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- 7922
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.921Z
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- 7860
- text
- II.
If next to that resolve concerning his lasting fraternal succor to
Isabel, there was at this present time any determination in Pierre
absolutely inflexible, and partaking at once of the sacredness and the
indissolubleness of the most solemn oath, it was the enthusiastic, and
apparently wholly supererogatory resolution to hold his father's memory
untouched; nor to one single being in the world reveal the paternity of
Isabel. Unrecallably dead and gone from out the living world, again
returned to utter helplessness, so far as this world went; his perished
father seemed to appeal to the dutifulness and mercifulness of Pierre,
in terms far more moving than though the accents proceeded from his
mortal mouth. And what though not through the sin of Pierre, but through
his father's sin, that father's fair fame now lay at the mercy of the
son, and could only be kept inviolate by the son's free sacrifice of all
earthly felicity;--what if this were so? It but struck a still loftier
chord in the bosom of the son, and filled him with infinite
magnanimities. Never had the generous Pierre cherished the heathenish
conceit, that even in the general world, Sin is a fair object to be
stretched on the cruelest racks by self-complacent Virtue, that
self-complacent Virtue may feed her lily-liveredness on the pallor of
Sin's anguish. For perfect Virtue does not more loudly claim our
approbation, than repented Sin in its concludedness does demand our
utmost tenderness and concern. And as the more immense the Virtue, so
should be the more immense our approbation; likewise the more immense
the Sin, the more infinite our pity. In some sort, Sin hath its
sacredness, not less than holiness. And great Sin calls forth more
magnanimity than small Virtue. What man, who is a man, does not feel
livelier and more generous emotions toward the great god of
Sin--Satan,--than toward yonder haberdasher, who only is a sinner in
the small and entirely honorable way of trade?
Though Pierre profoundly shuddered at that impenetrable yet blackly
significant nebulousness, which the wild story of Isabel threw around
the early life of his father; yet as he recalled the dumb anguish of the
invocation of the empty and the ashy hand uplifted from his father's
death-bed, he most keenly felt that of whatsoever unknown shade his
father's guilt might be, yet in the final hour of death it had been most
dismally repented of; by a repentance only the more full of utter
wretchedness, that it was a consuming secret in him. Mince the matter
how his family would, had not his father died a raver? Whence that
raving, following so prosperous a life? Whence, but from the cruelest
compunctions?
Touched thus, and strung in all his sinews and his nerves to the holding
of his father's memory intact,--Pierre turned his confronting and
unfrightened face toward Lucy Tartan, and stilly vowed that not even she
should know the whole; no, not know the least.
There is an inevitable keen cruelty in the loftier heroism. It is not
heroism only to stand unflinched ourselves in the hour of suffering; but
it is heroism to stand unflinched both at our own and at some loved
one's united suffering; a united suffering, which we could put an
instant period to, if we would but renounce the glorious cause for which
ourselves do bleed, and see our most loved one bleed. If he would not
reveal his father's shame to the common world, whose favorable opinion
for himself, Pierre now despised; how then reveal it to the woman he
adored? To her, above all others, would he now uncover his father's
tomb, and bid her behold from what vile attaintings he himself had
sprung? So Pierre turned round and tied Lucy to the same stake which
must hold himself, for he too plainly saw, that it could not be, but
that both their hearts must burn.
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