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- 4012
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 3953
- text
- realities; so that in these flashing revelations of grief's wonderful
fire, we see all things as they are; and though, when the electric
element is gone, the shadows once more descend, and the false outlines
of objects again return; yet not with their former power to deceive; for
now, even in the presence of the falsest aspects, we still retain the
impressions of their immovable true ones, though, indeed, once more
concealed.
Thus with Pierre. In the joyous young times, ere his great grief came
upon him, all the objects which surrounded him were concealingly
deceptive. Not only was the long-cherished image of his rather now
transfigured before him from a green foliaged tree into a blasted trunk,
but every other image in his mind attested the universality of that
electral light which had darted into his soul. Not even his lovely,
immaculate mother, remained entirely untouched, unaltered by the shock.
At her changed aspect, when first revealed to him, Pierre had gazed in a
panic; and now, when the electrical storm had gone by, he retained in
his mind, that so suddenly revealed image, with an infinite
mournfulness. She, who in her less splendid but finer and more spiritual
part, had ever seemed to Pierre not only as a beautiful saint before
whom to offer up his daily orisons, but also as a gentle lady-counsellor
and confessor, and her revered chamber as a soft satin-hung cabinet and
confessional;--his mother was no longer this all-alluring thing; no
more, he too keenly felt, could he go to his mother, as to one who
entirely sympathized with him; as to one before whom he could almost
unreservedly unbosom himself; as to one capable of pointing out to him
the true path where he seemed most beset. Wonderful, indeed, was that
electric insight which Fate had now given him into the vital character
of his mother. She well might have stood all ordinary tests; but when
Pierre thought of the touchstone of his immense strait applied to her
spirit, he felt profoundly assured that she would crumble into nothing
before it.
She was a noble creature, but formed chiefly for the gilded prosperities
of life, and hitherto mostly used to its unruffled serenities; bred and
expanded, in all developments, under the sole influence of hereditary
forms and world-usages. Not his refined, courtly, loving, equable
mother, Pierre felt, could unreservedly, and like a heaven's heroine,
meet the shock of his extraordinary emergency, and applaud, to his
heart's echo, a sublime resolve, whose execution should call down the
astonishment and the jeers of the world.
My mother!--dearest mother!--God hath given me a sister, and unto thee a
daughter, and covered her with the world's extremest infamy and scorn,
that so I and thou--_thou_, my mother, mightest gloriously own her, and
acknowledge her, and,---- Nay, nay, groaned Pierre, never, never, could
such syllables be one instant tolerated by her. Then, high-up, and
towering, and all-forbidding before Pierre grew the before unthought of
wonderful edifice of his mother's immense pride;--her pride of birth,
her pride of affluence, her pride of purity, and all the pride of
high-born, refined, and wealthy Life, and all the Semiramian pride of
woman. Then he staggered back upon himself, and only found support in
himself. Then Pierre felt that deep in him lurked a divine
unidentifiableness, that owned no earthly kith or kin. Yet was this
feeling entirely lonesome, and orphan-like. Fain, then, for one moment,
would he have recalled the thousand sweet illusions of Life; tho'
purchased at the price of Life's Truth; so that once more he might not
feel himself driven out an infant Ishmael into the desert, with no
maternal Hagar to accompany and comfort him.
- title
- Chunk 3