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- 14917
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.924Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 14856
- text
- II.
Notwithstanding the maternal visit of Mrs. Tartan, and the
peremptoriness with which it had been closed by her declared departure
never to return, and her vow to teach all Lucy's relatives and friends,
and Lucy's own brothers, and her suitor, to disown her, and forget her;
yet Pierre fancied that he knew too much in general of the human heart,
and too much in particular of the character of both Glen and Frederic,
to remain entirely untouched by disquietude, concerning what those two
fiery youths might now be plotting against him, as the imagined monster,
by whose infernal tricks Lucy Tartan was supposed to have been seduced
from every earthly seemliness. Not happily, but only so much the more
gloomily, did he augur from the fact, that Mrs. Tartan had come to Lucy
unattended; and that Glen and Frederic had let eight-and-forty hours and
more go by, without giving the slightest hostile or neutral sign. At
first he thought, that bridling their impulsive fierceness, they were
resolved to take the slower, but perhaps the surer method, to wrest Lucy
back to them, by instituting some legal process. But this idea was
repulsed by more than one consideration.
Not only was Frederic of that sort of temper, peculiar to military men,
which would prompt him, in so closely personal and intensely private and
family a matter, to scorn the hireling publicity of the law's lingering
arm; and impel him, as by the furiousness of fire, to be his own righter
and avenger; for, in him, it was perhaps quite as much the feeling of an
outrageous family affront to himself, through Lucy, as her own presumed
separate wrong, however black, which stung him to the quick: not only
were these things so respecting Frederic; but concerning Glen, Pierre
well knew, that be Glen heartless as he might, to do a deed of love,
Glen was not heartless to do a deed of hate; that though, on that
memorable night of his arrival in the city, Glen had heartlessly closed
his door upon him, yet now Glen might heartfully burst Pierre's open, if
by that he at all believed, that permanent success would crown the fray.
Besides, Pierre knew this;--that so invincible is the natural,
untamable, latent spirit of a courageous manliness in man, that though
now socially educated for thousands of years in an arbitrary homage to
the Law, as the one only appointed redress for every injured person; yet
immemorially and universally, among all gentlemen of spirit, once to
have uttered independent personal threats of personal vengeance against
your foe, and then, after that, to fall back slinking into a court, and
hire with sops a pack of yelping pettifoggers to fight the battle so
valiantly proclaimed; this, on the surface, is ever deemed very
decorous, and very prudent--a most wise second thought; but, at bottom,
a miserably ignoble thing. Frederic was not the watery man for
that,--Glen had more grapey blood in him.
Moreover, it seemed quite clear to Pierre, that only by making out Lucy
absolutely mad, and striving to prove it by a thousand despicable little
particulars, could the law succeed in tearing her from the refuge she
had voluntarily sought; a course equally abhorrent to all the parties
possibly to be concerned on either side.
What then would those two boiling bloods do? Perhaps they would patrol
the streets; and at the first glimpse of lonely Lucy, kidnap her home.
Or if Pierre were with her, then, smite him down by hook or crook, fair
play or foul; and then, away with Lucy! Or if Lucy systematically kept
her room, then fall on Pierre in the most public way, fell him, and
cover him from all decent recognition beneath heaps on heaps of hate and
insult; so that broken on the wheel of such dishonor, Pierre might feel
himself unstrung, and basely yield the prize.
- title
- Chunk 1