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- 3850
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z
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- text
- seems one little crack there, Pierre--a wedge, a wedge. Something ever
comes of all persistent inquiry; we are not so continually curious for
nothing, Pierre; not for nothing, do we so intrigue and become wily
diplomatists, and glozers with our own minds, Pierre; and afraid of
following the Indian trail from the open plain into the dark thickets,
Pierre; but enough; a word to the wise.
Thus sometimes in the mystical, outer quietude of the long country
nights; either when the hushed mansion was banked round by the
thick-fallen December snows, or banked round by the immovable white
August moonlight; in the haunted repose of a wide story, tenanted only
by himself; and sentineling his own little closet; and standing guard,
as it were, before the mystical tent of the picture; and ever watching
the strangely concealed lights of the meanings that so mysteriously
moved to and fro within; thus sometimes stood Pierre before the portrait
of his father, unconsciously throwing himself open to all those
ineffable hints and ambiguities, and undefined half-suggestions, which
now and then people the soul's atmosphere, as thickly as in a soft,
steady snow-storm, the snow-flakes people the air. Yet as often starting
from these reveries and trances, Pierre would regain the assured element
of consciously bidden and self-propelled thought; and then in a moment
the air all cleared, not a snow-flake descended, and Pierre, upbraiding
himself for his self-indulgent infatuation, would promise never again
to fall into a midnight revery before the chair-portrait of his father.
Nor did the streams of these reveries seem to leave any conscious
sediment in his mind; they were so light and so rapid, that they rolled
their own alluvial along; and seemed to leave all Pierre's
thought-channels as clean and dry as though never any alluvial stream
had rolled there at all.
And so still in his sober, cherishing memories, his father's
beatification remained untouched; and all the strangeness of the
portrait only served to invest his idea with a fine, legendary romance;
the essence whereof was that very mystery, which at other times was so
subtly and evilly significant.
But now, _now!_--Isabel's letter read: swift as the first light that
slides from the sun, Pierre saw all preceding ambiguities, all mysteries
ripped open as if with a keen sword, and forth trooped thickening
phantoms of an infinite gloom. Now his remotest infantile
reminiscences--the wandering mind of his father--the empty hand, and the
ashen--the strange story of Aunt Dorothea--the mystical midnight
suggestions of the portrait itself; and, above all, his mother's
intuitive aversion, all, all overwhelmed him with reciprocal
testimonies.
And now, by irresistible intuitions, all that had been inexplicably
mysterious to him in the portrait, and all that had been inexplicably
familiar in the face, most magically these now coincided; the merriness
of the one not inharmonious with the mournfulness of the other, but by
some ineffable correlativeness, they reciprocally identified each other,
and, as it were, melted into each other, and thus interpenetratingly
uniting, presented lineaments of an added supernaturalness.
On all sides, the physical world of solid objects now slidingly
displaced itself from around him, and he floated into an ether of
visions; and, starting to his feet with clenched hands and outstaring
eyes at the transfixed face in the air, he ejaculated that wonderful
verse from Dante, descriptive of the two mutually absorbing shapes in
the Inferno:
"Ah! how dost thou change,
Agnello! See! thou art not double now,
Nor only one!"
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