- end_line
- 4770
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 4714
- text
- cowardice of selfishness, but the infinite sensitiveness of his soul. He
could bear the agonizing thought of Isabel, because he was immediately
resolved to help her, and to assuage a fellow-being's grief; but, as
yet, he could not bear the thought of Lucy, because the very resolution
that promised balm to Isabel obscurely involved the everlasting peace of
Lucy, and therefore aggravatingly threatened a far more than
fellow-being's happiness.
Well for Pierre it was, that the penciling presentiments of his mind
concerning Lucy as quickly erased as painted their tormenting images.
Standing half-befogged upon the mountain of his Fate, all that part of
the wide panorama was wrapped in clouds to him; but anon those
concealings slid aside, or rather, a quick rent was made in them;
disclosing far below, half-vailed in the lower mist, the winding
tranquil vale and stream of Lucy's previous happy life; through the
swift cloud-rent he caught one glimpse of her expectant and angelic face
peeping from the honey-suckled window of her cottage; and the next
instant the stormy pinions of the clouds locked themselves over it
again; and all was hidden as before; and all went confused in whirling
rack and vapor as before. Only by unconscious inspiration, caught from
the agencies invisible to man, had he been enabled to write that first
obscurely announcing note to Lucy; wherein the collectedness, and the
mildness, and the calmness, were but the natural though insidious
precursors of the stunning bolts on bolts to follow.
But, while thus, for the most part wrapped from his consciousness and
vision, still, the condition of his Lucy, as so deeply affected now, was
still more and more disentangling and defining itself from out its
nearer mist, and even beneath the general upper fog. For when
unfathomably stirred, the subtler elements of man do not always reveal
themselves in the concocting act; but, as with all other potencies, show
themselves chiefly in their ultimate resolvings and results. Strange
wild work, and awfully symmetrical and reciprocal, was that now going on
within the self-apparently chaotic breast of Pierre. As in his own
conscious determinations, the mournful Isabel was being snatched from
her captivity of world-wide abandonment; so, deeper down in the more
secret chambers of his unsuspecting soul, the smiling Lucy, now as dead
and ashy pale, was being bound a ransom for Isabel's salvation. Eye for
eye, and tooth for tooth. Eternally inexorable and unconcerned is Fate,
a mere heartless trader in men's joys and woes.
Nor was this general and spontaneous self-concealment of all the most
momentous interests of his love, as irretrievably involved with Isabel
and his resolution respecting her; nor was this unbidden thing in him
unseconded by the prompting of his own conscious judgment, when in the
tyranny of the master-event itself, that judgment was permitted some
infrequent play. He could not but be aware, that all meditation on Lucy
now was worse than useless. How could he now map out his and her young
life-chart, when all was yet misty-white with creamy breakers! Still
more: divinely dedicated as he felt himself to be; with divine commands
upon him to befriend and champion Isabel, through all conceivable
contingencies of Time and Chance; how could he insure himself against
the insidious inroads of self-interest, and hold intact all his
unselfish magnanimities, if once he should permit the distracting
thought of Lucy to dispute with Isabel's the pervading possession of his
soul?
- title
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