 Book 18 of Pierre, or the Ambiguities, by Herman Melville. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Pierre as a juvenile author, reconsidered. Chapter 1. In as much as by various indirect intimations, much more than ordinary natural genius has been imputed to Pierre, it may have seemed an inconsistency that only the nearest magazine papers should have been thus far the sole productions of his mind. Nor need it be added that in the soberest earnest those papers contain nothing uncommon, indeed entirely, now to drop all irony if hitherto anything like that has been indulged in. Those fugitive things of Master Pierre's were the various commonplace. It is true, as I long before said, that nature at saddle matters had very early been as a benediction to Pierre, had blown her wind clarion to him from the blue hills and murmured melodious secrecies to him by her streams and her woods. But while nature thus very early and very abundantly feeds us, she is very late in tutoring us as to the proper methodization of our diet. Or to change the metaphor, there are immense quarries of fine marble, but how to get it out, how to chisel it, how to construct any temple. Youth must wholly quit then the quarry for a while and not only go forth and get tools to use in the quarry but must go and thoroughly study architecture. Now the quarry discoverer is long before the stone cutter and the stone cutter is long before the architect and the architect is long before the temple. For the temple is the crown of the world. Yes, Pierre was not only very unarchitectural at that time but Pierre was very young indeed at that time and it is often to be observed as in digging for precious metals in the mines much earthy rubbish has first to be troublesomely handled and thrown out so in digging in one's soul for the fine gold of genius much dullness and commonplace is first brought to light. Happy would it be if the man possessed in himself some receptacle for his own rubbish of this sort but he is like the occupant of a dwelling whose refuse cannot be clapped into his own cellar that must be deposited in the street before his own door for the public functionaries to take care of. No commonplace is ever if actually got rid of except by essentially emptying one's self of it into a book. For once trapped in a book then the book can be put into the fire and all will be well. But they are not always put into the fire and this accounts for the vast majority of miserable books over those of positive merit. Nor will any thoroughly sincere man who is an author ever be rash in precisely defining the period when he has completely ridded himself of his rubbish and come to the latent gold in his mine. It holds true in every case that the wiser a man is the more misgivings he has on certain points. It is well enough known that the best productions of the best human intellects are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immature freshman exercises wholly worthless in themselves except as initiatives for entering the great university of God after death. Certain it is that if any inferences can be drawn from observations of the familiar lives of men of the greatest mark, their finest things, those which become the foolish glory of the world are not only very poor and inconsiderable to themselves but often positively distasteful. They would rather not have the book in the room in minds comparatively inferior as compared with the above these surmising considerations so sad and unfit that they become careless of what they write, go to their desks with discontent and only remain there victims to headache and pain in the back by the hard constraint of some social necessity. Equally paltry and despicable to them are the works thus composed, born of unwillingness and the bill of the baker, the rickety offspring of a parent careless of life herself and reckless of the germ life she contains. Let not the short-sighted world for a moment imagine that any vanity lurks in such minds only hired to appear on the stage not voluntarily claiming the public attention their utmost life redness and glow is but rouge washed off in private with bitter tears. Their laugh only rings because it is hollow and the answering laugh is no laughter to them. There is nothing so slipperily alluring as sadness we become sad in the first place by having nothing stirring to do. We continue in it because we have found a snug sofa at last even so it may possibly be that arrived at this quiet retrospective little episode in the career of my hero this shallowly expansive inbade tap and z of my otherwise deep petty Hudson I too begin to loungingly expand and wax harmlessly sad and sentimental. Now what has been hitherto presented in reference to Pierre concerning rubbish as in some cases the unavoidable first fruits of genius is a no wise contradicted by the fact that the first published works of many meritorious authors have given mature token of genius for we do not know how many they previously published to the flames or privately published in their own brains and suppressed there as quickly and in the inferior instances of an immediate literary success in very young writers it will be almost invariably observable that for that instant success they were chiefly indebted to some rich and peculiar experience in life embodied in a book which because for that cause containing original matter the author himself forced Suthis to be considered original in this way many very original books being the product of very unoriginal minds indeed man has only to be but a little circumspect and away flies the last rag of his vanity the world is forever babbling of originality but there never yet was an original man in the sense intended by the world the first man himself who according to the rabbins was also the first author not being an original the only original author being God had Milton's been the lot of Casper Hauser Milton would have been vacant as he for the naked soul of man doth assuredly contain one latent element of intellectual productiveness yet never was there a child born solely from one parent the visible world of experience being that procreated thing which impregnates the muses self reciprocally efficient hermaphrodites being but a fable there is infinite nonsense in the world on all of these matters hence blame me not if I contribute might might it is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open the invulnerable night wears his visor down still it is pleasant to chat for it passes the time every go to our beds and speeches father incited when like strolling in provisor torres of Italy we are paid for our breath and we are only too thankful when the gates of the audience dismiss us with the few duckets we earn chapter two it may have been already inferred that the pecuniary plans appear touching his independent means of support in the city were based upon his presumed literary capabilities for what else could he do he knew no profession no trade glad now perhaps might he have been if fate had made him a black smith and not a gentleman a glendening and genius but here he would have been unpardonably rush had he not already in some degree actually tested the fact in his own personal experience that it is not altogether impossible for a magazine contributor to juvenile American literature to receive a few pence in exchange for his ditties such cases stand upon imperishable record and it were both folly and in gratitude to disown them but since the fine social position and noble patrimony of pier had thus far rendered it altogether unnecessary for him to earn the least farthing of his own in the world whether by hand or by brain it may seem desirable to explain a little here as we go we shall do so but always including the preamble sometimes every possible maxim or thought seems an old one yet it is among the elder of the things in that unaugmentable stock that never mind what one situation may be however prosperous and happy he will still be impatient of it he will still reach out of himself and beyond every present condition so while many are poor be inked galley slave toiling with the heavy ore of a quill to gain something where with all to stave off the cravings of nature and in his hours of morbid self-reproach regarding his paltry wages at all events as an unavoidable disgrace to him while this galley slave of letters would have leaped with delight reckless of the feeble seams of his pantaloons at the most distant prospect of inheriting the broad farms of saddle matters lord of an all-sufficing income and forever exempt from wearing on his hands those treacherous plague spots of indigence that elicit blots from the ink stand pier himself the undoubted and actual possessor of the things only longingly and hopelessly imagined by the other the then top of pier's worldly ambition was the being able to boast that he had written such matters as publishers would pay something for in the way of a mere business transaction which they thought would prove profitable yet altogether weak and silly as this may seem in pier let us preambulacally examine a little further and see if it be so indeed pier was proud and a proud man proud with the sort of pride now meant ever holds but likely those things however beneficent which he did not for himself procure were such pride carried out to its legitimate and the man would eat no bread the seeds were out he had not himself put into the cell not entirely without humiliation that even that seed must be barred from some previous planter a proud man likes to feel himself in himself and not by reflection in others he likes to be not only his own alpha and omega but to be distinctly all the intermediate predations and then to slope off on his own spine either way into the endless impalpable ether what a glory it was then to pier when first in his two gentlemenly hands he jingle the wages of labor talk of drums and the fight the echo of coin of one's own earning is more inspiring than all the trumpets of sparta how distinctly now he eyed the sumptuousness of his hereditary halls the hangings and the pictures and the bragging historic armorials and the banners of the glendoning renown confident that if need should come he would not be forced to turn resurrectionist and dig up his grandfather's indian chief grave for the ancestral sword and shield ignominiously to pawn them for a living he could live on himself oh twice blessed now in the feeding of practical capacity was pier the mechanic the day laborer has but one way to live his body must provide for his body but not only could pier in some sort do that he could do the other and letting his body stay lazily at home send off his soul to labor and a soul would come faithfully back and pay his body her wages so some unprofessional gentlemen of the aristocratic south who happened to own slaves give those slaves liberty to go and seek work and every night return with their wages which constitute those idle gentlemen's income both ambidexter and quadruple armed is that man who in a day laborers body possesses a day laboring soul yet let not such an one be overconfident our God is a jealous God he wills not that any man should permanently possess the least shadow of his own self-sufficient attributes yoke the body to the soul and put both to the plow and the one or the other must in the end a surely drop in keep then the body effeminate for labor and my soul laboriously robust or else the soul effeminate for labor and my body laboriously robust elect the two will not lastingly abide in one yoke thus over the most vigorous and soaring conceits that the cloud of truth comes stealing thus death the shot even of a 62 pounder pointed upward light at last on the earth for straggly how we may we cannot over shoot the earth's orbit to receive the attractions of other planets earth's law of gravitation extends far beyond her own atmosphere in the operative opinion of this world he who is already fully provided with what is necessary for him that man shall have more while he is deplorably destitute of the same he shall have taken away from him even that which he had yet the world is a very plain downright matter of fact plotting humane sort of world it is governed only by the simplest principles and scorns all ambiguities all transcendentals and all manner of juggling now some imaginatively heterodoxical men are often surprisingly tweeted upon their willful inverting of all common sense notions their absurd and all displacing transcendentals which say three is four and two and two make ten but if the eminent jugularious himself ever advocated in mere words a doctrine one thousandth part so ridiculous and subversive of all practical sense as that doctrine which the world actually and eternally practices of giving under him already have more than enough still more of the superfluous article and taking away from him who had nothing at all even that which he had then is the truest book in the world a lie wherefore we see that the so-called transcendentalists are not the only people who deal in transcendentals on the contrary we seem to see that the utilitarians the everyday worlds people themselves far transcend those inferior transcendentalists by their own incomprehensible worldly maxims and what is vastly more with the one party their transcendentals are but theoretic and inactive and therefore harmless whereas with the other they are actually clothed in living deeds the highly grappling doctrine and practice of the world above sight it had in some small degree been manifested in the case of Pierre he prospectively possessed the fee of several hundred farms scattered over part of two adjoining counties and now the proprietor of that popular periodical the Gazelle magazine sent him several additional dollars for his sonnets that proprietor though in soothe he never read the sonnets but referred them to his professional advisor and were so ignorant that for a long time previous to the periodicals actually being started he insisted upon spilling the Gazelle with a G for the Z as thus Gagel maintaining that in the Gazelle connection the Z was a mere imposter and that the G was soft for he was a judge of softness and could speak from experience that proprietor was undoubtedly a transcendentalist for did he not act upon the transcendental doctrine previously set forth now the dollars derived from his ditties these Pierre had always invested in cigars so that the puffs which indirectly brought him his dollars were again returned but as perfumed puffs perfumed with the sweet leaf of Havana so that this highly celebrated and world renowned Pierre the great author whose likeness the world had never seen for had he not repeatedly refused the world his likeness this famous poet and philosopher author of the tropical summer asanic against his very life several desperadoes were dark replotting for had not the biographers sworn they would have it this towering celebrity there he would sit smoking and smoking mild and self-esteemed as a vapory mountain it was very involuntarily and satisfactorily reciprocal his cigars were lighted in two ways lighted by the sale of his sonnets and lighted by the printed sonnets themselves for even at that early time in his authorial life Pierre however vain of his fame was not at all proud of his paper not only did he make arguments of his sonnets been published but was very careless about his discarded manuscripts they were to be found lying all around the house gave a great deal of trouble to the maids and sweeping went for kindlings to the fires and were forever flitting out of the windows and under the door sills into the faces of people passing the manorial mansion in this reckless indifferent way of his Pierre himself was a sort of publisher it is true his more familiar admirers often earnestly remonstrated with him against this irreverence to the primitive vestments of his immortal productions saying that whatever had once felt the nib of his mighty pen was thus forth sacred as the lips which had but once saluted the great toe of the pope but hardened as he was to these friendly censurings Pierre never forbade that ardent appreciation of the tear who finding a small fragment of the original manuscript containing a dot tear over an eye esteemed the significant event providential and begged the distinguished favor of being permitted to have it for a brooch and asked to the cameo head of Homer to replace it with the more invaluable gem he became inconsolable when being caught in a rain the dot tear disappeared from over the eye eye so that the strangeness and wonderfulness of the sonnet was still conspicuous in that though the least fragment of it would weep in a drought yet did it become all tearless in a shower but this indifferent and supercilious amateur deft to the admiration of the world the enigmatically merry and renowned author of the tear the pride of the gazelle magazine on whose flaunting cover his name figured at the head of all contributors no small men either for their lives had all been fraternally written by each other and they clubbed and had their likenesses all taken by the aggregate job and published on paper all bought at one shot this high prestige peer whose future popularity and the luminousness had become so startling the amounts by what he had already written that certain speculators came to the meadows to survey its water power if any with to start a paper mill expressly for the great author and so monopolize his stationery dealings this vast being spoken of with awe by all merely youthful aspirants for fame this age neutralizing peer before whom an old gentleman of 65 formerly librarian to Congress on being introduced to him at the magazine publishers devoutly took off his hat and kept it so and remain standing though Pierre was socially seated his hat on this wonderful disdainful genius but only life amateurs yet is now soon to appear in a far different guys he shall not learn and very bitterly learn that though the world worship mediocrity in commonplace yet hath it fire and sword for all co-temporary grandeur that though it swears that it fiercely assails all hypocrisy it hath it not always an ear for earnestness and though native things united with the ever multiplying freshers of new books seems inevitably to point to a coming time when the mass of humanity reduced to one level of do-teach authors shall be scarce as alchemists are today and the printing press be reckoned a small invention yet even now in the foretaste of this let us hug ourselves oh my Aurelian that though the age of authors be passing the hours of earnestness shall remain End of Book 18 Book 19 of Pierre or the Ambiguities by Herman Melville this LibriVox recording is in the public domain the Church of the Apostles Chapter 1 in the lower old fashioned part of the city in a narrow street almost a lane once filled with demure looking dwellings but now chiefly with immense lofty warehouses of foreign importers and not far from the corner where the lane intersected with a very considerable but contractive thoroughfare for merchants and their clerks and their carmen and porters stood at this period a rather singular and ancient edifice a relic of the more primitive time the material was a gray stone rudely cut and masoned into walls of surprising thickness and strength along two of which walls the side ones were distributed as many rows of art and stately windows a capacious square and wholly unornamented tower rose in front to twice the height of the body of the church three sides of this tower were pierced with small and narrow apertures thus far in its external aspect the building now more than a century old sufficiently attested for what purpose it had originally been founded in its rear was a large and lofty brick structure with its front to the rearward street but its back presented to the back of the church leaving a small flagged and quadrangular vacancy between at the sides of this quadrangle three stories of homely brick colonnades afforded covered communication between the ancient church and its less elderly adjunct a dismantled rested and forlorn old railing of iron fencing in a small courtyard in front of their rearward building seemed to hint that the latter had usurped an unoccupied space formally sacred as the old church's burial enclosure such a fancy would have been entirely true built when the city was devoted to private residences and not to warehouses and offices as now the old church of the apostles had had its days of sanctification and grace but the tide of change and progress had rolled clean through its broad aisle and side aisles and swept by far the greater part of its congregation were three miles uptown some stubborn and elderly old merchants and accountants lingered awhile among its dusty pews listening to the exhortations of a faithful old pastor who sticking to his post in this flight of his congregation still propped his half palsy form in the worm-eaten pulpit and occasionally pounded though now with less vigorous hand the moth eaten covering of its desk but it came to pass that this good old clergyman died and when the gray headed and bald headed remaining merchants and accountants followed his coffin out of the broad aisle to see it reverently interred then that was the last time that ever the old edifice witnessed the departure of a regular worshiping assembly from its walls the venerable merchants and accountants held a meeting at which it was finally decided that hard and unwelcome as the necessity might be yet it was now no use to disguise the fact that the building could no longer be efficiently devoted to its primitive purpose it must be divided into stores cut into offices and given for a roost to the gregarious lawyers this intention was executed even to the making offices high up in the tower and so well did the thing succeed that ultimately the churchyard was invaded for a supplemental edifice likewise to be mysteriously rented to the legal crowd but this new building very much exceeded the body of the church in height it was some seven stories a fearful pile of titanic bricks lifting its tiled roof almost to a level with the top of the sacred tower in this ambitious erection the proprietors went a few steps a few stories too far for as people would sell them willingly fall into legal altercations unless the lawyers were always very handy to help them so it is ever an object with lawyers to have their offices as convenient as feasible to the street on the ground floor if possible without a single aclivity of a step but at any rate not in the house where their clients might be deterred from employing them at all if they were compelled to mount seven long flights of stairs one over the other with very brief landings in order even to pay their preliminary retaining fees so from some time after its throwing open the upper stories of the less ancient detached edifice remained most wholly without occupants and by the forlorn echoes of their vacuities right over the head of the business thriving legal gentlemen below must to some few of them at least have suggested unwelcome similitudes having reference to the crowded state of their basement pockets as compared with the melancholy condition of their attics alas full purses and empty heads this dreary posture of affairs however was at last much altered for the better by the gradual filling up of the vacant chambers on high by scores of those miscellaneous bread and cheese adventurers and ambiguously professional non-descripts in very gentile but shabby black and unaccountable foreign looking hallows in blue spectacles who previously issuing from unknown parts of the world like Storkson Holland light on the eaves and in the attics of lofty old buildings in most large seaport towns here they sit and talk like magpies or descending in quests of improbable dinners are to be seen drawn up along the curb in front of the eating houses like lean rows of broken hearted pelicans on a beach their pockets loose hanging down flabby like the pelicans pouches when fish are hard to be caught but these poor panelists devils still strive to make ample amends for their physical forlornness by resolutely reveling in the region of blissful ideals they are mostly artists of various sorts painters or sculptors or indigent students or teachers of languages or poets or fugitive French politicians or German philosophers their mental tendencies however heterodox at times are still very fine and spiritual upon the whole since the vacuity of their ex-jackers leads them to reject the course of capitalism of Hobbes and incline to the exaltations of the Barclayan philosophy often groping in vain in their pockets they cannot but give in to the Decartian vortices while the abundance of leisure in their attics physical and figurative unite with the leisure in their stomachs to fit them in an eminent degree for that indispensable to the proper digesting of the sublimated categories of Kant especially as Kant is the one great palpable fact in their pervadingly impalpable lives these are the glorious paupers from whom I learn the profoundest mysteries of things since their very existence in the midst of such a terrible precariousness of the feminist means of support affords a problem on which many speculative nutcrackers have been vainly employed yet let me here offer up three locks of my hair to the memory of all such glorious paupers who have lived and died in this world surely and truly I honor them noble men often at bottom and for that very reason I make bold to be mean some about them for where fundamental nobleness is and fundamental honors do merriment is never accounted irreverent the fools and pretenders of humanity and the imposters and baboons among the gods these only are offended with railery since both those gods and men whose titles to eminence are secure seldom worry themselves about this gossip of old apple women and the scar larkings of funny little boys in the street when the substance is gone men cling to the shatter places once set apart to lofty purposes still retain the name of that loftiness even when converted to the meanest uses it would seem as if forced by imperative faith to renounce the quality of the romantic and lofty the people of the present would vain make a compromise by retaining some purely imaginative remainder the curious effects of this tendency as often as devinced in those venerable countries of the old trans Atlantic world where still over the Tims one bridge yet retains the monastic tide of blackfriars though not a single blackfriar but many a pickpocket has stood on that bank since a good ways beyond the days of queen best where still innumerable other historic anomalies sweetly and sadly remind the present man of the wonderful procession that preceded him in his new generation nor though the comparative recentness of our own foundation upon these Columbian shores excludes any considerable participation in these attractive anomalies yet are we not all together in our more elderly towns holy without some touch of them here and there it was thus with the ancient church of the apostles better known even in its primitive day under the abbreviative of the apostles which though now converted from its original purpose to one so widely contrasting yet still retained its majestical name the lawyer or artist tenenting its chambers whether in the new building or the old when asked where he was to be found invariably replied at the apostles but because now at last in the course of the inevitable transplantations of the more notable localities of the various professions in a thriving and amplifying town the venerable spot offered not such inducements as before to the legal gentleman and as the strange nondescript adventurers and artists and indigent philosophers of all sorts crowded in as fast as the others left therefore in reference to the metaphysical strangeness of these curious inhabitants and owing in some sort to the circumstance that several of them were well known teleological theorists and social reformers and political propagandists of all manner of heterodoxical tenants therefore I say and partly for adventure from some slight waggishness in the public the immemorial popular name of the ancient church itself was participatingly transferred to the dwellers therein so it came to pass that in the general fashion of the day he who had chambers in the old church was familiarly style and apostle but as every effect is but the cause of another and a subsequent one so it now happened that finding themselves thus clannishly and not altogether implicitly entitled the occupants of the venerable church began to come together out of their various dens in more social communion attracted toward each other by a title all by and by from this they went further and insensibly at last became organized in a peculiar society which though exceedingly inconspicuous and hardly perceptible in its public demonstrations was still secretly suspected to have some mysterious ulterior object vaguely connected with the absolute overturning of church and state and the hasty and premature advance of some unknown great political and religious millennium still though some zealous conservatives and devotees of morals several times left warning at the police office to keep a wary eye on the old church and though indeed sometimes an officer would look up inquiringly at the suspicious narrow window slits in the lofty tower yet to say the truth was the place to all appearance a very quiet and decorous one and its occupants a company of harmless people whose greatest reproach was effervescent coats and crack ground hats all potting in the sun though in the middle of the day many bails and boxes would be trundled along the stores in front of the apostles and along its critically narrow sidewalk the merchants would now and then hurry to meet their checks the bank should close yet this being mostly devoted to mere warehousing purposes and not used as a general thoroughfare it was at all times a rather secluded and silent place but from an hour or two before sundown to 10 or 11 o'clock the next morning it was remarkably silent and depopulated except by the apostles themselves while every Sunday it presented an aspect of surprising and startling quiet distance showing nothing but one long vista of six or seven stories of inexorable iron shutters on both sides of the way it was pretty much the same with the other street which as before said intersected with the warehousing lane not very far from the apostles for though that street was indeed a different one from the latter being full of cheap perfectories for clerks, foreign restaurants and other places it was a special resort yet the only hum in it was restricted to business hours by night it was deserted of every occupant but the lamp posts and on Sunday to walk through it was like walking through an avenue of sphinxes such then was the present condition of the ancient church of the apostles buzzing with a few lingering equivocal lawyers in the basement and populace with all sorts of poets and philosophers above a mysterious professor of the flute was perched in one of the upper stories of the tower and often of silent moonlight nights his lofty melodious notes would be warbled forth over the roofs of the ten thousand warehouses around him as of yore the bell had peeled over the domestic gables of a long departed generation chapter two on the third night following the arrival in the city pier sat at twilight by a lofty window in the rear building of the apostles the chamber was meager even to meanness no carpet on the floor no picture on the wall nothing but a low long and very curious looking single bedstead that might possibly serve for an indigent bachelor's palette a large blue chins covered chest of rickety rheumatic and most ancient mahogany chair and a white board of the toughest live oak about six feet long laid upon two upright empty flower barrels and loaded with a large bottle of ink an unfastened bundle of quills a pen knife a folder and a still unbound ream of fool's cap paper significantly stamped ruled blue there on the third night at twilight sat pier by that lofty window of a beggarly in the rear building of the apostles he was entirely idle apparently there was nothing in his hands but there might have been something on his heart now and then he fixed gazes at the curious looking rusty old bedstead it seemed powerfully symbolical to him and most symbolical it was for it was the ancient dismemorable and portable camp bedstead of his grandfather the defiant defender of the fort the valiant captain in many an unsecumbing campaign on that very camp bedstead there beneath his tent on the field the glorious old mild-eyed and warrior hearted general had slept and but wait to buckle his night making sword by his side for it was noble knighthood to be slain by ran pier in the other world his foes ghosts bragged of the hand that had given them their passports but has that hard bed of war descended for an inheritance to the soft body of peace in the peaceful time of full barns and when the noise of the peaceful flail is abroad and the hum of peaceful commerce resounds as the grandson of two generals a warrior to know not for naught in the time of this seeming peace are warrior grandsires given to pierre for pierre is a warrior to wipe his campaign and three fierce allies woe and scorn and want his foes the wide world is banded against him for low you he holds up the standard of right and swears by the eternal and true but a pierre pierre when thou goest to that bed how humbling the thought that thy most extended length measures not the proud six feet John of God sigh the stature of the warriors cut down to the dwindle glory of the fight for more glorious in real tented field to strike down your valiant foe than in the conflicts of a noble soul with a dastardly world to chase of our enemy who ne'er will show front there then on the third night at twilight by the lofty window of that beggarly room sat pierre in the rear building of the apostles now from the window now but except the Don John form of the old gray tower seemingly there is nothing to see but a wilderness of tiles slate shingles and tin the desolate hanging wildernesses of tiles slate shingles and tin wherewith we modern Babylonians replace the fair hanging gardens of the fine old asiatic times when the excellent Nebuchadnezzar was king there he sits in the strange exotic transplanted from the delectable alcoves of the old menorial mansion to take root in this niggered soil no more do the sweet purple airs of the hills round about green fields of saddle meadows come revivingly wafted to his cheek like a flower he feels the change his bloom is gone from his cheek his cheek is wilted in pale from the lofty window of that beggarly room what is it that pierre intently eyeing there is no street at his feet like a profound black gulf the open area of the quadrangle gapes beneath him but across it and at the further end of the steep roof of the ancient church there looms the gray and grand old tower emblem to pierre of an unshakable fortitude which deep rooted in the heart of the earth defied all the howls of the air there is a door in pierre's room under a pierre and now a soft knock is heard in that direction accompanied by gentle words asking whether the speaker might enter yes always sweet isabel answered pierre rising and approaching the door here let us drag out the old camp bed for a sofa come sit down my sister and let us fancy ourselves anywhere thou wilt then my brother let us fancy ourselves in realms of everlasting light and peace where no bright sun shall rise because the black night is always this follower twilight and peace my brother twilight and peace it is twilight now my sister and surely this part of the city at least seems still twilight now but night soon then a brief sun and then another long night peace now but sleep and nothing less soon and then hard work for thee my brother till the sweet twilight come again let us light a candle my sister the evening is deepening for what light a candle dear pierre sit close to me my brother he moved nearer to her and stole one arm around her her sweet head leaned against his breast each felt the others throbbing oh my dear pierre why should we always be longing for peace and then be impatient of peace when it comes tell me my brother not two hours ago thou were wishing for twilight and now thou wantest a candle to her the lights last lingering away but pierre did not seem to hear her his arm embraced her tighter his whole frame was invisibly trembling then suddenly in a low tone of wonderful intensity he breathed isabel isabel she caught one arm around him as his was around herself the tremor ran from him to her both sat down he rose and paced the room well pierre he missed him here to arrange thy matters thou sets now what hast thou done come we will light a candle now the candle was lighted and their talk went on how about the papers my brother thus thou find everything right hast thou decided upon what to publish first while thou aren't writing the new thing thou distint of look at that chest my sister sees thou not that the cords are yet untied then thou hast not been into it at all not at all isabel in ten days i've lived ten thousand years for a warm now of the rubbish in that chest i cannot summon the heart to open it trash draws dirt pierre pierre what changes this does thou not tell me ere we came hither that thy chest not only contained some silver and gold but likewise far more precious things readily convertible into silver and gold pierre thou did swear we had not to fear if i've ever willingly to see the isabel may the high gods prove benedict Arnold's to me and go over to the devils to reinforce them against me but to have ignorantly to see myself and the together isabel that is a very different thing or what a vile jugger and cheat is man isabel in that chest are things which in the hour of composition i thought the very heavens looked in from the windows in their beauty and power then afterward when days cool me down and again i took them up and scanned them some underlying suspicions intruded but when in the open air i recall the fresh unwritten images of the bunglingly written things then i felt buoyant and triumphant again as if by that act of ideal recalling i had forced to transfer the perfect ideal to the miserable written attempt at embodying it this mood remains so that afterward how i talked to the about the wonderful things i had done the golden silver mine i had long before sprung for thee and for me who never were to come to want embody our mind yet all this time there was the latent suspicion of folly but i would not admit it i shut my soul's door in its face yet now the ten thousand universal revelings brand me on the forehead with fool and like protested notes at the bankers all those written things of mine are through and through with the protesting hammer of truth oh i am sick sick sick that the arms that never were filled but by the lure the back again pier to the peace of the twilight even though it be of the dimmest she blew out the light and may pier sit down by her and their hands were placed in each others say are not by torments now gone my brother but replaced by by oh god isabel unhand me starting up the heavens that have hidden yourselves in the black hood of the night i call to ye if to follow virtue to her utter most vista where common souls never go if by that i take hold on hell and the utter most virtue after all prove but a betraying pander through the monstrous vice then close in and crush me ye stony walls and into one golf let all things tumble together my brother this is some incomprehensible raving pealed isabel throwing both arms around him my brother my brother hark thee to that furthest inland soul thrill pier in a steeled and quivering voice call me brother no more how knowest thou i am thy brother did thy mother tell thee did my father say so to me i am pier and thou isabel wide brother and sister in the common humanity no more for the rest let the gods look after their own combustibles if they have put powder casts in me let them look to it let them look to it ah now i catch glimpses and seem to half see somehow that the utter most ideal of moral perfection a man is wide of the mark the demi gods trample on trash and virtue and vice or trash isabel i will write such things gospelize the world of new and show them deeper secrets than the apocalypse i will write it i will write it pier i am a poor girl born in the midst of a mystery bred in mystery and still surviving to mystery so mysterious myself the air and the earth are unutterable to me no word have I to express them but these are the circumambient mysteries thy words thy thoughts open other wonder worlds to me wither by myself i might fear to go but trust to me pier with thee with thee i would boldly swim a starless sea and be buoyed to thee there when thou the strong swimmer should faint thou pier speakest of virtue and vice life secluded isabel knows neither the one nor the other but by hearsay what are they in their real selves pier tell me first what is virtue begin if on that point the gods are dumb shall a pygmy speak ask the air then virtue is nothing not that then vice look and nothing is the substance it casts one shadow one way and another the other way and these two shadows cast from one nothing these seems to me are virtue and vice then why torment thy self so dearest pier it is the law what that a nothing should torment a nothing for I am a nothing it is all a dream we dream that we dream we dream pier when thou just hovered on the verge that were to riddle to me but now that thou art deep down in the gulf of the soul now when thou wits be lunatic to wisemen perhaps now death poor ignorant isabel begin to comprehend thee thy feeling hath long been mine pier long loneliness and anguish have opened miracles to me yes it is all a dream beautifully he caught her in his arms from nothing proceeds nothing isabel how can one sin in a dream first what is sin pier another name for the other name isabel for virtue pier no for vice let us sit down again my brother I am pier let us sit down again pier sit close thy arm and so on the third night when the twilight was gone and no lamp was lit within the lofty window of that baggley room sat pier and isabel hushed in the book 19 book 20 of pier for the ambiguity spot herman melville this liber box recording is in the public domain charlie millthorpe chapter one pier had been induced to take chambers at the apostles by one of the apostles themselves an old acquaintance of his and a native of saddle meadows millthorpe was the son of a very respectable farmer now dead of more than common intelligence and whose bowed shoulders and homely garb had still been surmounted by a head fit for a greek philosopher and features so fine and regular that they would have had well graced and opulent gentlemen the political and social levelings and confoundings of all manner of human elements in america produced many striking individual anomalies unknown in other lands pier well remembered old farmer millthorpe the handsome melancholy calm tempered mute old man the countenance refinitely ennobled by nature and yet coarsely tanned and attenuated by many a prolonged day's work in the harvest rusticity and classicalness were strangely united the delicate profile of his face bespoke the loftiest aristocracy his knobbed and bony hands resembled the beggars though for several generations the millthorpes had lived in ending lands they loosely and unostentatiously traced their origin to an emigrating english knight who had crossed the sea in the time of the elder charles but that indigence which had prompted the knight to forsake his courtly country for the howling wilderness was the only remaining hereditement left to his bedwindled descendants in the fourth and fifth removed there first recollected this interesting man he had a year or two previous abandoned an ample farm on account of absolute inability to meet the menorial rent and was become the occupant of a very poor and contracted little place on which was a small and half ruinous house there he then harbored with his wife a very gentle and retiring person his three little daughters his son a lad of pierre's own age the hereditary beauty and youthful bloom of this boy his sweetness of temper and something of natural refinement as contrasted with the unrelieved rudeness and often time sordidness of his neighbors these things had early attracted the sympathetic spontaneous friendliness of pierre they were often want to take their boyish rambles together and even the severely critical glendoning always vestidiously cautious as to the companions of pierre had never objected to his intimacy with so prepossessing and handsome a rustic as Charles boys are often very swiftly acute informing a judgment-armed character the lads had not long companion pierre concluded that however fine his face and sweet his temper young milthorpe was but little vigorous in his mind besides possessing a certain constitutional sophomore Ian presumption and egotism which however having nothing to feed on but his father's meal and potatoes and his own essentially timid and humane disposition merely presented and amusing and harmless though incurable anomalous feature in his character not at all impairing the good will and companionableness of pierre for even in his boyhood pierre possessed a sterling charity which could cheerfully overlook all minor blemishes in his inferiors whether in fortune or mind content and glad to embrace the good whenever presented or with whatever conjoined so in youth do we unconsciously act upon those peculiar principles which in conscious and verbalize maximum shall systematically regulate our mature lives a fact which forcibly illustrates the necessitarian dependence of our lives and their subordination not to ourselves but to fate if the grown man of taste possessed not only some eye to detect the picturesque in the natural landscape so also has he as keen a perception of what may not unfitly be here styled the povert to risk in the social landscape to such and one not more picturesquely conspicuous is the dismantle fact in a painted cottage of Gainsborough than the time tangled and want thinned locks of a beggar povert to riskly diversifying those snug little cabinet pictures of the world which exquisitely varnished and framed are hung up in the drawing room minds of humane men of taste and amiable philosophers of either the compensation or optimum school they deny that any misery is in the world except for the purpose of throwing the fine povert to risk element into its general picture go to God hath deposited cash in the bank subject to our gentlemanly order he hath bountiously blessed the world with a summer carpet of green begun Heraclitus the lamentations of the rain are but to make us our rainbows not that inequivical reference to the povert to risk old farmer millthorpe peers here intended to be hinted at still man cannot wholly escape his surroundings unconsciously mrs. Glendening had always been one of these curious optimists and in his boyish life pier had not wholly escaped the maternal contagion yet often in calling at the old farmers for Charles of some early winter mornings and meeting the painfully embarrassed in feeble features of Mrs. millthorpe and the sadly inquisitive and hopelessly half envious glances of the three little girls and standing on the threshold pier would catch low aged life weary groans from a recess out of sight from the door then would pier have some boyish inklings of something else than the pure povert to risk in poverty some inklings of what it might be to be old and poor and mourn and rheumatic with shivering death drawing nigh and present life itself but a doll and a chill some inklings of what it might be for him who in youth advivatiously leap from his bed impatient to meet the earliest son and lose no sweet drop of his life now hating the beams he once so dearly loved turning round in his bed to the wall to avoid them and still postponing the foot which should bring him back to the dismal day the sun is not gold but copper and the sky is not blue but gray and the blood like renish wine too long unquaffed by death grows thin and sour in the veins pier had not forgotten that the augmented penury of the milthorps was at the time we now retrospectively treat of gravely imputed by the gossiping frequenters of the black swan in to certain insinuated moral derelictions of the farmer the old man tipped his elbow too often once set in pier's hearing an old bottle necked fella performing the identical same act with a half empty glass in his hand but though the form of old milthorpe was broken his countenance however sat him thin betrayed no slightest sign of the sot either past or present he never was publicly known to frequent the inn and seldom quitted the few acres he cultivated with his son and though alas indigent enough yet was he most punctually honest in paying his little debts of shillings and pens for his groceries and though heaven knows he had plenty of occasion for all the money he could possibly earn yet pier remembered that when one autumn a hog was bought of him for the servants hall at the mansion the old man never called for his money till the midwinter following and then as with trembling fingers he eagerly clutched the silver he unsteadily said I have no use for it now it might just as well have stood over it was then that chanceing to overhear this mrs. glendening had looked at the old man with a kindly and benignly interested eye to the pover to your risk and murmured ah the old english knight is not yet out of his blood bravo old man one day in pier's sight the fine silent figures emerge from the door of old millthorpe a coffin was put into it neighbor's farm wagon and a procession some 30 feet long including the elongated pole and box of the wagon wound along subtle meadows to a hill where at last old millthorpe was laid down in a bed where the rising sun should affront him no more oh softest and daintiest of holland linen the motherly earth there beneath the sublime tester of the infinite sky like emperors and kings sleep in grand state the beggars and paupers of earth I joy that death is this democrat and hopeless of all other real and permanent democracies still hug the thought that though in life some heads are crowned with gold and some bound round with thorns yet chiseled them how they will headstones are all alike this somewhat particular account of the father of young millthorpe will better set forth the less immature condition and character of the son on whom had now descended the maintenance of his mother and sisters but though the son of a farmer Charles was peculiarly averse to hard labor it was not impossible that by resolute hard labor he might eventually have succeeded in placing his family in a far more comfortable situation than he had ever remembered them but it was not so faded the benevolent state had in its great wisdom decreed otherwise in the village of saddle meadows there was an institution half common school and half academy that mainly supported by a general ordinance and financial provision of the government here not only were the rudiments of an English education taught but likewise some touch of bell and composition and that great American ball work and bore elocution on the high raised stage platform of the saddle meadows academy the sons of the most indigent day laborers will want to draw out the fiery revolutionary rhetoric of Patrick Henry or gesticulate impetuously through the soft cadences of Drake's culprit fave what wonder then that of Saturdays when there was no elocution of poetry these boys should grow melancholy and disdainful over the heavy plodding handles of done forks and hoes at the age of fifteen the ambition of Charles Milthorpe was to be either an orator or a poet at any rate a great genius of one sort or other he recalled the ancestral knight and indignantly spurned the plow detecting on him the first germ of this inclination old Milthorpe had very seriously reasoned for his son warning him against the evils of his vagrant ambition ambition of that sort was either for undoubtedly genius rich boys or poor boys standing entirely alone in the world with no one relying upon them Charles had better consider the case his father was old and infirm he could not last very long he had nothing to leave behind him but his plow and his hoe his mother was sickly his sister's in that part of the country exceedingly bitter and long seven months out of the twelve the pastures bore nothing and all cattle must be fed in the barns but Charles was a boy advice often seems the most wantonly wasted of all human breath man will not take wisdom on trust maybe it is well for such wisdom is worthless we must find the true gem for ourselves and so we go groping and groping for many and many a day yet was Charles milthorpe as affectionate and dutiful a boy as ever boasted of his brain and knew not that he possessed a far more excellent and angelical thing in the possession of a generous heart his father died to his family he resolved to be a second father and a careful provider now but not by hard toil of his hand but by gentler practices of his mind already he had read many books history poetry romance essays and all the menorial bookshelves set off and been honored by his business and Pierre had kindly been his librarian not to lengthen the tale at the age of seventeen Charles sold the horse the cow the pig the plow the hoe and almost every movable thing on the premises and converting all into cash departed with his mother and sisters for the city chiefly basing his expectations of success on some vague representations of an apothecary relative their resident how he and his mother and sisters battled it out how they pined and half star for a while how they took in sewing and Charles took in copying and all but scantily suffice for a livelihood all this may be easily imagined but some mysterious latent goodwill of fate toward him had not only thus far kept Charles from the poor house but had really advanced his fortunes in a degree at any way that certain harmless presumption and innocent egotism which have been previously averted to as sharing in his general character these had by no means retarded him for it is often to be observed of the shallower men that they are the very last to despond it is the glory of the bladder that nothing can sink it it is the reproach of a box of treasure that once overboard it must down Chapter 2 When arrived in the city and discovering the heartless neglect of Glen Pierre looking about him for whom to apply to in this straight the thought him of his old boy companion Charlie and went out to seek him and found him at last he saw before him a tall well grown but rather thin and pale yet strikingly handsome young men of two and twenty occupying a dusty law office on the third floor of the older building of the apostles assuming to be doing a very large and hourly increasing business among empty pigeonholes and directly under the eye of an unopened bottle of ink his mother and sisters dwelling in a chamber overhead and himself not only following the law for a corporeal living but likewise interlinked with the peculiar secret the logical political social schemes of the Masonic order of the city coated apostles and pursuing some crude transcendental philosophy for both a contributory means of support as well as for his complete intellectual element Pierre was at first somewhat startled by his exceedingly frank and familiar manner all old menorial deference for Pierre was clean gone and departed though at the first shock of their encounter Charlie could not possibly have known that he was cast off ah Pierre glad to see you my boy Harkie next month I am to deliver an address before the omega order of the apostles grand master Flynn lemon will be there I've heard on the best authority that he once said of me that youth has the primitive categories in him he is destined to astonish the world while lad I've received propositions from the editors of the spinosaist to contribute a weekly column to their paper and you know how very few can understand the spinosaist nothing is admitted there but the ultimate transcendental Hark now in your ear I think of throwing off the apostolic disguise and coming boldly out Pierre I think of stomping the state and preaching our philosophy to the masses when did you arrive in town spite of all his tribulations Pierre could not restrain a smile at this highly reverting reception well knowing the youth he did not conclude from this audacious burst of enthusiastic egotism that his heart had at all corroded for egotism is one thing and selfishness another no sooner did Pierre intimate his condition to him then immediately Charlie was all earnest and practical kindness recommended the apostles as the best possible lodgement for him cheap snug and convenient to most public places he offered to procure a cart and see himself to the transport of Pierre's luggage but finally thought it best to mount the stairs and show him the vacant rooms the when these at last were decided upon and Charlie all cheerfulness and the liquidity started with Pierre for the hotel to assist him in the removal grasping his arm the moment they emerged from the great arch door under the tower of the apostles he instantly launched into his amusing heroic and continued train till the trunks were fairly in sight Lord my law business overwhelms me I must drive away some of my clients I must have my exercise and this ever growing business denies it to me besides I owe something to the sublime cause of the general humanity I must display some of my briefs for my metaphysical treatises I cannot waste all my oil over bonds and mortgages you said you were married I think but without stopping for any reply he rattled on well I suppose it is wise after all it settles centralizes and confirms a man I have heard no I didn't it is a random thought of my own that yes it makes the world definite to him it removes his morbid subjectiveness and makes all things objective nine small children for instance may be considered objective Mary J a fine thing no doubt no doubt domestic pretty nice all round but I owe something to the world my boy by marriage I might contribute to the population of men but not to the senses of mind the great men are all bachelor's you know their family is the universe I should say the planet Saturn was their elder son and Pluto their uncle so you are married but again reckless of answers Charlie went on Pierre I thought my boy I thought for you you do not say it but you hint about low purse now I shall help you to fill it stump the state on the Kantian philosophy a dollar ahead my boy pass round your beaver and you'll get it I have every confidence in the penetration and my unanimousness of the people Pierre harken your ear is my opinion the world is all wrong his dice an entire mistake society demands an avatar or courteous my boy to leap into the fiery gall and by perishing himself save the whole empire of men Pierre I've long renounced the allurements of life and fashion look at my coat and see how I sprung them Pierre but stop have you ever a shilling let's take a cold cut here it's a cheap place I go here sometimes come that's in in the book 20 book 21 of Pierre or the ambiguities in Melville this liver vox recording is in the public domain Pierre immaturely attempts a mature work tidings from the meadows plain lemon chapter one we are now to behold Pierre permanently lodged in three lofty adjoining chambers of the apostles and passing on a little further and overlooking the 101 domestic details of how their internal arrangements were finally put into steady working order how poor deli now giving over the sharper pangs of her grief found in the lighter occupations of a handmade and familiar companion to Isabelle the only practical relief from the memories of her miserable past how Isabelle herself in the otherwise occupied hours of Pierre passed some of her time in mastering the chirographical incoherencies of his manuscripts with a view to eventually copying them out in a legible hand for the printer or went below stairs to the rooms of the milled thorps and in the modest and amiable society of the three young ladies and their excellent mother found some little solace for the absence of Pierre or when his day's work was done sat by him in the twilight and played her mystic guitar till Pierre felt chapter after chapter born of its wondrous suggestiveness but alas eternally incapable of being translated into words for where the deepest words end their music begins with its super sensuous and all confounding intimations disowning now all previous exertions of his mind and burning in scorn even those fine fruits of a cared free fancy which written at saddle meadows in the sweet legendary time of Lucy and her love he had jealously kept from the publishers as too true and good to be published renouncing all his foregone self Pierre was now engaged in a comprehensive compacted work to whose speedy completion to tremendous motives unitedly impelled the burning desire to deliver what he thought to be new or at least miserably neglected truth to the world and the prospective menace of being absolutely penniless unless by the sale of his book he could realize money swayed to universality of thought by the widely explosive mental tendencies of the profound events which had lately befallen him and the unprecedented situation in which he now found himself and perceiving by presentiment that most grand productions of the best human intellects ever are built round a circle as a tolls that is the primitive coral islets which raising themselves in the depths of profound disease rise funnel-like to the surface and present there a hoop of white rock which though on the outside everywhere lash by the ocean yet excludes all tempests from the quiet lagoon within digestively including the whole range of all that can be known or dreamed Pierre was resolved to give the world a book which the world should hail with surprise and delight a buried scope of reading little suspected by his friends and randomly acquired by a random but links-eyed mind in the course of the multifarious incidental bibliographic encounterings of almost any civilized young inquirer after truth this poured one considerable contributory stream into that bottomless spring of original thought which the occasion and time had caused to burst out in himself now he congratulated himself upon all his cursory acquisitions of this sort ignorant that in reality to a mind bent on producing some thoughtful thing of absolute truth all mere reading is apt to prove but an obstacle hard to overcome and not an accelerator helping pushing him along Lapierre was thinking that he was entirely transplanted into a new and wonderful element of beauty and power he was in fact but in one of the stages of the transition that ultimate element once fairly gained then books no more are needed for boys to our souls our own strong limbs support us and we float over all bottomlessnesses with a jeering impunity he did not see or if he did he could not yet name the true cause for it of the insipiancy of his work the heavy unmalleable element of mere book knowledge would not congenially weld with the wide fluidness and the ethereal airiness of spontaneous creative thought he would climb Parnassus with a pile of folios on his back he did not see that it was nothing at all to him what other men had written that though Plato was indeed a transcendent late great man Plato must not be transcendently great to him Pierre so long as he Pierre himself would also do something transcendently great he did not see that there is no such thing as a standard for the creative spirit that no one great book must ever be separately regarded and permitted to domineer with its own uniqueness upon the creative mind but that all existing great works must be federated in the fancy and so regarded as a miscellaneous and pantheistic whole and then without at all dictating to his own mind or unduly biasing it anyway thus combined they would prove simply an exhilarative and provocative to him he did not see that even when thus combined all was but one small might compared to the latent exhaustability in himself that all the great books in the world are but the mutilated shadowings forth of invisible and eternally unembodied images in the soul so that they are but the mirrors distortedly reflecting to us our own things and never mind what the mirror may be if we would see the object we must look at the object itself and not at its reflection but as to the absolute traveler in Switzerland the Alps do never in one wide and comprehensive sweep instantaneously reveal their full awfulness of amplitude their overawing extent of peak crowded on peak and spur sloping on spur and chain jammed behind chain and all their wonderful battalionings of might so hath heaven wisely ordained that on first entering into the Switzerland soul man shall not at once perceive its tremendous immensity, lest illy prepared for such an encounter his spirit should sink and perish in the lowermost snows. Only by judicious degrees appointed of God does man come at last to gain his Mont Blanc and take an overtopping view of these Alps and even then the tithe is not shown and far over the invisible rocky mountains and the Andes are yet unbehaved. Appalling is the soul of a man better might one be pushed off into the material spaces beyond the outermost orbit of our son than once feel himself fairly afloat in himself but not now to consider these ulterior things pierce though strangely and very newly alive to many before unregarded wonders in the general world still had he not as yet procured for himself that enchanters wand of the soul which but touching the humblest experiences in one's life straight way it starts up all eyes in every one of which are and the significacies. Not yet had he dropped his angle into the well of his childhood to find what fish might be there for who dreams find fish in a well the running stream of the outer world there doubtless swim the golden perch and the pickle ten million things were as yet uncovered to pierre the old mummy lies buried in cloth on cloth it takes time to unwrap this Egyptian king yet now for soothed because pierre began to see through the first superficiality of the world he fondly weans to the unlayered substance but far as any geologist has yet gone down into the world it is found to consist of nothing but surface stratified on surface to its axis the world being nothing but super induced superficies by vast pains we mine into the pyramid by horrible groupings we come to the central room with joy we aspire the sarcophagus but we lift the lid and no body is there appallingly vacant as vast is the soul of a man chapter two he had been engaged some weeks upon his book in pursuance of his settled plan avoiding all contact with any of his city connections or friends even as in his social downfall they sedulously avoided seeking him out nor ever once going or sending to the post office though it was but a little round the corner from where he was since having dispatched no letters himself he expected none thus isolated from the world and intent upon his literary enterprise pierre had passed some weeks when verbal tidings came to him of three most momentous events first his mother was dead second all matters was become glan stanley's third glan stanley was believed to be the suitor of lucy who convalescent from an almost mortal illness was now dwelling at her mother's house in town it was chiefly the first mentioned of these events which darted a sharp natural anguish into pierre no letter had come to him no smallest ring or memorial been sent to him no slightest mention made of him in the will and yet it was reported that an inconsolable grief had induced his mother's mortal malady and driven her at length into insanity which suddenly terminated in death and when he first heard of that event she had been cold in the ground for 25 days how plainly did all this speak of the equally immense pride and grief of his once magnificent mother and how agonizedly now did it hint of her mortally wounded love for her only and best beloved pierre in vain he reasoned with himself in vain remonstrated with himself in vain sought to parade all his stoic arguments to drive off the onslaught of natural passion nature prevailed and with tears that like acid burned and scorched as they float he waved at the bitter loss of his parent whose eyes had been closed by unrelated hands that were hired but whose heart had been broken and whose very reason been ruined by the related hands of her son for some interval it almost seemed as if his own heart would snap his own reason go down unendurable grief of a man when death itself gives the stab and snatches all availments to solacement away for in the grave is no help no prayer thither may go no forgiveness thence come so that the penitent whose sad victim lies in the ground for that useless penitent his doom is eternal and though it be Christmas day with all Christendom with him it is hell day and an eaten liver forever with what marvelous decision and exactitude he now went over in his mind all the minutest details of his old joyous life with his mother at saddle meadows he began with his own toilet in the morning then his miles stroll into the fields then his cheerful return to call his mother in her chamber then the gay breakfast and so on and on all through the sweet day till mother and son kissed their bright loving hearts separated to their beds to prepare themselves for still another day of affectionate delight this recalling of innocence and joy in the hour of remorsefulness and woe this is as heeding red hot the pincers that tear us but in this delirium of his soul Pierre could not define where that line was which separated the natural grief for the loss was born of compunction he strove hard to define it but could not he tried to cousin himself into believing that all his grief was but natural or if there existed any other that must spring not from the consciousness of having done any possible wrong but from the pang at what terrible cost the more exalted virtues are gained nor did he wholly fail in this endeavor at last he dismissed his mother's memory in the same profound vault where hitherto had reposed the swooned form of his Lucy but as sometimes men are coffoned in a trance being thereby mistaken for dead so it is possible to bury a trance grief in the soul erroneously supposing that it hath no more vitality of suffering now immortal things only can be get immortality it would almost seem one presumptive the endless duration of the human soul that it is impossible in time and space to kill any compunction arising from having cruelly injured a departed fellow being ere he finally committed his mother to the profound as vault of his soul vain would he have drawn one poor alleviation from a circumstance which nevertheless impartially viewed seemed equally capable either of soothing or intensifying his grief his mother's will which without the least mention of his own name bequeathed several legacies to her friends and concluded by leaving all saddle meadows and its rent rolls to Glendening Stanley this will bore the date of the day immediately succeeding his fatal announcement on the landing of the stairs of his assumed nuptials with Isabel it plausibly pressed upon him that as all the evidences of his mother's dying relenting nest toward him were negative and the only positive evidence so to speak of even that negativeness was the will which omitted all mention of Pierre therefore as that will bore so significant a date it must needs be most reasonable to conclude that it was dictated in the not yet subsided transports of his mother's first indignation but small consolation was this when he considered the final insanity of his mother for whence that insanity but from a hate grief unrelenting even as his father must have become insane from a sin grief irreparable nor did this remarkable double doom of his parents holy fail to impress his mind with presentiments concerning his own fate his own hereditary liability to madness presentiment I say but what is a presentiment how shall you coerently define a presentiment or how make anything out of it which is at all lucid unless you say that a presentiment is but a judgment in disguise and if a judgment in disguise and yet possessing this preter naturalness of prophecy how then shall you escape the fateful conclusion that you are helplessly held in the six hands of the sisters for while the still dreading your doom you foreknow it yet how foreknow and dread in one breath unless with this divine seeming power of prescience you blend the actual slimy powerlessness of defense that his cousin Glenn Stanley had been chosen by his mother to inherit the domain of the matters was not entirely surprising to Pierre not only had Glenn always been a favorite with his mother by reason of his superb person and his congeniality of world reviews with herself but accepting only Pierre he was her nearest surviving relation and moreover in his Christian name bore the hereditary syllables Glenn didn't so that if to anyone but Pierre the matters must descend Glenn on these general grounds seemed the appropriate heir but it is not natural for a man never mind who he may be to see a noble patrimony rightfully his go over to a sole alien and that alien wants his rival in love and now is heartless nearing foe for so could not but now argue of Glenn it is not natural for a man to see this without singular emotions of discomfort and hate nor in Pierre with these feelings at all soothed by the report of Glenn's renewed attentions to Lucy for there is something in the breast of almost every man which at bottom takes offense at the attentions of any other man offered to a woman the hope of whose natural love he himself may have discarded the harshly appropriate all the hearts which have ever in any way confessed themselves his besides in Pierre's case this resentment was heightened by Glenn's previous hypocritical demeanor for now all his suspicions seemed abundantly verified and comparing all dates he inferred that Glenn's visit to Europe had only been undertaken to wear off the pang of his rejection by Lucy a rejection tacitly consequent upon her not denying her affianced relation to Pierre but now under the mask of profound sympathy in time ripening into love for a most beautiful girl roughianly deserted by her betrothed Glenn could afford to be entirely open in his new suit without at all exposing his old scar to the world so at least it now seemed to Pierre moreover Glenn could now approach Lucy under the most favorable possible auspices he could approach her as a deeply sympathizing friend all wishful to assuage her sorrow but hinting nothing at present of any selfish matrimonial intent by enacting this prudent and unclamorous part the mere sight of such tranquil disinterested but indestructible devotedness could not but suggest in Lucy's mind very natural comparisons between Glenn and Pierre most deplorably abasing to the latter then no woman as it would sometimes seem no woman is utterly free from the influence of her princely social position in her suit especially if he be handsome and young and Glenn would come to her now the master of two immense fortunes and the heir by voluntary election no less than by blood propinquity to the ancestral bannered hall and the broad menorial matters of the Glenn dinnings and thus to the spirit of Pierre's own mother would seem to press Glenn's suit indeed situated now as he was Glenn would seem all the finest part of Pierre without any of Pierre's shame would almost seem Pierre himself what Pierre had once been to Lucy and as in the case of a man who has lost a sweet wife and who long refuses the lease consolation as this man at last finds a singular solace in the companionship of his wife's sister who happens to bear a peculiar family resemblance to the dead and as he in the end proposes marriage to this sister merely from the force of such magical associative influences so it did not seem wholly out of reason to suppose that the great manly beauty of Glenn possessing a strong related similitude to Pierre's might raise in Lucy's heart associations which would lead her at least to seek if she could not find solace for one now regarded as dead and gone to her forever in the devotedness of another who would not withstanding almost seem as that dead one brought back to life deep deep and still deep and deeper must we go if we would find out the heart of a man descending into witches as descending a spiral stare in a shaft without any end and where that endlessness is only concealed by the spiralness of the stare and the blackness of the shaft as Pierre conjured up this phantom of Glenn transformed into the seeming semblance of himself as he figured it advancing toward Lucy and raising her hand in devotion an infinite quenchless rage and malice possessed him many commendable emotions combined to provoke this storm but chief of all was something strangely akin to that indefinable detestation which one feels for any imposter who has dared to assume one's own and aspect in any equivocal or dishonorable affair an emotion greatly intensified if this imposter be known for a mean villain at bottom and also by the freak of nature to be almost the personal duplicate of the man whose identity he assumes all these in a host of other distressful and resentful fancies now ran through the breast of Pierre all his faith born enthusiastic high rot stoic and philosophic defenses were now beaten down by this sudden storm of nature in his soul for there is no faith and no stoicism and no philosophy that a mortal man can possibly evoke which will stand the final test of a real impassioned onset of life impassioned upon him then all the fair philosophic or faith phantoms that he raised from the mist slide away and disappear as ghosts at cockro for faith and philosophy are air events or brass amidst his great philosophizing life breaks upon a man like a morning while this mood was on him Pierre cursed himself for a heartless villain and an idiot fool heartless villain as the murderer of his mother idiot fool because he had thrown away all his felicity because he had himself as it were resigned his noble birthright to a cunning kinsman for a mess of potage which now proved all but ashes resolved to hide these new and as it lately seemed to him unworthy pangs from Isabel as also their cause he quitted his chamber intending a long vagabond stroll in the suburbs of the town to wear off his sharper grief ere he should again return into her sight. Chapter 3 as Pierre now hurrying from his chamber was rapidly passing through one of the higher brick colonnades connecting the ancient building where their advance toward him from the direction of the ladder a very plain composed manly figure with a countenance rather pale if anything but quite clear and without wrinkle though the brow and the beard and the steadiness of the head and subtleness of the step indicated mature age yet the blue bright but still quite ascent eye offered a very striking contrast in that eye the gay immortal youth Apollo enshrined along that ivory thrown brow O Santorin cross-legged sat the whole countenance of this man the whole heir and look of this man expressed a cheerful content cheerful is the adjective for it was the contrary of gloom content perhaps aqueous since is the substantive for it was not happiness or delight but while the personal look and error of this man with us winning there was still something which repelled that something may best be characterized as non benevolence non benevolence seems the best word for it was neither malice nor ill will but something passive to crown all a certain floating atmosphere seem to invest and go along with this man that atmosphere seems only renderable in words by the term inscrutableness though the clothes worn by this man were strictly in accordance with the general style any unobtrusive gentleman's dress yet his clothes seem to disguise this man one would almost have said his very face the apparently natural glance of his very eye disguised this man now as this person deliberately passed by Pierre he lifted his hat gracefully bowed smiled gently and passed on but Pierre was all confusion he flushed looked to scans stammered with his hand at his hat to return the courtesy of the other he seemed thoroughly upset by the mere sight of this hat lifting gracefully bowing gently smiling and most miraculously self possessed non benevolent man now who was this man this man was Plotinus Plin Lemon Pierre had read a treatise of his in a stagecoach coming to the city and it heard him often spoken of by Milthorpe and others as the grand master of a certain mystic society among the apostles when she came no one could tell his surname was Welsh but he was a Tennessean by birth he seemed to have no family or blood ties of any sort he never was known to work with his hands never to write with his hands he could not even write a letter he never was known to open a book there were no books in his chamber nevertheless some day or other he must have read books but that time seemed gone now as for the sleazy works that went under his name they were nothing more than his verbal and bunglingly methodized by his young disciples binding Plin Lemon thus unfurnished either with books or pen and paper and imputing it to something like indigence or a foreign scholar a rich nobleman who chanced to meet him once sent him a fine supply of stationery with a very fine set of volumes cardin, epictetus the Book of Mormon, Abraham Tucker Condorcet and the Zendavesta but this noble foreign scholar calling next day perhaps in expectation of some compliment for his great kindness started aghast at his own package deposited just without the door of Plin Lemon with all fastenings untouched Miss Scent, said Plotinus Plin Lemon, placidly if anything I look for some choice Karakko from a nobleman like you I should be very happy my dear count to accept a few jugs of choice Karakko I thought that the society which you are the head excluded all things of that sort replied the count dear count so they do but Bahamut hath his own dispensation ah I see said the noble scholar archly I'm afraid you do not see dear count said Plin Lemon and instantly before the eyes of account the inscrutable atmosphere eddied and eddied round about Miss Plotinus Plin Lemon his chance brushing encounter in the quarter was the first time that ever Pierre had without medium beheld the form or the face of Plin Lemon very early after taking chambers at the Apostles he had been struck by a steady observant blue-eyed countenance at one of the loftiest windows of the old gray tower which on the opposite side of the quadrangular space rose prominently before his own chamber only through two panes of glass his own and the strangers appear hitherto beheld that remarkable face of repose repose neither divine nor human nor anything made up of either or both but a repose separate and apart a repose of a face by itself one adequate look at that face conveyed to most philosophical observers a notion of something not before included in their scheme of the universe now as to the mild sun glass is no hindrance at all but he transmits his light and life through the glass even so through Pierre's pains did the tower transmit its strange mystery becoming more and more interested in this face he had questioned Milthorpe concerning it bless your soul replied Milthorpe that is Plotinus Plin Lemon our grand master Plotinus Plin Lemon by God you must know Plotinus thoroughly as I have long done come away with me now and let me introduce you instant to Plotinus Plin Lemon but Pierre declined and could not help thinking that though in all well understood Milthorpe yet Milthorpe could hardly yet have wound himself into Plotinus though indeed Plotinus who at times was capable of assuming a very offhand confidential and simple Safa Maureen heir might for reasons best known to himself have tacitly pretended to Milthorpe that he Milthorpe had thoroughly wriggled himself into his Plotinus inner most soul a man will be given a book and when the donors like his turn will carelessly drop it in the first corner he is not over anxious to be bothered with the book but now personally point out to him the author and tend to one he goes back to the corner picks up the book dust the cover and very carefully reads that invaluable work one does not vitally believe in a man till one's own two eyes have beheld him if then by the force of peculiar circumstances Pierre well in the stage had formally been drawn into perusal of the work on chronometricals and horologicals how then was his original interest heightened by catching a subsequent glimpse of the author but at the first reading not being able as he thought to master the pivot idea of the pamphlet and as every incomprehended idea is not only a perplexity but a taunting approach to one's mind Pierre had at last ceased studying it all together nor consciously troubled himself further about it during the remainder of the journey but still thinking now it might possibly have been mechanically retained by him he searched all the pockets of his clothes but without success he begged no thought to do his best toward procuring him another copy but it proved impossible to find one Plotinus himself could not furnish it among other efforts Pierre in person had accosted a limping half deaf old bookstore man not very far from the apostles have you the chronometrics forgetting the exact title very bad very bad said the old man rubbing his back has had the chronic rheumatics ever so long what's good for him perceiving his mistake Pierre replied that he did not know what was the infallible remedy with let me tell ye then young and said the old cripple limping close up to him and putting his mouth in Pierre's ear never catch him now's the time when you're young never catch him mined by the blue-eyed mystic and the upper window of the old gray tower began to domineer in a very remarkable manner upon Pierre when in his moods of peculiar depression and despair when dark thoughts of his miserable condition would steal over him and black doubts as to the integrity of his unprecedented course in life would most malignantly suggest themselves when a thought of the vanity of his deep book would glidingly intrude if glancing at his closet window that mystic face met Pierre's under any of these influences the effect was surprising and not to be adequately detailed in any possible words vain vain vain said the face to him fool fool fool said the face to him quit quit quit said the face to him but when he mentally interrogated the face as to why it thrice said vain fool quit to him here there was no response for that face did not respond to anything did I not say before that that face was something separate and apart a face by itself now anything which is thus a thing by itself never responds to any other thing if to affirm be to expand one's isolated self and if to deny be to contract one's isolated self then to respond is a suspension of all isolation though this face in the tower was so clear and so mild though the youth Apollo was enshrined in that eye and paternal old Saturn sat cross-legged on that ivory bra yet somehow to Pierre the face at last war a sort of malicious leer to him but the contests might say that this was a subjective sort of leer and Pierre anyway the face seemed to leer upon Pierre and now it said to him as as as this expression was insufferable he procured some muslin for his closet under and the face became curtain like any portrait but this did not mend the layer Pierre knew that still the face leered behind the muslin what was most terrible was the idea that by some magical means or other the face it got hold of his secret I should appear the face knows that Isabelle is not my wife and that seems the reason it leers then would all manner of wild fan scenes float through his soul and detach sentences of the chronometrics would vividly recur to him sentences before but imperfectly comprehended but now shedding a strange baleful light upon his peculiar condition and emphatically denouncing it again he tried his best to procure that pamphlet to read it now by the commentary of the mystic mouth face again he searched through the pockets of his clothes for this stagecoach copy but in vain and when at the critical moment of quitting his chambers that morning of the receipt of the fatal tidings himself the man himself this inscrutable Plotinus blin lemon himself did visibly brush by him in the brick corridor and all the trepidation he had ever before felt at the mild mystic aspect in the tower window now redoubled upon him so that as before said he flushed looked to scant and stambered with his saluting hand to his hat then anew did there burn in him the desire procuring the pamphlet cursed fate that I should have lost that he cried more cursed that when I did have it and did read it I was such a nanny as not to comprehend and now it is all too late yet to anticipate here when years after an old Jew clothesman rummaged over a third two of peers which by some means had come into his hands his links like fingers happened to feel something foreign between the cloth and the heavy quilted bombazine lining he ripped open the skirt and found several old pamphlet pages soft and worn almost to tissue but still legible enough to reveal the title chronometricals and horologicals Pierre must have ignorantly thrust it into his pocket in the stage and it had worked through a rent there and worked its way clean down into the skirt and there helped pad the padding so that all the time he was hunting for this pamphlet he himself was wearing the pamphlet when he brushed past Flynn Lemon in the brick quarter and felt that renewed intense longing for the pamphlet then his right hand was not two inches from the pamphlet possibly this curious circumstance may in some sort illustrate his self-supposed non-understanding of the pamphlet as first read by him in the stage could he likewise have carried about with him in his mind the thorough understanding of the book and yet not be aware that he so understood it I think that regarded in one like the final career Pierre will seem to show that he did understand it and here it may be randomly suggested by way of bagatelle whether some things that men think they do not know are not for all that thoroughly comprehended by them and yet so to speak though contained in themselves are kept a secret from themselves the idea of death seems such a thing end of book 21