- end_line
- 3689
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3666
- text
- secrets, as lovely Venice upon invisible and incorruptible piles in the
sea. Love's secrets, being mysteries, ever pertain to the transcendent
and the infinite; and so they are as airy bridges, by which our further
shadows pass over into the regions of the golden mists and exhalations;
whence all poetical, lovely thoughts are engendered, and drop into us,
as though pearls should drop from rainbows.
As time went on, the chasteness and pure virginity of this mutual
reservation, only served to dress the portrait in sweeter, because still
more mysterious attractions; and to fling, as it were, fresh fennel and
rosemary around the revered memory of the father. Though, indeed, as
previously recounted, Pierre now and then loved to present to himself
for some fanciful solution the penultimate secret of the portrait, in so
far, as that involved his mother's distaste; yet the cunning analysis in
which such a mental procedure would involve him, never voluntarily
transgressed that sacred limit, where his mother's peculiar repugnance
began to shade off into ambiguous considerations, touching any unknown
possibilities in the character and early life of the original. Not, that
he had altogether forbidden his fancy to range in such fields of
speculation; but all such imaginings must be contributory to that pure,
exalted idea of his father, which, in his soul, was based upon the known
acknowledged facts of his father's life.
- title
- Chunk 6