- end_line
- 3167
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3110
- text
- gushing tears from his reader's eyes; even as _thy_ note so strangely
made thine own manly eyes so arid; so glazed, and so arid,
Pierre--foolish Pierre!
Oh! mock not the poniarded heart. The stabbed man knows the steel; prate
not to him that it is only a tickling feather. Feels he not the interior
gash? What does this blood on my vesture? and what does this pang in my
soul?
And here again, not unreasonably, might invocations go up to those Three
Weird Ones, that tend Life's loom. Again we might ask them, What threads
were those, oh, ye Weird Ones, that ye wove in the years foregone; that
now to Pierre, they so unerringly conduct electric presentiments, that
his woe is woe, his father no more a saint, and Isabel a sister indeed?
Ah, fathers and mothers! all the world round, be heedful,--give heed!
Thy little one may not now comprehend the meaning of those words and
those signs, by which, in its innocent presence, thou thinkest to
disguise the sinister thing ye would hint. Not now he knows; not very
much even of the externals he consciously remarks; but if, in
after-life, Fate puts the chemic key of the cipher into his hands; then
how swiftly and how wonderfully, he reads all the obscurest and most
obliterate inscriptions he finds in his memory; yea, and rummages
himself all over, for still hidden writings to read. Oh, darkest lessons
of Life have thus been read; all faith in Virtue been murdered, and
youth gives itself up to an infidel scorn.
But not thus, altogether, was it now with Pierre; yet so like, in some
points, that the above true warning may not misplacedly stand.
His father had died of a fever; and, as is not uncommon in such
maladies, toward his end, he at intervals lowly wandered in his mind. At
such times, by unobserved, but subtle arts, the devoted family
attendants, had restrained his wife from being present at his side. But
little Pierre, whose fond, filial love drew him ever to that bed; they
heeded not innocent little Pierre, when his father was delirious; and
so, one evening, when the shadows intermingled with the curtains; and
all the chamber was hushed; and Pierre but dimly saw his father's face;
and the fire on the hearth lay in a broken temple of wonderful coals;
then a strange, plaintive, infinitely pitiable, low voice, stole forth
from the testered bed; and Pierre heard,--"My daughter! my daughter!"
"He wanders again," said the nurse.
"Dear, dear father!" sobbed the child--"thou hast not a daughter, but
here is thy own little Pierre."
But again the unregardful voice in the bed was heard; and now in a
sudden, pealing wail,--"My daughter!--God! God!--my daughter!"
The child snatched the dying man's hand; it faintly grew to his grasp;
but on the other side of the bed, the other hand now also emptily lifted
itself and emptily caught, as if at some other childish fingers. Then
both hands dropped on the sheet; and in the twinkling shadows of the
evening little Pierre seemed to see, that while the hand which he held
wore a faint, feverish flush, the other empty one was ashy white as a
leper's.
- title
- Chunk 3