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- 3293
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z
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- 3259
- text
- himself; one taken in his early childhood, a frocked and belted boy of
four years old; and the other, a grown youth of sixteen. Except an
indestructible, all-surviving something in the eyes and on the temples,
Pierre could hardly recognize the loud-laughing boy in the tall, and
pensively smiling youth. If a few years, then, can have in me made all
this difference, why not in my father? thought Pierre.
Besides all this, Pierre considered the history, and, so to speak, the
family legend of the smaller painting. In his fifteenth year, it was
made a present to him by an old maiden aunt, who resided in the city,
and who cherished the memory of Pierre's father, with all that wonderful
amaranthine devotion which an advanced maiden sister ever feels for the
idea of a beloved younger brother, now dead and irrevocably gone. As the
only child of that brother, Pierre was an object of the warmest and most
extravagant attachment on the part of this lonely aunt, who seemed to
see, transformed into youth once again, the likeness, and very soul of
her brother, in the fair, inheriting brow of Pierre. Though the portrait
we speak of was inordinately prized by her, yet at length the strict
canon of her romantic and imaginative love asserted the portrait to be
Pierre's--for Pierre was not only his father's only child, but his
namesake--so soon as Pierre should be old enough to value aright so holy
and inestimable a treasure. She had accordingly sent it to him, trebly
boxed, and finally covered with a water-proof cloth; and it was
delivered at Saddle Meadows, by an express, confidential messenger, an
old gentleman of leisure, once her forlorn, because rejected gallant,
but now her contented, and chatty neighbor. Henceforth, before a
gold-framed and gold-lidded ivory miniature,--a fraternal gift--aunt
Dorothea now offered up her morning and her evening rites, to the memory
of the noblest and handsomest of brothers. Yet an annual visit to the
far closet of Pierre--no slight undertaking now for one so stricken in
years, and every way infirm--attested the earnestness of that strong
sense of duty, that painful renunciation of self, which had induced her
voluntarily to part with the precious memorial.
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