- end_line
- 15009
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.924Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 14963
- text
- III.
As a statue, planted on a revolving pedestal, shows now this limb, now
that; now front, now back, now side; continually changing, too, its
general profile; so does the pivoted, statued soul of man, when turned
by the hand of Truth. Lies only never vary; look for no invariableness
in Pierre. Nor does any canting showman here stand by to announce his
phases as he revolves. Catch his phases as your insight may.
Another day passed on; Glen and Frederic still absenting themselves, and
Pierre and Isabel and Lucy all dwelling together. The domestic presence
of Lucy had begun to produce a remarkable effect upon Pierre. Sometimes,
to the covertly watchful eye of Isabel, he would seem to look upon Lucy
with an expression illy befitting their singular and so-supposed merely
cousinly relation; and yet again, with another expression still more
unaccountable to her,--one of fear and awe, not unmixed with impatience.
But his general detailed manner toward Lucy was that of the most
delicate and affectionate considerateness--nothing more. He was never
alone with her; though, as before, at times alone with Isabel.
Lucy seemed entirely undesirous of usurping any place about him;
manifested no slightest unwelcome curiosity as to Pierre, and no painful
embarrassment as to Isabel. Nevertheless, more and more did she seem,
hour by hour, to be somehow inexplicably sliding between them, without
touching them. Pierre felt that some strange heavenly influence was near
him, to keep him from some uttermost harm; Isabel was alive to some
untraceable displacing agency. Though when all three were together, the
marvelous serenity, and sweetness, and utter unsuspectingness of Lucy
obviated any thing like a common embarrassment: yet if there was any
embarrassment at all beneath that roof, it was sometimes when Pierre was
alone with Isabel, after Lucy would innocently quit them.
Meantime Pierre was still going on with his book; every moment becoming
still the more sensible of the intensely inauspicious circumstances of
all sorts under which that labor was proceeding. And as the now
advancing and concentring enterprise demanded more and more compacted
vigor from him, he felt that he was having less and less to bring to it.
For not only was it the signal misery of Pierre, to be
invisibly--though but accidentally--goaded, in the hour of mental
immaturity, to the attempt at a mature work,--a circumstance
sufficiently lamentable in itself; but also, in the hour of his
clamorous pennilessness, he was additionally goaded into an enterprise
long and protracted in the execution, and of all things least calculated
for pecuniary profit in the end. How these things were so, whence they
originated, might be thoroughly and very beneficially explained; but
space and time here forbid.
- title
- Chunk 1