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- 15649
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.924Z
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- 15597
- text
- resurrection of the one he had burnt at the Inn. Not that the separate
features were the same; but the pervading look of it, the subtler
interior keeping of the entirety, was almost identical; still, for all
this, there was an unequivocal aspect of foreignness, of Europeanism,
about both the face itself and the general painting.
"Is it? Is it? Can it be?" whispered Isabel, intensely.
Now, Isabel knew nothing of the painting which Pierre had destroyed. But
she solely referred to the living being who--under the designation of
her father--had visited her at the cheerful house to which she had been
removed during childhood from the large and unnamable one by the
pleasant woman in the coach. Without doubt--though indeed she might not
have been at all conscious of it in her own mystic mind--she must have
somehow vaguely fancied, that this being had always through life worn
the same aspect to every body else which he had to her, for so very
brief an interval of his possible existence. Solely knowing him--or
dreaming of him, it may have been--under that one aspect, she could not
conceive of him under any other. Whether or not these considerations
touching Isabel's ideas occurred to Pierre at this moment is very
improbable. At any rate, he said nothing to her, either to deceive or
undeceive, either to enlighten or obscure. For, indeed, he was too much
riveted by his own far-interior emotions to analyze now the cotemporary
ones of Isabel. So that there here came to pass a not unremarkable
thing: for though both were intensely excited by one object, yet their
two minds and memories were thereby directed to entirely different
contemplations; while still each, for the time--however
unreasonably--might have vaguely supposed the other occupied by one and
the same contemplation. Pierre was thinking of the chair-portrait:
Isabel, of the living face. Yet Isabel's fervid exclamations having
reference to the living face, were now, as it were, mechanically
responded to by Pierre, in syllables having reference to the
chair-portrait. Nevertheless, so subtile and spontaneous was it all,
that neither perhaps ever afterward discovered this contradiction; for,
events whirled them so rapidly and peremptorily after this, that they
had no time for those calm retrospective reveries indispensable perhaps
to such a discovery.
"Is it? is it? can it be?" was the intense whisper of Isabel.
"No, it can not be, it is not," replied Pierre; "one of the wonderful
coincidences, nothing more."
"Oh, by that word, Pierre, we but vainly seek to explain the
inexplicable. Tell me: it is! it must be! it is wonderful!"
"Let us begone; and let us keep eternal silence," said Pierre, quickly;
and, seeking Lucy, they abruptly left the place; as before, Pierre,
seemingly unwilling to be accosted by any one he knew, or who knew his
companions, unconsciously accelerating their steps while forced for a
space to tread the thoroughfares.
- title
- Chunk 4