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- text
- unattractive woman in her circumstances, would not have been altogether
alluring to Pierre. No. That intense and indescribable longing, which
her letter by its very incoherencies had best embodied, proceeded from
no base, vain, or ordinary motive whatever; but was the unsuppressible
and unmistakable cry of the godhead through her soul, commanding Pierre
to fly to her, and do his highest and most glorious duty in the world.
Nor now, as it changedly seemed to Pierre, did that duty consist in
stubbornly flying in the marble face of the Past, and striving to
reverse the decree which had pronounced that Isabel could never
perfectly inherit all the privileges of a legitimate child of her
father. And thoroughly now he felt, that even as this would in the
present case be both preposterous in itself and cruel in effect to both
the living and the dead, so was it entirely undesired by Isabel, who
though once yielding to a momentary burst of aggressive enthusiasm, yet
in her more wonted mood of mournfulness and sweetness, evinced no such
lawless wandering. Thoroughly, now he felt, that Isabel was content to
live obscure in her paternal identity, so long as she could any way
appease her deep longings for the constant love and sympathy and close
domestic contact of some one of her blood. So that Pierre had no
slightest misgiving that upon learning the character of his scheme, she
would deem it to come short of her natural expectations; while so far as
its apparent strangeness was concerned,--a strangeness, perhaps
invincible to squeamish and humdrum women--here Pierre anticipated no
obstacle in Isabel; for her whole past was strange, and strangeness
seemed best befitting to her future.
But had Pierre now reread the opening paragraph of her letter to him, he
might have very quickly derived a powerful anticipative objection from
his sister, which his own complete disinterestedness concealed from him.
Though Pierre had every reason to believe that--owing to her secluded
and humble life--Isabel was in entire ignorance of the fact of his
precise relation to Lucy Tartan:--an ignorance, whose first indirect and
unconscious manifestation in Isabel, had been unspeakably welcome to
him;--and though, of course, he had both wisely and benevolently
abstained from enlightening her on that point; still, notwithstanding
this, was it possible that any true-hearted noble girl like Isabel,
would, to benefit herself, willingly become a participator in an act,
which would prospectively and forever bar the blessed boon of
marriageable love from one so young and generous as Pierre, and
eternally entangle him in a fictitious alliance, which, though in
reality but a web of air, yet in effect would prove a wall of iron; for
the same powerful motive which induced the thought of forming such an
alliance, would always thereafter forbid that tacit exposure of its
fictitiousness, which would be consequent upon its public
discontinuance, and the real nuptials of Pierre with any other being
during the lifetime of Isabel.
- title
- Chunk 3