violence and stamped for him to be gone apprising the equally perplexed old landlord that certain things would in the course of that forenoon be left for him Pierre at the end and also desiring him to prepare a chamber for himself and wife that night some chamber with a commodious connecting room which might answer for a dressing room and likewise still another chamber for a servant Pierre departed the place leaving the old landlord staring vacantly at him and dumbly marbling what horrible thing had happened to turn the brain of his fine young favorite and old shooting comrade master Pierre soon the short old man went out bareheaded upon the low porch of the inn descended its one step and crossed over to the middle of the road gazing after Pierre and only as Pierre turned up a distant lane did his amazement and his solicitude find utterance I taught him yes oh casks the best shot in all the country round is master Pierre pray god he hits not now the bulls are in himself married married and coming here this is pesky strange in the book 11 book 12 of Pierre or the ambiguities by Herman Melville this liberal box recording is in the public domain isabel mrs. glendenning the portrait and lucy chapter one when on the previous night Pierre had left the farmhouse where isabel harbored it will be remembered that no hour either of night or day no special time at all have been assigned for a succeeding interview it was isabel who for some doubtlessly sufficient reason of her own had for the first meeting assigned the early hour of darkness as now when the full sun was well up the heavens pier drew near the farmhouse of the Olvers he described isabel standing without the little dairy wing occupied in vertically arranging numerous glaring shield like milk pans on a long shelf where they might purifyingly meet the sun her back was toward him as Pierre passed through the open wicked and crossed the short soft green sword he unconsciously muffled his footsteps and now standing close behind his sister touched her shoulder and stood still she started trembled turned upon him swiftly made a low strange cry and then gazed rivetedly and imploringly upon him i look rather queerish sweet isabel do i not sit pier at last with a rife and painful smile my brother my blessed brother speak tell me what has happened what has thou done oh i should have warned thee before pier pier it is my fault mine mine what is thy fault sweet isabel thou hast revealed isabel to that mother pier i have not isabel mrs glendony knows not thy secret at all mrs glendony that's that's thine own mother pier in heaven's name my brother explain thyself knows not my secret and yet thou hear so suddenly and with such a fatal aspect come come with me into the house quick pier why does thou not stir oh my god if mad myself sometimes i am to make mad him who loves me best and who i fear has in some way ruined himself for me then let me no more stand upright on this side but fall prone beneath it but i may be hidden tell me catching pier's arms in both her frantic hands tell me do i blast where i look is my face corgans nay sweet isabel but it had the more sovereign power that turned to stone thine might turn white marble into mother's milk come with me come quickly they passed into the dairy and sat down on a bench by the honey-suckled casement pier forever fatal and accursed be the day my longing heart called thee to me if now in the very springtime of our related love thou art minded to play deceivingly with me even though thou should fancy it for my good speak to me oh speak to me my brother thou hintest of deceiving one for one's good now supposing sweet isabel that in no case would i affirmatively deceive thee in no case whatever which thou then be willing for thee and me to piously deceive others for both there and our united good thou say is nothing now then is it my turn sweet isabel to bid thee speak to me oh speak to me that unknown approaching thing seemeth ever ill my brother which must have un frank heralds to go before oh pier dear dear pier be very careful with me this strange mysterious an example of love between us makes me all plastic in my hand be very careful with me i know a little out of me the world seems all one unknown india to me look up look on me pier say now thou wilt be very careful say so say so pier if the most exquisite and fragile filigree of genoa be carefully handled by its artisan if sacred nature carefully folds and warms and by inconceivable attentiveness's eggs round and round her minute and marvelous embryos and isabel do i most carefully and most tenderly egg thee gentlest one in the fate of the short of the great god isabel there lives none who will be more careful with the more infinitely considered and delicate with thee from my deepest heart do i believe the pier yet thou may us be very delicate in some point where delicateness is not all essential and in some quick impulse of our omit thy fullest heedfulness somewhere where heedlessness where most fatal may name my brother bleach these locks no white thou sun if i have any thought to reproach the pier or betray distrust of thee but earnestness must sometimes seem suspicious else it is none pier pier all thy aspect speaks eloquently of some already executed resolution born in suddenness since i last saw the pier some deed irrevocable has been done by thee my soul was stiff and starched to it now tell me what it is thou and i and deli over tomorrow morning depart this whole neighborhood and go to the distant city that is it no more is it not enough there's something more pier thou has not yet answered a question i put to thee but just now we think the isabel that is seething out brothers by the ame in a thing holy pertaining to ourselves for there an hour united good which thou i would do anything that does not tend to the marring of that best lasting fortunes pier what is it that which have the ame to do together i wait i wait let us go into the room of the double casement my sister said pier rising nay then if it cannot be said here then can i not do it anywhere my brother for it would harm thee girl quite pier sternly if for thee i have lost but he checked himself lost for me now does the very worst black and on me pier pier i was foolish and sought but to frighten thee my sister it was very foolish do thou now go on with thine innocent work here and i will come again a few hours hence let me go now he was turning from her when isabel sprang forward to him caught him with both her arms round him and held him so convulsively that her hair sideways swept over him and have concealed him pier if indeed my soul have cast on thee the same black shadow that my hair now flings on thee if thou has lost ought for me then eternally is isabel lost isabel and isabel will not outlive this night if i am indeed in a cursing thing i will not act the given part but cheat the air and die from it see i let thee go lest some poison i know not of distal upon thee from me she slowly drooped and trembled from him but pier caught her and supported her foolish foolish one behold in the very bodily act of losing hold of me thou dost reel and fall unanswerable emblem of the indispensable heart stay i am to thee my sweet sweet isabel pray not then a parting what has thou lost for me tell me again for lost my sister tismir rhetoric what has thou lost nothing that my inmost heart would now recall i've bought inner love and glory by a price which large or small i would not now have paid me back so i must return the thing i bought is love then cold and glory white thy cheek is snowy pier it should be for i believe to god that i'm pure let the world think how it may what has thou lost not the nor the pride and glory of ever loving thee and being a continual brother to thee my best sister nay why dost thou now turn thy face from me with fine words he weedles me and coaxes me not to know some secret thing go go pier come to me when thou wilt i'm steeled now to the worst and to the last again i tell thee i will do anything yes anything that pier commands for the outer ill do lower upon us still deep within i won't be careful very careful with me pier though i'm made of that fine unshared stuff of which god makes his seraphim but thy divine devotedness to me is meant by mine to thee well may as thou trust me isabel and whatever strangest thing i may yet propose to thee thy confidence will it not bear me out surely thou will not hesitate to plunge when i plunge first already have i plunged now thou canst not stay upon the bank harken harken to me i seek not now to gain thy prior assent to a thing as yet undone but i call to thee now isabel from the depth of a foregone act to ratify backward by thy consent look not so hard upon me listen i won't tell all isabel though thou art all fearfulness to injure any living thing least of all thy brother still thy true heart for knoweth not the myriad alliances and criss crossings among mankind the infinite entanglements of all social things which forbids that one thread should fly the general fabric on some new line of duty without tearing itself and tearing others listen all that has happened up to this moment and all that may be yet to happen some sudden inspiration now assures me inevitably proceeded from the first hour i saw thee not possibly could it or can it be otherwise therefore feel like that i have some patience listen whatever outer things might possibly be mine whatever seeming brightest blessings yet now to live uncomforting and i'm loving to thee isabel now to dwell domestically away from thee so that only by stealth and base connivances of the night i could come to thee as that related brother this would be and is unutterably impossible in my bosom a secret adder of self approach and self infamy would never leave off its sting listen but without gratuitous dishonor to a memory which for right cause or wrong is ever sacred and invalid to me i cannot be an open brother to thee isabel but thou want us not the openness for thou does not pine for empty nominalness but for vital realness what thou want is does not the occasional openness of my brotherly love but its continual domestic confidence do i not speak thine own hidden heart to thee say isabel well then still listen to me one only way presents to this the most strange way isabel to the world that never throbbed for thee in love a most deceitful way but to all a harmless way so harmless in its essence isabel that seems to me pier had consulted heaven itself upon it and heaven itself did not say nay still listen to me mark me as thou knowest that which now droop and die without me so would i without thee we are equal there mark that to isabel i do not stoop to thee nor thou to me but we both reach up a like to a glorious ideal never continualness the secretness yet the always present domesticness of our love how may we best compass that without jeopardizing the ever sacred memory i hinted at one way only one a strange way but most pure listen brace thyself here let me hold thee now and then whisper it to the isabel come i holding thee thou canst not fall he held her tremblingly she bent over toward him his mouth wet her ear he whispered it the girl move not was done with all her tremblings leaned closer to him with an inexpressible strangeness of an intense love new and inexplicable over the face of peer their shot of terrible self-revelation the imprinted repeated burning kisses upon her pressed hard her hand would not let go hurt sweet and awful passiveness then they changed they coiled together and entangled glace to mute chapter two mrs glendonny walked her chamber her dress loosened that such a cursed vileness should proceed from me now will the tongue world say see the vile boy of mary glendonny deceitful thick with guilt where i thought it was all guilessness and gentlest docility to me it has not happened it is not day where this thing so i should go mad and be shut up and not walk here where every door is open to me my own only son married to an unknown thing my own only son foster his holiest plightest public vow and the wide world knowing to it he bears my name glendoning i will disown it were it like this dress i would tear my name off from me and burn it till it shriveled to a crisp pierre pierre come back come back and swear it is not so it cannot be wait i will ring the bell and see if it be so she rang the bell with violence and soon heard a responsive knock come in nay fault or not throwing a shawl over her come in stand there and tell me if thou darest that my son was in this house this morning and met me on the stairs darest thou say that dates looked confounded at her most unwanted aspect say it find thy tongue or i will root mine out and fling it at thee say it my dear mistress i'm not thy mistress but thou my master for if thou sayest it thou commandest me to madness oh wow boy begone from me she locked the door upon him and swiftly and distractedly walked her chamber she paused and tossing down the curtains shut out the sun from the two windows another but an unsummoned knock was at the door she opened it my mistress his reverence is below i would not call you but he insisted let him come up here immediately this thou hear me that mr falls grave come up as if suddenly and admonishingly made aware by dates of the ungovernable mood of mrs glendoning the clergyman entered the open door of her chamber with the most deprecating but honest reluctance and apprehensiveness of he knew not what be seated sir stay shut the door and lock it madam i will do it be seated as thou seen him whom madam master pierre him quick it was to speak of him i came madam he made a most extraordinary call upon me last night midnight and thou marriage tim damned thee nay nay nay madam there is something here i know not of i came to tell the news but thou has some or well mean tidings to reveal to me i beg no pardons but i may be sorry mr falls grave my son standing publicly plighted to lucy tartan has privately wedded some other girl some slut impossible true as thou art there thou knowest nothing of it then nothing nothing not one grain till now who is it he has wedded some slut i tell thee i am no lady now but something deeper a woman an outraged and pride poisoned woman she turned from him swiftly and again paced the room as frantic and entirely regardless of any presence waiting for her to pause but in vain mr falls grave advanced toward her cautiously and with a profoundest deference which was almost a cringing spoke it is the hour of woe to thee and i confess my cloth hath no consolation for thee yet a while permit me to withdraw from thee leaving my best prayers for thee that thou may us know some peace ere this now shut out sun goes down send for me whenever thou desirous me may i go now be gone and let me not hear thy soft mincing voice which is an infamy to a man be gone thou help us and unhelping one she swiftly paced the room again swiftly muttering to herself now now now now i see it clearer clearer clear it now as day my first dim suspicions pointed right to right i the sowing it was the sowing the shriek i saw him gazing rooted at her he would not speak going home with me i charged him with his silence he put me off with lies lies lies i i he is married to her to her to her perhaps was then and yet and yet how can it be lucy lucy i saw him after that look on her as if he would be glad to die for her and go to hell for her whether he deserves to go oh oh oh thus ruthlessly to cut off at one gross central dash the fair succession of an honorable race mixing the choices wine with filthy water from the plebeian pool and so turning all to undistinguishable rankness oh viper had i thee now in me i would be a suicide and a murderer with one blow a third knock was at the door she opened it my mistress i thought it would disturb you it is so just overhead so i have not removed them yet unravel thy gibberish what is it pardon my mistress i somehow thought you knew it but you cannot what is that writing crumbling in my hand give it me i've promised my young master not to my mistress i will snatch it then and so leave thee blameless what what what he's mad sure fine old fellow dates what what mad and merry chest clothes trunks he wants them tumble them out of his window and if he stand right beneath tumble them out dismantle that whole room tear up the carpet i swear he shall leave no smallest vestige in this house here this very spot here here where i stand he may have stood upon yes he tied my shoestring here it's slippery dates my mistress do his bidding by reflection he has made me infamous to the world and i will make him infamous to it listen and do not delude thyself that i'm crazy go up to yonder room pointing upward and remove every article in it and where he bid thee set down the chest and trunks there set down all the contents of that room it was before the house this house and if it had not been there i would not order me to put them there does i would have the world know that i disown and score him do my bidding stay let the room stand but take him what he asked for i will my mistress as dates left the chamber mrs glendening again pasted swiftly and again swiftly muttered now if i were less a strong and haughty woman the fit would have gone by air now but deep volcanoes long burn air they burn out oh that the world were made of such malleable stuff that we could recklessly do our fireiest hearts wish before it and not falter of course be those four syllables of sound which make up that bile word propriety it is a chain and bell to drag drag what sound is that there's dragging his trunks the travelers dragging out oh would i could so drag my heart as fishers for the drown do as that i might drag up my sunken happiness boy boy worse than brought in dripping drowned to me drowned in icy infamy oh oh oh she threw herself upon the bed covered her face in late motionless but suddenly rose again and hurriedly rang the bell open that desk and draw the stand to me now wait and take this to miss lucy with a pencil she rapidly traced these lines my heart bleeds for these sweet lucy i cannot speak i know it all look for me the first hour i regain myself again she threw herself upon the bed and lay motionless chapter three towards sundown that evening pierre stood in one of the three bespoke chambers in the black swan inn the blue chins covered chest and the writing desk before him his hands were eagerly searching through his pockets the key the key nay then i must force it open it bodes ill to yet lucky is it some bankers can break into their own vaults when other means do fail not so ever let me see yes the tongs there now then for the sweet sight of gold and silver i never loved it till this day how long it has been hoarded little token pieces of years ago from aunts uncles cousins innumerable and from but i won't mention them dead hands forth to me sure there'll be a premium on such ancient gold there's some raw bits token pieces to my i name him not more than half a century ago well well i never thought to cast them back into the sorted circulations once they came but if they must be spent now is the time in this last necessity and in the sacred cost is at most stupid dunderhead he crowbar hoy so now for it snakes nest four suddenly back the chest lit had suddenly revealed to him the chair portrait lying on top of all the rest where he had secreted it some days before face up it met him with its noiseless ever nameless and ambiguous unchanging smile now his first repugnance was augmented by an emotion altogether new that certain lurking lenient in the portrait whose strange transfer blended with far other and sweeter and noble characteristics was visible in the countenance of isabel that lenient in the portrait was somehow now detestable may altogether loath some ineffably so to pierre he argued not with himself why this was so he only felt it and most keenly omitting more subtle inquisition into this deathly winding theme it will be enough to hint perhaps that possibly one source of this new hatefulness had its primary and unconscious rise in one of those profound ideas which at times atmospherically as it were to insinuate themselves even into very ordinary minds in the strange relativness reciprocal nests and transmit between the long dead father's portrait and the living daughter's face pier might have seemed to see reflected to him by visible and uncountradictible symbols the tyranny of time and fate painted before the daughter was conceived or born like a dumb seer the portrait still seemed leveling its prophetic finger at that empty air from which is about did finally emerge there seemed to look some mystical intelligence and vitality in the picture because since in his own memory of his father pier could not recall any distinct liniment transmitted to isabel but vaguely saw such in the portrait therefore not pier's parent as any way rememberable by him but the portrait's painted self seemed the real father of isabel for so far as all sentiment isabel had inherited one peculiar trait no wither traceable but to it and as his father was now sought to be banished from his mind as a most bitter presence there but isabel was become a thing of intense and fearful love for him therefore it was loathsome to him that in the smiling and ambiguous portrait her sweet mournful image should be so sinisterly be crooked the mixed amutilated to him when the first shock and then the pause over he lifted the portrait in his two hands and held it averted from him it shall not live hitherto i've hoarded up mementors and monuments of the past been a worshipper of all heirlooms a fawn filer a way of letters locks of hair bits of ribbon flowers and the thousand and one minutenesses which love and memory think they sanctify but it is forever over now if to me any memory shall henceforth be dear i will not mummy it in a visible memorial for every passing beggars dust together on love's museum is vain and foolish as the catacombs where grinning apes and abject lizards are embalmed as forsooth significant of some imagined charm it speaks merely of decay and death and nothing more decay and death of endless innumerable generations it makes of earth one mold how can lifelessness be fit memorial of life so far for mementors of the sweetest as for the rest now i know this that in commonest memorials the twilight fact of death first discloses in some secret way all the ambiguities of that departed thing or person obliquely it casts hints and insinuates surmises base and eternally incapable of being cleared decreed by god omnipotent it is that death should be the last scene of the last act of man's play a play which began how it may in forest or comedy ever have its tragic end the curtain inevitably falls upon a corpse therefore never more will i play the vile pygmy and buy small memorials after death attempt to reverse the decree of death by assaying the poor perpetuating of the image of the original let all die and mix again as for this this why longer should i preserve it why preserve that on which one cannot patient look if i am resolved to hold his public memory in violet destroy this thing for here's the one great condemning and unsuborn proof whose mysticalness drives me half mad of old greek times before man's brain went into doting bondage and bleached and beaten in buccanean fulling mills his four limbs lost their barbaric tan and beauty when the round world was fresh and rosy and spicy as a new plucked apple all wilted now in those bold times the great dead were not turkey like dished in trenches and set down all garnished in the ground to glut the damn cyclops like a cannibal but nobly envious life cheated the glutton worm and gloriously burned the corpse so that the spirit up pointed and visibly fort to heaven so now will i serve the though that solicity of which thou art the unsolvable duplicate that's long gone to its city's churchyard account and though god knows but for one part of the it may have been fit auditing yet will i now a second time see thy obsolete squeeze performed and by now burning they earn the in the great base of air come now a small wood fire had been kindled on the heart to purify the long closed room it was now diminished to a small pointed heap of glowing embers detaching and dismembering the gilded but tarnished frame pier laid the four pieces on the coals as their dryness soon caught the sparks he rolled the reverse canvas into a scroll and tied it and committed it to the now crackling clamorous flames steadfastly pier watched the first crispings and blackenings of the painted scroll but started as suddenly unwinding from the burnt string that had tied it for once with instant seen through the flame and smooth the uprising portrait tormentedly stared at him in beseeching horror and then wrapped in one broad sheet of oily fire disappeared forever yielding to a sudden ungovernable impulse pier darted his hand among the flames to rescue the imploring face but as swiftly drew back his scorched and bootless grasp his hand was burnt and blackened but he did not heed it he ran back to the chest and seizing repeated packages of family letters and all sorts of miscellaneous memorials and papery threw them one after the other upon the fire thus and thus and thus on thy mains i fling fresh spoils pour out all my memory in one libation so so so lower lower lower now all is done and all is ashes henceforth cast out pier hath no paternity and no past and since the future is one blank to all therefore twice disinherited pier stands untrammeledly is ever present self free to do his own self will and present fancy to whatever end chapter four that same sunset lucy lay in her chamber a knock was heard at its door and the responding martha was met by the now self-controlled and resolute face of mrs glendoning how is your young mistress martha may i come in but waiting for no answer with the same breath she passed the mate and determinately entered the room she sat down by the bed and met the open eye but closed and pallid mouth of lucy she gazed rivetedly and inquisitively a moment then turned a quick a gas look toward martha as if seeking warrant for some shuttering thought miss lucy said martha it is your it is mrs glendoning speak to her miss lucy as if left in the last helpless attitude of some spent contortion of her grief lucy was not lying in the ordinary posture of one in bed but they half crosswise upon it with the pale pillows propping her heel as form but a single sheet thrown over her as though she were so heart overlaid that her white body could not bear one added feather and as in any snowy marvel statue the drapery clings to the limb so as one found ground the fin defining she invested lucy it is mrs glendoning will you speak to her miss lucy the thin lips moved and trembled for a moment and then were still again and augmented pallor shrouded her martha brought restoratives and went always as before she made a gesture for the lady to depart and then a whisper said she will not speak to any she does not speak to me the doctor has just left he's been here five times since morning and says she must be kept entirely quiet then pointing to the stand edit you see what he's left mirrored restoratives quiet is her best medicine now he says quiet quiet quiet oh sweet quiet without now ever come as mrs tartan been written to whispered the lady martha nodded so the lady moved to quit the room saying that once every two hours she would send to know how lucy fared but where where is her aunt martha she explained lowly pausing at the door and glancing in sudden astonishment about the room surely surely mrs lanolin poor poor old lady weepingly whispered martha she had caught infection from sweet lucy's woe she hurried hither caught one glimpse of that bed and fell like dead upon the floor the doctor hath two patients now lady glancing at the bed and tenderly feeding lucy's bosom to mark if yet it heaved a lack a lack oh reptile reptile like a sting so sweet a breast fire would be too cold for him a cursed thy own tongue blistered the roof of thy mouth cried mrs glandini in a half stifled whispering scream does not for thee hard one to rail at my son though he were lucifer simmering in hell mendai manners makes and she left the chamber dilated with her unconquerable pride leaving martha aghast at such venom in such beauty end of book 12 book 13 of pierre or the ambiguities by herman melville this river box recording is in the public domain they depart the meadows chapter one it was just dusk when pierre approached the over farmhouse in a wagon belonging to the black swan in he met his sister shalt and bonneted in the porch now then isabel is already whereas deli i see two most small and inconsiderable portmanteau we is the chest that holds the goods of the disowned the wagon waits isabel now is already and nothing left nothing pierre unless and going hence but i'll not think of that all's faded deli where is she let us go in for her said pierre catching the hand of isabel and turning rapidly as he thus half dragged her into the little lighted entry and then dropping her hand placed his touch on the catch of the inner door isabel stayed his arm as if to keep him back till she should forewarn him against something concerning deli but suddenly she started herself and for one instant eagerly pointing at his right hand seemed almost to have shrink from pierre it is nothing i'm not hurt a slight burn the nearest accidental scorch this morning but what's this he added lifting his hand higher smoke soot this comes of going in the dark sunlight and i had seen it but i had not touched the isabel isabel lifted her hand and showed the marks but it came from the my brother and i would catch the plague from the so that it should make me share the do thou clean thy hand let mine alone deli deli cried pierre why may i not go to her to bring her forth placing her finger upon her lip isabel softly opened the door and showed the object of his inquiry avertedly seated muffled on a chair do not speak to her my brother whispered isabel and do not seek to behold her face as yet it will pass over now air long i trust come shall we go now take deli forth but do not speak to her i have been all goodbye the old people are in yonder room in the rear i'm glad that they chose not to come out to attend our going forth come now be very quick pierre this is an hour i like not be it swiftly passed soon all three alighted at the inn ordering lights pierre led the way above stairs and ushered his two companions into one of the two outermost rooms of the three adjoining chambers prepared for all see said he to the mute and still self averting figure of deli see this is thy room miss over isabel has told thee all thou knowest our till now a secret marriage she will stay with thee now till i return from a little business down the street tomorrow thou knowest very early we take the stage i may not see thee again till then so be steadfast and cheer up a very little miss over and good night all will be well chapter two next morning by break of day at four o'clock the four swift hours were personified in four inpatient horses which shook their trappings beneath the windows of the inn three figures emerged into the cool dim air and took their places in the coach the old landlord had silently and despondently shaken pierre by the hand the vane glorious driver was on his box threadingly adjusting the four reins among the fingers of his buckskin gloves the usual thin company of admiring oslars and other early onlookers were gathered about the porch when on his companion's account all eager to cut short any vain delay at such a painful crisis pierre impetuously shouted for the coach to move in a moment the four meadow fed young horses leaped forward their own generous lengths and the four responsive wheels roll their complete circles while making vast rearward flourishes with his whip the elated driver seemed as a bravado hero signing his ostentatious farewell signature in the empty air and so in the dim of the dawn and to the defiant crackings of that long and sharp resounding whip the three forever fled the sweet fields of subtle meadows the short old landlord gazed after the coach a while and then re-entering the inn stroked his gray beard and muttered to himself i have kept this house now three and thirty years and have had plenty of bridal parties come and go in their long train of wagons breakdowns buggies gigs a gay and giggling train ha there's a pun popped out like a cork i and once in ox carts all gallanted i and once the mary bride was bedded on a load of sweet scented new cut clover but such a bridal party as this morning's why it's as sad as funerals and brave master pier glendening is the groom well well wonders is all the gold i thought i had done with one drink when i passed fifty but i keep wondering still uh somehow now i feel as though i had just come from lowering some old friend beneath the sod and yet felt the grading chord marks in my palms is early but i'll drink let's see cider a mug of cider to his sharp and pricks like a game cock spur ciders the drink for grief oh lord that fat men should be so thin skinned and suffer in pure sympathy on others account a thin skinned thin man he don't suffer so because there ain't so much stuff in him for his thin skin to cover well well well well well of all colleagues save me from the melon colleagues green melons is the greenest thing end of book 13 book 14 of pier or the ambiguities by herman melville this liberal box recording is in the public domain the journey and the pamphlet chapter one all profound things and emotions of things are preceded and attended by silence what a silence is that with which the pale bride precedes the responsive i will to the priest solemn question will thou have this man for thy husband in silence to the wedded hands or class yet in silence the child christ was born into the world silence is the general consecration of the universe silence is the invisible laying on of the divine pontiff's hands upon the world silence is at once the most harmless and the most awful thing in all nature it speaks of the reserve forces of fate silence is the only voice of our god nor is this so august silence confined to things simply touching or grand like the air silence permeates all things and produces its magical power as well during that peculiar mood which prevails at a solitary traveler's first setting forth on a journey as at the unimaginable time when before the world was silence brooded on the face of the waters no word was spoken by its inmates as the coach bearing our young enthusiast Pierre and his mournful party sped forth through the dim dawn into the deep midnight which still occupied unrepulsed the hearts of the old woods through which the road wound very shortly after quitting the village when first entering the coach Pierre had pressed his hand upon the cushioned seat to study his way some crumpled leaves of paper had met his fingers he had instinctively clutched them and the same strange clutching mood of his soul which had prompted that instinctive act did also prevail in causing him now to retain the crumpled paper in his hand for an hour or more of that wonderful intense silence which the rapid coach bore through the heart of the general stirrless morning silence of the fields and the woods his thoughts were very dark and wild for a space there was rebellion and horrid anarchy and infidelity in his soul this temporary mood may best be likened to that which according to a singular story once told in the pulpit by a reverend man of god invaded the heart of an excellent priest in the midst of a solemn cathedral upon a cloudy sunday afternoon this priest was in the act of publicly administering the bread at the holy sacrament of the supper when the evil one suddenly propounded to him the possibility of the mere moonshine of the christian religion just such now was the mood of Pierre to him the evil one propounded the possibility of the mere moonshine of all his self renouncing enthusiasm the evil one hooted at him and called him a fool but by instant and earners prayer closing his two eyes with his two hands still holding the sacramental bread the devout priest had vanquished the impious devil not so with Pierre the imperishable monument of his holy catholic church the imperishable record of his holy bible the imperishable intuition of the innate truth of christianity these were the indestructible anchors which still held the priest to his firm faiths rock when the sudden storm raised by the evil one assailed him but pierre where could he find the church the monument the bible which unequivocally said to him go on thou art in the right i endorse thee all over go on so the difference between the priest and pierre was herein with the priest it was a matter whether certain bodiless thoughts of his were true or not true but with pierre it was a question whether certain vital acts of his were right or wrong in this little nut lie germ like the possible solution of some puzzling problems and also the discovery of additional and still more profound problems ensuing upon the solution of the former for so true is this last that some men refuse to solve any present problem for fear of making still more work for themselves in that way now pierre thought of the magical mournful letter of isabel he recalled the divine inspiration of that hour when the heroic words burst from his heart comfort thee and stand by thee and fight for thee will thy leapingly acknowledging brother these remembrances unfurl themselves in proud exaltations in his soul and from before such glorious banners of virtue the clubfooted evil one limped away in dismay but now the dread fateful parting look of his mother came over him i knew he heard the heart prose grabbing words beneath my roof and at my table he who was once pierre glendening no more puts himself swooning in her snow white bed the lifeless lucy lay before him wrapped as in the reverberating echo wings of her own agonizing shriek my heart my heart then how swift the recurrence to isabel and the nameless awfulness of his still imperfectly conscious incipient new mingled emotion toward this mysterious being low i leave corpses wherever i go groaned pierre to himself can then my conduct be right low by my conduct i seem threatened by the possibility of a sin anomalous and accursed so anomalous it may well be the one for which scripture says there is never forgiveness corpses behind me and the last sin before how then can my conduct be right in this mood the silence accompanied him and the first visible rays of the morning sun in this same mood found him and saluted him the excitement and the sleepless night just passed and the strange narcotic of a quiet steady anguish and the sweet quiet essence of the air and the monotonous cradle-like motion of the coach over a road made firm and smoothed by a refreshing shower overnight these had wrought their wanted effect upon isabel and deli with hidden faces they leaned fast asleep in pierre's sight fast asleep thus unconscious oh sweet isabel oh for lauren deli your swift destinies i bear in my own suddenly as his said i fell lower and lower from scanning their magically quiescent persons his glance lit upon his own clutched hand which rested on his knee some paper protruded from that clutch he knew not how it had got there or whence it had come though himself had closed his own grip upon it he lifted his hand and slowly unfingered and unbolted the paper and unrolled it and carefully smoothed it to see what it might be it was a thin tattered dried fish like thing printed with blurred ink upon mean sleazy paper it seemed the opening pages of some ruinous old pamphlet a pamphlet containing a chapter or so of some very voluminous disquisition the conclusion was gone it must have been accidentally left there by some previous traveler who perhaps in drawing out his handkerchief had ignorantly extracted his waste paper there is a singular infatuation in most men which leads them in odd moments intermitting between their regular occupations and when they find themselves all alone in some quiet corner or nook too fast and with unaccountable fondness upon the nearest rag of old printed paper some shred of a long exploded advertisement perhaps and read it and study it and reread it and pour over it and fairly agonize themselves over this miserable sleazy paper rag which at any other time or in any other place they would hardly touch with saint dunstan's long tongs so now in a degree with pierre but not withstanding that he with most other human beings shared in the strange hallucination above mentioned yet the first glimpse of the title of the dried fish like pamphlet shaped rag did almost tempt him to pitch it out of the window for be a man's mood what it may what sensible and ordinary mortal could have patience for any considerable period to knowingly hold in his conscious hand a printed document and that to a very blurred one as to ink and a very sleazy one as to paper so metaphysically and insufferably entitled as this chronometricals and horologicals doubtless it was something vastly profound but it is to be observed that when a man is in a really profound mood then all merely verbal or written profundities are unspeakably repulsive and seem downright childish to him nevertheless the silence still continued the road ran through and almost unplowed and uninhabited region the slumber is still slumbered before him the evil mood was becoming well not insupportable to him so more two forces mind away from the dark realities of things than from any other motive pierre finally tried his best to plunge himself into the pamphlet chapter two sooner or later in this life the earnest or enthusiastic youth comes to know and more or less appreciate this startling solosism that while as the grand condition of acceptance to God Christianity calls upon all men to renounce this world yet by all odds the most mannish part of this world Europe and America are owned by none but professed Christian nations who glory in the owning and seem to have some reason therefore this solosism once vividly and practically apparent then comes the earnest re perusal of the gospels the intense self-absorption into that greatest real miracle of all religions the sermon on the mount from that divine mount to all earnest loving youths flows and inexhaustible soul melting stream of tenderness and loving kindness and they leap exalting to their feet to think that the founder of their holy religion gave utterance to sentences so infinitely sweet and soothing as these sentences which embody all the love of the past and all the love which can be imagined in any conceivable future such emotions as that sermon raises in the enthusiastic heart such emotions all youthful hearts refuse to ascribe to humanity as their origin this is of God cries the heart and in that cry ceases all inquisition now with this fresh red sermon in his soul the youth again gazes abroad upon the world instantly in aggravation of the former solosism an overpowering sense of the world's downright positive falsity comes over him the world seems to lie saturated and soaking with lies the sense of this thing is so overpowering that at first the youth is apt to refuse the evidence of his own senses even as he does that same evidence in the matter of the movement of the visible sun in the heavens which with his own eyes he plainly sees to go around the world but nevertheless on the authority of other persons the Copernican astronomers whom he never saw he believes it not to go around the world but the world around it just so too he hears good and wise people sincerely say this world only seems to be saturated and soaking with lies but in reality it does not so lie soaking and saturate along with some lies there is much truth in this world but again he refers to his bible and there he reads most explicitly that this world is unconditionally depraved and accursed and that it all hazards men must come out of it but why come out of it if it be a true world and not a lying world assuredly then this world is a lie here upon them in the soul of the enthusiast youth two armies come to the shock and unless he proved recreate or unless he proved gullible or unless he can find the talismanic secret to reconcile this world with his own soul then there is no peace for him no slight is truce for him in this life now without doubt this talismanic secret has never yet been found and in the nature of human things it seems as though it never can be certain philosophers have time and again pretended to have found it but if they do not in the end discover their own delusion other people soon discover it for themselves and so those philosophers and their vain philosophy are let glide away into practical oblivion plaito and spamosa and girta and many more belong to this guild of self imposters with their preposterous rabble of muggletonian scots and yankees whose vile brogue still the more bestreaks the stripedness of their greek or german neo platonical originals that profound silence that only voice of our god which i before spoke of from that divine thing without a name those imposter philosophers pretend somehow to have got an answer which is as absurd as though they should say they had got water out of stone for how can a man get a voice out of silence certainly all must admit that if for any one this problem of the possible reconcilment of this world with our own souls possessed a peculiar and potential interest that one was pierre glendenning at the period we now write of for in obedience to the loftiest behest of his soul he had done certain vital acts which had already lost him his worldly felicity in which he felt must in the end indirectly work him some still additional and not to be thought of whoa soon then as after his first distaste at the mystical title and after his then reading on merely to drown himself pierre at last began to obtain a glimmering into the profound intent of the writer of the sleazy rag pamphlet he felt a great interest awakened in him the more he read and reread the more this interest deepened but still the more likewise did his failure to comprehend the writer increase he seemed somehow to derive some general vague inkling concerning it but the central conceit refused to become clear to him the reason we're of is not so easy to be laid down seeing that the reason originating heart and mind of man these organic things themselves are not so easily to be expounded something however more or less to the point may be adventured here if a man be in any vague latent doubt about the intrinsic correctness and excellence of his general life theory and practical course of life then if that man chance to light on any other man or any little treatise or sermon which I'm intendingly as it were yet very palpably illustrates to him the intrinsic incorrectness and non excellence of both the theory and the practice of his life then that man will more or less unconsciously try hard to hold himself back from the self admitted comprehension of a matter which thus condemns him for in this case to comprehend is himself to condemn himself which is always highly inconvenient and uncomfortable to a man again and if a man be told a thing holy new then during the time of its first announcement to him it is entirely impossible for him to comprehend it for absurd as it may seem men are only made to comprehend things which they comprehended before though but in the embryo as it were things new it is impossible to make them comprehend by merely talking to them about it true sometimes they pretend to comprehend in their own hearts they really believe they do comprehend outwardly look as though they did comprehend wag their bushy tails comprehendingly but for all that they do not comprehend possibly they may afterward come of themselves to inhale this new idea from the circumambient air and so come to comprehend it but not otherwise at all it will be observed that neither points of the above speculations do we in set terms attribute to pier in connection with the rag pamphlet possibly both might be applicable possibly neither certain it is however that at the time in his own heart he seemed to think that he did not fully comprehend the strange writers conceit in all this bearings yet was this conceit apparently one of the plainest in the world so natural a child might almost have originated it nevertheless again so profound that scarce jugularious himself could be the author and still again so exceedingly trivial that jugularious smallest child might well have been ashamed of it seeing then that this curious paper rags so puzzle pier for seeing to that pier may not in the end be entirely uninfluenced in his conduct by the torn pamphlet when afterwards perhaps by other means he shall come to understand it or for adventure come to know that he in the first place did seeing to that the author thereof came to be made known to him by reputation and though pier never spoke to him yet exerted a surprising sorcery upon his spirit by the mere distinct glimpse of his countenance all these reasons i account sufficient apology for inserting in the following chapters the initial part of what seems to me a very fanciful and mystical rather than philosophical lecture from which i confess that i myself can derive no conclusion which permanently satisfies those peculiar motions in my soul to which that lecture seems more particularly addressed for to me it seems more the excellently illustrated restatement of a problem than the solution of the problem itself but as such mere illustrations are almost universally taken for solutions and perhaps they are the only possible human solutions therefore it may help to the temporary quiet of some inquiring mind and so not be holy without use at the worst each person can now skip or read and rail for himself chapter three e i by platinus plin lemon in three hundred and thirty three lectures lecture first chronometricals and horologicals being not too much the portal as part of the temporary scaffold to the portal of this new philosophy few of us doubt gentlemen that human life on this earth is but a state of probation which among other things implies that here below immortals have only to do with things provisional accordingly a whole that all our so-called wisdom is likewise but provisional this preamble laid down i begin it seems to me in my visions that there is a certain most rare order of human souls which have carefully carried in the body will almost always and everywhere give heavens own truth with some small grains of variance for peculiarly coming from god the sole source of that heavenly truth and the great Greenwich hill and tower from which the universal meridians are far out into infinity reckoned such souls seem as london see chronometers greek time-namers which as the london ship floats past Greenwich down the Thames are accurately adjusted by Greenwich time in a feedfully kept will still give that same time even though carried to the Azores true in nearly all cases of long remote voyages to China say chronometers of the best make and the most carefully treated will gradually more or less vary from Greenwich time without the possibility of the error being corrected by direct comparison with their great standard but skillful and about observations of the stars by the sextant will serve materially to lessen such errors and besides there is such a thing as rating a chronometer that is having ascertained as degree of organic in accuracy however small then in all subsequent chronometrical calculations that ascertained loss or gain can be readily added or deducted as the case may be then again on these long voyages the chronometer may be corrected by comparing it with the chronometer of some other ship it see more recently from home now in an artificial world like ours the soul of man is further removed from its God in the heavenly truth then the chronometer carried to China is from Greenwich and as that chronometer if at all accurate will pronounce it to be 12 o'clock high noon when the China local watches say perhaps it is 12 o'clock midnight so the chronometric soul if in this world true to its great lineage in the other will always in its so-called intuitions of right and wrong be contradicting the mere local standards and watchmakers brains of this earth bacon's brains were mere watchmakers brains but Christ was a chronometer and the most exquisitely adjusted an exact one and the least affected by all terrestrial giants of any that have ever come to us and the reason why his teachings seem folly to the Jews was because he carried that heaven's time in Jerusalem while the Jews carry Jerusalem time there did he not expressly say my wisdom time is not of this world but whatever is really peculiar in the wisdom of Christ seems precisely the same follow today as it did 1850 years ago because in all that interval his bequeath chronometer has still preserved its original heaven's time and the general Jerusalem of this world has likewise carefully preserved its own but though the chronometer carried from Greenwich to China should truly exhibit in China what the time may be at Greenwich at any moment yet though thereby it must necessarily contradict China time it does by no means then follow that with respect to China the China watches are at all out of the way precisely the reverse for the fact of that variance is a presumption that with respect to China the Chinese watches must be alright and consequently as the China watches are right as to China so the Greenwich chronometers must be wrong as to China besides of what use to the Chinaman would a Greenwich chronometer keeping Greenwich time be were he thereby to regulate his daily actions he would be guilty of all manner of absurdities going to bed at noon save when his neighbors would be sitting down to dinner and thus though the earthly wisdom of man be heavenly folly to God so also conversely is the heavenly wisdom of God and earthly folly to man literally speaking this is so nor does the God that the heavenly Greenwich expect common men to keep Greenwich wisdom in this remote Chinese world of ours because such a thing were unprofitable for them here and indeed a falsification of himself in as much as in that case China time would be identical with Greenwich time which would make Greenwich time long but why then does God now and then send a heavenly chronometer as a meteoric stone into the world uselessly as it would seem to give the lie to all the world's timekeepers because he is unwilling to leave man without some occasional testimony to this that though man's Chinese notions of things may answer well enough here they are by no means universally applicable and that the central Greenwich in which he dwells goes by a somewhat different method from this world and yet it follows not from this that God's truth is one thing in man's truth another but as above hinted and this will be further elucidated in subsequent lectures by their very contradiction they are made to correspond by influence it follows also that he who finding in himself a chronometrical soul seeks practically to force that heavenly time upon the earth in such an attempt he can never succeed with an absolute and essential success and that's for himself if he seek to regulate his own daily conduct by it he will but array all man's earthly timekeepers against him and thereby work himself well and death both these things are plainly advanced in the character and fate of Christ in the past and present condition of the religion he taught but here one thing is to be especially observed though Christ encountered woe in both the precept and the practice of his chronometricals yet did he remain throughout entirely without following a sin whereas almost invariably with inferior beings the absolute effort to live in this world according to the strict letter of the chronometricals is somehow apt to involve those inferior beings eventually in strange unique follies and sins unimagined before it is the story of the aphesian matron allegorized to any earnest man of insight a faithful contemplation of these ideas concerning chronometricals and horologicals will serve to render prove visionally far less dark some few of the otherwise obscure as things which have hitherto mentored the honest thinking man of all ages what man who carries a heavenly soul in him has not grown to perceive that unless he committed a sort of suicide as to the practical things of this world he never can hope to regulate his earthly conduct by that same heavenly soul and yet by an infallible instinct he knows that that monitor cannot be wrong in itself and where is the earnest and righteous philosopher gentleman who looking right and left and up and down through all the ages of the world the present included where is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort of infidel idea that whatever other worlds god may be lord of he is not the lord of this for else this world would seem to give the lie to him so readily repugnant seem its ways to the instinctively known ways of heaven but it is not and cannot be so nor will he who regards this chronometrical conceit a right ever more be conscious of that horrible idea for he will then see or seem to see that this world's seeming incompatibility with god absolutely results from its meridional correspondence with him this chronometrical conceit does by no means involve the justification of all the acts which wicked men may perform for in their wickedness downright wicked men sin as much against their own horologues as against the heavenly chronometer that this is so their spontaneous liability do remorse does plainly events no this conceit merely goes to show that for the masses men the highest abstract heavenly righteousness is not only impossible but would be entirely out of place and positively wrong in a world like this to turn the left cheek if the right be smitten is chronometrical hence no average son of man ever did such a thing to give all that thou hast to the poor this too is chronometrical hence no average son of man ever did such a thing nevertheless if a man gives with a certain self-considerate generosity to the poor abstains from doing downright ill to any man does his convenient best in a general way to do good to his whole race takes watchful loving care of his wife and children relatives and friends is perfectly tolerant to all other men's opinions whatever they may be is an honest dealer and honest citizen and all that and more especially if he believed that there is a god for infidels as well as for believers and acts upon that belief then though such a man falls into the short of the chronometrical standard though all his actions are entirely horology yet such a man need never lastingly despond because he is sometimes guilty of some minor offense hasty words impossibly returning a blow fits of domestic petulance selfish enjoyment of a glass of wine while he knows there are those around him who lack a loaf of bread I say you need never lastingly despond on account of his perpetual liability to these things because not to do them and their like would be to be an angel a chronometer whereas he is a man and a horologe yet does the horologe itself teach that all liabilities to these things should be checked as much as possible though it is certain they can never be utterly eradicated they are only to be checked then because if entirely unrestrained they would finally run into utter selfishness and human demonism which as before hinted are not by any means justified by the horologe in short this chronometrical and horological conceit in some seems to teach this that in things to rest real horological a man must not be governed by idea celestial chronometrical that certain minor self renunciations in this life his own mere instinct for his own everyday general well-being will teach him to make but he must by no means make a complete unconditional sacrifice of himself on behalf of any other being or any cause or any conceit for does ought else completely unconditionally sacrifice himself for him god's own son does not abate one tiddle of its heat in july however you swoon with that heat in the sun and if it did abate its heat on your behalf then the weed in the ride would not ripen and so for the incidental benefit of one a whole population would suffer a virtuous expediency then seems the highest desirable or attainable earthly excellence for the massive men and is the only earthly excellence that their creator intended for them when they go to heaven it would be quite another thing there they can freely turn the left cheek because there the right cheek will never be smitten there they can freely give all to the poor for there there will be no poor to give to a due appreciation of this matter will do good for demand for hitherto being authoritatively taught by his dog medical teachers that he must well on earth fame at heaven and attain it to in all his earthly acts on pain of eternal wrath and finding by experience that this is impossible in his despair he is too apt to run clean away into all manner of moral abandonment self deceit and hypocrisy cloak however mostly under an aspect of the most respectable devotion or else he openly runs like a mad dog into atheism whereas let men be taught those chronometricals and or horologicals and while still retaining every common sense incentive to whatever a virtue be practicable and desirable and having these incentives strengthened to by the consciousness of powers to attain their mark and there would be an end to that fatal despair of becoming at all good which has to often prove the vice producing result of many minds of the undiluted chronometrical doctrines here that you taught to mankind but if any man say that such a doctrine is this I lay down this false as impious I would charitably refer that man to the history of christened him for the last 1800 years and ask him whether in spite of all the maxims of Christ that history is not just as full of blood violence wrong and iniquity of every kind as any previous portion of the world story therefore it follows that so far as practical results are concerned regarded in a purely earthly light the only great original moral doctrine of Christianity that is the chronometrical gratuitous return of good for evil as distinguished from the horological forgiveness of injuries taught by some of the pagan philosophers has been found horologically a false one because after 1800 years inculcation from tens of thousands of pulpits it has proved entirely impracticable I but lay down then what the best mortal men do daily practice and what all really wicked men are very far removed from that present consolation to the earnest man who among all his human realities is still agonizingly conscious of the beauty of chronometrical excellence I hold up a practicable virtue to the vicious and interfere not with the eternal truth that sooner or later in all cases downright vice is downright woe moreover if but here the pamphlet was torn and came to a most untidy termination in the book 14