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- VII.
But Pierre, though, charged with the fire of all divineness, his
containing thing was made of clay. Ah, muskets the gods have made to
carry infinite combustions, and yet made them of clay!
Save me from being bound to Truth, liege lord, as I am now. How shall I
steal yet further into Pierre, and show how this heavenly fire was
helped to be contained in him, by mere contingent things, and things
that he knew not. But I shall follow the endless, winding way,--the
flowing river in the cave of man; careless whither I be led, reckless
where I land.
Was not the face--though mutely mournful--beautiful, bewitchingly? How
unfathomable those most wondrous eyes of supernatural light! In those
charmed depths, Grief and Beauty plunged and dived together. So
beautiful, so mystical, so bewilderingly alluring; speaking of a
mournfulness infinitely sweeter and more attractive than all
mirthfulness; that face of glorious suffering; that face of touching
loveliness; that face was Pierre's own sister's; that face was Isabel's;
that face Pierre had visibly seen; into those same supernatural eyes
our Pierre had looked. Thus, already, and ere the proposed encounter, he
was assured that, in a transcendent degree, womanly beauty, and not
womanly ugliness, invited him to champion the right. Be naught concealed
in this book of sacred truth. How, if accosted in some squalid lane, a
humped, and crippled, hideous girl should have snatched his garment's
hem, with--"Save me, Pierre--love me, own me, brother; I am thy
sister!"--Ah, if man were wholly made in heaven, why catch we
hell-glimpses? Why in the noblest marble pillar that stands beneath the
all-comprising vault, ever should we descry the sinister vein? We lie in
nature very close to God; and though, further on, the stream may be
corrupted by the banks it flows through; yet at the fountain's rim,
where mankind stand, there the stream infallibly bespeaks the fountain.
So let no censorious word be here hinted of mortal Pierre. Easy for me
to slyly hide these things, and always put him before the eye as perfect
as immaculate; unsusceptible to the inevitable nature and the lot of
common men. I am more frank with Pierre than the best men are with
themselves. I am all unguarded and magnanimous with Pierre; therefore
you see his weakness, and therefore only. In reserves men build imposing
characters; not in revelations. He who shall be wholly honest, though
nobler than Ethan Allen; that man shall stand in danger of the meanest
mortal's scorn.
BOOK VI.
ISABEL, AND THE FIRST PART OF THE STORY OF ISABEL.
I.
Half wishful that the hour would come; half shuddering that every moment
it still came nearer and more near to him; dry-eyed, but wet with that
dark day's rain; at fall of eve, Pierre emerged from long wanderings in
the primeval woods of Saddle Meadows, and for one instant stood
motionless upon their sloping skirt.
Where he stood was in the rude wood road, only used by sledges in the
time of snow; just where the out-posted trees formed a narrow arch, and
fancied gateway leading upon the far, wide pastures sweeping down toward
the lake. In that wet and misty eve the scattered, shivering pasture
elms seemed standing in a world inhospitable, yet rooted by inscrutable
sense of duty to their place. Beyond, the lake lay in one sheet of
blankness and of dumbness, unstirred by breeze or breath; fast bound
there it lay, with not life enough to reflect the smallest shrub or
twig. Yet in that lake was seen the duplicate, stirless sky above. Only
in sunshine did that lake catch gay, green images; and these but
displaced the imaged muteness of the unfeatured heavens.
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