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- 13002
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.924Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 12941
- text
- ceased studying it altogether; 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 Millthorpe 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 book-stall man, not very far from the Apostles'. "Have you the
'_Chronometrics_,' my friend?" 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 'em?"
Perceiving his mistake, Pierre replied that he did not know what was the
infallible remedy.
"Whist! let me tell ye, then, young 'un," said the old cripple, limping
close up to him, and putting his mouth in Pierre's ear--"Never catch
'em!--now's the time, while you're young:--never catch 'em!"
By-and-by the blue-eyed, mystic-mild face in 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-mild 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 any thing.
Did I not say before that that face was something separate, and apart; a
face by itself? Now, any thing 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 gay youth Apollo was enshrined in
that eye, and paternal old Saturn sat cross-legged on that ivory brow;
yet somehow to Pierre the face at last wore a sort of malicious leer to
him. But the Kantists might say, that this was a _subjective_ sort of
leer in Pierre. Any way, the face seemed to leer upon Pierre. And now it
said to him--_Ass! ass! ass!_ This expression was insufferable. He
procured some muslin for his closet-window; and the face became
curtained like any portrait. But this did not mend the leer. 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 had got hold of
his secret. "Ay," shuddered Pierre, "the face knows that Isabel is not
my wife! And that seems the reason it leers."
Then would all manner of wild fancyings float through his soul, and
detached 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 the pamphlet, to read
it now by the commentary of the mystic-mild face; again he searched
through the pockets of his clothes for the stage-coach copy, but in
vain.
- title
- Chunk 3