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- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z
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- 295
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- glorious thing to engage in a mortal quarrel on a sweet sister's behalf!
Now, of all things, would to heaven, I had a sister!"
Thus, ere entranced in the gentler bonds of a lover; thus often would
Pierre invoke heaven for a sister; but Pierre did not then know, that if
there be any thing a man might well pray against, that thing is the
responsive gratification of some of the devoutest prayers of his youth.
It may have been that this strange yearning of Pierre for a sister, had
part of its origin in that still stranger feeling of loneliness he
sometimes experienced, as not only the solitary head of his family, but
the only surnamed male Glendinning extant. A powerful and populous
family had by degrees run off into the female branches; so that Pierre
found himself surrounded by numerous kinsmen and kinswomen, yet
companioned by no surnamed male Glendinning, but the duplicate one
reflected to him in the mirror. But in his more wonted natural mood,
this thought was not wholly sad to him. Nay, sometimes it mounted into
an exultant swell. For in the ruddiness, and flushfulness, and
vain-gloriousness of his youthful soul, he fondly hoped to have a
monopoly of glory in capping the fame-column, whose tall shaft had been
erected by his noble sires.
In all this, how unadmonished was our Pierre by that foreboding and
prophetic lesson taught, not less by Palmyra's quarries, than by
Palmyra's ruins. Among those ruins is a crumbling, uncompleted shaft,
and some leagues off, ages ago left in the quarry, is the crumbling
corresponding capital, also incomplete. These Time seized and spoiled;
these Time crushed in the egg; and the proud stone that should have
stood among the clouds, Time left abased beneath the soil. Oh, what
quenchless feud is this, that Time hath with the sons of Men!
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