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- 6273
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.921Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 6208
- text
- piercing as he was; how could he fail to acknowledge the existence of
that all-controlling and all-permeating wonderfulness, which, when
imperfectly and isolatedly recognized by the generality, is so
significantly denominated The Finger of God? But it is not merely the
Finger, it is the whole outspread Hand of God; for doth not Scripture
intimate, that He holdeth all of us in the hollow of His hand?--a
Hollow, truly!
Still wandering through the forest, his eye pursuing its ever-shifting
shadowy vistas; remote from all visible haunts and traces of that
strangely wilful race, who, in the sordid traffickings of clay and mud,
are ever seeking to denationalize the natural heavenliness of their
souls; there came into the mind of Pierre, thoughts and fancies never
imbibed within the gates of towns; but only given forth by the
atmosphere of primeval forests, which, with the eternal ocean, are the
only unchanged general objects remaining to this day, from those that
originally met the gaze of Adam. For so it is, that the apparently most
inflammable or evaporable of all earthly things, wood and water, are, in
this view, immensely the most endurable.
Now all his ponderings, however excursive, wheeled round Isabel as their
center; and back to her they came again from every excursion; and again
derived some new, small germs for wonderment.
The question of Time occurred to Pierre. How old was Isabel? According
to all reasonable inferences from the presumed circumstances of her
life, she was his elder, certainly, though by uncertain years; yet her
whole aspect was that of more than childlikeness; nevertheless, not only
did he feel his muscular superiority to her, so to speak, which made him
spontaneously alive to a feeling of elderly protectingness over her; not
only did he experience the thoughts of superior world-acquaintance, and
general cultured knowledge; but spite of reason's self, and irrespective
of all mere computings, he was conscious of a feeling which
independently pronounced him her senior in point of Time, and Isabel a
child of everlasting youngness. This strange, though strong conceit of
his mysterious persuasion, doubtless, had its untraced, and but
little-suspected origin in his mind, from ideas born of his devout
meditations upon the artless infantileness of her face; which, though
profoundly mournful in the general expression, yet did not, by any
means, for that cause, lose one whit in its singular infantileness; as
the faces of real infants, in their earliest visibleness, do oft-times
wear a look of deep and endless sadness. But it was not the sadness, nor
indeed, strictly speaking, the infantileness of the face of Isabel which
so singularly impressed him with the idea of her original and changeless
youthfulness. It was something else; yet something which entirely eluded
him.
Imaginatively exalted by the willing suffrages of all mankind into
higher and purer realms than men themselves inhabit; beautiful
women--those of them at least who are beautiful in soul as well as
body--do, notwithstanding the relentless law of earthly fleetingness,
still seem, for a long interval, mysteriously exempt from the
incantations of decay; for as the outward loveliness touch by touch
departs, the interior beauty touch by touch replaces that departing
bloom, with charms, which, underivable from earth, possess the
ineffaceableness of stars. Else, why at the age of sixty, have some
women held in the strongest bonds of love and fealty, men young enough
to be their grandsons? And why did all-seducing Ninon unintendingly
break scores of hearts at seventy? It is because of the perennialness of
womanly sweetness.
Out from the infantile, yet eternal mournfulness of the face of Isabel,
there looked on Pierre that angelic childlikeness, which our Savior
hints is the one only investiture of translated souls; for of such--even
of little children--is the other world.
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