La letra escarlata 📖🔥: El símbolo de la culpa y el arrepentimiento
The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, transports us to the Puritan society of 17th-century New England, where young Hester Prynne is publicly punished for having committed a sin that defies the strict moral standards of her community. Throughout this work, we explore the themes of repentance, honor, and guilt, as Hester struggles with the stigma of her action and the influence her sin has on her life and the lives of those around her. Chapter 1. THE PRISON GATE. A crowd of bearded men, dressed in dark suits and tall, almost pointy, gray hats, mixed with women, some wearing hoods and others without their heads covered, was gathered in front of a wooden building whose heavy oak door was studded with iron spikes. The founders of a new colony, whatever utopian dreams of virtue and happiness may have presided over their project, have always considered it among the most necessary things to dedicate a portion of the virgin land to a cemetery, and another portion to the erection of a jail. According to this principle, it may be assumed that the founders of Boston built the first jail in the vicinity of Cornhill, just as they laid out the first cemetery on the site that later became the nucleus of all the tombs clustered in the old cemetery of King’s Chapel. It is certain that fifteen or twenty years after the settlement was founded, the jail, which was made of wood, already showed every outward sign of having spent several winters there, which gave it a more somber appearance than it normally had. The rust with which the heavy ironwork of its door was covered gave it an appearance of greater antiquity than anything else in the New World. Like everything connected in one way or another with crime, it seemed never to have enjoyed youth. In front of this ugly building, and between it and the lanes or ruts of the street, there was a kind of meadow where burdock and other such weeds grew abundantly, evidently finding suitable soil in a place that had already produced the black flower common to a civilized society—the prison. But on one side of the door, almost on the threshold, was seen a wild rosebush, which in this month of June was covered with delicate blossoms that, one might say, offered their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoners entering the prison, and to the condemned criminals leaving to suffer their punishment, as if nature took pity on them. The existence of this rosebush, by a strange coincidence, has been preserved in history; But we will not attempt to discover whether it was simply a bush left over from the old primeval forest after the giant pines and oaks that shaded it had disappeared, or whether, as tradition tells us, it sprang up under the footsteps of Saintly Anne Hutchinson when she entered the prison. Be that as it may, since we find it on the threshold of our narrative, so to speak, we cannot but pluck one of its blossoms and offer it to the reader, hoping that it may symbolize some peaceful moral lesson, either derived from these pages, or serve to mitigate the somber issue of a tale of human frailty and sorrow. Chapter 2. MARKET PLACE. The small lawn in front of the prison, of which mention has been made, was occupied about two hundred years ago, on a summer morning, by a large number of Bostonians, all with their eyes directed towards the iron-tipped oak door. In any other New England town, or at a later period in its history, the somber appearance of those bearded faces would have boded ill ; it would have been thought to herald the approaching execution of some notorious criminal, against whom a court of justice had pronounced a sentence that was merely a confirmation of the public sentiment. But given the natural severity of the Puritan character in those times, such a suggestion could not have been drawn. deduction, based solely on the appearance of the people there assembled: perhaps some lazy slave, or some disobedient child, delivered by his parents to the civil authority, was being pilloried. It might also be that a Quaker, or some other individual belonging to a heterodox sect, was about to be driven from the town at the point of the whip; or perhaps some idle, vagrant Indian, who had been rioting in the streets in a state of complete intoxication from the white men’s liquor, was about to be driven into the woods with blows from the club; or perhaps some witch, like old Mrs. Hibbins, the magistrate’s acerbic widow , was about to die on the scaffold. Be that as it may, there was about the spectators that air of gravity which perfectly suited a people for whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character the two sentiments were so completely amalgamated that any act of public justice, however lenient or severe, equally assumed an aspect of respectful solemnity. Little or no compassion could a criminal on the scaffold expect from such spectators. But on the other hand, a punishment which in our times would attract a certain degree of infamy and even ridicule upon the culprit was then invested with a dignity as somber as capital punishment itself. It is worth noting that on the summer morning on which our story begins, the women who were mingled among the crowd seemed to have a special interest in witnessing the punishment whose imposition was expected. At that time, morals had not yet attained that degree of refinement where the thought of social considerations could restrain the female sex from invading the public thoroughfares, and, if opportunity offered, from forcing their robust selves through the crowd, so as to be as near the scaffold as possible, when an execution was to be carried out. In these matrons and young maidens of ancient English stock and education, there was, both morally and physically, something coarser and rougher than in their fair descendants, from whom they are separated by six or seven generations; for it may be said that every mother, since then, has successively transmitted to her offspring a less vivid color, a more delicate and less lasting beauty, a weaker physical constitution, and perhaps even a character of less strength and solidity. The women who stood near the prison door on that beautiful summer morning displayed plump and rosy cheeks, robust and well-developed bodies with broad shoulders; while the language the matrons employed had a roundness and ease which in our own time would astonish us, as much from the force of their expression as from the volume of their voices. “Honourable wives,” said a lady of fifty, with a stern features, “I will tell you what I think. It would be a great public good if we, women of advanced years, of good repute, and members of a church, would take it upon ourselves to treat such miscreants as this Hester Prynne. What do you think, gossips? If that good little girl had to be tried by us five here , would she get off as well as she does now, with a sentence such as the venerable magistrates have pronounced? Certainly not! ” “Good people,” said another, “it is said that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, your pious pastor, is deeply distressed that such a scandal should have occurred in his congregation.” “Magistrates are gentlemen, full of the fear of God, but exceedingly merciful, that is the truth,” added a third matron, already well into her autumnal years. “At least they ought to have branded Hester Prynne’s forehead with a red-hot iron. I assure you, Madam Hester would have known then what was good. But what does that vixen care what they have put in the bosom of her dress? She will cover it with her brooch, or some other of those pagan ornaments in vogue, and we shall see her walking through the streets as fresh as ever . ” “Ah!” said a young married woman, who seemed of a milder nature, and She was holding a child by the hand—let her cover that mark as she will; she will always feel it in her heart. “What are we talking about here, infamous marks or seals, whether on the bodice of a garment, on the back, or on the forehead?” cried another, the ugliest as well as the most implacable of those who had set themselves up as judges in their own right. “This woman has dishonored us all, and she must die. Is there not a law for it? Yes, indeed: there is one both in the Holy Scriptures and in the Statutes of the city. The magistrates who have disregarded her will have themselves to blame if their wives or daughters stray from the right path. ” “Heaven help us! Good lady,” exclaimed a man, “is there not more virtue in a woman than that which is due to the fear of the gallows? Nothing worse could be said.” Silence now, neighbors, for they are about to open the prison door, and here comes Madame Esther herself. The prison door opened indeed, and first appeared, like a black shadow emerging into the daylight, the grim and terrible figure of the town constable, with his sword at his belt and in his hand the rod, the symbol of his office. The appearance of this personage represented all the somber severity of the Puritan code of laws, which he was called upon to enforce to the last extremity. Extending the rod of his office with his left hand, he placed his right upon the shoulder of a young woman, whom he urged forward, pushing her forward, until, at the threshold of the prison, she repulsed him with a movement that indicated natural dignity and force of character, and stepped forth into the open air as if of her own free will. She carried in her arms a tender infant of about three months old, who closed his eyes and turned his face to one side, avoiding the excessive brightness of the day, a very natural thing, since his existence until then had been spent in the darkness of a dungeon, or in some other gloomy room of the prison. When this young woman, mother of the tender child, found herself in the presence of the crowd, her first impulse was to clasp the little girl to her breast, not so much from an act of maternal affection, but rather as if she wished in this way to conceal some sign carved or affixed to her dress. However, judging, perhaps wisely, that one sign of shame could not very well conceal another, she took the little creature in her arms, and with a face full of blushes, but with a haughty smile and eyes that would not allow themselves to be humiliated, she glanced at the neighbors who stood around her. On the bodice of her gown, in a brilliant red cloth, surrounded by exquisite embroidery and fantastic gold thread ornaments, stood out the letter A. It was so artistically executed, and with such a luxurious and capricious imagination, that it produced the effect of being the final and appropriate ornamentation of her dress, which had all the splendor compatible with the taste of that time, far exceeding what was permitted by the sumptuary laws of the colony. That woman was of tall stature, perfectly formed, and slender. Her hair was abundant and almost black, and so lustrous that it reflected the rays of the sun. Her face, besides being beautiful due to the regularity of its features and the softness of its color, had all the force of expression that well-marked eyebrows and intensely black eyes communicate . Her appearance was that of a lady characterized, as was usual in those times, rather by a certain dignity of bearing, than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace that is accepted today as an indication of that quality. And Esther never looked more like a true lady, according to the ancient meaning of that word, than when she left prison. Those who had known her before and expected to see her dejected and humiliated were surprised, almost astonished, to see how her beauty shone, as if the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped formed a halo around her. It is true that a sensitive observer would have perceived something slightly painful in her features. Her dress, which was surely A garment made by herself in prison for that day, modeled after her own whim, seemed to express the state of her mind, the hopeless indifference of her feelings, as far as its extravagant and picturesque appearance was concerned. But what attracted every eye, and what may be said to have transfigured the woman who wore it, so that those who had been familiarly acquainted with Hester Prynne felt as if they were now seeing her for the first time, was THE SCARLET LETTER, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated as it was sewn upon the bodice of her gown. Its effect was like a magic charm, separating this woman from the rest of the human race, and setting her apart in a world peculiar to herself. “She has a very skillful needle,” observed one of the spectators; “but I doubt very much whether any other woman has devised so bold a means of displaying her skill.” What is this, gossips, but mocking our pious magistrates, and boasting of what those worthy gentlemen thought would be a punishment? “It would be well,” exclaimed the most sour-faced of those old women, “if we were to strip Madame Esther of her beautiful dress, and instead of that red letter so exquisitely embroidered, to nail her one made from a piece of this flannel I use for my rheumatism. ” “Oh! Enough, neighbors, enough,” murmured the youngest of those present, “speak so that she cannot hear you. There is not a single stitch in the embroidery of that letter that she has not felt in her heart! ” The gloomy constable at this moment made a sign with his staff. “Good people, make a stand; make a stand in the name of the King!” he cried. Make way for her, and I promise you that Madam Esther will sit where all , man, woman, and child, may gaze perfectly and at their leisure upon the beautiful ornament from now until one o’clock in the afternoon. Heaven bless the righteous Colony of Massachusetts, where iniquity is forced to appear before the light of the sun. Come hither, Madam Esther, and show your scarlet letter in the market-place.” Immediately a space was opened through the throng of spectators. Preceded by the constable, and accompanied by a retinue of stern-faced men and unsympathetic women, Esther Prynne advanced to the place appointed for her punishment. A crowd of schoolchildren, drawn by curiosity and not understanding what she was talking about except that it gave them half a day’s rest, ran ahead of her, occasionally turning their heads to fix their gaze on her, now on the tender little creature, now on the ignominious letter shining in its mother’s womb. In those days, the distance from the prison gate to the marketplace was not great; however, measured by Esther’s experience, it must have seemed very long to her, because despite her proud bearing, every step she took in the midst of that hostile crowd was an unspeakable pain to her . It was as if her heart had been thrown out into the street to be mocked and trampled underfoot by the people. But there is something in our nature, partly marvelous and partly compassionate, that prevents us from understanding the full intensity of what we suffer, thanks to the very effect of the torture of the moment, although we later realize it by the pain it leaves behind. Therefore , with an almost serene demeanor, Esther suffered this part of her punishment, and arrived at a small platform that stood at the western end of the market place, near the oldest church in Boston, as if it were a part of it. Indeed, this scaffold was a part of the penal machinery of that time, and although for two or three generations it has been simply historical and traditional among us, it was then considered an agent as effective for the preservation of the good morals of the citizens, as the guillotine was later considered among the terrorists of revolutionary France. It was, in a word, the platform on which the pillory stood: on it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, so constructed that, by holding a person’s head in a hole, it was exposed to public view. In that framework of iron and wood was embodied the true ideal of ignominy; for I do not believe that a greater outrage can be committed against human nature, whatever the individual’s faults, than to prevent him from hiding his face from a sense of shame, making this impossibility the essence of the punishment. With respect to Esther, however, as happened more or less frequently, the sentence ordered that she remain standing for a certain time on the platform, without inserting her neck into the ring or stocks that exposed her head to public view. Knowing well what she had to do, she ascended the wooden steps and remained in full view of the multitude that surrounded the platform or scaffold. The scene was not without that certain dreadful solemnity which the sight of guilt and shame will always produce in one of our fellow-creatures, until society has become so corrupted as to make him laugh instead of shudder. Those who witnessed the disgrace of Hester Prynne were not in that situation. They were stern and hard people, so much so that they would have watched her death, had such been the sentence, without a murmur or the least protest; but they could have found no subject for jests and jocularity in such an exhibition as this. And had there been any disposition to make the punishment a matter of joking, any attempt of this kind would have been checked by the solemn presence of persons of such consequence and dignity as the Governor and several of his councilors: a judge, a general, and the justices of the town, all of whom were seated or standing in a balcony of the church overlooking the platform. When persons of such stature could attend such a spectacle without risking the majesty or reverence due to their rank and position, it was easy to infer that the execution of a legal sentence must have a meaning as serious as it was efficacious; and therefore, the multitude remained silent and grave. The unhappy culprit was behaving as best as a woman could, who felt a thousand implacable glances fixed upon her, concentrated in the scarlet letter of her gown . It was an unbearable torment. Esther, endowed with an impetuous nature and carried away by her first impulse, had resolved to brave public contempt, however poisonous its barbs and cruel its insults. But in the solemn silence of that multitude there was something so terrible that she would have preferred to see those rigid and severe faces upset by the mockery and sarcasm of which she had been the object. And if a general roar of laughter had broken out in the midst of that crowd, in which men, women, and even children had taken part, Hester would have responded with a bitter and disdainful smile. But overwhelmed under the weight of the punishment she was doomed to suffer, at times she felt as if she must scream at the top of her lungs and throw herself from the platform to the ground, or else go mad. There were, however, intervals when the whole scene in which she played the most important part seemed to vanish before her eyes, or at least shone with an indistinct and vague appearance, as if the spectators were a mass of imperfectly sketched or spectral images. Her mind, and especially her memory, had an almost supernatural activity, and carried her to the contemplation of something very different from what surrounded her at that moment, far from that little town, in another country where she saw faces very different from those who there fixed their implacable gaze upon her. Reminiscences of the most insignificant nature, of his childhood games, of his school days, of his childish quarrels, of the domestic hearth, crowded into his memory mixed with the recollections of what was more grave and serious in subsequent years, a picture being precisely so vivid and animated like the other, as if they were all of equal importance, or all a simple game. Perhaps this was a resource that her spirit instinctively found to free herself, through the contemplation of these visions of her fancy, from the overwhelming sadness of present reality. But whatever it was, the pillory platform was a kind of viewing platform that revealed to Esther the entire path she had traveled since the days of her happy childhood. Standing on that sad height, she saw again her native village in old England and her paternal home: a half-ruined house of dark stone, with an appearance that revealed poverty, but which still retained above the doorway, as a sign of ancient nobility, a half-erased coat of arms. She saw the face of her father, with a broad, bald forehead and a venerable white beard that fell over the ancient wall of the time of Queen Elizabeth of England. She also saw her mother, with that look of love, full of anxiety and care, always present in her memory and which, even after her death, had often, and as a gentle reproach, been a kind of warning on her daughter’s path. She saw her own face, in the splendor of her youthful beauty, illuminating the dull mirror in which she had been accustomed to gazing. There she beheld another face, that of a man well into his years, pale, thin, with the features of someone who had devoted himself to study, eyes clouded and strained by the lamp by whose light he had read so many ponderous volumes and meditated upon them. Yet those same strained eyes had a strange and penetrating power when the one who possessed them wished to read into human consciences. That figure was somewhat deformed, with one shoulder slightly higher than the other. Then she saw, in the picture gallery which her memory presented to her, the intricate and narrow streets, the tall, brown houses, the massive cathedrals and public buildings of ancient date and strange architecture, of a European city, where a new life awaited her, always in association with the wise and ill-formed scholar. At last, in place of these scenes and this sort of shifting panorama, there presented herself to her, the rude market-place of a Puritan colony, with all the people of the population assembled there, directing their stern gazes upon Hester Prynne—yes, upon herself—standing upon the pillory platform, with a tender child in her arms, and the scarlet letter A, fantastically embroidered in gold thread, upon her breast. Could this be true? She clasped the little creature so tightly to her bosom that it made her cry out; then she lowered her eyes, and fixed them upon the scarlet letter, and even felt it with her fingers, to make sure that both the child and the shame to which she was exposed were real. Yes, they were real—all else was gone! Chapter 3. RECOGNITION. From this intense sensation and conviction of being the object of the stern, searching glances of the whole world, the woman of the scarlet letter was at last awakened by the perception, in the rearmost ranks of the crowd, of a figure which irresistibly preyed upon her thoughts. There stood an Indian in the dress of his tribe; but copper-skinned men were not so uncommon visitors in the English colonies, that the presence of one could have engaged Hester’s attention under these circumstances, much less distracted her from the thoughts that preoccupied her mind. Beside the Indian, and evidently in his company, was a white man, dressed in a strange mixture of semi-civilized and semi-savage attire. He was of small stature, with a countenance furrowed by numerous wrinkles, yet which could not be called that of an old man. His facial features revealed a remarkable intelligence, like that of someone who had so cultivated his mental faculties that the physical part could not help but adapt to them and reveal itself through unmistakable features. Although, thanks to an apparent disorder of his heterogeneous clothing, he had tried to hide or disguise a certain peculiarity of his figure, It was obvious to Esther that one of this man’s shoulders was higher than the other. No sooner had she perceived that thin face and that slight deformity of figure than she clasped the child to her breast with such convulsive force that the poor little creature gave another cry of pain. But the mother did not seem to hear him. From the moment he arrived at the market-place, and some time before she had seen him, this stranger had fixed his gaze on Esther. At first, in a careless manner, like a man accustomed to directing his gaze mainly within himself, and to whom external things are a matter of little consequence unless they are connected with something that disturbs his spirit. Soon, however, his glances became fixed and penetrating. A kind of horror, one might say, visibly twisted his face, like a serpent lightly gliding over his features, pausing briefly and verifying all its convolutions in the light of day. His face darkened with some powerful emotion, which he was nevertheless able to subdue instantly by an effort of will, and to such an extent that, except for a brief instant, the expression of his countenance would have seemed perfectly tranquil. After a brief moment, the convulsion was almost imperceptible, until at last it completely vanished. When he saw that Esther’s eyes had fixed on his, and perceived that she seemed to recognize him, he slowly and quietly raised his finger, made a sign with it in the air, and raised it to his lips. Then, touching one of the persons by his side on the shoulder, he addressed him with the greatest civility, saying: “I beg you, good sir, to tell me who this woman is, and why she is being thus exposed to public shame? ” “You must be a stranger who is new to the scene, my friend,” replied the man, casting a curious glance at the questioner and his savage companion, “else you would have heard of Lady Hester Prynne and her misdeeds. She has caused a great scandal in the holy man Dimmesdale’s church. ” “Indeed,” replied the other, “I am a stranger here; and much against my will have been wandering about the world, and having suffered every kind of misfortune by sea and land. I have been a long time a captive among savages, and I am now come with this Indian to redeem myself. Will you, therefore, be so good as to tell me the crimes of Hester Prynne, I believe, for that is her name, and tell me what brought her to this table?” “With great pleasure, my friend, and I think you will be exceedingly glad, after all you have suffered among the savages,” said the narrator, “to find yourself at last in a land where iniquity is pursued and punished in the presence of the rulers and the people, as is the practice here in our good New England. You must know, sir, that this woman was the wife of a certain wise man, an Englishman by birth, but who had lived a long time in Amsterdam, from whence, years ago, he contemplated coming to settle his fate among us here in Massachusetts. For this purpose, he first sent his wife, remaining in Europe while he arranged certain affairs. But during the two years or more that the woman has resided in this city of Boston, no news has been received of the wise gentleman, Mr. Prynne; and his young wife, having been left to her own errant course… ” “Ah! ah!” interrupted the stranger with a bitter smile. A man as wise as the one you speak of should have learned that from his books as well. And who, my excellent sir, is said to be the father of the little creature, who seems to be three or four months old, and whom Mrs. Prynne is holding in her arms? “In truth, my friend, the matter remains an enigma, and someone who can solve it remains to be found,” replied the interlocutor. “Madame Hester refuses to speak at all, and the magistrates have been racking their brains in vain. It would not be surprising that the culprit was present.” contemplating this sad spectacle, unknown to men, but forgetting that God is watching him. “The wise husband,” said the stranger with another smile, “should come and unravel this enigma. ” “It would be well for him to do so, if he still lives,” replied the neighbor. “Know ,
my good friend, that the magistrates of our Massachusetts, considering that this woman is young and beautiful, and that the temptation that made her fall was undoubtedly too powerful, and considering, moreover, that her husband lies at the bottom of the sea, have not had the courage to make her feel the full rigor of our just laws. The punishment for this offense is death . But moved by compassion and mercy, they have condemned Madame Esther to remain standing on the platform of the pillory for only three hours, and after that, and for the whole time of her natural life, to wear a mark of ignominy on the body of her dress.” “A very wise sentence,” observed the stranger, bowing his head gravely. “Thus it will be a sort of living sermon against sin, until the ignominious letter is engraved on the stone of her tomb. It grieves me, however, that the companion in her iniquity was not, at least, at her side upon that scaffold. But who he is, we shall know! Who he is, we shall know!” He courteously greeted the communicative neighbor, and, saying a few words in a low voice to his companion the Indian, they made their way together through the midst of the crowd. While this was going on, Esther had remained on her pedestal, her gaze fixed upon the stranger; so fixed was her gaze that it seemed as if all other objects of the visible world had disappeared, leaving only he and she. This solitary interview would perhaps have been more terrible than to see him, as was now the case, with the burning midday sun scorching her face and illuminating her shame. With the scarlet letter, as an emblem of ignominy, on her breast; with the child, born in sin, in her arms; with the whole town, gathered there as if at a festival, fixing their pitiless gazes on a face that should have been seen alone in the soft glow of the domestic fire, in the shadow of a happy hearth, or under the bridal veil in church. But however terrible her situation was, she knew that the very presence of those thousands of witnesses was a kind of shelter and refuge for her. It was better to be thus, with so many people mediating between him and her, than to see each other face to face and alone. It may be said that she sought a refuge in her very exposure to public shame , and that she dreaded the moment when that protection would fail her. Overcome by these thoughts, she scarcely heard a voice that resounded behind her, repeating her name several times in such a vigorous and solemn accent that it was heard by the whole crowd. “Hear me, Hester Prynne!” came the voice. As has been stated, directly above the platform on which Hester stood was a sort of small balcony or open gallery, which was the place where proclamations and orders were issued, with all the ceremony and pomp customary on such occasions in those days. Here, as witnesses of the scene we are describing, stood Governor Bellingham, with four mace-bearers at his chair, each armed with halberds, constituting his guard of honor. A dark plume adorned his hat; his mantle was embroidered at the edges, and beneath it he wore a suit of green velvet. He was an elderly gentleman, with a wrinkled face that bespoke much bitter experience of life. He was a man fit to be at the head of a community which owes its origin and progress, and its present development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the stern and temperate energy of manhood and the somber sagacity of old age; having accomplished so much precisely because he imagined and hoped for so little. The other eminent persons who surrounded the Governor were distinguished by a certain dignity of bearing, appropriate to a period in which the forms of authority seemed invested with the sacredness of a divine institution. They were Undoubtedly, good, just, and sensible men; but it would hardly have been possible to select, from the whole human family, an equal number of wise and virtuous men, and at the same time less capable of understanding the heart of a wayward woman, and of separating within it the good from the evil, than these sensible persons of stern countenance to whom Hester now turned her face. It may be said that the unhappy woman was conscious that if there was any compassion for her, it must rather be expected from the crowd, for as she turned her eyes to the little balcony, she all trembled and turned pale. The voice that had attracted her attention was that of the reverend and famous John Wilson, the senior clergyman of Boston, a great scholar, like most of his contemporaries in the same profession, and yet a man of affable and natural disposition. These latter qualities, however, had not been developed to match his intellectual powers. There he stood with the locks of his hair, already quite gray, projecting from under the brim of his hat; while her brown eyes , accustomed to the veiled light of her study, blinked like those of the child in Esther before the bright sunshine. She resembled one of those somber portraits we see engraved in old volumes of sermons; and, to speak the truth, with as much aptitude for treating of the faults, passions, and anguish of the human heart as one of those portraits could possess. “Esther Prynne,” said the clergyman, “I have been conversing with this young brother whose teachings you have been privileged to enjoy”—and here Mr. Wilson laid his hand on the shoulder of a pale young man who stood by her— “I have endeavored, I say, to persuade this pious young man, that here in the face of heaven, and before these righteous and wise authorities and this people assembled, he may address you, and speak to you of the ugliness and blackness of your sin.” Knowing better than I the temper of your spirit, he could also, better than I, know what reasons to employ to overcome your hardness and obstinacy, so that you will no longer conceal the name of him who has tempted you to this grievous fall. But with the extreme gentleness of his youth, notwithstanding the maturity of his spirit, he replies that it would be contrary to the innate feelings of a woman to force her to disclose the secrets of her heart in the light of day, and in the presence of so vast a multitude. I have tried to convince him that shame consists in committing the sin and not in confessing it. What
decide you, Brother Dimmesdale? Will you address yourself to the soul of this poor sinner, or shall I? There was a murmur among the dignified and reverend occupants of the little balcony; and Governor Bellingham expressed the general desire, speaking with an accent of authority, yet with respect, to the young clergyman to whom he addressed himself. “My good Lord Dimmesdale,” he said, “the responsibility of the salvation of this woman’s soul rests largely upon you. It therefore belongs to you to exhort her to repentance and confession.” The directness of these words drew the eyes of the whole crowd to the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, a young clergyman who had come from one of the great English universities, bringing all the learning of his time to our forests and wild lands. His eloquence and religious fervor had made him eminent in his profession. He was a person of remarkable appearance, with a white and high forehead, large, melancholy gray eyes, and a mouth whose lips, unless kept almost closed by force, had a certain tendency to move, expressing at the same time a nervous sensitiveness and great self-control. Despite his many natural gifts and vast knowledge, there was something in the appearance of this young minister that suggested a timid, timid, easily alarmed person, as if he were a being who felt himself completely lost on the path of human life and did not know which way to turn, feeling at ease and content only in a secluded place of his own choosing. Therefore, as far as his duties permitted, his existence glided along, as if We might say, in the gloom, having retained all the simplicity and candor of childhood; emerging from that sort of shadow, when the opportunity presented itself, with such freshness, fragrance, and purity of thought, as people declared, as if they had the effect that the word of an angel would produce. Such was the young minister to whom the Reverend Mr. Wilson and the Governor had called the attention of the public, by asking him to speak, in the presence of all, of the mystery of a woman’s soul, so sacred even in the midst of its fall. The difficulty and painful nature of the position thus created for him made the blood rush to his cheeks and make his lips tremble. “Speak to that woman, Brother,” said Mr. Wilson. “It is of the greatest importance to her soul, and therefore, as our worthy Governor says, important also to yours, in whose charge is that woman’s. Exhort her to confess the truth.” The Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale bowed his head as if in prayer, and then stepped forward. “Esther Prynne,” said he, leaning upon the little balcony and looking deeply into the woman’s eyes, “you have heard what this just man has said, and you see the responsibility that rests upon me. If you think it is conducive to the peace of your soul, and that your earthly punishment will thereby be the more effectual to your salvation, I pray you will reveal the name of your companion in guilt and suffering. Let not a misguided pity and compassion for him make you silent; for, believe me, Esther, were he to descend from a high place, and place himself beside you on that same pedestal of shame, yet were it far better for him to do so, than to conceal a guilty heart all his life long. What can your silence do for that man but tempt, yea, compel him to add hypocrisy to sin?” Heaven has granted you a public ignominy, that you may thereby achieve a public triumph over the evil that may be in you. Consider what you do, by denying to one who perhaps has not the courage to take it for himself, the bitter but wholesome cup now presented to your lips. The young minister’s voice, as he spoke these words, was tremulously sweet, rich, deep, and broken. The emotion so evidently expressed, rather than the meaning of the words, struck a deep note in the hearts of all present, and they were moved with the same sentiment of compassion. Even the poor little creature whom Hester clasped to her bosom seemed affected by the same influence, for she turned her eyes towards Mr. Dimmesdale and lifted her tender little arms with a murmur half pleasing, half plaintive. So vehement did the people find the young minister’s address, that they all believed that Esther would either pronounce the name of the guilty party, or that the latter himself, however high or low his position, would, under some inward and irresistible impulse, come forward and mount the platform where the unhappy woman lay. Esther shook her head in the negative. “Woman! Do not abuse the mercy of heaven,” cried the Reverend Mr. Wilson, in a harsher tone than before. “That tender child, with her faint little voice, hath supported and confirmed the advice which thou hast heard from the lips of the Reverend Dimmesdale. Speak the name! That, and thy repentance, may avail thee of the scarlet letter upon thy gown. ” “Never! never!” replied Esther, fixing her eyes, not on Mr. Wilson, but on the deep, troubled eyes of the young minister. “It is graven too deeply. You cannot tear it out.” And would I could bear his agony as I bear mine own! “Speak, woman,” said another voice, cold and stern, from the crowd about the platform. “Speak; and give thy daughter a father. ” “I will not speak,” replied Hester, turning pale as death, but answering that voice which she certainly recognized. “And my daughter shall seek a heavenly father: she shall never know an earthly one. ” “She will not speak!” murmured Mr. Dimmesdale, who, leaning on the balcony, with her hand on her heart, had been awaiting the outcome of her speech. “Wonderful strength and generosity of a woman’s heart! She will not speak!” And he drew back, breathing deeply. Understanding the poor guilty woman’s state of mind, the senior minister, who had prepared himself for the occasion, addressed the crowd in a discourse on sin in all its ramifications, frequently alluding to the ignominious letter. He dwelt with such vigor upon this symbol during the hour or more of his peroration, that it struck terror into the imaginations of those present, to whom it seemed as if its scarlet glow proceeded from the flames of the infernal pit. Meanwhile, Hesther remained standing on her pedestal of shame, with a vague look and a general air of weary indifference. She had suffered that morning all that human nature can endure, and as her temperament was not one of those that faints from too intense a suffering, her spirit could only find relief under a cloak of marble-like insensibility, so long as her bodily strength remained intact. In this condition, although the orator’s voice thundered relentlessly, Esther’s ears perceived nothing. During the latter part of the speech, the child filled the air with her cries and moans; the mother tried mechanically to silence her, apparently unaffected by the little creature’s uneasiness. With the same harsh indifference, she was led back to her prison and disappeared from public view behind the iron door. Those who could follow her with their eyes reported, in very low voices, that the scarlet letter was shedding a sinister glow along the dark passage that led into the prison. Chapter 4. THE INTERVIEW. After her return to prison , Esther’s state of nervous agitation became such that the most assiduous vigilance became necessary to prevent her from attempting anything against her person, or from in a fit of rage doing any harm to the poor little creature. As night approached , and finding that she could not be reduced to obedience by either reproof or threats of punishment, the jailer thought it advisable to send for a physician, whom he described as a man highly skilled in all the Christian arts of physical science, and at the same time well acquainted with all that the savages could teach in the matter of medicinal herbs and roots growing in the woods. Indeed, not only Esther, but much more the tender child, was in urgent need of a physician’s assistance; The child, deriving her sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed to have drunk in all the anguish, despair, and agitation that filled her mother’s soul, and was now writhing in convulsions of pain. She was, in a small way, a vivid image of the moral agony through which Esther had passed for so many hours. Following close behind the jailer into that gloomy dwelling, entered the singular-looking individual whose presence in the crowd had made so deep an impression upon the wearer of the scarlet letter. He had been lodged in the jail, not because he was suspected of any crime, but as the most convenient and comfortable mode of disposing of him until the magistrates had conferred with the Indian chiefs about a ransom. His name was given to be Roger Chillingworth. The jailer, after ushering him into the room, remained there for a moment, surprised at the comparative calm his entrance had caused , for Esther had immediately become as quiet as death, although the little creature continued to fuss. “I beg you, my friend, to leave me alone with the sick woman,” said the doctor. ” Believe me, good jailer, there will soon be peace in this house; and I promise you that Mrs. Prynne will henceforth show herself more docile to authority and more tractable than hitherto. ” “If your lordship can accomplish that,” replied the jailer, “I shall consider you a man of undoubted ability. Truly this woman has behaved herself as if possessed by the evil enemy; and I was almost determined to expel Satan from her body and whip her. The stranger had entered the room with the tranquility characteristic of the profession to which he professed to belong. Nor did his appearance change when the jailer’s withdrawal left him face to face with the woman who had recognized him in the midst of the crowd, and whose profound abstraction upon recognizing him indicated great intimacy between them. His first care was to attend to the tender little creature, whose cries, as she writhed on her bed, made it absolutely necessary to postpone all other matters to the task of calming her pains. He examined her carefully and then proceeded to open a leather bag, which he carried under his dress, which seemed to contain medicines, one of which he mixed with a little water in a cup. “My earlier studies in alchemy,” he said by way of observation, “and my residence of more than a year among a people well versed in the properties of herbs, have made me a better physician than many who have graduated. Listen, woman, the child is yours; she has nothing of mine, nor will she recognize my voice or my face as those of a father. Administer this potion to her with your own hands.” Esther rejected the medicine presented to her, while at the same time, with visible fear, her gaze rested on the man’s face. “Would you seek revenge on the innocent child?” she said in a low voice. “Mad woman!” replied the doctor, in a tone somewhere between cold and soft. “What profit would it be to me to harm this poor, bastard child? The medicine is good and beneficial; and if she were my daughter, my own daughter as well as yours, I could do nothing better for her benefit.” As Hester was still hesitating, not being really in her right mind at that moment , the physician took the child in his arms and himself administered the potion, which soon showed its efficacy. The groans of the little sufferer subsided, her convulsions gradually ceased; and in a few moments, as is the custom of tender children after they are freed from pain, she was plunged into a profound sleep. The physician, for such he may with full justice be called, then turned his attention to the mother. Calmly and slowly , he examined her, took her pulse, glanced into her eyes—a look that oppressed her heart and made her shudder, so familiar, yet so strange and cold, and finally, satisfied with the results of his search, he proceeded to prepare another potion. “I do not know where to find Lethe and Nepentes,” he said, “but I have learned many new secrets among the savages.” And this recipe, which an Indian gave me in exchange for some of my lessons, as old as Paracelsus, is one of those secrets. Drink this. It will, however, be less soothing than a clean and pure conscience; but I cannot give you that. It will still the turmoil of your chest and the surges of your passion, just as oil thrown upon the waves of a stormy sea. He presented the cup to Esther, who received it, looking at him steadily, slowly and seriously; not exactly with a look of fear, but full of doubt, as if questioning him about what his intentions could be, and at the same time she also glanced at the sleeping little girl. “I have thought of death,” she said, “I have desired it, I would even have prayed for it, if I could pray for anything. However, if death is contained in this cup, I ask you to reflect on it before you see me drink it. Look: I have already raised it to my lips.” “Drink, then,” replied the physician, with the same air of calm and coldness as before. “Do you know me so little, Esther? Could my purposes be so vain? Even if I were to imagine a means of revenge, what could better serve my ends than to let you live, and to give you these medicines against everything that might endanger your life, so that this burning ignominy may continue to glow in your breast?” As he spoke thus, he touched with his forefinger the scarlet letter, which seemed to scorch Esther’s breast as if it had indeed been an iron. hot. The doctor noticed her involuntary gesture and with a smile said: “Live, yes, live; and bear this sign with you before the eyes of men and women—before the eyes of him whom you called your husband—before the eyes of that little girl. And that you may live, take this medicine.” Without saying a word, Esther drained the cup and, obeying a sign from the man of science, sat down on the bed where the little girl slept, while he, taking the only chair in the room, sat down beside her. She could not help trembling at these preparations, for she understood that, having already done everything that humanity, or duty, or, if you will, a refined cruelty obliged him to do to relieve her physical pain, he was now going to treat her like a man whom he had offended in the most profound and irreparable way. “Esther,” he said, “I do not ask for what reasons, nor how you have fallen into the abyss, or rather, how you have risen to the pedestal of infamy on which I have found you. The reason is easy to find. It has been my madness and your weakness. I—a man given to study, a true bookworm —a man already in the decline of his years, who spent the best days of his life feeding his devouring desire for knowledge—what had I to do with beauty and youth like yours? Deformed from birth, how could I have deluded myself with the idea that intellectual gifts could, in the fancy of a young maiden, cast a veil over physical deformities? Men call me wise. If wise men were sane in what concerns them, I should have foreseen all this.” I should have known that, as I left the vast and gloomy forest to enter this Christian settlement, the first object my eyes would encounter would be you, Esther, standing like a statue of ignominy, exposed to the eyes of the people. Yes, from the moment we left the church, now united by the bonds of matrimony, I should have beheld the burning flame of that scarlet letter shining at the end of our path. “You know,” said Esther, “who, despite her state of dejection , could not bear this final blow that reminded her of her shame, you know that I was frank with you. I felt no love, nor did I pretend to have any. ” “It is true,” replied the doctor, “it was my madness! I have already said so. But, up to that time in my life, I had lived in vain. The world had seemed so sad to me!” My heart was like a dwelling large enough to accommodate many guests, but cold and lonely. I longed for a home, to experience its warmth. Old, warped, and gloomy as it was, it did not seem to me an extravagant dream that I too could enjoy this simple happiness, scattered everywhere, which all humanity can enjoy. And
so, Esther, I harbored you in the recesses of my heart and tried to enliven yours with that flame which your presence had kindled in my breast. “I have wronged you greatly,” Esther murmured. “We have wronged each other,” the physician replied. “The first error and wrong was mine, when I brought your blossoming youth into a false and unnatural relationship with my decadence. Therefore, as a man who has neither thought nor philosophized in vain, I seek no revenge, I harbor no evil designs against you. Between you and me the scales are perfectly balanced.” But, Esther, the man who has wronged us both lives. Who is he? ‘ ‘Do not ask me,’ replied Esther, looking firmly into his face. ‘That you will never know. ‘ ‘Never, you say?’ rejoined the physician, with a bitter smile of self-confidence. ‘Never know? Believe me, Esther, there are few things,’ whether in the outer world, or at some depth in the invisible sphere of thought, ‘few things, I repeat, that remain hidden from the man who is seriously and tirelessly engaged in the solution of a mystery. You may hide your secret from the searching eyes of the multitude. You may hide it also from the inquiries of the ministers and magistrates, as you did today when they sought to extort that name from yours. ‘ heart and give you a partner on your pedestal. But as for me, I will dedicate myself to the investigation with senses they do not possess. I will search for this man as I have searched for the truth in books; as I have searched for gold in alchemy. There is a hidden sympathy that will make him known to me . I will see him tremble. I myself, upon seeing him, will feel myself shudder suddenly and without knowing why. Sooner or later, he must be mine. The doctor’s eyes, fixed on Esther’s face, shone with such intensity that she put her hands to her heart as if fearing that she might discover the secret there at that very moment. “You don’t want to reveal his name? However, I will know it anyway ,” continued the doctor with a look full of confidence, as if fate had decreed it thus. He does not wear any infamous letter embroidered on his clothes, like you; but I will read it in his heart. But do not fear for him. Do not think that I will interfere with the retribution that Heaven will exact, or that I will deliver him into the clutches of human justice. Do not imagine that I will attempt anything against his life; no, not even against his reputation, if, as I judge, he is a man of good repute. I will let him live: I will let him wrap himself in the cloak of his outward honor, if he can. Nevertheless, he will be mine. “Your actions seem merciful,” said Esther, bewildered and terrified, “but your words make you horrible. ” “One thing I will recommend to you, you who were my wife,” said the wise man. “You have kept the secret of your accomplice: keep mine also. No one knows me on this earth. Tell no human being that you once called me your husband. Here, on this strip of land, I will pitch my tent; “For having been a stranger everywhere, and having lived far from human interests, I have found here a woman, a man, and a tender little girl between whom and I exist the closest ties imaginable. Whether they be of love or hate , just or unjust, it matters not. You and yours, Esther, belong to me. My home is where you are and where he is. But do not sell me! ” “Why do you wish this?” asked Esther, refusing, without knowing why, to accept this secret agreement. “Why do you not announce yourself publicly and be rid of me at once? ” “I might be moved to do so,” replied the doctor, “not to risk the dishonor that stains the husband of an unfaithful woman. I might be moved by other reasons as well. It is enough for you to know that my purpose is to live and die unknown. Therefore, your husband must remain to the world a man already dead, of whom no news will ever be received.” Do not recognize me by a word, a sign, or a look. Do not reveal your secret to anyone, especially not to the man you know. If you fail me in this—woe to you! His fame and name, his position, his life, will be in my hands! Guard yourself against it! “I will keep your secret, as I keep his,” said Hester. “Swear it,” replied the other. And she took the oath. “And now, Hester,” said old Roger Chillingworth, as he was to be called henceforth, “I leave you alone: alone with your daughter and the scarlet letter. What is this, Hester? Does the sentence oblige you to sleep with the letter? Are you not afraid that nightmares and horrible dreams will assail you?” “Why do you look at me and smile like that?” asked Esther, all worried at the expression in his eyes. “Are you like the Black Man who roams the forests around us? Have you induced me to accept a pact that will result in the loss of my soul? ” “Not your soul,” answered the doctor with another smile. “No; not your soul!” Chapter 5. Esther, Needle in Hand. The term of imprisonment to which Esther was condemned having ended, the prison doors were opened and she came out into the light of the sun, which, shining equally for all, seemed nevertheless to her morbid imagination to have been created for the sole purpose of revealing the scarlet letter she wore on the bosom of her garment. Perhaps she suffered morally more when, having crossed the threshold of the prison, she began to move freely and alone, not in the midst of the crowd and spectacle described here, where her shame was made public and where everyone pointed their fingers at her. At that time, she was sustained by a supernatural tension of nerves and all the fighting energy of her character, which helped her transform that scene into a kind of gloomy triumph. It was, moreover, an isolated and singular event that would occur only once in her life; and to face it, she had to expend all the vital force that would have sufficed for many years of tranquility and calm. The same law that condemned her had sustained her during the terrible ordeal of her ignominy. But now, out of prison, alone and unaccompanied on the path of life, a new existence began for her, and she had to sustain herself and continue forward with the resources provided by her own nature, or else succumb. She could not count on the future to bear her present pain. Tomorrow would bring its share of grief, and so would the next and the ones after that: each would bring its own sorrow, which, in essence, was nevertheless the same one that now seemed so immensely painful. The years to come would follow one another, and she would have to continue carrying the same burden, never being able to throw it off ; for the succession of days and years would only pile misery upon ignominy. During all that time, Esther, stripping herself of her own individuality, would become the living example that moralists and preachers could use to glorify their images of feminine fragility and sinful passion. I would tell the young and the pure to look upon the scarlet letter that shone in her bosom, to look upon that woman, the daughter of honest parents, the mother of a little child who would later also be a woman, to remember that she had once been innocent, and to see in her now the image, the incarnation, the reality of sin; and upon her grave, the infamy that had attended her in life would also be her only monument. It will seem surprising, that with the world open before her, with no restraint in her sentence to prevent her from leaving that obscure and remote Puritan colony and returning to the place of her birth, or to any other European country, and there concealing herself and her identity, under a new exterior, as if she were beginning another existence altogether ; and having also within her reach the gloomy and almost impenetrable woods, where the impetuousness of her spiritual being might be assimilated to the people whose customs and life had nothing in common with the law that condemned her; it will seem surprising, I repeat, that this woman could still give the name of home to that spot where she was to be the type of ignominy. But there is a kind of fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable, having all the force of destiny, that it almost invariably compels men to remain and wander, ghost-like, in the very spot where some great and notable event has influenced the course of their lives, and which is all the more irresistible the more somber its influence has been. Her sin, her ignominy, were the roots that held her to that soil, which had become Hester’s permanent and final home. All other places in the world, even that English village where her happy childhood and immaculate youth had been, had become strange things. The ties that bound her to this new soil were formed of iron links that penetrated into the inmost depths of her soul, and were never broken. It might also be–and doubtless it was, though she concealed it from herself , and grew pale as it struggled out of her heart like a snake out of its hole–it might also be that some other sentiment kept her in the place which had been so fatal to her. There dwelt, there passed his life, someone to whom she considered herself bound by ties which, though not acknowledged on earth, would bring them together to the tribunal of the final judgment, where they would be bound together forever. a common future of inextinguishable retribution. The tempter of mankind had repeatedly presented this idea to Esther’s mind, and he laughed at the passionate, yet despairing, joy with which she at first welcomed it, and then strove to reject it. No sooner had she entertained such an idea than she sought to destroy it. What she finally wanted to believe, what she herself considered the supreme reason for continuing to live in that place, was partly true and partly an illusion with which she tried to deceive herself. Here, she said to herself, I committed my sin, and here my earthly punishment must be carried out; and perhaps in this way the tortures of her daily ignominy would finally purify her soul, giving it a new purity in exchange for that which she had lost, all the more sacred since it would be the result of martyrdom. Consequently, Esther did not move from there. On the edge of the town, though not in the immediate vicinity of any habitation, stood a hut or cabin, built by one of the first settlers and abandoned because the land was too barren for cultivation. Its isolation and distance from the town placed it outside the circle of social activity already evident in the settlers’ customs. That small dwelling stood on the seashore, half hidden by a grove of not very large trees; and in that solitary place, with the few resources she possessed, and thanks to the permission of the magistrates who still exercised a kind of inquisitorial surveillance over Esther, she settled with her little daughter. A vague idea of something mysterious and unknown immediately became associated with that place . The children, too tender to understand why this woman was separated from the rest of her fellows, crept as close as possible to see her busy with her needle, sitting at the window of her cottage, or standing at the door, or working in the little garden, or strolling in the path that led to the town; and when they beheld the scarlet letter on the bosom of her garment, they would run away with a strange and contagious fear. Solitary as Esther was, and though she had not a friend on earth who dared to visit her, she was not in danger of suffering want. She possessed an art sufficient to provide for herself and her little daughter, even in a country that offered comparatively few opportunities for its practice. An art which at that time, as now, was almost the only one available to womanhood—sewing. She carried within her bosom, in the exquisitely embroidered lettering, a sample of her delicate skill and inventiveness, which the ladies of the court themselves would have rejoiced in adding to their rich silk and gold fabrics the even more precious adornments of human art. It is true that, given the simplicity of the black gown that generally characterized the Puritan fashions of that time, there would not have been many occasions on which Esther could display her talents with the needle; however , the taste of the time, which delighted in what was complicated in this kind of work, could not help but exert its influence on those stern Puritan ancestors, who had shed so many things that today seem very difficult to renounce. Public ceremonies, such as the installation of magistrates, and whatever might add majesty to the manner in which a new governor was presented to the people, were distinguished by imposing ceremony and a somber but studied magnificence. Large collars or collars, intricately worked sashes, and luxuriously embroidered gloves were absolutely necessary for high officials when they took charge of the reins of power; and their use was also permitted to individuals distinguished by their position or wealth, although sumptuary laws prohibited these and similar luxuries to commoners. At funerals, either on the clothing of the deceased, or to express the grief of the deceased through a variety of emblematic signs of black cloth and white linen, Among the survivors, there was also a frequent demand for the kind of work Esther could supply. Diapers and skirts for infants, for at that time children of tender age wore full gowns, also offered opportunities for delicate needlework. Little by little, though not very slowly, Esther’s work became fashionable, as they say today, either out of compassion for a woman whose fate had been so unfortunate, or out of the morbid curiosity that gives a fictitious value to things common or that have none, or because then, as now, certain people were granted , for whatever reason, what others solicit in vain, or because Esther truly filled a void that was felt. It is certain that she found frequent employment for her needle, and well paid. Perhaps vanity chose, as a means of mortifying herself, to bring the ornaments wrought by her sinful hands to the pomp and ceremonies of state. Her work was seen on the Governor’s collar; The military displayed it on their bands and sashes; the altar minister also displayed it in his austere attire; it adorned the caps of newborns, and even the coffins of those being carried to burial. But not a single instance is recorded in which Esther’s skill was called upon to embroider the white veil that was to cover the modest face of a bride being led to the altar. This exception indicated the inextinguishable rigor with which society reproved her sin. Esther sought to acquire nothing beyond what was necessary for her subsistence, her nature being of the simplest and most ascetic nature possible in her regard; and for her daughter, she provided very simple, though abundant, food. The dresses she wore were made of the coarsest fabrics and the most somber colors, with a single ornament—the scarlet letter—which she was condemned to wear forever. The child’s little dress , on the other hand, was distinguished by a certain whimsical, or rather, fantastic, cut and adornments, which served to enhance a kind of airy charm that began to be noticed very early in the little creature, who also displayed signs of profound seriousness. We will speak of this later. Except for the small sum Esther dedicated to her daughter’s adornment, she spent the rest on charitable works for unfortunates less unfortunate than herself, who frequently insulted the hand that helped them. Much of the time that she could have devoted to more productive labors was spent making dresses of coarse fabric for the poor. It is likely that she associated this kind of occupation with an idea of penance, and that by devoting so many hours to this rough labor, she offered them as a kind of sacrifice of other pleasures. There was something of the rich and voluptuous oriental nature in Hester’s nature , a taste for all that was splendorous and beautiful, which, except in the exquisite productions of her needle, she found no means of exercising. Women find in the delicate work of the needle a pleasure incomprehensible to the stronger sex. For Hester, it was perhaps a way of expressing the passion of her life, and therefore of calming it. Like all other pleasures, she rejected this passion as a sin. Such a morbid intervention of conscience in trifling matters might well be considered an indication of a penitence that was neither genuine nor constant, but rather something dubious, and which, at bottom, was not what it ought to be. Thus Hester Prynne had her part to play in the world. Thanks to the natural energy of her character, and to her rare intelligence, it was not possible to completely isolate her from society, although it had marked her with a mark more intolerable to the heart of a woman than the one engraved on the forehead of Cain. In all her relations with that society, however, there was nothing to make her understand that she belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the very silence of those with whom she came in contact, frequently implied and expressed the idea that she was banished, and as isolated as if inhabited another sphere. She felt estranged from the moral interests of her fellow men, though so near to them, like a spirit returning to the domestic hearth, unable to make itself seen or felt; unable to share its joys or its sorrows; and, had it so far as to manifest the feelings which were forbidden to it, it would have been to awaken only terror and horrible repugnance. And indeed, this, and the bitterest contempt, seemed to be all that remained for her in the hearts of her fellow citizens. This was not an age of delicacy and refinement of manners; and although Hester was fully aware of her position, and in no danger of her forgetting it, it was frequently made to feel rudely, and when she least expected it. The poor, as we have already said, whom she had made the object of her kindness and beneficence, often stifled the hand extended to their aid. The high-class ladies whose homes she entered to perform her needlework were accustomed to distil bitter drops in her heart; sometimes, thanks to that secret and refined alchemy with which a woman can infiltrate a subtle poison extracted from the most trivial things; and at other times, with a harshness of expression that fell upon the defenseless breast of that unfortunate woman like a blow struck upon a festering wound. Esther had long mastered the art of suffering in silence: she never responded to these attacks except with a blush that irresistibly reddened her pale cheek and then disappeared into the depths of her soul. She was patient, a true martyr; But she refrained from praying for her enemies, for fear that, despite her good intentions, the words with which she implored a blessing for them might irremediably turn into a curse. Continually, and in a thousand ways, she experienced the innumerable torments that the imperishable sentence of the Puritan tribunal had devised for her. The ministers of the altar stopped in the middle of the street to address her with words of exhortation, which drew a relentless crowd around the poor sinner. If she entered church on Sundays, trusting in the mercy of the Universal Father, it was often, through her bad luck, to find herself become the subject of a sermon. She came to possess a real terror of the children, who had conceived, thanks to their parents’ conversations, a vague idea that there was something horrible about this sad woman who glided silently through the streets of the town, alone with her only daughter. Thus , at first allowing her to pass, they pursued her at some distance with shrill shrieks, uttering a word whose exact meaning they could not understand, but which was none the less dreadful to Hester, coming from unconscious lips. It seemed to indicate such a diffusion of her ignominy as if it were known to all nature; and it could not have caused her deeper grief had she heard the leaves of the trees relate to one another the sombre tale of her fall, or the summer breezes whisper it, or the winter south winds proclaim it with their tempestuous voices. Another peculiar kind of torture the poor woman experienced was when she saw a new face, when strangers fixed their curious eyes on the scarlet letter, which no one failed to do, and it was to her as if a hot iron were applied to her heart. Then she could scarcely restrain the impulse to cover the fatal symbol with her hands, though she never did so. But people accustomed to contemplating that sign of ignominy could also make her suffer intense agony. From the first moment that the letter became an integral part of her dress, Esther had experienced the secret terror that a human eye was always fixed on the sad emblem: her sensitivity in this particular, far from diminishing with the The pain of the letter, which was constantly increasing, was aggravated by the daily torment she endured. But now and then, perhaps at intervals of many days, or perhaps of several months, she felt as if a glance—a compassionate glance —had been fixed upon the infamous letter; and this seemed to give her a momentary relief, as if someone shared half her agony. But an instant later it was redoubled with renewed pain, for in that brief moment she had sinned again. Had Hester sinned alone? Her imagination was somewhat affected, and had she possessed less intellectual and moral fiber, it would have been much more affected, in consequence of the solitude and the continual anguish in which she lived. Going out into the small external world with which she was associated, and returning to her own dwelling, and always solitary in these walks, Hester believed, or fancied she believed, that the scarlet letter had endowed her with a new sense. She shuddered to think, and could not help thinking, that it gave her a kind of intuitive knowledge of the secret faults of other souls. The revelations thus presented to her filled her with terror. And what were they? But what could they be but the insidious insinuations of the evil angel, who would have persuaded this struggling woman, who was only half his victim, that the outward appearance of purity was a lie, and that if the truth were known, the scarlet letter would shine on more than one breast, and not only on that of Hester Prynne? Was she to receive these dark insinuations as if they were real and positive? This sort of supernatural sense with which she believed herself endowed was the most terrible and intolerable thing she had ever experienced in the course of her wretched existence. It filled her with perplexity and unease, for at times that red mark of infamy on the breast of her gown seemed to throb and stir when Esther passed by some venerable ecclesiastic or magistrate, models of piety and justice, whom the world regarded as the companions of angels. “What wicked man passes by me?” Esther asked herself. And raising her head in disgust, she saw that there was no human being in those surroundings but this man whom everyone considered a saint. At other times, she thought she had a sister in guilt at her side, and when she raised her eyes, she came across the form of a devout and harsh matron, whose heart, according to public belief, had been a piece of ice all her life. What did that ice on the matron’s breast and Esther’s burning disgrace have in common? At other times the electric thrill would give her the signal, as if to say, “Here, behold, you have a companion,” and raising her eyes, she would see a young maiden stealthily gazing at the scarlet letter, and quickly walk away with a slight blush on her cheeks, as if her purity had been marred by that instantaneous glimpse. Such lack of faith in the virtue of others is one of the saddest consequences of sin. But a proof that in this poor victim of her own frailty and of the harshness of human laws, corruption had made little progress, consisted in the constant struggle of her mind to believe that no mortal was as guilty as herself. The vulgar, who in those rude times always added the element of the grotesque to whatever struck their imagination, had invented a story about the scarlet letter, which we might easily convert into a terrible legend. They affirmed that this symbol was not merely a scarlet cloth, dyed with a color that was the work of man, but that the fiery red was produced by the fires of hell, and could be seen to shine in all its brilliance when Esther walked alone near her dwelling during the night. Chapter 6. PEARL. So far we have spoken scarcely of the child; of the little creature whose innocent life seemed a beautiful and immortal flower sprung up in the excessive luxuriance of a criminal passion. How strange appeared this a child in the eyes of the sad woman, as she beheld the growth and the ever-brightening beauty and intelligence that illumined with its tremulous rays the delicate features of her daughter, her Pearl! Such was the name Hester had given her, not because it bore any analogy to her appearance, for it had none of the white, calm , and cold luster that the comparison might indicate; but she had called her Pearl, because she had obtained her at a great price, because she had really bought her with all that she possessed, with that which was her only treasure. How singular was all this! Man had made this woman’s fault evident by a scarlet letter of such great and disastrous efficacy that it prevented her from becoming an object of human sympathy, except from persons equally guilty. But nature, in compensation for this fault which man had punished, endowed her with a lovely child, who reposed in that same womb desecrated by the law, in order to forever establish the mother in relation to the human race, and so that she might at last become a chosen soul in heaven. Nevertheless, these thoughts filled Esther’s mind with feelings of fear rather than hope. She knew that her action had been evil, and therefore she could not believe that its results would be good. With increasing fear, she contemplated the development of the child, always fearing to discover some dark and strange peculiarity that corresponded to the fault that had caused her being. There was no physical defect in the child: by her perfect form, by her vigor and the natural agility in the use of her tender limbs, she was worthy of having been born in Eden; of having been left there to play with the angels, after the expulsion of our first parents. She possessed an innate grace that does not always accompany perfect beauty : her dress, despite its simplicity, awakened in the beholder the idea that it was precisely the one that best suited her. But tender Perlita was not dressed in wild herbs. Her mother, thanks to a certain morbid tendency, which will be better understood later , had purchased the richest fabrics they could procure and gave free rein to her creative imagination in the arrangement and decoration of the child’s clothes whenever she appeared in public. So magnificently did this little creature look thus attired, and such was the splendor of Perla’s own beauty, shining through the showy garments that might have extinguished a much less radiant beauty, that it might be said that a circle of dazzling light formed around her on the floor of the dark cabin. Pearl’s appearance had a charm of infinite variety: in this child many children were epitomized and summed up, ranging from the wildflower-like beauty of a peasant’s child to the pomp, on a lesser scale, of a little princess. Yet there was something passionate about her, a certain intensity of color which she never lost; and had this color grown fainter or paler in any of her changes, she would have ceased to be herself, she would not have been Pearl. This external mobility fully indicated and expressed the diverse conditions of her inner life. It seemed that in her nature depth was twinned with variety; but, unless Esther’s fears deceived her, we might say that she lacked the power to adapt herself to the world into which she was born. The child could not be subjected to fixed rules. In giving her existence, a great moral law had been broken, and the result was a being whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but in disorder, or with an order peculiar to themselves, making it difficult, or almost impossible, to discover where the variety and arrangement began or ended. Esther could only understand Pearl’s character, and that only in a vague and imperfect way, by remembering what she herself had been during that critical period when the child’s soul and body were being formed. The state of passionate agitation in which she found herself The mother had served to transmit to the unborn child the rays of her moral life; and however clear and pure they had been originally, they had acquired certain hues, sometimes vivid and brilliant, sometimes intense and somber. But above all, the violent struggle that reigned in Esther’s spirit had been perpetuated in Perla’s soul , and Esther could recognize in her daughter the same free, restless, provocative, and desperate spirit, the same lightness of her character, and even something of the same dejection that had taken hold of her heart. Now all this was illuminated by the rays of dawn that gild the sky of childhood, but later in the day of earthly existence, it could be fertile in whirlwinds and storms. Family education in those times was much stricter than it is now. The frown, the harsh rebuke, and the application of the strap or rod were not intended merely to punish faults committed, but were employed as a salutary means for the development of all childish virtues. However, Esther, the lonely mother of this only child, ran little risk of erring by being too severe. Fully conscious of her own errors and misfortunes, she endeavored from a very early age to exercise strict supervision over the tender soul whose destiny was in her charge. But this task was beyond her strength, or her capacity. After trying both the smile and the frown, and finding that nothing exerted any noticeable influence, she finally decided to let the child obey her own impulses. Of course, the restraint or compulsion produced its effect while it was in force; But all other moral discipline, whether directed to her intellect or her heart, yielded or failed to yield results according to the capricious disposition of her mind at the time. When Pearl was still very tender, her mother had observed in her a certain peculiar expression of countenance, which was a sign that everything done to make the child obey her commands would then be in vain. This expression was so intelligent, yet so inexplicable, so perverse, and sometimes so malignant, though generally accompanied by a great exuberance of extravagant good humor, that Hester could not help wondering if Pearl were really a human creature. She resembled rather an aerial spirit, who, after having amused herself with her fantastic games on the floor of the cabin, would disappear into the air with a mocking smile. Whenever her deep, black, and shining eyes assumed this expression, the child resembled an intangible being of indefinable strangeness. It seemed as if she were hovering in the air and might vanish, like a light whose origins are unknown and whose destination is unknown. Then Esther was forced to throw herself upon the child, to chase her in the race that the little elf invariably undertook, and to clasp her to her bosom, covering her with kisses and caresses, not so much out of excessive love, but to assure herself that it was Pearl herself in the flesh, and not a completely illusory form. But Pearl’s laughter when she saw herself caught, although harmonious and brimming with joy, only served to increase her mother’s doubts. Wounded to the heart by this kind of indecipherable and disconcerting mystery that so often interposed itself between her and her only treasure, so dearly acquired, and which was her entire universe, Esther sometimes burst into bitter tears. Then, without knowing why, Pearl would frown, make a fist, and give her small face a hard, severe expression of dry discontent; or else she would burst into laughter again, louder than before, as if she were a being incapable of feeling and understanding human sorrow; or perhaps, though very rarely, she would experience convulsions of grief, and amid sobs and broken words she would express her love for her mother, and seem to wish to prove that she had a heart by breaking it to pieces. However, Esther did not trust much in this excess of tenderness, which passed so quickly. as she had appeared. Thinking of all these things, the mother found herself in the position of a person who has evoked a spirit, as one reads in a fantastic story, but who does not know the magic word by which she must keep that mysterious power under her command and master it . Her only hours of complete tranquility were when the child lay in the repose of sleep. Then she was perfectly certain of the little creature, and enjoyed a delicious and peaceful happiness until, perhaps with that perverse expression that could be glimpsed under the half-opened eyelids, “Pearl awoke. ” How soon! and really with how strange rapidity! Pearl reached an age when she was already capable of hearing something more than the almost meaningless words with which a mother speaks to her little one. And what a joy it would have been for Esther to hear Pearl’s clear, resonant voice mingled with the tumult of other children’s voices, and to distinguish and recognize the sounds her beloved treasure made amidst the confusing mingling of the shouts of a group of playful children! But such joy was denied her. Pearl, from birth, was an outcast from the world of children. Being a graft of evil, an emblem and product of sin, she had no right to be among baptized children. The instinct with which the little girl understood her solitude and the destiny that had drawn an inviolable circle around her was very remarkable; in short, everything peculiar about her position in relation to other children. Never since she left prison had Esther faced the public eye without being accompanied by Pearl. On all her visits to the town, Pearl also went: first, as a tender child, she carried her in her arms; later, as a grown woman, she went like a tiny companion to her mother, holding onto a finger and hopping along. She saw the town children either on the grass growing along the sidewalks or on the thresholds of their houses, playing in the manner permitted by their Puritan upbringing: that is, pretending to go to church; or scalping in mock battles with the Indians; or frightening one another with something that imitated acts of sorcery or witchcraft. Pearl saw everything, contemplated everything intensely, but she never attempted to make acquaintance with any of the children. If they spoke to her, she made no reply. If the children surrounded her, as sometimes happened, Pearl would become truly terrible in her childish rage, picking up stones to throw at them, accompanying the action with incoherent and piercing cries and exclamations that made her mother tremble, for they resembled the accents of a curse uttered by a witch in some unknown language. The truth of the matter was that those unripe little Puritans, like worthy offspring of the most intolerant caste that ever existed, entertained a vague idea that there was something strange, mysterious, out of the ordinary , and ordinary about both mother and daughter, and therefore they despised them in their secret hearts and frequently shouted insults at them. Pearl resented the offense and retaliated with all the hatred of which a child’s breast can be supposed capable. These outbursts of violent temper had some value and even served as a consolation to the mother, since they at least revealed a certain understandable seriousness in that way of feeling, which was not the case with the fantastic whims that so often surprised her and that she could not explain in some of her daughter’s manifestations. She was terrified, however , to discern here and there a kind of reflection of the evil that had existed in herself. Perla had inherited all these feelings of enmity and anger from her mother: both mother and daughter found themselves in the same state of exclusion from all social intercourse; and in the latter’s nature, it seemed, all those elements of restlessness that had so agitated Esther before the birth of the child, and which had since begun to calm down thanks to the beneficial influence of motherhood, were perpetuated. At her mother’s side, in the domestic hearth, Pearl had no need of much social intercourse. Her imagination lent the attributes of life to thousands of inanimate objects, like a torch that kindles a flame wherever it is applied: a branch of a tree, a few rags, a flower—these were the playthings on which Pearl’s creative magic was exercised ; and without undergoing any outward change, they adapted themselves to all the requirements of her fancy. She lent her childish voice to a multitude of imaginary beings, old and young, with whom she thus entered into lively dialogues. The ancient pines, black and solemn, which emitted a sort of growl and other melancholy murmurs when stirred by the breeze, easily became Puritan clergymen in Pearl’s eyes; the ugliest weeds in the garden were her children; weeds which the child trampled and pulled up without compassion. The vast variety of ways in which her intelligence indulged itself was truly astonishing , without any order or harmony, always in a state of supernatural activity, succeeding one another like the capricious emanations and displays of the aurora borealis. In the mere exercise of fancy and the festive disposition of a developing mind, there was perhaps little more than what might be observed in other children gifted with brilliant faculties, except that Pearl, being deprived of playmates, resorted to the resources lent her by her imagination as a substitute. The singularity of the case consisted in the hostile attitude the child displayed toward these creatures, the offspring of her fancy and her heart. She never made a friend, but always, in imitation of Cadmus in the fable, seemed to sow the dragon’s teeth right and left , from which sprang battalions of armed enemies, upon whom the child immediately declared war. It was exceedingly sad to observe in so tender a being this constant thought of an adverse world, and the fierce display of energy that prepared her for the world’s struggles; and it is easy to imagine the intense pain that all this must have produced in her mother, who found the cause of this phenomenon in her own heart. Contemplating Pearl, Hester frequently dropped her sewing work into her lap and burst into tears with a grief she would have liked to conceal, and which manifested itself in sobs and broken words, exclaiming: “O Father who art in heaven! if indeed Thou be still my Father, what babe is this that I have brought into the world?” And Pearl, upon hearing this cry, or perceiving those sobs of anguish, would turn her lively and lovely little face toward her mother, smile sweetly, and continue her play. It remains for us to speak of a peculiarity of this little child. The first thing she ever noticed was not her mother’s smile in response to what, as with other children of tender age, might be mistaken for a smile, or rather, the embryo of a smile. No: the first object that seemed to have attracted Pearl’s attention was the scarlet letter on Esther’s breast . One day, as Esther bent over the cradle, the little girl’s eyes fell upon the glittering gold embroidery that surrounded the letter, and stretching out her tiny hands, she tried to grasp it, smiling, no doubt, though with a strange expression that made her face seem that of a much older child. Then Esther, trembling and convulsing, clasped the fatal sign with her hand, as if she instinctively wished to tear it from her breast. So intense was the torture caused by the action of that little creature! And as if the agony on her mother’s face had no other purpose than to amuse her, the little girl fixed her gaze on her and smiled. From that time on, except when Pearl was asleep, Esther never had a moment of security, not a moment when she completely enjoyed her daughter’s company. It is true that sometimes entire weeks would pass without the little creature’s gaze falling on the scarlet letter; but it is also true that the opposite would happen when least expected, and always with that smile. peculiar and strange expression of the eyes already mentioned. Once, while Esther was gazing at her own image in her daughter’s eyes, as is usual with mothers, that singular and fantastic expression flashed in them; and as women who live solitary and whose hearts are restless are subject to innumerable illusions, she suddenly imagined that she saw, not her own image in miniature, but another face reflected in Pearl’s black eyes. It was an enemy’s face, full of malignant smiles, yet bearing a close resemblance to features she had known very well, though they were seldom animated by a smile, and never by a malevolent expression. It was as if an evil spirit had taken possession of the child, and showed itself in her eyes. After this incident, Esther was tormented several times with the same illusion of her senses, though not so strongly. One summer afternoon, when Pearl was old enough to walk alone, the child amused herself by gathering wild flowers, throwing them one by one into her mother’s lap, and performing a sort of dance each time one of the flowers happened to strike the scarlet letter. Hester’s first impulse was to cover the letter with both hands; but whether it was pride, or resignation, or the thought that the pain to which she had been condemned would sooner be satisfied by this unspeakable sorrow, she resisted the impulse and sat up, pale as death, looking with profound sadness at Pearl, whose eyes shone in an unusual way. And the child continued to throw the flowers, which invariably struck the letter, filling her mother’s breast with wounds for which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew how to seek it in the next. At last, when she had finished throwing the flowers, the child remained standing, looking at Esther, just like that mocking image of the enemy that the mother thought she saw in the unfathomable abyss of her daughter’s black eyes. “My child, who are you?” exclaimed the mother. “Oh! I am your little Pearl,” she replied. But while Pearl was saying this, she began to laugh and dance with the petulant gestures of a little imp, whose next whim would be to escape up the chimney. “Are you really my daughter?” asked Esther. And it was not an idle question that she asked, but, at that moment, she felt it was so; for such was Pearl’s marvelous intelligence that her mother even imagined that the child knew the secret history of her existence and would now reveal it to her. “Yes; I am your little Pearl,” repeated the child, continuing her capers. “You are not my daughter! You are not my Pearl!” “said the mother, with a half -smiling air, for often in the midst of the deepest grief she was overcome by impulses of rejoicing. ‘Tell me, then, who you are, and who sent you here. ‘ “Tell me, my mother,” replied Pearl in a grave tone, approaching Esther and embracing her knees, “tell me, mother, tell me. ” “Your Heavenly Father sent you,” answered Esther. But she said this with a hesitation that did not escape the child’s keen understanding; and, whether moved by her ordinary petulance, or because an evil spirit had inspired her, raising her little forefinger and touching the scarlet letter, she exclaimed with an accent of conviction: “No; He did not send me. I have no Heavenly Father. ” “Hush, Pearl, hush! You must not talk like that,” replied the mother, suppressing a groan. “Heavenly Father has sent us all into this world. He has even sent me, your mother.” and even more so to you. And if not, where did you come from, you peculiar and capricious child? “Tell me, tell me,” repeated Perla, no longer with her serious face, but laughing and jumping on the ground. “You are the one who must tell me.” But Esther could not resolve the question, finding herself in a labyrinth of doubts. She remembered, between laughter and fear, the chatter of the townspeople who, searching in vain for the paternity of the girl, and observing some of her peculiarities, had decided to say that Pearl was the offspring of a demon, as had happened more than once upon earth; nor was Pearl the only one to whom the Puritans of New England imputed such sinister origins. Chapter 7. THE GOVERNOR’S HALL. One day Esther went to the residence of Governor Bellingham to deliver a pair of gloves which she had hemmed and embroidered by his order, and which she was to wear at some official ceremony, for although she no longer held the high office she had formerly held, she still held an honorable and influential position in the colonial magistracy. But something more important than the delivery of a pair of embroidered gloves compelled Esther to request an interview with a personage of such power and so active in the affairs of the colony. A rumor had reached her ears that some of the principal inhabitants of the town were seeking to deprive her of her child, desirous of establishing more rigid principles in matters of religion and government. These good people, supposing , as already stated, that Perla was of diabolical stock, believed that for the greater benefit of the mother’s soul, it was advisable to remove this obstacle from her path; adding that if the child was truly capable of a religious and moral education, and possessed within her the elements of her future salvation, she would undoubtedly enjoy all these advantages if she were removed from her mother and her education entrusted to a better and more sensible person. It was also said that among the promoters of this idea, the Governor was one of the most active. It may seem strange , and even ridiculous, that a matter of this nature should have been publicly discussed, in which several eminent figures in the government took part for and against. But in that age of pristine simplicity, matters of lesser public importance, and of lesser significance than the welfare of Esther and her daughter, had a place in the deliberations of the legislators and in the acts of the State. And it is even related that a dispute concerning the right of ownership of a pig gave rise, at a time previous to the one in which our story takes place, to heated debates in the legislative body of the colony, and occasioned important changes in the conduct of the Legislature. Filled, therefore, with fears, yet so fully convinced of her right that the struggle between the public on the one side and a solitary woman on the other did not seem unequal to her, Esther set out from her cabin, accompanied, as might be expected, by Pearl. The latter had now reached an age where she could run at her mother’s side, and as she was always in motion from morning to night, she could have made a much longer journey. Nevertheless, sometimes, more from whim than from necessity, she asked to be carried; but after a few moments she wanted to be allowed to walk, and continued beside Esther, hopping and stumbling every moment. We have spoken of Pearl’s singular beauty, a beauty of vivid and deep hues, of a brilliant complexion, eyes possessing both radiance and meditative intensity, and hair of a soft, lustrous chestnut color that would later become almost black. She was all fire and seemed the fruit of a moment of unpremeditated passion. The mother, in devising her daughter’s costume , had given free rein to the showy tendencies of her imagination, and dressed her in a crimson velvet gown of a peculiar cut, abundantly adorned with fanciful embroidery and flourishes of gold thread. Such a luxury of colors, which would have given a pale and wan appearance to less brilliant cheeks, was admirably adapted to Pearl’s beauty, and made her the most brilliant flame that ever moved upon the earth. But it was a remarkable peculiarity of this dress, and indeed of the child’s general appearance, that it inevitably brought to the beholder’s mind the recollection of the sign that Esther was condemned to bear on her dress. It was the scarlet letter in another form: the scarlet letter endowed with life. The mother herself, as if that red ignominy had been so deeply impressed upon her brain that every thought of it was of its appearance,–the mother herself had discovered this resemblance, spending many hours of morbid ingenuity in discovering an analogy between the object of her affection and the emblem of her fault and torment. But as Pearl was in reality both one and the other, Hester could well imagine that the child’s appearance bore a perfect resemblance to the scarlet letter. As mother and child approached the edge of the town, the Puritan children , in the midst of their games, or what passed for games among those somber children, fixed their eyes upon them and said: “Here comes the woman with the scarlet letter; and beside her comes skipping what also looks like a scarlet letter. Let us throw mud at them.” But Pearl, who was a fearless child, after frowning, stamping her foot on the ground, and clenching her fist in various threatening gestures, suddenly flung herself upon the group of her enemies and put them all to flight. At the same time, she shrieked and screamed with such violence that the hearts of the fugitives trembled with terror. Her victory over her, Pearl quietly returned to her mother, upon whom she cast a smiling glance. Without further adventure, they arrived at the Governor’s dwelling. It was a large wooden house, built in the style still seen in the streets of our most ancient cities; now covered with moss, crumbling, and of a melancholy appearance, mute witnesses to the sorrows or joys that had been the scene of its dark chambers. Then, however, there was the freshness of youth on its exterior, and from its sunlit windows, there seemed to shine that contentment that reigns in human dwellings where death has not yet entered. The Governor’s house had, indeed, a very cheerful appearance: the walls were covered with a kind of stucco, with innumerable fragments of glass in them, so that when the sun struck the building slantwise, it sparkled and glittered as if diamonds had been thrown upon it by the handful, which made it appear more suitable for Aladdin’s palace than for the residence of some grave old Puritan chieftain. It was also adorned with strange, apparently cabalistic figures and diagrams, according to the rare taste of the times, which had been drawn on the stucco when it was finished, and had hardened with time, doubtless to serve as a marvel to future ages. Pearl, when she beheld this wonderful sort of house, began to clap her hands and dance, and earnestly demanded that the whole radiant front of the building might be torn off and given to her to play with. “No, my dear little Pearl,” said her mother, “you must procure your sunshine for yourself.” I have nothing to give you. They approached the gate, which was shaped like an arch, and flanked on each side by a narrow tower or projection of the building, with wire-lattice windows and wooden shutters. Lifting the iron knocker, Esther gave a knock, which was answered by one of the Governor’s servants, an Englishman by birth and free, but then a slave for seven years. During that time he was to be his master’s property, just as if he were an ox. The servant wore the blue dress that was the ordinary dress of servants in those days, as it had been long before in the old manors of England. “Is his lordship Governor Bellingham at home?” asked Esther. “Certainly he is,” replied the servant, gazing with large eyes at the scarlet letter, for being but recently come into the country, he had not yet seen it. “Yes, his lordship is at home.” but there are with him a couple of pious ministers, and at the same time a doctor: I do not believe you can see him now. ” “I will go in, however,” replied Esther. And the servant, judging perhaps from the decisive tone in which he spoke these words, and the bright symbol he wore on his breast, that he was A great lady of the country, offered no resistance. Mother and daughter were therefore admitted to the hall. The Governor, considering the nature of the building materials available, as well as the difference in climate and social customs of the colony, had drawn the plan of their new dwelling in imitation of those of gentlemen of moderate means in his native country. There was, therefore, a wide and lofty hall extending to the rear of the house and serving as a means of more or less direct communication with all the other rooms. At one end, this spacious room was lighted by the windows of the two towers; and at the other, though protected by a curtain, it was by a large vaulted window, provided with a cushioned seat, on which lay a folio volume, probably of the Chronicles of England or some such literature . The furniture consisted of several massive chairs, on the backs of which were carved garlands of oak blossoms; In the center was a table of the same style as the chairs, all from the time of Queen Elizabeth of England, or perhaps earlier, and brought from the Governor’s paternal household. And on the table, as proof that the old-fashioned hospitality had not died out, was a large pewter tankard at the bottom of which the curious might have seen the foam of recently drunk ale . On the wall hung a row of portraits representing the ancestors of the Bellingham line, some dressed in breastplates and armor, and others with turned-out collars and cassocks. As a characteristic feature, they all had that severity and rigidity that is invariably found in old portraits, as if, instead of paintings, they were the spirits of illustrious men, already dead, looking harshly and intolerantly upon, and criticizing, the actions and pleasures of the living. Toward the center of the oak panels that covered the walls of the hall was suspended a coat of mail and its accessories, not a hereditary relic, like the portraits, but of more modern date, made by a skilled London armorer the very year that Governor Bellingham came to New England. There were a helmet, breastplate, gorget, and greaves, with a pair of gauntlets, and hanging below a sword; the whole, and especially the helmet and breastplate, so perfectly polished that they shone with a radiant white, illuminating the pavement. This brilliant panoply served no mere ornament, but the Governor had donned it more than once, especially at the head of a regiment in the Indian war , for although by education and profession he was a lawyer, the demands of the new country had made him a soldier and a Governor. Little Pearl, who was as much pleased with the shining armor as with the bright pediment of the house, lingered for some time looking at the polished surface of the breastplate, which shone like a mirror. “Mother!” she cried, “Mother, I see you here. Look! Look!” Hester, to please her little daughter, cast a glance into the breastplate, and saw that, owing to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter appeared to be reproduced in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so that it became the most prominent feature of her entire person. Indeed, it seemed as if Hester were concealed behind the letter. Pearl also called her attention to another similar figure on the helmet, smiling at her mother with that pixie-like expression so common to her intelligent face. This look of mischievous joy was also reflected in the mirror, with such proportions and such intensity of effect, that Esther did not believe it could be the image of her own daughter, but that of some goblin or sprite trying to mold itself to Pearl’s form . “Come, Pearl,” said the mother, taking her with her. “Come and see this beautiful garden. Perhaps there are flowers in it more beautiful than those in the woods. ” Pearl went to the arched window at the end of the hall, and She cast her gaze along the paths of the garden, carpeted with freshly cut grass and lined with a few bushes, not many, as if the owner had given up on his idea of perpetuating English taste in gardens on this side of the Atlantic. The cabbages grew in plain sight, and a pumpkin plant, planted some distance away, had spread across the intervening space, depositing one of its gigantic products directly beneath the indicated window. There were, however, a few rosebushes, and a number of apple trees, probably those planted by the early settlers. Pearl, seeing the rosebushes, began to clamor for a red rose, and would not be quiet. “Be quiet, child, be quiet,” said her mother earnestly. “Don’t cry, my dear Pearl. I hear voices in the garden. The Governor is approaching, accompanied by several gentlemen. Be quiet.” Indeed, a number of people could be seen along the garden path, heading in the direction of the house. Pearl, heedless of her mother’s attempts to quiet her, uttered a shrill cry, and then fell silent; not from any sentiment of obedience, but from the lively and agile curiosity of her nature, which directed her whole interest upon the appearance of these new personages. Chapter 8. The Goblin Girl and the Minister. Governor Bellingham, dressed in his housedress, consisting of a loose gown and cap, led the procession, and seemed to be showing his estate to those who accompanied him, and explaining the improvements he intended to introduce. The vast circumference of a tufted collar, carefully made, projecting from under his gray beard, after the fashion of ancient times, contributed to give his head a resemblance to that of St. John the Baptist at the fountain. The impression produced by his rigid and stern countenance, which had been filled with the effects of several autumns, was not in harmony with his surroundings, and he seemed destined for the enjoyment of earthly things. But it is a mistake to suppose that our grave forefathers, though accustomed to talk and think of human existence as a mere trial and constant struggle, and though prepared to sacrifice property and life when duty required it, would have made it their conscience to reject all those comforts, and even gifts, that were within their reach. No such doctrine was ever taught, for instance, by the venerable pastor of souls, John Wilson, whose snowy beard was visible over the shoulder of Governor Bellingham as he told him that pears and peaches could be domesticated in New England, and that purple grapes could flourish if protected by garden walls more directly exposed to the sun. The old minister had a legitimate and long-established taste for all things good and all the comforts of life; and severe as he might have been in the pulpit in his public reprobation of such transgressions as those of Hester Prynne, yet the benevolence he displayed in private life had won him a greater measure of affection than had been accorded to any of his colleagues. Next to the Governor and Mr. Wilson were two other guests: one, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, whom the reader may perhaps remember as having acted, not willingly, a small part in the scene of Hester’s public chastisement; and by his side, as though he had been her intimate companion, old Roger Chillingworth, a man of considerable medical skill , who had taken up his residence in the colony two or three years before . It was said that this wise old man was at the same time the doctor and the friend of the young ecclesiastic, whose health had recently deteriorated greatly due to his boundless devotion and complete consecration to the work and duties of his sacred ministry. The Governor, going ahead of his guests, mounted two or three steps, and opening one of the leaves of the great window of the vestibule, found himself close to Perla. The shadow of the curtain hid partially to the mother. “What have we here?” said the Governor, looking at the scarlet little figure before him. “I confess I have never seen anything like it since the days of my vanities, way back in my youth, when I thought it a priceless favor to be admitted to the costume balls at Court. There were swarms of these little apparitions then on festival days. But how did this guest get into my antechamber? ” “Yes, indeed,” exclaimed good old Mr. Wilson, “what scarlet little bird can this be? I seem to have seen something like it when the sun shines through a multi-colored window pane , and makes gold and crimson images on the floor. But that was back in our old country. Tell me, child, who are you, and what has moved your mother to dress you up in so strange a manner? Are you a Christian child? Do you know your catechism?” Or are you perhaps one of those petulant goblins or imps whom we thought we had left forever in merry England? “I am my mother’s daughter,” replied the scarlet vision, “and my name is Pearl. ” “Pearl?” “Rather Ruby, or Coral, or a fiery Rose at least, to judge from your color,” replied the old minister, stretching out his hand in vain to stroke Pearl’s cheek. “But where is your mother?” “Ah!” he added; and turning to the Governor, he said in a low voice: “This is the very child we were speaking of; and behold, there is that unhappy woman, Esther Prynne, her mother. ” “Is that what you say?” cried the Governor. “Yes, we should have thought that the mother of such a child must have been a scarlet woman, and a type worthy of Babylon. But she arrives in good time, and we will discuss this matter at once. ” The Governor entered the antechamber, followed by his three guests. “Esther Prynne,” she said, fixing her naturally stern gaze upon the wearer of the scarlet letter, “much has been said concerning you these days . We have discussed very calmly and soberly whether we, who are persons of authority and influence, are doing our duty by entrusting the direction and guidance of an immortal soul, such as this child’s, to whom she has stumbled and fallen amidst the snares and nets of the world. Speak, you who are the mother of this child. Do you not think it would be better, both for the temporal welfare and the eternal life of your little one, that you should be deprived of her care, and that, arrayed in a less conspicuous manner, she should be brought up to obedience and instructed in the truths of heaven and earth? What can you do for your child in this particular? ” “I can instruct my daughter according to the teaching I have received in this matter,” replied Esther, touching the scarlet letter with her finger. “Woman, that is your badge of shame,” replied the stern magistrate. ” It is precisely in consequence of the fault indicated by that letter that we wish your daughter to be taken into other hands. ” “Nevertheless,” said the mother calmly, though growing paler and paler, “this badge has given me, and gives me daily, even at this moment, lessons which will make my daughter wiser and better, though they are no longer of any benefit to me. ” “Now we shall know,” said the Governor, “and decide what is to be done. My good Lord Wilson, I beg you to examine this Pearl, for such is her name, and see if she has the Christian instruction befitting a child of her age.” The old clergyman sat down in an armchair and made an effort to draw Pearl between his knees. But the child, accustomed only to the familiar touch of her mother and to that of no one else, slipped out through the open window and stood upon the highest step, resembling then some wild tropical bird, with brilliant plumage, ready to take flight into space. Mr. Wilson, not a little surprised at this, for he was a sort of favorite patriarch with the children, nevertheless endeavored to proceed with the examination. “Pearl,” he said with great solemnity, “you must receive instruction , that in due time you may succeed in carrying in your bosom a pearl of great beauty.” Price. Can you tell, my child, who created you? Pearl knew perfectly well how to reply, for Esther, being the daughter of a pious family, had soon after the conversation she had had with her daughter about her Heavenly Father, begun to speak to her of those truths to which the human spirit, whatever its stage of development, hears with intense interest. Therefore, Pearl, although only three years old, might have successfully passed an examination in some religious subjects; but the perversity more or less common to all children, and of which the child had a good deal, seized her at the most inopportune moment, and made her close her lips or utter words that were irrelevant. After putting her finger to her mouth, and after many refusals to answer the good Mr. Wilson’s questions , the child finally announced that she had not been created by anyone, but that her mother had gathered her from a wild rosebush that grew near the prison gate. This fantastic reply was probably suggested to her by the proximity of the Governor’s rosebushes, which she had before her, and by the recollection of the wild rosebush in the prison, which she had passed on her way to Bellingham. Old Roger Chillingworth, with a smile on his lips, murmured a few words in the young clergyman’s ear. Hester glanced at the scientist, and, though her fate hung in the balance, she was surprised to notice the change in Roger’s features; he had become much uglier, his complexion darker , and his figure more ill-formed than at the time when she had been most familiar with him. Their eyes met for a moment, but she immediately turned her whole attention to what was passing concerning her daughter. “This is horrible!” exclaimed the Governor, slowly recovering from the astonishment caused by Pearl’s reply. “Here is a child of three years of age, who does not know who created her!” There is no doubt that she is in the same ignorance of her soul, her present wickedness, and her future destiny. It seems to me, gentlemen, that there is no need to go any further. Hester then took Pearl and clasped her in her arms, looking at the old Puritan magistrate with an almost ferocious expression in her eyes. Alone in the world, cast out of it like rotten fruit, and with this one treasure the consolation of her heart, she was conscious of possessing indestructible rights against the claims of the world, and she was ready to defend them at all costs. “God has given me this child,” she exclaimed. “He has given her to me in return for all that you have taken from me. She is my happiness, and at the same time my torment. It is Pearl who keeps me alive in this world. Pearl also punishes me. Do you not see that she is the scarlet letter, capable only of being loved and endowed with infinite power of retribution for my fault?” You will not take her from me: I must die first. Poor woman, said the old clergyman, with a certain kindness, the child will be very well cared for, perhaps better than you can do. God has committed her to my care, repeated Hester, straining her voice. I will not give her up. And then, as if on a sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, to Mr. Dimmesdale, whom, until this moment, she had scarcely looked at, and cried: Speak for me! You were my shepherd, and had my soul in your charge, and you know me better than these men do. I do not want to lose my child. Speak for me: you know, for you are endowed with that compassion which these men lack, you know what is in my heart, and what a mother’s rights are, and that they are much stronger when that mother has only her child and the scarlet letter. Look at her! I do not want to lose the child. Look at her! At this frantic and singular appeal, which indicated that Esther’s present position had almost deprived her of her wits, the young ecclesiastic came forward, pale and placing his hand upon his heart, as was his custom. a customary habit whenever his nervous temper threw him into a state of extreme agitation. He seemed now more anxious and exhausted than when we described him at the scene of Hester’s public ignominy; and whether from his failing health, or from some other cause, his large black eyes revealed a world of sorrow in the anxious and melancholy expression of their looks. “There is much truth in what this woman says,” began Mr. Dimmesdale, in a sweet, tremulous, yet vigorous voice, which resounded throughout the hall; “there is truth in what Hester says, and in her sentiments. God has given her the child, and at the same time an instinctive knowledge of the nature and wants of that tender being, which seem very peculiar—knowledge such as no other mortal can possess. And, besides, is there not something immensely sacred between the relations of this mother and this child? ” “Ah!” “How is that, good Mr. Dimmesdale?” interrupted the Governor. “I pray you will make this point clear. ” “It must be so,” continued the young clergyman, “for, if we think otherwise, would it not imply that the Heavenly Father, the Creator of all things in this world, has made light of a sinful act, and made light of the difference between a pure and an impure love? This child of the father’s guilt and the mother’s shame has come, sent from God, to influence in various ways the heart of her who now so vehemently and so bitterly claims the right to keep her. She was created for a blessing, for the only happiness of her life. She was created, doubtless, as the mother herself has told us, to be also a recompense; a torment of every hour; a sting, a grief, an agony ever throbbing in the midst of a passing joy.” Has she not expressed this thought in the poor child’s dress, which so effectually reminds us of the red symbol which scorches her bosom? ” “Well said, well said!” cried good Mr. Wilson. “I was afraid the woman had only in mind to make a mountebank of her child. ” “Oh! no, no,” continued Dimmesdale. “The mother, believe me, recognizes the solemn miracle which God has wrought in the existence of that child. She may also understand—what is to me an indisputable truth—that this gift is, above all things, intended to preserve the mother’s soul in a state of grace, and to deliver her from the depths of sin into which Satan would otherwise have sunk her.” Therefore, it is a good thing for this poor sinful woman to have in her care an infant soul, a being capable of eternal happiness or eternal sorrow—a being who will be trained by her in the paths of righteousness, who will every moment remind her of her fall, but at the same time make her remember, as if it were a sacred promise from the Creator, that if the mother trains the child for heaven, the child will take its mother thither also. And in this, the sinful mother is happier than the sinful father. Therefore, for Hester Prynne’s sake, no less than for the poor child’s, let us leave them as Providence has seen fit to place them. “You speak, my friend, with strange vehemence,” said old Roger, with a smile. “And what my young brother has said has great weight,” added the Reverend Mr. Wilson. “What does the most worthy Governor say? Has he not well defended the rights of the poor woman?” “Certainly so,” replied the magistrate, “and he has adduced such reasons that we will let the matter stand; at least, so long as the woman is not an object of scandal. We must, however, take care that the child be instructed in the catechism with you, good Mr. Wilson, or with the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. Besides, in due course it is necessary to see that she goes to school and church.” When the young minister had done speaking, he withdrew a few paces from the group, and stood with his face partially hidden in the heavy folds of the window curtains, while the shadow of his body, which the sunlight caused to fall upon the ground, was all tremulous. with the vehemence of her speech. Pearl, with her characteristic whimsical vivacity , approached him, and taking one of his hands in hers, placed her cheek upon it: a caress so tender, yet so natural, that Esther, as she beheld it, said to herself: Is that my Pearl? She knew, however, that her daughter’s heart was capable of love, though it almost always revealed itself in a passionate and violent manner ; and in the course of her few years, it had scarcely twice manifested itself with such gentleness and tenderness as now. The young minister—for except the glances of a woman who idolizes herself, there is nothing so sweet as these spontaneous caresses of a child, which are an indication that there is something truly worthy of being loved within us—the young minister cast a glance around him, laid his hand on the child’s head, hesitated a moment, and kissed her forehead. This tender whim, so unusual in Pearl’s character, did not last long: she laughed, and skipped so lightly down the hall that old Mr. Wilson wondered if she had touched the pavement with her toes. “There is something of a sorcery about this little thing,” said she to Dimmesdale; “she needs no old woman’s broomstick to fly. ” “Strange child!” observed old Roger. “It is easy to see what is in her of her mother. Do you suppose, gentlemen, that it is beyond the power of a philosopher to analyze the child’s nature, and from her make and demeanor guess who her father is? ” “No: in such a matter, it would be sinful to rely on profane philosophy ,” said Mr. Wilson. “It is better to give oneself to fasting and prayer to solve the problem.” and much better still to leave the mystery as it is, until Providence reveals it when it sees fit. Consequently
, every good Christian has a right to show the kindness of a father to this poor, abandoned child. The matter having been thus settled to Esther’s satisfaction, she departed with her daughter for her cottage. As they were descending the stairs, it is said that the shutter of one of the rooms opened, and the face of Mrs. Hibbins, the Governor’s irascible sister, who some years later was executed as a witch, peeped out. “Hey! Hey!” she said, revealing a foreboding countenance that contrasted sharply with the cheerful appearance of the house. “Will you come with us tonight into the woods? We shall have a very merry company there; and I have promised the Black Man that Esther Prynne should take part in the revelry. ” “Please excuse me,” replied Esther with a smile of triumph. ” I must return home and take care of my Pearl.” If she had been taken from me, then I would gladly have gone into the forest with you, signing my name in the Black Man’s book, and that with my own blood. ” “We shall have you there ere long,” said the lady witch, frowning and withdrawing. But here—if we suppose this dialogue between Mrs. Hibbins and Esther to be genuine, and not a fable—here we have a proof of the young clergyman’s reason in refusing to sever the ties that bind a delinquent mother to the child of her frailty. Already on this occasion the love of the child saved the mother from the snares of Satan. Chapter 9. THE PHYSICIAN. As the reader will remember, the name of Roger Chillingworth concealed another name, whose former possessor had resolved that it should never be mentioned. It has already been reported that in the midst of the crowd witnessing Esther’s ignominious punishment, an elderly man, recently arrived from the lands occupied by the Indians, suddenly beheld, exposed to the public eye, as if she were a living image of sin, the woman in whom he had hoped to find the joy and warmth of home embodied. He saw his wife’s honor trampled by all those present. Her infamy palpitated there in the public square. If the news ever reached the ears of her relatives and companions, of that woman’s childhood, what else would remain for them but the contagion of her dishonor, the greater the more intimate and sacred their relations of kinship had been? And as for him, whose ties of union with the delinquent woman had been the closest and most sacred that could be imagined, why should he come forward to claim so unwelcome an inheritance? He resolved, therefore, not to be exposed to the pillory of infamy by the side of her who had once been his wife. Unknown to everyone except Esther, and possessing the means to keep her silent, he chose to erase his name from the list of the living, to consider his former ties and interests completely dissolved , and, in a word, to consider himself estranged from the world as if he actually lay at the bottom of the ocean, where public rumor had long since consigned him. Once this plan was realized, new interests would immediately arise, and at the same time a new objective to which he could devote his energy—a dark one, it is true, and perhaps criminal, but sufficiently absorbing incentive to devote the whole force of his faculties to its realization. To carry out this project, he established his residence in the Puritan city, under the assumed name of Roger Chillingworth, with no other recommendation than his scientific knowledge and intelligence, of which he possessed a remarkable amount. Since his previous studies had familiarized him with the medical science of the day, he presented himself as a physician and as such was cordially received. In the colony, men skilled in medicine or surgery were very rare. The health of the residents of the good city of Boston, at least as far as medicine was concerned, had until then been entrusted to the tutelage of an elderly deacon and pharmacist, whose piety and uprightness were more convincing testimonies in his favor than any he could have presented in the form of a proper diploma. The only surgeon was an individual who combined the casual practice of that noble profession with the daily and habitual handling of the razor. For such a body of physicians, Roger Chillingworth was a brilliant acquisition. He soon demonstrated his familiarity with the powerful and imposing machinery of ancient medicine, in which each remedy contained a multitude of extraordinary and heterogeneous ingredients, compounded with as much labor and care as if one were trying to obtain the Elixir of Life. During his captivity among the Indians, he had acquired a remarkable knowledge of the properties of indigenous herbs and roots ; nor did he conceal from his patients that these simple medicines, which wise nature had made known to the uncultivated savage, deserved his confidence as much as the European pharmacopoeia, in whose formation so many centuries and so many learned doctors had been employed. This learned stranger was an exemplary person, at least in the outward forms of religion, and soon after his arrival in the colony he chose the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale as his spiritual guide. The young churchman, who had completed his studies at Oxford University , where his memory was respectfully preserved, was regarded by his most ardent admirers almost as an apostle consecrated by heaven, and destined, if he could work and live out the ordinary term of human existence, to do much for the benefit of the Church of New England. At the period in which we are dealing with our history, his health, however, had evidently begun to fail. Those who were most familiar with Dimmesdale’s habits and customs believed that the pallor of his cheeks was the result of his intense zeal for study, his scrupulous performance of his religious duties, and, more than anything, of the fasting and watching which he so frequently observed to prevent earthly matter from dimming or obscuring the brightness of his spiritual lamp. Some declared that if Mr. Dimmesdale was really about to die so young, it was because the world was not worthy for his feet to tread upon. On the other hand, he himself, with characteristic humility, said that if Providence saw fit to take him from this world, it would be because of his unworthy condition to perform the humblest mission on earth. But notwithstanding the divergence of opinions on the matter, the fact remained that his health was much impaired. He had grown much thinner; his voice, though still sonorous and sweet, had a certain melancholy expression of decay; he was frequently seen, at the least noise or minor accident, to put his hand to his heart, with a sudden redness of face, followed by a pallor, indicative of pain. Such was the condition of young Dimmesdale, and so imminent was the danger of extinguishing this nascent light of the world before its time, when Roger Chillingworth arrived in town. His first appearance on the scene, without anyone knowing whence he came, whether he had fallen from heaven or whether he had proceeded from the nether regions, gave him a certain air of mystery, which easily became something almost miraculous. He was known to be a clever and resourceful man; he had been observed gathering herbs and wild flowers, digging up roots, and cutting branches from forest trees, as one familiar with the hidden virtues of things of no value in the eyes of the common people. He had been heard speaking of Sir Kenelm Digby15 and other famous men, whose knowledge of scientific matters was esteemed almost supernatural, with whom he had associated or corresponded. Why, occupying so high a position in the world of science, had he come to the colony? What could this man, whose sphere of activity lay in large cities, have been seeking in a semi-savage country? In answer to this question, a rumor began to circulate, which, absurd as it was, was believed even by sensible people. It was said that heaven had performed a miracle by transporting an eminent doctor of medicine through the air from a university in Germany and depositing him at the door of Mr. Dimmesdale’s study. People much more sensible in matters of faith, and who knew that heaven achieves its ends without what is called miraculous intervention, were inclined to see something providential in the timely arrival of Roger Chillingworth. This idea was supported by the great interest that the physician, as they called it in those days, manifested from the first in the young clergyman, to whom he attached himself as one of his parishioners; and notwithstanding the latter’s natural reserve, he endeavored to gain his friendship and confidence. He manifested great alarm at the state of his minister’s health, and also a great desire to see if he could cure him, and he did not despair of obtaining it if the work were undertaken in time. The officers of Mr. Dimmesdale’s church, as well as the married ladies and the young and beautiful young ladies of his parishioners, urged him to avail himself of the skill of the physician, who had so generously offered to serve him. Mr. Dimmesdale sweetly refused their solicitations. “I need no medicine,” he said. But how could the young minister speak thus, when with every passing Sunday his cheeks grew paler, his face thinner, and his voice more tremulous; and when he had become a constant habit of pressing his heart with his hand? Was he weary of his labors? Did he wish to die? These questions were solemnly put to Mr. Dimmesdale by the oldest ministers of Boston, and by the dignitaries of his own church, who, to use their own language, admonished him of the sin he committed in refusing the aid which Providence so manifestly offered him. He listened to them in silence, and at last promised to consult his physician. “If it be God’s will,” said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, when in fulfillment of his promise he had asked old Roger Chillingworth for the assistance of his profession, “I should be content that my labors, and my sorrows, and my sins, should soon be over with me, and that which is earthly in me should be buried in my grave, and that which is spiritual man will accompany me to my eternal home, rather than test your skill for my benefit. ” “Ah!” replied the physician, with that calmness which, whether natural or imposed, distinguished all his manners, “such is the manner in which a young clergyman generally speaks. Youth, by reason that it has not yet struck deep root, easily renounces life. And devout and good men who follow the precepts of God on earth, would gladly leave this world to be with him in the New Jerusalem. ” “No,” replied Dimmesdale, laying his hand upon his heart, with a quick flush of color upon his brow and a contraction of pain upon his face, “if I were worthier to go thither, I should have more satisfaction in laboring here. ” “Good men always form too mean an idea of themselves,” said the physician. In this way the mysterious Roger Chillingworth became the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale’s medical advisor. Since not only the illness aroused the doctor’s interest, but also the character and qualities of his patient, these two men, so different in age, gradually came to spend a lot of time together. For the benefit of the clergyman’s health, and to enable the doctor to better gather the medicinal plants he needed, they would take long walks along the seashore or in the woods, mingling their varied conversation with the murmur and cadence of the waves and the solemn murmur of the wind in the treetops. Frequently, too, one was the other’s guest; and for the young minister, there was a kind of fascination in the society of the scientist, in whom he recognized an intellectual development of uncommon range and depth , together with a liberality and breadth of ideas that he would have sought in vain in members of his profession. Indeed , he was truly surprised, if not scandalized, to discover this last quality in the doctor. Mr. Dimmesdale was a true priest, in the broadest sense of the word: a truly religious man, with a highly developed sense of reverence, and a kind of intelligence that compelled him not to swerve from the narrow paths of faith, which daily deepened within him. In no state of society could he have been what is called a liberal man; it would always have been necessary, for the peace of his mind, to feel that faith surrounded him on every side, supporting him as it encircled him in an iron circle. Yet, with tremulous joy, he experienced a sort of temporary relief in being able to view the universe through an intelligence quite different from those with which he was usually in contact. It was as if a window had been opened, through which a purer air penetrated the dense and stifling atmosphere of his study, where his life was wasting away by the lamplight , or by the rays of the sun that penetrated with difficulty, and where he inhaled only the musty odor that emanates from books. But that air was too subtle and cold to be breathed safely for long; consequently, the ecclesiastic, as well as the physician, re-entered the limits permitted by the Church so as not to fall into heresy. In this way, he examined his patient with the greatest care and diligence, not only as he saw him in his daily life, without deviating from the path of ideas and feelings that were habitual to him, but also as he appeared to him when, in a different environment, both morally and intellectually, the novelty of that environment gave expression to something equally new in his nature. He seems to have considered it essential to know the man before attempting to cure him; For wherever heart and intelligence are combined, they have a certain influence on bodily illnesses. Arthur Dimmesdale’s imagination and brain were so active , and his sensibility so intense, that his physical ailments certainly originated in the former. Therefore, Roger Chillingworth—the able man, the benevolent and friendly physician— first sought to fathom his patient’s heart, tracing his ideas and principles, searching his memories, and probing all with a cautious hand, like one seeking treasure in a dark cave. Few secrets can escape the investigator who has the opportunity and license to pursue such an enterprise, and possesses the sagacity to carry it through. The man who feels himself burdened under a grave secret ought especially to avoid the intimacy of his physician; for if the latter be endowed with natural sagacity, and with something in the manner of intuition; if he be not manifest in importunate vanity, nor in any disagreeable characteristic qualities; if he be possessed of the innate faculty of establishing such a congeniality between his own mind and that of his patient, that the latter may speak, plainly and carelessly, what he fancies himself to have only thought— If such revelations are received in silence, with a simple glance of sympathy, or at most with an occasional word that implies that all is understood; and if to these necessary qualities of a confidant are added the advantages that come from being a physician, then, in an inevitable moment, the patient’s soul will open up, revealing its most hidden mysteries to the light of day . Roger Chillingworth possessed all, or almost all, of the above- mentioned qualifications. Time, however, passed; a sort of intimacy, as we have already said, had grown up between these two learned and intelligent men; they discussed all subjects relating to moral or religious matters, as well as matters of a public or private nature; each also spoke much about matters that seemed purely personal; and yet, not a single secret, such as the doctor imagined must exist, escaped the young minister’s lips . He had, however, a suspicion that even the exact nature of Mr. Dimmesdale’s bodily malady had not been revealed to him. Strange reserve! After some time, at the doctor’s suggestion, Mr. Dimmesdale’s friends arranged for them to be lodged under one roof, so that the physician might have more opportunities of supervising the young clergyman’s health. This arrangement excited great joy in the town. It was believed to be the most expedient thing for Mr. Dimmesdale’s welfare; unless, as had been repeatedly advised by those in authority, he should choose for his wife one of the many young ladies who were spiritually devoted to him. But at present there was no hope that Arthur Dimmesdale would so choose; had replied to all such suggestions by refusing, as if priestly celibacy were one of his articles of faith. 16 Things being as they were, it seemed that this aged, sagacious, experienced, and benevolent physician, especially considering the paternal love and respect he bore to the young minister, was the one and only person most likely to be constantly at his side and within reach of his voice. The two friends took up their new residence in the house of a pious widow of good standing, who assigned to Mr. Dimmesdale a sunlit room on the street, but with thick curtains at the window to soften the light when desired. The walls were hung with tapestries said to have come from the Gobelins, and representing the history of David and Bathsheba, and that of the prophet Nathan, as told in the Bible, with colors still vivid that gave the beautiful female figures in the picture the appearance of horrible prophetesses of misfortune . Here the pale ecclesiastic deposited his library, rich in enormous folio books covered in parchment, containing the works of the Holy Fathers, the science of the Rabbis and the erudition of the monks, whose writings the Protestant clergy were often obliged to make use of, no matter how much they disdained and At the rear of the house, the old physician arranged his study and laboratory, not as a modern scientist would consider it tolerably complete, but equipped with distilling apparatus and the necessary implements for preparing drugs and chemicals, which the practical alchemist knew how to make good use of. Thus comfortably situated, these two learned individuals settled each in their respective quarters, but passing familiarly from one room to the other, each manifesting a keen interest in the other’s affairs, without, however, exceeding the bounds of curiosity. The more sensible friends of the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, as we have already indicated, very justly imagined that the hand of Providence had done all this for the purpose—sought in so many prayers, both public and private—of restoring the young minister’s health. But it must also be said that a certain portion of the community had recently begun to view the relationship between Mr. Dimmesdale and the mysterious old doctor differently . When an ignorant crowd tries to see things with its own eyes, at its own peril, it runs a great risk of being deceived. However, when it forms its judgment, as is commonly the case, guided by the teachings of a great soul, the conclusions it arrives at are frequently so profound and so exact that they may be said to possess the character of supernaturally revealed truths. The people, in the case in question, could not justify their prejudice against Roger Chillingworth with any reasons worth refuting. It is true that an old artisan who had lived in London thirty years before the events we are narrating, claimed to have seen the doctor, though under a different name, which he did not recall, in the company of Doctor Forman, the famous old magician concerned in the affair of the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, which occurred about that time and caused what is now called a great sensation. Two or three individuals stated that the physician, during his captivity among the Indians, had increased his medical knowledge by participating in the incantations or magical ceremonies of the savage priests, who, as was well known, were powerful sorcerers, and sometimes performed almost miraculous cures by their skill in black magic. A large number of individuals, many of them sensible and practical observers, whose opinions in other matters would have been invaluable, affirmed that Roger Chillingworth’s outward appearance had undergone a remarkable change since he had first settled in the town, and especially since he had been living under the same roof with Dimmesdale. The calm, thoughtful, and studious expression of his face, which had at first characterized him, had been replaced by something malignant and disagreeable, which had not been previously apparent, but which increased in intensity with increasing frequency and nearer observation . According to the popular notion, the fire that burned in his laboratory came from hell, and was fed with infernal substances; and therefore, as was to be expected, his face also grew blacker and blacker with smoke. To summarize, it was widely believed that the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages of special sanctity in all ages of the Christian religion, was tempted by Satan himself, or by an emissary of his in the person of old Roger Chillingworth. This diabolical agent had divine permission to enjoy the young clergyman’s intimacy for a time, and to plot against the salvation of his soul; though no sensible man could doubt for a moment which side would win. The people expected, with unshaken faith, to see the minister emerge from that struggle transfigured with the glory that his inevitable triumph would bring him. Meanwhile, it was nevertheless very sad to think of the mortal agony he had to go through before emerging victorious. Alas! Judging from the sadness and terror revealed in the poor ecclesiastic’s expression, the battle was proving to be very fierce, and victory could not be said to be certain. Chapter 10. THE PHYSICIAN AND HIS PATIENT. The old physician had been all his life a man of calm and benevolent temperament, though not of very warm affections, and always pure and honest in all his dealings with the world. He had now begun an investigation with the severe and impartial integrity of a judge, as he imagined himself, desirous only of discovering the truth, as if it were a geometrical problem, and not of the human passions and offenses to which he was a victim. But as he proceeded with his labors, a sort of terrible fascination, an imperious and inescapable necessity, took possession of the old Roger, and left him no peace or repose until he had done all that he believed to be his duty. He now probed the poor minister’s heart as a miner digs the earth for gold, or a gravedigger digs a pit for a jewel buried with a corpse, only to find only bones and corruption at last. Would that, for the sake of his soul, this had been what Chillingworth was looking for! Sometimes an ominous gleam gleamed in the doctor’s eyes, like the reflection of an infernal fire, as if the ground in which this somber miner labored had given him clues that gave him well-founded hopes of finding something valuable. “This man,” he said to himself at such moments, “this man, as pure as they judge him, who seems every bit as pure in spirit, has inherited a very strong animal nature from his father or his mother. Let us delve a little deeper into this direction.” Then, after thoroughly searching the soul of the young clergyman, and discovering much precious material in the form of lofty aspirations for the welfare of the human race, a fervent love of souls, pure feelings, a natural piety strengthened by meditation and study, and illuminated by revelation—all of which, though of many carats of gold, was of no value to the medical examiner—he, though discouraged, would begin his investigations in another direction. He would steal stealthily slip in, with as cautious a tread and as wary an aspect as a thief who enters a chamber where a man is half asleep, or perhaps wide awake, with the object of stealing the very treasure that man guards like the apple of his eye. In spite of all his precautions and care, the pavement occasionally creaked; his garments made a slight noise; the shadow of his figure, in an unauthorized proximity, almost enveloped his victim. Mr. Dimmesdale, whose nervous sensibility was often to him a kind of spiritual intuition, sometimes had a vague idea that something, an enemy to his peace, had placed itself in his path. But the old doctor also possessed perceptions that were almost intuitive; and when the minister cast a look of astonishment upon him, the doctor would sit quietly and wordlessly, like his benevolent, watchful, and affectionate, though not importunate, friend. Yet Mr. Dimmesdale might perhaps have realized the character of this individual more perfectly, had not a certain morbid feeling, to which diseased souls are liable, led him to suspect all mankind. Trusting in the friendship of no man, he could not recognize an enemy when one actually appeared. Therefore, he continued to maintain his familiarity with the doctor, receiving him daily in his study, or visiting him in his laboratory, and, by way of recreation, paying attention to the processes by which herbs were converted into powerful drugs. One day, with his forehead reclining on his hand, and his elbow on the windowsill overlooking a cemetery near the house, he was talking with the doctor while he examined a bunch of ugly-looking plants. “Where?” he said, looking askance at the plants, for he seldom “I now looked upon any object, human or inanimate, and said, ‘Where, good Doctor, have you gathered these black, limp-leaved herbs ? ‘ ‘In the neighboring churchyard,’ replied the doctor, continuing his occupation. ‘They are new to me. They grew over a grave, without a tombstone, or any other sign to preserve the memory of the dead man, except these ugly herbs. They seemed to spring from his heart, as if they symbolized some horrible secret buried with him, which he had better have confessed during his life. ‘ ‘Perhaps,’ replied Mr. Dimmesdale, ‘he desired it very much, but it was not given him to do it. ‘ ‘And why?’ said the doctor. ‘Why not, when all the forces of nature so demand the confession of guilt, that even these black herbs have sprung up from a buried heart , to make manifest a crime that was not revealed?’ “That, good sir, is nothing more than your imagination. If I’m not mistaken, only the power of Divinity can discover, whether through spoken words, or through a sign or emblem, the secrets that may be buried in a human heart. The heart that makes itself guilty of such secrets is forced to preserve them until the day when all hidden things will be revealed. Nor have I read or interpreted the Holy Scriptures in such a way as to make me understand that the discovery of human deeds or thoughts, which is to be realized then, should be part of the retribution. That would surely be a very superficial way of looking at things. No; these revelations, unless I am greatly mistaken, serve only to increase the intellectual satisfaction of all rational beings who on that day will be waiting to see the explanation of the somber problem of life. For the resolution of this problem to be complete in all its aspects, a knowledge of the hearts of men will be necessary.” And I believe, moreover, that the hearts that hold those sad secrets of which you speak will, at that last day, not with loathing, but with unspeakable joy. “Then why not reveal them here?” inquired the doctor, looking sideways and calmly at the minister, “why do not the guilty parties profit by this unspeakable joy as soon as possible? ” “Most of them do,” said Dimmesdale, laying his hand upon his breast , as if seized with a sudden pang. “Many an unhappy soul has confided his secret to me, not only on his deathbed, but in the prime of life and the enjoyment of a good reputation. And always, after such a confession, oh! what a look of inward tranquility have I seen upon the countenances of those brethren who had erred in the path of duty! And how could it be otherwise? Why should a man guilty of murder, for instance, prefer to keep the corpse buried in his own heart, rather than cast it away once and for all, for the world to take its own? “Yet some men bury their secrets in this manner,” observed the quiet physician. “Yes, it is true; such men exist,” replied Mr. Dimmesdale. But, for lack of other more obvious reasons, it may be that they do not open their mouths from the very constitution of their nature. Or—why not suppose it?—guilty as they may be, as they still cherish a true zeal for the glory of God and the welfare of their fellow men, they are afraid of appearing stained and guilty in the eyes of men; for they fear that no good can be expected from them in the future, nor can they redeem by good works the evil they have done.” Therefore, to their own unspeakable torment, they move about among their fellow men, seemingly pure as new-fallen snow, while their hearts are all tarnished and stained with iniquity from which they cannot be rid. “These men deceive themselves,” said the physician, with somewhat more vehemence than was natural to him, and making a slight sign with his hand. index finger,–they fear to bring upon themselves the ignominy that rightfully belongs to them. Their love for men, their zeal in the service of God, all these holy impulses, may or may not exist in their hearts alongside the iniquities to which their faults have given rise, and which will necessarily engender infernal products. But do not raise your impure hands to heaven if you seek to glorify God. If you wish to serve your fellow men, do so by clearly revealing the power and reality of your conscience, voluntarily humbling yourself and doing penance. Would you have me believe, O wise and pious friend! that a false exterior can do more for the glory of God or the well-being of men than the pure and simple truth? Believe me, such men deceive themselves. “Perhaps so,” said the young minister with an indifferent air, as if dodging a discussion which he considered irrelevant or unreasonable ; for he possessed a high degree of faculty for disengaging from a subject which agitated his overly nervous and sensitive temperament. “Perhaps so,” he continued, “but now I wish to ask my skillful physician whether he really believes that the kind care he has been taking of this, my weak human machine, has been of any benefit to me.” Before the doctor could reply, they heard the clear, wild laughter of a child in the adjoining cemetery. Instinctively glancing through the half-open window, for it was summer, the young minister saw Esther and Pearl on the path which crossed the tomb. Pearl looked as beautiful as the light of dawn, but she was precisely in one of those fits of malignant joy which, when they occur, seem to isolate her completely from all that is human. She hopped disrespectfully from grave to grave, until she came to a gravestone with a large stone engraved with a coat of arms, and she began to dance upon it. In response to her mother’s admonitions, the child paused for a moment to pluck the thorny buds of a thistle growing beside the grave. Taking a handful of buds, she fastened them along the lines of the scarlet letter that decorated her mother’s breast, to which they clung tenaciously. Hester did not pluck them out. The doctor, who had meanwhile approached the window, cast a glance at the cemetery and smiled bitterly. “In the nature of that child,” he said, as much to himself as to his companion, “there is neither law, nor reverence for authority, nor regard for the opinions and customs of others, whether good or bad.” A few days ago I saw her sprinkle the Governor himself at the cattle trough. What in heaven’s name is this child? Is she a thoroughly wicked imp? Has she any affections at all? Has she any clear principles? “None, except the liberty that comes from breaking a law,” replied Mr. Dimmesdale, in a calm tone, as if he had been discussing the matter with himself. “Whether she is capable of any good, I do not know. ” The child probably heard the voices of these men, for, raising her eyes to the window with a clever and malicious smile, she flung one of the thorny buds at the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, who, with a nervous hand and some trepidation, endeavored to parry the missile. Pearl, perceiving her uneasiness, clapped her hands with the most extravagant joy. Hester, too, had involuntarily raised her eyes; And all these four people, old and young, looked at each other in silence, until the little girl burst into laughter and cried: “Come away, mother; come away, or that old Black Man over there will get you. He has already got hold of the minister. Come away, mother, come away, or he will get you too.” But he cannot get hold of Pearl. And he sent her mother off, jumping, dancing, cavorting fantastically among the mounds of the dead, like a creature that had nothing in common with the generations buried there, not even the remotest kinship with them. It seemed as if she had been created from anew. elements, and is therefore obliged to live a separate existence, with its own special laws, without its eccentricities being considered a crime. “There is a woman,” continued the physician after a pause, “who, whatever her faults may be, has none of that mysterious hidden corruption which you think must be so hard to bear. Do you think Hester Prynne is the less unhappy on account of that scarlet letter she wears on her breast? ” “I think so,” replied the minister. “However, I cannot answer for her. There is an expression of grief on her face which I wish I had not seen. I think, however, that it is far better for the patient to be at liberty to show his grief, as this poor Hester is, than to bear it hidden in his heart.” There was another pause; and the physician began again to examine and arrange the plants he had gathered. “You asked me, not long ago,” he said, “my opinion of your health.” “I did so,” replied Dimmesdale, “and I should be glad to know it. Pray speak plainly, whatever your judgment may be. ” “Well, quite frankly,” said the physician, still engaged in the arrangement of his herbs, but observing Mr. Dimmesdale with circumspection , “the disease is very strange; not so much in itself, or in the way it manifests itself outwardly, as far as I can judge from the symptoms I have been given to observe. Seeing you daily, my good sir, and having studied the changes in your countenance for months, I might perhaps judge you a very sick man, though not so sick that a learned and vigilant physician would not hope to cure. But” I do not know what to say, “the disease seems to be familiar to me, and yet I do not know it. ” “You are speaking in riddles, my learned sir,” said the pale minister, looking out of the window. “Then, to speak more plainly,” continued the physician, “and I beg your pardon, if my frankness of language be pardoned, let me ask you, as your friend, to whom Providence has committed your life and physical welfare, whether you have fully explained and related to me all the effects and symptoms of this disease. ” “How can you ask me such a question?” rejoined the minister. It would certainly be child’s play to call a physician and conceal the sore. ” “You give me to understand, then, that I know all,” said Roger Chillingworth, with a deliberate accent, and fixing upon the minister a discerning glance, full of intense and concentrated intelligence. “It must be so; but he to whom only the physical and outward malady is presented, sometimes knows but half the evil for which he is called.” A disease of the body, which we consider a complete whole in itself, may perhaps be but the symptom of some purely spiritual disturbance. I beg your pardon again, my good friend, if my language offends you in the least; but of all the men I have known, in none, as in you, is the physical part so completely amalgamated and identified, if I may use the expression, with the spiritual part of which it is the mere instrument. “In that case, I need ask you no more questions,” said the minister, rising somewhat hastily from his seat. “I do not believe that the cure of souls is your charge. ” “This,” continued the physician, without altering his voice, nor noticing the interruption, but standing up before the pale and exhausted minister, “causes a disease, a sore spot, if we may call it so, in your spirit, to have its immediate, appropriate manifestation in your corporeal form. Would you wish your physician to cure the physical malady?” But how can he do it without your first letting him see the wound or sorrow of your soul? “No! Not to you! Not to an earthly physician!” cried Mr. Dimmesdale, in the greatest agitation, and fixing his wide-open, bright, and fierce eyes upon old Roger. Chillingworth. Not you! But if it be a disease of the soul , then I will put myself in the hands of the only Physician of the soul; he can cure or he can kill, as he judges best. Let him do with me in his justice and wisdom what he thinks good. But who are you to interfere in this matter? You who dare to come between the patient and his God? And with a furious gesture, he hurried from the room. “I am glad I have taken this step,” said the physician to himself, following the minister with his eyes and with a grave smile. “Nothing is lost. We shall soon be friends again. But see how anger takes hold of this man and drives him mad! And as happens with one feeling, so happens with another. This pious Mr. Dimmesdale has committed a fault before now, in a moment of hot passion.” It was not difficult to reestablish the intimacy between the two companions, in the same state and condition as before. The young minister, after a few hours of solitude, realized that his nervous disorder had caused him to incur an explosion of rage, without any excuse in the doctor’s words . He marveled at the violence with which he had treated the kindly old man, when he had only been expressing an opinion and giving advice that were part of his duty as a physician, and which he himself had expressly requested. Filled with these thoughts of repentance, he lost no time in giving his complete satisfaction and in begging his friend to continue his work and care, which, if they did not completely restore his health, had undoubtedly contributed to prolonging his feeble existence until that hour. Old Roger readily agreed and continued his medical vigilance, doing all he could for the minister’s benefit with the greatest good faith, but always leaving the patient’s room, after a medical interview, with a mysterious and strange smile on his lips. This expression was invisible in Dimmesdale’s presence , but grew more intense as the physician crossed the threshold. “A strange case!” he murmured. “I must search it more deeply. Strange sympathy between soul and body! If only for the benefit of science, I must investigate this matter thoroughly . ” A short time after the above-mentioned scene, it happened that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, at noon, quite unexpectedly, fell into a profound sleep, while seated in his armchair, reading a folio volume that lay open upon the table. The intensity of the minister’s repose was the more remarkable, as he was one of those persons whose sleep is usually light, uncontinuous, and easily interrupted by the slightest cause. But his spirits were not so profoundly lethargic as to prevent him from stirring in his chair, when the old physician, without any extraordinary precautions, entered the room. Chillingworth went without hesitation to his sick friend, and placing his hand upon his bosom, drew aside the garment which had always kept him covered, even from the physician’s gaze. Then it was that Mr. Dimmesdale started, and even stirred slightly. After a brief pause, the doctor withdrew. But with what a fierce look of surprise, joy, and horror! With what sinister pleasure, too intense to find full expression in his eyes and features, and therefore permeating the whole ugliness of his face and body, manifesting itself in extravagant gestures and motions, now in the raising of his arms to heaven, now in the stamping of his feet! Had anyone been able to see old Roger Chillingworth in that moment of ecstasy , they would not have had to wonder how Satan behaves when he succeeds in losing a precious soul to heaven and winning it to hell. But what distinguished the doctor’s ecstasy from that which Satan would experience was the expression of astonishment that accompanied it. Chapter 11. THE INTERIOR OF A HEART. After the incident last related, the relations between Dimmesdale and the physician, though apparently the same, were in reality of a different character than they had been before. The physician now saw a very simple course to pursue, though not exactly the one he had marked out for himself. Quiet, peaceful, and cold as he appeared, it was to be feared that there existed within him a fund of malice, hitherto latent, but now active, which impelled him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever taken upon his enemy. He aspired to become that faithful friend into whose heart would be confided all the fear, the remorse, the agony, the useless regret, the repeated invasion of sinful thoughts, which he had vainly sought to repel. All that guilty pain, hidden from the eyes of the world, which the world would have pitied and forgiven, must be revealed to him, the Implacable One, to him who would never forgive. All that dark secret must be revealed to the very man for whom nothing else could so completely satisfy the desire for revenge! The young minister’s natural reserve and elusiveness had been an obstacle to this plan. The doctor, however, was not prepared to be satisfied with the aspect which, almost providentially, the matter had assumed in place of the dark plans he had formed. He might say that a revelation had been given to him; and it mattered little to him whether its source was heavenly or hellish. Thanks to this unexpected revelation, in all his subsequent relations with Mr. Dimmesdale, it seemed that the inmost recesses of the young minister’s soul were visible to the doctor’s eyes, so that he could observe and study his most intimate emotions. From then on, he became not only a spectator but also the principal actor in what was happening in the depths of the poor minister’s heart. He could do whatever he wanted with him. If he felt like awakening him with a sensation of agony, there was his victim on the rack. He only needed to stir certain springs of his soul, which the doctor knew perfectly well. Did he want to shock him with sudden fear? As if obeying the wand of a prodigious magician, a thousand visions of different shapes arose, revolving around the unfortunate clergyman with their fingers pointing at his chest. He executed all this with such perfect subtlety that the minister, although constantly vaguely aware that something evil was watching him, was never able to fully grasp its true nature. It is true that he regarded the old doctor with doubt and fear, and even at times with horror and intense aversion. His gestures, his movements, his gray beard, his smallest and most indifferent actions, even the cut and style of his dress, were odious to him: all indicative of a deeper antipathy in the minister’s heart than he was willing to confess to himself. And as it was impossible to assign any cause to this distrust and aversion, Mr. Dimmesdale, conscious that the poison of some morbid element in his spirit was infecting his whole heart, attributed to this every presentiment. He endeavored, therefore, to cure himself of his antipathies toward the old physician, and, regardless of what he might have deduced from them, did all he could to extirpate them. This being impossible , he continued his habits of familiar intercourse with the old man, thus affording constant opportunities for the vengeful physician, a poor, wretched creature more unhappy than his victim, to accomplish the end to which he had devoted his entire energies. While suffering bodily, his soul gnawed and tormented by some dark cause, and wholly at the mercy of the machinations of his most mortal enemy, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale had been steadily attaining a brilliant popularity in his sacred ministry. This popularity was no doubt largely due to his sufferings. His intellectual gifts, His moral perceptions, his faculty of communicating to others the emotions he himself experienced, kept him in a state of supernatural activity, owing to the anxiety and anxiety of his daily life. His fame, though still steadily increasing, had already overshadowed the less brilliant reputations of some of his colleagues, among whom were men who had spent many more years in acquiring their theological knowledge than Mr. Dimmesdale had been , and who therefore ought to have been much more filled with solid learning than his young companion. There were others endowed with more tenacious effort, of greater weight and gravity, qualities which, combined with a certain amount of theological learning, constitute an efficient and highly respectable, though unlovable, variety of the clerical species. Others there were, true holy fathers, whose faculties had been developed by patient, constant, and untiring study of books, and whose purity of life, it may be said, had brought them into spiritual communication with a higher world. But all these men lacked that divine gift which descended upon the Lord’s disciples in tongues of flame on the day of Pentecost, symbolizing not only the ability to speak in strange and unknown languages, but also the ability to address all mankind in the language of their own hearts. All these ministers, otherwise very apostolic, lacked that divine gift of a tongue of flame. They would have endeavored in vain, had they attempted it, to express the most sublime truths through familiar voices and images. Probably to this class Mr. Dimmesdale belonged, both by temperament and by education. He would have soared to the loftiest heights of faith and holiness, had not the weight of crime, or anguish, or whatever it was that dragged him down, impeded him. This burden, even though he was a man of ethereal attributes whose voice perhaps even angels would have heard, kept him at the level of the humblest; but at the same time it brought him into closer contact with sinful humanity, so that his heart beat in unison with its own, understanding its sufferings and making thousands of hearts share his own, through his melancholic and persuasive, though sometimes terrible, eloquence. The guilty people knew the power that so moved them. The people thought the young minister a miracle of sanctity: they imagined that heaven spoke through his mouth, either to console them, or to reprove them, or to speak words of love or wisdom. In their eyes, the ground they trod was sanctified. The young maidens of his church grew paler and paler around him, the victims of a passion so full of religious feeling, that they imagined themselves to be all religion, and offered it publicly at the foot of the altars as the most acceptable of sacrifices. The elderly members of his congregation, contemplating Mr. Dimmesdale’s delicate physical constitution, and comparing it with the vigor of their own, notwithstanding the difference in age, believed that he would precede them on their journey to the celestial region, and recommended to their children that his aged remains should be buried beside the young minister’s holy grave. And meanwhile, when the unfortunate Mr. Dimmesdale thought of his grave, he wondered if it were possible for grass to grow upon it, since a cursed thing was to be buried there. It is inconceivable what anguish this public veneration filled him with! To adore the truth was a genuine impulse in him, and to consider anything not vivified by the truth as empty, vain, and completely devoid of all weight and value. What was he, then? Something corporeal, or the most impalpable of shadows? He longed, therefore, to speak once for all from the height of his pulpit, and to say aloud, before the whole world, what he really was: “I, whom you see dressed in this black robe of the priesthood; I, who ascend the sacred pulpit and I lift my pale face heavenward, endeavoring to establish myself, in your name, in connection with the Almighty; I, in whose daily life you think you discern the sanctity of Enoch; I, whose footsteps, as you suppose, leave a shining imprint upon my earthly path, to guide the pilgrims who come after me into the region of the blessed; I, who have placed the water of baptism upon the heads of your children; I, who have repeated the last prayers for the souls of those who are forever departed; I, your pastor, whom you so reverence and in whom you so much trust, I am nothing but a lie and a profanation. More than once had the Reverend Dimmesdale mounted the pulpit with the firm purpose of not descending until he had uttered words like these. More than once he had cleared his throat, and taken a long, deep, tremulous breath to rid himself of the dark secret of his soul. More than once—no, more than a hundred times—he had truly spoken. Spoken! But how? He had told his hearers that he was a completely abject being, the most abject of the abject, the worst of sinners, an abomination, a thing of incredible iniquity; and that the only thing worthy of surprise was that they did not see his miserable body burned to a crisp in their presence by the fiery wrath of the Almighty. Could clearer language than this be given? Would not the hearers, by a simultaneous impulse, rise from their seats and call him down from the pulpit he was defiling with his presence? No; certainly not . All heard this, and all reverenced him the more. They had not the slightest suspicion of the terrible import of these words with which he condemned himself. “The excellent young man!” they said to one another. “The saint on earth! Alas! If in the ermine purity of his soul he can perceive such iniquity, what a horrible sight will he not see in yours or mine! ” Dimmesdale, a subtle, though remorseful hypocrite , knew well how this vague confession would be regarded. He had tried to create a kind of illusion for himself by exposing to the public the spectacle of a guilty conscience, but he only succeeded in burdening himself with a new sin, and adding a new shame to the old, without even obtaining the momentary consolation of deceiving himself . He had spoken the pure truth, yet transformed it into the most utter falsehood. And notwithstanding this, by instinct, by education, by principle, he loved the truth and hated the lie as few men do. But above all things, and above all things, he hated himself . His private troubles had led him to adopt practices more in harmony with those of the Catholic Church than with those of the Protestant Church in which he had been born and trained. Shutting himself up in his chamber, under lock and key, he devoted himself to the practice of discipline upon his ailing body. Often this Protestant and Puritan minister had applied these practices behind his back, laughing bitterly at himself at the same time, and chastising himself the more relentlessly for this bitter laughter. Like many other pious Puritans, he was accustomed to fast; though not as they did to purify the body and render it more worthy of heavenly inspiration, but in a rigorous manner, until his knees trembled, and as an act of penance. He also spent night after night awake, sometimes in complete darkness, sometimes illuminated only by the flickering light of a lamp. and at other times gazing at her face in a mirror illuminated by the strongest light she could obtain, thus symbolizing the constant internal examination with which she tortured herself, but by which she could not purify herself. During these prolonged vigils her mind became troubled, and then she thought she saw visions floating before her eyes; perhaps she perceived them confusedly in the weak light that emanated from them, in the most remote and dark part of her room, or more distinctly, and at her side, reflected in the mirror. It was already a pack of diabolical forms that They made faces at the pale minister, mocking him and inviting him to follow them; now a group of bright angels, soaring to heaven in sorrow, growing more ethereal as they ascended. Or they were the dead friends of his youth, and his white-bearded father, frowning piously, and his mother, turning her face away from him as she passed. A mother’s spirit! I believe she would have cast a pitying glance at her child. And then, across the room made so horrible by these spectral visions, glided Hester Prynne, leading Pearl in her scarlet gown by the hand , and pointing with her finger first to the letter that gleamed on her bosom, and then to the breast of the young clergyman. None of these visions ever entirely deceived him. At any moment, by an effort of his will, he could convince himself that they were not corporeal substances but creations of his restless imagination; but nevertheless, in a certain sense, they were the most true and real things the poor minister now had to deal with. In a life as false as his, the most unspeakable sorrow consisted in the fact that the realities around us, destined by Heaven for the sustenance and joy of our spirits, were deprived of that which constitutes their very life and essence. To the false man, the whole universe is false, impalpable, and everything he touches becomes nothing. And he himself, showing himself under a false aspect, becomes a shadow, or perhaps ceases to exist. The only truth that continued to give Mr. Dimmesdale a real existence in this world was the agony latent in the inmost recesses of his soul, and its undisguised expression in all its outward appearance. Had he once found it in his power to smile and present a cheerful countenance, he would not have been the man he was. On one of those dreadful nights which we have been in vain endeavoring to describe, the minister started from his seat with a start. A new idea had occurred to him. There might be a moment of peace in his soul. Dressing himself with the same care as though he were about to discharge his sacred ministry, and in precisely the same manner, he quietly descended the stairs, opened the door, and passed out into the street. Chapter 12. The Minister’s Watch. Walking as if in a dream, and perhaps really under the influence of a species of somnambulism, Mr. Dimmesdale arrived at the spot where, years before, Hester had suffered the first hours of her public ignominy. The same platform, black and stained by the rain, sun, and storms of seven long years, its steps worn by the footsteps of the many prisoners who had climbed them since that time, rose there below the balcony of the church or meeting house. The minister ascended the steps. It was a dark night in early May. The sky was covered over its entire length with a thick blanket of clouds. Had the same crowd that witnessed the punishment of Hester Prynne been able to be summoned now, they would not have been able to make out the features of a face on the platform, nor the outlines of a human form in the deep darkness of midnight. But the entire population was fast asleep. There was no danger that its inhabitants might discover anything. The minister could remain standing there, if he so chose, until morning tinged the east, running no risk other than the damage that the cold, damp night air might cause to his system. No eye could see him, except He, ever alert and awake, who had seen him when he was shut up in his secluded chamber scourging himself with the bloody disciplines. Why, then, had he gone there? Was it a parody of penance? Yes, a parody, but one in which his soul deceived itself while angels shed sad tears and the enemy of men rejoiced. He had gone there, driven by remorse, which beset him everywhere, and whose companion was that cowardice which invariably He drew back at the very moment he was about to open his lips. Poor, unhappy man! What right had he to burden such feeble shoulders as his own with the weight of crime? Crime is for the strong, who can either bear it in silence, or, if they find the burden too great, rid themselves of it by a discharge of their consciences. But this exceedingly weak and sensitive soul could do neither, but continually wavered between the two extremes, becoming more and more entangled in the inextricable bonds of the agony of useless repentance and hidden crime. And thus, as he stood upon the platform, engaged in this vain show of atonement, Dimmesdale was seized with a great horror, as if the whole world were beholding a scarlet mark upon his naked breast, just above the region of the heart. And there indeed was, and there had been for a long time, the gnawing and poisonous tooth of physical pain. Without any effort of his will to stop it, and without being able to control himself, he uttered a piercing shriek, which resounded from house to house and was echoed back by the distant hills, as if a band of evil spirits, knowing the horror and misery that cry contained, had amused themselves by echoing the sound from one side to the other. “There is no remedy now!” exclaimed the clergyman, covering his face with his hands. “The whole city will wake up and rush out into the streets and find me here.” But it was not so. The cry resounded perhaps in his frightened ears with more force than it really had. The population did not wake up; Or if any did wake up, they attributed it to something dreadful that had happened in a dream, or to the noise of witches or sorceresses, whose voices, in those days, were frequently heard in lonely places as they passed through the air in company with Satan. Mr. Dimmesdale, therefore, hearing nothing to indicate a general alarm, took his hands from his face and looked around him. At one of the windows of the Governor’s house, which was some distance away, he saw the figure of the old magistrate wrapped in a white nightgown, with a lamp in her hand and a nightcap on her head. She looked like a phantom summoned at an ill hour. The cry had evidently frightened her. At another window of the same house appeared old Mrs. Hibbins, the Governor’s sister, also carrying a lamp, which, even at this distance, revealed the stern, displeasing expression of her face. She put her head through the shutter and looked up with some anxiety. Surely the venerable witch had also heard Mr. Dimmesdale’s cry and believed it to be, with its multitude of echoes and repercussions, the clamor of the demons and night hags with whom, as is well known, she was in the habit of making excursions into the forest. Upon noticing the light from the Governor’s lamp, the old lady promptly extinguished her own and probably disappeared into the clouds. The minister never saw her again. The magistrate, after a scrupulous observation of the darkness, in which he would have been able to distinguish nothing, withdrew from the window. The minister then calmed himself somewhat. Soon, however, he discerned the gleam of a distant light, gradually approaching, and recognizing here one object, here another, such as the arched door of a house, with an iron knocker, a water pump, etc., which riveted his attention, although he was firmly convinced that as the light, which would soon fall full upon his face, drew nearer, the moment drew nearer when his fate would be decided, and the fatal secret so long concealed would be revealed . As the light drew nearer, he could discern the figure of his brother in religion, or, to speak more properly, of his spiritual father, as well as his very dear friend, the Reverend Mr. Wilson, who, as Mr. Dimmesdale rightly conjectured, had been with him. praying at the bedside of a dying man. The good old minister had just come from the chamber of Governor Winthrop, who had just passed away, and was now making his way home by the light of a lantern. The gleam of which had led Mr. Dimmesdale to imagine that he saw good Father Wilson surrounded by a halo or radiant coronet like that of the saintly men of old, which gave him an air of glorious beatitude in the midst of this somber night of sin. Dimmesdale smiled, or rather laughed, at these thoughts suggested by the lantern, and wondered if he had gone mad. As the Reverend Mr. Wilson passed the stage, wrapping himself tightly in the folds of his Genoa cloak with one hand, while holding the lantern in the other, Mr. Dimmesdale could hardly repress the desire to speak. “Good night, venerable Father Wilson.” I beg you to come up and spend a little time with me. Good heavens! Had Mr. Dimmesdale really spoken? He believed so for an instant; but the words were only spoken in his own mind. The venerable Father Wilson proceeded slowly on his way, taking the greatest care to avoid staining himself with the mud of the street, and without even turning his head towards the fateful platform. When the light of his lantern had completely vanished in the distance, the young minister perceived, by the sort of faintness that seized him, that the last few moments had been for him a crisis of terrible anxiety, though his spirit had made an involuntary effort to extricate itself from it by the sort of half-jocular apostrophe addressed to Mr. Wilson. Soon after, the feeling of the grotesque crept back upon Dimmesdale amidst the solemn visions which his mind was forming. He thought his legs were growing stiff with the night chill , and he began to imagine that he would never be able to descend the steps of the platform. Morning was approaching, and he would be there: the townspeople would be beginning to rise. The earliest riser, emerging in the twilight’s dimness, would perceive a vague figure standing in the place consecrated to atone for crimes and misdemeanors; and almost out of his mind, moved by fright and curiosity, he would go knocking from door to door for the entire village to come and behold the specter—for so he imagined—of some deceased criminal. At this time, the morning light would grow ever more intense: the elderly patriarchs of the town would hastily rise, each wrapped in his flannel dressing gown, and the respectable matrons without pausing to change their nightclothes. The whole congregation of decent and proper people, who had never before been seen with a hair astray, would now appear with their hair and clothes in the greatest disorder. Old Governor Bellingham would come out with a stern countenance, wearing his collars backward; and Mrs. Hibbins, his sister, would come with a few twigs of the jungle pinned to her dress, and with a more sour face than ever, as if she had scarcely slept a minute after her night’s walk; and good Father Wilson would also appear, having spent half the night at the bedside of a dying man, not much pleased to have his sleep disturbed so early. There would also come the dignitaries from Mr. Dimmesdale’s church, and the young virgins who idolized their spiritual minister and had built an altar to him in their pure hearts. They would all rush in, stumbling and stumbling, and casting their eyes in terror and horror towards the fateful platform. And whom would they perceive there in the red light of dawn? Who, but the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, half frozen with cold, overcome with shame, and standing where Hester Prynne had been! Moved by the grotesque horror of this sight, the minister, forgetting his infinite anxiety and alarm, burst into a roar of laughter, which was immediately answered by a light, airy, childish laugh, in which, with a thrill of the heart—whether from intense pain or extreme pleasure, he knew not,—he recognized the accent of little Pearl. “Pearl! little Pearl!” she cried after a moment’s pause; and then, in a lower voice, she added: “Esther, Esther Prynne, are you there? ” “Yes; it is Esther Prynne,” she replied, in an accent of surprise; and the minister heard her footsteps approaching. “It is I and my little Pearl. ” “Whence come you, Esther?” inquired the minister. “What has brought you hither? ” “I have been watching over a dying man,” replied Esther; “I have been at Governor Winthrop’s deathbed, taken measurements for his gown, and am now on my way to my room. ” “Come up here, Esther; “Come with Pearl,” said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. “You have both been here before, but I was not with you. Come up here once more, and we three shall be together. ” Hester silently mounted the steps, and stood upon the platform, holding Pearl’s hand. The minister took the child’s other hand in his own. He did so, but it seemed as if a new life had entered her, and flowed like a torrent into her heart, and spread itself through her veins. One might say that mother and daughter were communicating their vital warmth to the half-frozen nature of the young clergyman. The three of them formed an electric chain. “Minister!” whispered little Pearl. “What do you mean, child?” asked Mr. Dimmesdale. “Will you be here at noon to-morrow with my mother and me?” asked Pearl. “No; “Not so, my little Pearl,” replied the minister; for with the new energy he acquired at that instant, all the old dread of public revelation, which had so long been the agony of his life, had come over him, and he was already trembling, though mingled with a strange joy, at the sight of his present situation. “No, not so, my child,” he continued. “I will stand with you and your mother another day; yes, another day; but not tomorrow. ” Pearl laughed and tried to disengage the minister’s hand, but he held it fast. “Just one moment longer, my child,” he said. “But will you promise me that tomorrow at noon you will take my mother and me by the hand ?” asked Pearl. “No, not tomorrow, Pearl,” said the minister, “but another day. ” “What day?” persisted the child. “On the great day of judgment,” murmured the clergyman, who felt obliged to reply thus to the child in his sacred capacity as minister of the altar. “Then,” continued he, “there before the Supreme Judge, your mother, you, and I, must appear at the same time. But the sunlight of this world shall not see us together.” Pearl began to laugh again. But before Mr. Dimmesdale had finished speaking, a light flashed across the dark horizon. It was doubtless one of those meteors which the night observer may often see, that quickly flare up, and brighten, and then vanish in the regions of space. So intense was its splendor that it completely illuminated the dense mass of clouds between the heavens and the earth. The celestial vault shone so brightly that the street was visible as if lit by midday light, but with that strangeness that always imparts an unaccustomed clarity to familiar objects. The wooden houses, with their projecting stories and curious pointed ridges; the door steps and doorways with the first grasses of spring just beginning to sprout nearby ; the earthen banks in the gardens that seemed black with newly turned earth—everything became visible, but with a singularity of appearance that seemed to give the objects a different meaning than they had before. And there stood the minister with his hand upon his heart; and Hester Prynne, with the embroidered letter shining in her bosom; and little Pearl, who was herself itself a symbol and the bond of union between those two beings. There they stood in the glare of that strange and solemn light, as if it were the light that was to reveal all secrets, and were also the dawn that was to reunite all who belonged to each other. There was a certain mysterious expression in Pearl’s eyes, and on her face, as she raised it to look at the minister, that malicious smile that made her compare it to a hobgoblin. She withdrew her hand from Mr. Dimmesdale’s and pointed across the street. But he folded his hands upon his breast and raised his eyes to heaven. Nothing was so common in those days as to interpret all meteoric apparitions, and all other natural phenomena, which occur with less regularity than the rising and setting of the sun and moon, as so many revelations of supernatural origin. Thus a shining spear, a flaming sword, a bow, or a sheaf of arrows, all predicted a war with the Indians. It was well known that a shower of crimson light indicated an epidemic. We doubt very much that anything remarkable ever happened in New England, from the earliest days of its settlement until the time of the Revolutionary War, that the inhabitants had not had advance warning from a spectacle of this nature. Sometimes it was seen by the multitude; but much more frequently, it all rested on the mere rumor of a solitary spectator who had contemplated the marvelous phenomenon through the disturbing magnifying glass of his imagination, later giving it a more precise form. It was certainly a grandiose idea to think that the destiny of nations should be revealed in these amazing hieroglyphics in the celestial vault. Among our ancestors, it was a widespread belief, indicating that their nascent community was under the special guardianship of heaven. But what shall we say when an individual discovers a revelation in that same mysterious book addressed to him alone? In that case, it would be merely a symptom of a profound disturbance of the spirit, if a man, in consequence of prolonged, intense, and secret suffering, and of the morbid habit of constant self-study, has come to associate his personality with the whole of nature, so that the firmament becomes but a suitable page for the history of the future destiny of his soul. Therefore, to this malady of his spirit, we attribute the idea that the minister, directing his gaze heavenward, fancied he beheld therein the figure of an immense letter—the letter A—drawn with contours of dark red light. There, and burning dully, only a meteor had been seen through a veil of clouds; but not in the form his culpable imagination had given it, or at least in a form so indistinct that a delinquent conscience might have seen a different symbol in it. There was one special circumstance which characterized Mr. Dimmesdale’s psychological state at that moment. All the time he looked at the zenith, he was perfectly aware that Pearl was pointing her finger in the direction of old Roger Chillingworth, who was standing not far from the platform. The minister seemed to regard him with the same gaze with which he discerned the miraculous letter. As with other objects, the meteoric light imparted a new expression to the doctor’s features ; or it might well be that he did not take care on this occasion, as he always did, to conceal the malevolence with which he regarded his victim. Certainly, if the meteor illuminated space and made the earth visible with a solemn radiance that compelled the clergyman and Esther to recall the day of judgment, then Roger Chillingworth must have seemed to them the great enemy of mankind, standing there with a threatening smile, claiming what was his. So vivid was that expression, or so intense was the minister’s perception of it, that it seemed to him that he remained visible in the darkness, even after the light of the meteor had faded, as if the street and everything else had utterly disappeared. “Who is that man, Esther?” asked Dimmesdale, in a trembling voice, overcome with terror. “I shudder to see him. Do you know that man? I hate him, Esther.” She remembered her oath and remained silent. “I tell you, my soul shudders at his presence,” murmured the minister again. “Who is he? Who is he? Can you do nothing for me? I dread the man beyond words. ” “Minister,” said Pearl, “I can tell you who he is. ” “Quick, child, quick,” said the minister, bending his ear close to Pearl’s lips. “Quick, and as quietly as you possibly can.” Pearl murmured something in her ear, which sounded like human speech, but was in reality only the unintelligible and senseless gibberish which children sometimes use to amuse themselves when they are together. However, she gave him no secret intelligence concerning the old physician. It was a language unknown to the learned clergyman, and it only increased his confusion. The child then burst into laughter. “Are you mocking me now?” said the minister. “You were not brave, you were not sincere,” replied the child. ” You would not promise to take my mother and me by the hand tomorrow at noon. ” “Worthy sir!” cried the doctor, who had advanced to the foot of the platform, “pious Mr. Dimmesdale, is it really you? Yes, yes, surely it is. Well! Well!” We men of learning, who have our heads buried in our books, need to be watched. We dream in our waking hours, and we walk about in our sleep. Come, good sir and dear friend; let me conduct you home. ‘ ‘How did you know I was here?’ asked Dimmesdale fearfully. ‘As a matter of fact,’ replied the doctor, ‘I knew nothing of this. A great part of the night I have spent at the bedside of the worthy Governor Winthrop, doing for him what my little skill permitted. He has gone to a better world, and I was on my way home when that extraordinary light shone. Pray come, reverend sir; otherwise you will not be in a condition to perform your duties on Sunday morning. Ah! See how books trouble the brain! These books, these books! You must study less, good sir, and procure some recreation, if you will not have these things repeated again.’ “I will come home with you,” said Mr. Dimmesdale. Completely dejected, feeling as cold as one who wakes from a nightmare, he accompanied the doctor, and they set out together. The next day, Sunday, he preached a sermon which was considered the best, the most vigorous, and the most heavenly unction that had yet been uttered by his lips. It was said that more than one soul was regenerated by the efficacy of that discourse, and that many swore eternal gratitude to Mr. Dimmesdale for the good he had done them. But as he stepped down from the pulpit, the old sexton stopped him by presenting him with a black glove, which the minister recognized as his own. “He found himself this morning,” said the sexton, “on the platform where malefactors are exposed to public shame. Satan dropped him there, doubtless wishing to play a trick on Your Reverence. But he has acted as carelessly and rashly as ever.” A clean and pure hand needs no glove to cover it. “Thank you, good friend,” said the minister gravely, but very much startled, for his recollections were so confused that he almost believed the events of last night were only a dream. “Yes,” he added, “ it seems that it is my glove.” “And since Satan has seen fit to steal it from you, from now on Your Reverence must treat that enemy without any regard whatsoever . Harsh with him,” said the old sexton with a horrible smile. “ But have Your Reverence heard of the portent that was seen last night? It is said that a large red letter, the letter A, appeared in the sky, which we have interpreted it to mean Angel. And as our good Governor Winthrop died last night also, and was transformed into an angel, it was doubtless thought proper to publicize the intelligence in some manner. “No; I have heard nothing of that particular,” replied the minister. Chapter 13. ANOTHER WAY OF JUDGING ESTHER. At her last singular interview with Mr. Dimmesdale, Hester was thoroughly surprised at the condition to which the minister was reduced . His nerves seemed utterly ruined; his moral force was that of a child; his gait was with a shuffling shuffle, though his intellectual powers were still intact, or had perhaps acquired a morbid energy, which only illness could have imparted to them. Being acquainted with the whole chain of circumstances, which were a profound secret from others, she might infer that, besides the legitimate action of her own conscience, some terrible and mysterious machinery had been, and was still being, employed against Mr. Dimmesdale’s repose and comfort . Knowing also what this poor, now fallen man had once been, her soul was filled with compassion at the recollection of the deep sense of terror with which he had appealed to her—the scorned woman —for protection against an enemy he had instinctively discovered; and she decided that the minister had a right to expect all possible assistance from her. Little accustomed, in her long isolation and segregated state of society, to measuring her ideas of right and wrong by the common standard, Hester saw, or thought she saw, that she bore a responsibility to Dimmesdale greater than she owed to the world at large. The ties that had bound her to the latter, whatever their nature, were all destroyed. On the contrary, to the minister there was the iron bond of mutual crime, which neither he nor she could break, and which, like all other ties, carried with it unavoidable obligations. Hester no longer occupied precisely the same position she had in the early days of her ignominy. The years had passed, and Pearl was now seven years old. Her mother, with the scarlet letter on her breast, shining with its fantastic embroidery, was now a well-known figure in the town; and as she did not interfere in anyone’s public or private affairs, in anything or for anything, a sort of general regard had been formed for Hester. It may be said , to the credit of human nature, that, except where selfishness intervenes, it is more disposed to love than to hate. Hatred, by a silent and gradual process, may even be transformed into love, provided no new causes are opposed to it to keep alive the original sentiment of hostility. In the case of Hester Prynne, nothing had occurred to aggravate it, for she never declared herself against the public, but submitted, without complaint, to whatever it chose to do, without demanding anything in return for her sufferings. We must add the immaculate purity of her life during all those years in which she had been excluded from social contact and declared infamous, and this circumstance greatly influenced her. Having now nothing to lose in the world, and without hope, and perhaps also without desire to gain something, her return to the austere path of duty could only be attributed to a true love of virtue. It had also been noted that although Esther never claimed the slightest share in the goods and benefits of the world, except to breathe the air common to all and earn a living for Perlita and herself with the work of her hands,–nevertheless, she was always ready to serve her fellow men, when the opportunity presented itself. There was no one who with such promptness and good will shared his meager provisions with the poor, even when the latter, in return for the food regularly brought to his door, or the clothes worked by those fingers that could have embroidered the cloak of a monarch, repaid her with sarcasm or an offensive word. In times of general calamity, epidemic, or scarcity, no one was as full of self-sacrifice as Esther: she entered homes invaded by misfortune, not as an intrusive and unwelcome guest, but as one with full right to do so; as if the shadows spread by pain were the most appropriate means to be able to deal with her fellow men. There the scarlet letter shone like a light that sheds consolation and well-being: a symbol of sin everywhere, at the bedside of the sick it was an emblem of charity and commiseration. In such cases, Esther’s nature showed itself with all the warmth that was innate to her, and with that tenderness and gentleness that never failed to produce the desired effect on the afflicted who came to her. Her bosom, with its mark of ignominy, might be said to be the lap where the unfortunate man’s head might rest in peace. She was a self-ordained sister of charity, or rather, ordained by the rude hand of the world, when neither it nor she could foresee such a result. The scarlet letter was the symbol of her vocation. Hester made herself so useful, displayed such a faculty of doing good and of sympathizing with the sorrows of others, that many people refused to give the scarlet _A_ its original meaning of Adulteress, and said that it really stood for Self-denial. Such were the virtues manifested by Hester Prynne! Only those dwellings over which misfortune had cast a shadowy veil could retain her; from the moment when the rays of happiness began to illuminate them, Hester vanished. The charitable and obliging guest would walk away without even a farewell glance to collect the tribute of gratitude that was due to him, if any existed in the hearts of those he had served with so much zeal. Meeting them in the street, he never raised his head to receive their greeting; and if any one approached him boldly, he would silently point to the scarlet letter with his finger and continue on his way. This might be attributed to pride, but it was so much like humility that it produced in the minds of the public all the conciliatory effect of that virtue. The public temper is generally despotic, and apt to deny the most obvious justice when it is demanded too insistently as if by right; but they frequently grant more than is asked if, as is the case with despots, their generosity is appealed to entirely. Interpreting Esther’s conduct as an appeal of this nature, society was inclined to treat its former victim more leniently than she herself desired or perhaps deserved. The rulers of that community were slower than the people to recognize the influence of Esther’s good qualities. The concerns they shared in common with Esther were given greater force by a series of arguments that made it exceedingly difficult to disengage from these prejudices. Day by day, however, their sour, rigid faces gradually unwrinkled and acquired something that, in the course of time, might be mistaken for an expression of benevolence. So it was with the men of high standing, who considered themselves the guardians of public morality . Private individuals had now completely forgiven Esther Prynne her frailty; Furthermore, they had begun to regard the scarlet letter not as a sign that denounced a fault so long and so hard atoned for, but as a symbol of their many good deeds. “Do you see that woman with the embroidered badge?” they would say to strangers. “She is our Esther, the Esther of our town, so compassionate to the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comforting to the afflicted.” It is true that at that time the propensity of human nature to recount evil when it concerns another, also impelled them to recount in low voices the scandal of former times. And yet, it was a It is a real fact that, in the eyes of the very people who spoke thus, the scarlet letter produced an effect similar to that of the cross on the breast of a nun, communicating to the wearer a kind of sanctity, which enabled her to pass safely through any kind of danger. Had she fallen among thieves, it would have protected her. It was said, and many believed, that an Indian once shot an arrow at the letter, and that, upon touching it, the arrow fell to the ground in pieces, without having done the least damage to the letter. The effect of the device, or rather, of the position it indicated in relation to society, was powerful and peculiar on Esther’s mind. All the grace and lightness of her spirit had disappeared under the influence of this fatal letter, leaving only something ostensibly rough and coarse, which might have been repulsive to her friends or companions, had she had any. The physical attractions of her person had undergone a similar change; perhaps partly owing to the seriousness of her dress, and partly to the dryness of her manner. A sad transformation also passed over her beautiful and splendid hair, which had either been cut off or was so completely hidden under her cap that not even a single curl could be seen. From all these causes, but still more from some unknown cause, it seemed that there was nothing in Esther’s face to attract the glances of love; nothing in Esther’s figure, stately and statue-like though it was, to awaken passion to embrace her; nothing in Esther’s heart to respond to the amorous throbbings of another. Something was gone from her, something altogether feminine, as often happens when a woman has been through trials of peculiar severity ; for if she be all tenderness, it will cost her her life. And if she survives these trials, then that tenderness must either be completely extinguished, or become so deeply concentrated in the heart that it can never be shown again. Perhaps the latter is more accurate. She who was once a true woman, and has ceased to be one, can at any moment recover her feminine attributes, if only the magic touch comes to effect the transfiguration. We shall see whether Hester Prynne later received this magic touch and was transfigured. Much of the marble-like coldness with which Hester seemed to be endowed must be attributed to the fact that a great change had taken place in her life, and thought now reigns where passion and feeling had formerly ruled. Alone in the world, alone in dependence on society, and with little Pearl to guide and protect—alone and without hope of improving her position, though she would not have disdained such a thought—she cast far from her the fragments of a shattered chain. Universal law was not the law of her mind. She lived, moreover, in an age when the human mind, recently emancipated, had displayed greater activity and entered a wider sphere of action than it had done for many centuries. Nobles and thrones had been overthrown by men of the sword; and ancient concerns had been destroyed by men even bolder than these. Esther had been imbued with this purely modern spirit, adopting a freedom of speculation, common then across the Atlantic, but which, had our ancestors known it, would have judged a more deadly sin than the one they branded with the scarlet letter. In her solitary cottage by the sea, she was visited by such thoughts and ideas as no other New England dwelling could have dared to enter: invisible guests, who would have been as dangerous to those who admitted them into their minds as if they had been seen in familiar intercourse with the enemy of the human race. It is worthy of note that the people who indulge in the most daring mental speculations are frequently also those who most They quietly conform to the external laws of society. Their thoughts are enough for them, without their trying to translate them into action. This seems to have been the case with Esther. However, if she had not had Pearl, things would have been very different. Then perhaps her name would shine today in history as the founder of a religious sect on a par with Anne Hutchinson; perhaps she would have been a kind of prophetess; but probably the severe courts of the time would have condemned her to death for attempting to destroy the foundations on which the Puritan colony rested. But in the education of her daughter, the boldness of her thoughts had largely dashed her enthusiastic flight. In the person of her little girl, Providence had assigned Esther the task of making the most worthy attributes of womanhood germinate and flourish, amidst great difficulties. Everything was against the mother: the world was hostile to her; The very nature of the child had something perverse about it, which continually reminded her that guilt had been at her birth—the result of the mother’s inordinate passion—and repeatedly Esther bitterly asked herself whether this little creature had come into the world for good or evil. It is true that the same question was asked of the human race in general. Was existence worth accepting, even for the happiest of mortals? As for herself, she had long since answered in the negative, and considered the matter completely closed. The tendency to speculation, though it may calm a woman’s mind, as it does a man’s, nevertheless makes her sad, for perhaps she sees before her an impossible task. First, the whole social edifice must be torn down and rebuilt anew; then, the nature of man must be essentially altered before woman is allowed to occupy what appears to be a just and proper position; And finally, even after all other difficulties have been smoothed over, woman will not be able to profit by all these preliminary reforms until she herself has undergone a radical change, in which, perhaps, the ethereal essence that constitutes the truly feminine soul has completely evaporated. A woman never solves these problems by the mere use of thought: they are irresolvable, or they can only be resolved in one way. If by chance the heart prevails, the problems vanish. Esther, whose heart, so to speak, had lost its regular and healthy rhythm, wandered aimlessly, without light to guide her, in the gloomy labyrinth of her spirit; and at times she was seized by the terrible doubt as to whether it would not be better to send Pearl to heaven as soon as possible , and present herself also to accept the destiny to which Eternal Justice deemed her worthy. The scarlet letter had not fulfilled the purpose for which it was destined. Now, however, her interview with the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale on the night of his vigil had furnished her with fresh food for reflection, and presented before her an object worthy of every effort and sacrifice for its attainment. She had witnessed the intense torment under which the minister struggled, or, to speak more properly, had ceased to struggle. She saw that he was verging on madness, if his reason had not already sunk. It was impossible to doubt that, however painful the efficacy of a piercing and secret remorse, a far more deadly poison had been administered by the very hand that sought to cure him. Beneath the cloak of a friendly and favoring physician, there was constantly at her side a secret enemy, who availed himself of every opportunity to touch, with malicious intent, every spring of Mr. Dimmesdale’s delicate nature. Esther could not help but wonder if it was not from the beginning a lack of courage, sincerity and loyalty on her part to allow the minister to find himself in a situation from which nothing good, and much bad, came. It might have been expected. Her only justification was the impossibility of finding any other means of saving him from a ruin even more terrible than that which had befallen her. The only thing possible was to accede to Roger Chillingworth’s plan of disguise. Moved by this idea, she then, as she now understood, determined upon the worst course she could have adopted. She determined, therefore, to remedy her error as far as she could. Strengthened by years of severe trials, she no longer felt herself so unfit to contend with Roger as she had been on the night when, overcome with sin, and half mad with the ignominy to which she had just been exposed, she had had that interview with him in the prison chamber. Since then, her spirits had been rising to greater heights; while the old physician had been sinking to the level of Hester, or perhaps far below her, through the idea of revenge with which he was possessed. In a word, Esther resolved to have another interview with her former husband, and to do all in her power to save the victim he had evidently seized. An opportunity soon presented itself. One evening, as she was walking with Pearl in a secluded spot near her cottage, she saw the old physician with a basket in one hand and a staff in the other, seeking herbs and roots to concoct his remedies and medicines. Chapter 14. Esther and the Doctor. Esther told Pearl to run about on the sea-shore and play with the shells and sea-weed, while she talked awhile with the man who was gathering herbs at some distance; accordingly, the child took off like a bird, and, removing her shoes, began to wander along the moist sea-shore. Here and there she paused beside a pool of water left by the tide, and gazed into it as if into a mirror. Reflected in the pool was the image of the little girl with her shining black curls and the smile of a pixie, whom Pearl, having no other playmate with, invited to take her by the hand and race her. The image repeated the same sign, as if to say, “This is a better place: come here.” And Pearl, going knee-deep into the water, beheld her little white feet in the depths, while, still deeper still, she saw a faint smile floating in the troubled water. In the meantime, the mother had approached the doctor. “I would have a word to you,” said Hester, “a word that interests us both. ” “Hello! Is it Mrs. Hester who wishes to have a word with old Roger Chillingworth?” replied the doctor, slowly rising. “With all my heart,” he continued; “come, madam, I hear only good news of you everywhere.” No more than yesterday afternoon, a magistrate, a wise and God-fearing man, was discussing your affairs with me, Lady Esther, and he told me that there had been a discussion in the Council whether this scarlet letter which you wear might be removed from your breast without the community suffering . I swear to you on my life, Esther, that I earnestly begged the worthy magistrate that this be done without loss of time. “It is not in the magistrates’ will to remove this ensign from me,” Esther replied quietly. “If I were worthy to be freed from it, it would have fallen off of its own accord, or it would have been transformed into something of a very different significance. ” “Wear it, then, if it pleases you,” replied the physician. “A woman should follow her own whim in regard to the adornment of her person. The letter is beautifully embroidered, and it looks very good on your breast. ” While they were thus speaking, Esther had been staring at the old physician, and she was both surprised and appalled at the change that had taken place in him during the last seven years; not that he had grown older, for although the marks of his age were visible , he still seemed to retain his former vigor and liveliness of spirit; but that look of an intellectual and studious man, calm and peaceful, The expression, which she remembered best, had completely disappeared, replaced by an anxious, searching, almost ferocious, though reserved expression. It seemed as if his wish and purpose were to hide this expression under a smile, but it sold him, for it wandered so derisively over his face that the spectator could, thanks to it, better discern the darkness of his soul. From time to time his eyes flashed with a sinister gleam, as if the old man’s soul were seized by a fire, manifesting itself only occasionally in a quick burst of anger and a momentary flare. The doctor repressed this as quickly as possible, and then tried to appear as calm as if nothing had happened. In a word, the old doctor was an example of that extraordinary faculty a man has of transforming himself into a demon, if he chooses to perform one for a while. Such a transformation had come over the physician, as he had been for seven years devoted to the constant analysis of a heart filled with agony, finding his pleasure in the task, and adding, as it were, fuel to the horrible tortures he analyzed, and in the analysis of which he found such intense pleasure. The scarlet letter was scorching the bosom of Hester Prynne. Here was another ruin for which she was partly responsible. “What do you see in my face, that you behold with such grave expression?” inquired the physician. “Something that would make me weep, if there were tears bitter enough in me,” replied Hester; “but let us not speak of that. It is of that unfortunate man I would speak.” “And what of him?” inquired the doctor anxiously, as if the subject were very dear to him, and he were glad to find an opportunity of discussing it with the only person with whom he could do so. “To speak the truth, my lady Esther, my thoughts were just now occupied with that gentleman: therefore, speak freely, and I will answer you. ” “When we last spoke to each other,” said Esther, “about seven years ago, you were pleased to extract from me a promise of secrecy concerning the relations that formerly existed between us. As the minister’s life and name were in your hands, there was nothing left for me to do but to remain silent, in accordance with your desire. However, not without grave forebodings, I obliged myself to it; for, being released from all obligations to other human beings, I was not so to him; and something whispered in my ears that, in pledging my word to obey your command, I was committing a betrayal.” Since then, no one like you has been so close to him: you follow his every step; you are at his side, awake or asleep; you scrutinize his thoughts; you undermine and ulcerate his heart; his life is in your clutches; you are killing him with a slow death, and he still does not know you, he does not know who you are. By allowing this, I have acted falsely toward the only man to whom I had a duty to be honest. “What other course was open to you?” asked the doctor. “If I had pointed my finger at this man, he would have been thrown from his pulpit into a dungeon—and from there perhaps to the scaffold. ” “It would have been preferable,” said Esther. “What wrong have I done to that man?” asked the physician again. “ I assure you, Hester Prynne, that with the largest and most valuable fee that a monarch could have paid to a physician, all the care and attention I have bestowed upon this unhappy clergyman would not have been obtained. But for me, his life would have been extinguished in torment and agony during the first two years that followed the commission of his crime and yours. For you know, Hester, that his soul has not the strength of yours to bear, as you have done, a weight like that of your scarlet letter. Oh! I could reveal a secret worth knowing! But enough on this point. What science can do, I have done for him. If he still breathes and He owes it only to me. ” “It would have been better for him to have died at once,” said Esther. “Yes, woman, you are right,” exclaimed old Roger, with all the infernal fire of his heart flashing in his eyes; “it would have been better for him to have died at once. No mortal ever suffered what this man has suffered… And all, all, in full view of his worst enemy. He has had a vague suspicion of me; he has felt that something was always hanging over him like a curse; he knew instinctively that the hand that probed his heart was not a friendly hand, and that there was an eye that watched him, seeking only iniquity, and it has found it. But he did not know that that hand and that eye were mine! With the superstition common to his class, he imagined himself delivered to a demon, to be tormented with dreadful dreams, with terrible thoughts, with the sting of remorse, and with the belief that he would not be forgiven—all in anticipation of what awaited him beyond the grave. But it was the constant shadow of my presence, the proximity of the man whom he had most basely offended, and who lives only by this perpetual poison of the most intense desire for revenge. Yes! Yes indeed! He was not mistaken; he had an implacable enemy at his side. A mortal, once endowed with human feelings, has become a demon for his own special torment. The unfortunate physician, as he uttered these words, threw up his arms with a look of horror, as if he had beheld some hideous form, which he could not recognize, and which was usurping the place of his own image in a mirror. It was one of those rare moments when a man’s moral aspect is truly revealed to the eyes of his soul. He had probably never seen himself as he saw himself now. “Have you not tortured him enough?” asked Esther, noting the expression on the old man’s face. “Has he not paid you everything with usury? ” “No! No! He has increased his debt,” replied the doctor, and as he proceeded, his face gradually lost its fierce expression and grew more and more somber. “Do you remember, Esther, what I was like nine years ago? Even then, I was in the autumn of my days, not the beginning of autumn. But my whole life had consisted of quiet years of severe study and meditation, devoted to increasing my knowledge, and also, faithfully, to advancing the welfare of the human race. No life had ever been so peaceful and innocent as mine; few so rich in benefits conferred. Do you not remember what I was?” Though cold in appearance, was I not a man who thought only of the good of others, without much thought of himself; kind, sincere, just, and constant in his affections, though they were not very ardent? Was I not all these? “All these, and more,” said Esther. “And what am I now?” asked the old man, looking fixedly into her face, and allowing all the perversity of his soul to be portrayed in his physiognomy. “What am I now? I have told you what I am: an implacable enemy: a demon in human form. Who has made me thus? ” “I have been,” cried Esther, shuddering. “I have been as much, or more, than he. Why have you not taken revenge on me? ” “I have left you to the scarlet letter,” replied Roger. “If that has not avenged me, I can do no more.” And he laid his finger on the letter with a smile. “He has avenged you!” retorted Esther. “That is what I thought,” said the doctor. “And now, what is it you want from me regarding that man? ” “I must reveal the secret to him,” replied Esther firmly, “he must see and know what you really are. I do not know what the consequences will be. But this debt of mine to him, whose ruin and torment I have been, must at last be satisfied. The destruction or preservation of his good name and social status, and perhaps even his life, is in your hands. Neither can I,”—to whom the scarlet letter has made understand the value of truth, though it has penetrated the soul as with a hot iron——no, nor can I perceive the advantage that he report of living this life of misery and horror any longer, in order to humble myself before you and implore your compassion for your victim. No; do with him what you will. There is nothing good to hope for him—nor for me—nor for you—nor even for my little Pearl. There is no path that will lead us out of this sad and gloomy labyrinth. “Woman, I could almost pity you,” said the doctor, who could not restrain a movement of admiration, for there was a certain majesty in the despair with which Hesther expressed herself. “You had great qualities; and if you had found in your early years a love more suitable than mine, none of this would have happened. I pity you for all the good that has been lost in you. ” “And I pity you,” replied Hesther, “for all the hatred that has transformed a just and wise man into an infernal monster.” Do you wish to cast off that hatred and become a human creature again? If not for him, at least for yourself. Forgive; and leave his further punishment to the Power to which it belongs. I said just now that nothing good could be expected from him, nor from you, nor from I, who wander together in this gloomy labyrinth of wickedness, stumbling at every step against the guilt we have scattered in our path. Not so. There may be something good for you; yes, for you alone, because you are the one deeply offended, and you have the privilege of being able to forgive. Do you wish to abandon that one privilege? Do you wish to reject that advantage of incomparable value? “Enough, Esther, enough,” replied the old physician with somber fortitude. “It is not given to me to forgive. I lack that faculty of which you speak. My ancient faith, long forgotten, takes hold of me again and explains everything we do and everything we suffer.” The first wrong step you took sowed the germ of evil; but from that moment it has been all one fatal necessity. You who have thus offended me are not to blame, except in a kind of illusion; nor am I the infernal enemy who has robbed the great enemy of mankind of his office. It is our lot. Let it unfold as it will. Continue in your path, and do as you please with that man. He made a sign with his hand and went on gathering herbs and roots. Chapter 15. Esther and Pearl. Thus Roger Chillingworth, old, misshapen, and with a face that remained in men’s memories longer than they would have liked, took leave of Esther and went on his way on earth. Here he gathered an herb, there he plucked up a root, and laid all in the basket that he carried on his arm. His gray beard almost touched the ground as he stooped and went onward. Esther gazed at him for a moment, with a certain strange curiosity, to see if the tender herbs of early spring might not wither beneath his feet, leaving a black, dry trail through the cheerful greenery that covered the ground. She wondered what kind of herbs these were that the old man was gathering with such care. Would not the earth, quickened to evil by the influence of his malignant gaze, offer him poisonous roots and herbs of hitherto unknown species, springing up at the touch of his fingers? Or would not that very touch be enough to convert the most wholesome products of the earth’s bosom into something deleterious and deadly? Did the sun, which shone so brightly everywhere, really shed its beneficial rays upon him? Or was he, as it seemed, surrounded by a circle of doomed shadow that moved with him wherever he turned his steps? And where was he going now? Would it not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a barren and scorched place, which in course of time would become covered with deadly nightshade , henbane, hemlock, sagebrush, and every other kind of noxious weed that the climate produced, growing there in horrible abundance? Or would it spread out huge bat-like wings, and taking to its wings in the open air, appear all the more ugly the higher it ascended toward heaven? “Whether it be a sin or not,” said Hester bitterly, her eyes fixed on the old doctor—”I hate that man!” She scolded herself for this feeling, but she could neither overcome it nor lessen its intensity. To accomplish this, she thought of those days, long gone now, when Roger had been accustomed to leaving his study at dusk and coming to sit by the hearth, in the rays of her bridal smile. He had said then that he needed to warm himself in the radiance of that smile, so that the chill produced by so many solitary hours spent among his books might disappear from his learned heart . Such scenes had once seemed to her to be imbued with a certain happiness; but now, viewed through the lens of subsequent events, they had become her most bitter memories. She marveled that such scenes had ever taken place; and above all, that she had allowed herself to be induced to marry him. She considered this the greatest crime she had to repent of, as well as having responded to the cold pressure of that hand, and having suffered the smile of her lips and eyes to mingle with those of that man. And it seemed to her that the old doctor, in persuading her when her inexperienced heart knew nothing of the world, in persuading her to imagine herself happy with him, had committed a greater offense than anything that had ever been done to him. “Yes, I hate him!” repeated Hester, with more intense rancor than before. “He has deceived me! He has done me a far greater wrong than I have ever done him! Let the man tremble who gains a woman’s hand, unless at the same time he obtains the whole love of her heart! Else, what happened to Roger Chillingworth will happen to him, when a more powerful and eloquent accent than his awakens the slumbering passions of her. Then they will reproach her for that peaceful contentment, that cold image of happiness that she was led to believe was the warm reality. But Hester should have long since put aside this injustice. What did it mean? Had the seven long years of torture with the scarlet letter produced unspeakable pain, without remorse having penetrated her soul? The emotions of those brief moments, when she contemplated the distorted figure of old Roger, shed a light on Hester’s mind, revealing many things that she herself would not otherwise have noticed. Once the doctor had disappeared, she called to her little daughter. “Pearl! Pearl! Where are you? ” Pearl, whose activity of mind never faltered, had not lacked distractions while her mother spoke with the old herbalist. At first, she amused herself by contemplating her own image in a pool of water; Then she made small boats of birch bark and loaded them with seashells, most of which capsized. Then she tried to gather the white foam left by the retreating waves between her fingers and scatter it to the wind. Presently, perceiving a flock of small river birds fluttering along the beach, the mischievous girl covered her apron with small pebbles and, gliding from rock to rock in pursuit of these birds, displayed remarkable skill in pelting them with stones. A little bird, brown in color and with a white breast , was struck by a pebble and fluttered away with a broken wing. But then the child stopped playing, for it made her very sad to have hurt this little creature, as capricious as the sea breeze or Pearl herself. Her last occupation was gathering seaweed of various kinds, making it into a sort of sash or mantle and headdress, which gave her the appearance of a little mermaid. Pearl had inherited from her mother the talent for devising costumes and ornaments. As a final touch to her mermaid’s dress, she took some seaweed and placed it on her breast , imitating, as best she could, the letter A that glittered on her mother’s breast and with which she was so familiar, except that this A was green and not scarlet. The child bent her little head on her breast and gazed at this ornament with strange interest, as if the only thing to do was to that she had been sent into the world was to unravel its hidden significance. “I wonder if my mother will ask me what this means?” thought Perla. Just then she heard her mother’s voice, and running with the same lightness as the little birds fluttering about on the riverbank, she appeared before Esther, dancing, laughing, and pointing with her finger at the ornament she had pinned to her breast. “My little Perla,” said her mother after a moment of silence, “the green letter A on your infant breast has no purpose. But do you know, my child, what the letter your mother must wear means? ” “Yes, mother,” said the child, “it is a capital A. You taught it to me in the primer.” Esther looked at her fixedly; but although in the child’s black eyes there was the singular expression she had so often noticed in them, she could not discover whether the symbol really had any significance for Perla , and she felt a morbid curiosity to find out. “Do you know, my child, why your mother wears this letter?” “Yes, I know,” replied Pearl, fixing her intelligent gaze on her mother’s face, “for the same reason that the minister puts his hand on his heart. ” “And what is that reason?” asked Hester, half smiling at first at the child’s absurd reply, but growing pale a moment later. “What has the letter to do with any heart, except my own? ” “Nothing, mother; I have told you all I know,” replied Pearl, with more seriousness than was her usual. “Ask that old man you have been talking to. Perhaps he can tell you. But tell me, my dear mother, what does that scarlet letter mean? And why do you wear it on your breast? And why does the minister put his hand on his heart?” Saying this, she took her mother’s hand in both of hers and fixed her gaze on her face with a grave and calm expression, unusual in her restless and capricious nature. The thought occurred to Esther that perhaps the child was truly trying to identify with her with childish confidence, doing what she could, and in the most intelligent way possible, to establish a closer bond of affection between them. Pearl revealed herself to her in a light she had not seen before . Although the mother loved her daughter with the intensity of a unique affection, she had tried to reconcile herself to the idea that she could expect very little in return: a fleeting, vague affection, with bursts of passion, petulant in its best hours, which chills us more often than it caresses us, which shows itself by kissing the cheeks with dubious tenderness, or playing with the hair, or in some other similar way, only to vanish in the immediate instant and continue with her usual games. And this was what a mother thought of her little daughter, for strangers would have seen only a few unloving traits, making them appear even blacker. But now the thought came over Hester that Pearl, with her remarkable precocity and perspicacity, had already arrived at the age where she could make her a friend and confide to her much that caused the ache in her maternal heart, as far as was possible with due regard for the child and the father. In the little chaos of Pearl’s character there was doubtless in embryo an indomitable courage, a tenacious will, a haughty pride that might be transformed into self-respect , and a contempt for many things that, upon close examination, would be found to be tainted with falsehood. She was equally endowed with affections that, though not very tender, had all the rich aroma of unripened fruit. With all these high qualities, Esther believed that this child would become a noble and excellent woman, unless the evil portion inherited from her mother was too great. Pearl’s inevitable tendency to occupy herself with the enigma of the scarlet letter seemed an innate quality in the child. Esther had often thought that Providence, in endowing Pearl with this marked propensity, did so out of an idea of justice and retribution; but never, Until now, it had occurred to her to wonder if, linked to this idea, there might not also be those of benevolence and forgiveness. If she treated Pearl with faith and confidence, considering her a spiritual messenger as well as an earthly creature, would it not be her destiny to soften and finally dispel the pain that had turned her mother’s heart into a tomb? Would it not also serve to help her conquer the passion, once so impetuous, and even now neither dead nor asleep, but only imprisoned in that tomb of her heart? Such were some of the thoughts that swirled through Esther’s mind , as vividly as if some mysterious being had actually whispered them in her ear. And there Pearl was all this time, clasping her mother’s hand in her tiny hands, her eyes fixed on her face, while she repeated the same questions over and over again . “What does the letter mean, my mother? And why do you carry it? And why does the minister put his hand to his heart?” “What shall I say to him?” Hesther asked herself. “No! If this is to be the price of my daughter’s affection, I cannot buy it at such a cost.” Then she spoke aloud. “You fool,” she said, “what questions are these? There are many things in this world a child ought not to ask. What do I know of the minister’s heart? And as for the scarlet letter, I wear it because of the beauty of its golden threads.” In all the seven years that had passed, Hesther had never once shown any falsehood about the symbol upon her bosom, except at this moment, as if, in spite of her constant vigilance, some new moral disease had crept into her heart, or some other of old date had not been entirely expelled. As for Pearl, the graveness of her face was already gone. But the child did not give up the matter of the scarlet letter; And two or three times, on their way home, and as many times at supper, and when her mother was putting her to bed, and once afterward, when she seemed to be asleep, Pearl, with a certain malice in her black eyes, continued her question: “Mother, what is the meaning of the scarlet letter?” And the next morning, the first sign the child gave of being awake, was to raise her head from the pillow, and ask the other question which she had so strangely associated with the scarlet letter: “Mother, mother, why does the minister always have his hand on his heart? ” “Be quiet, you naughty child,” answered the mother, with a harshness she had never used before. “Tort me no more, or I will shut you up in a dark room.” Chapter 16. A WALK IN THE WOODS. Esther remained steadfast in her purpose of making the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale acquainted with the true character of the man who had gained her confidence, whatever the consequences of his revelation might be. For several days, however, she sought in vain an opportunity of speaking to him, during one of the solitary walks which the minister was accustomed to take, all thoughtful, along the seacoast, or among the wooded hills of the neighboring country. There would doubtless have been nothing scandalous or unusual, nor any danger to the minister’s reputation, had Esther visited him in his own study, where so many penitents, before now, had confessed faults, perhaps even graver than those of the scarlet letter. But whether she feared the secret or public interference of Roger Chillingworth, or whether her conscience made her fear that a suspicion might be raised , which no one else would have imagined, or whether both the minister and herself needed more room to breathe freely while they talked together,–or perhaps all these reasons combined, the fact is that Hester never thought of speaking to him anywhere but in the open air, and certainly not within four walls. At last, one night while she was attending a sick man, she learned that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, whom they had come to ask for his help, was very much in need of help. dying, had gone to visit the Apostle Eliot, there at his residence among his converted Indians, and would probably return the following day at noon. As the appointed hour approached, she took Pearl, her constant companion, by the hand and set out in search of Mr. Dimmesdale. The road was nothing more than a path that disappeared into the mystery of a virgin forest, so thick that the sky could hardly be seen through the treetops. Esther compared it to the solitude and moral labyrinth in which she had been wandering for so long. The day was cold and dark; the firmament was covered by thick, ashen clouds, slightly moved by the breeze, which allowed an occasional glimpse of the sun playing on the narrow path. This faint, flickering light was always visible at the farthest extremity, visible across the forest, and it seemed to fade or recede as the solitary travelers advanced in its direction, leaving the places where it shone even more gloomy, for the very reason they had expected to find them bright. “Mother,” said Pearl, “the sunlight does not love you. It runs and hides because it is afraid of something in your breast. Look now: it is playing there, quite a distance from us. Stay here, and let me run and catch it. I am only a child. It will not run away from me, for I have nothing in my breast as yet. ” “And I hope you never will, my child,” said Esther. “Why not, Mother?” asked Pearl, stopping just as she was about to run. “Will not that come of itself when I am a grown woman?” “Run, my child,” replied the mother, “and catch the sunbeam, for it will soon be gone.” Pearl hurried off, and soon she was standing in the midst of the sunlight, laughing, all aglow with its splendor, her eyes shining with joy. It seemed as if the sunbeam had lingered around the solitary child, rejoicing in playing with her, until the mother came close enough to almost enter the magic circle itself. “Now it will be gone,” said Pearl, shaking her head. “Look,” said Hester, smiling, “now I can reach out and catch something. ” But as she attempted to do so, the sunbeam disappeared; or, judging from the brightness with which it shone from Pearl’s face, her mother might have imagined that the child had absorbed it, and would throw it back, lighting up the path they were traveling on once more when they entered the shadowy places of the forest. None of her tender daughter’s attributes made such an impression on her mother as that constant vivacity of spirit, perhaps a reflection of the energy with which Esther had struggled to combat her intimate sorrows before Pearl’s birth. It was certainly a dubious charm, which gave the child’s character a certain hard, metallic luster. She needed deep pain to humanize her and make her capable of compassion. But Pearl had plenty of time for that. “Come, my child,” said Esther; “let us sit in the woods and rest a while. ” “I am not tired, Mother,” replied the child; “but you may sit if you wish, and in the meantime tell me a story. ” “A story, child,” said Esther, “and what kind of story? ” “Ah!” “Something about the story of the Black Man,” she replied, taking hold of her dress and looking at her with an expression between serious and malicious. “Tell me how he goes around this forest carrying under his arm a large, heavy book with iron clasps; and how this ugly Black Man offers his book and an iron pen to all who meet him here among the trees, and how they all have to write their names in their own blood. And then he makes a sign on their breasts. Have you ever met the Black Man, Mother? ” “And who told you this story, Pearl? ” asked the mother, recognizing a superstition very common at that time. “That old lady who was sitting in a corner by the fireplace in the house where you were keeping watch last night,” said the child. She thought I was asleep when I was talking about it. She said a thousand and a thousand people had found him here, and had written in their book, and had his mark on their breasts. And one of those who has seen him is that foul-tempered woman, old Mrs. Hibbins. And, mother, she said also that this scarlet letter you have is the mark the Black Man put on you, and that it glows like a red flame when you see him at midnight, here in this dark wood. Is that true, mother? And is it true that you go to see him at night? “Have you ever woken up without seeing me beside you?” asked Hester. “I don’t remember,” said the child. “If you are afraid to leave me alone in our cottage, you must take me with you. I would be glad to come with you. But, mother, tell me now, is there such a Black Man? And have you ever seen him? And is this his mark?” “Will you leave me alone if I tell you at once?” asked her mother. “Yes, if you tell me everything,” replied Pearl. “Well, I met the Black Man once in my life,” said her mother. “This scarlet letter is his mark.” While they were thus conversing, they passed far enough into the woods to be out of sight of a chance passerby, and sat down upon the rotten trunk of a pine, which once would have been a gigantic tree, but was now only a mass of moss. The place where they sat down was a small hollow, crossed by a rill which trickled over a bed of tree leaves. The fallen branches of these trees here and there interrupted the current of the rill, which formed little eddies here and there, while elsewhere it wound itself channel-like over a bed of pebbles and sand. Following the water’s course with one’s eyes, one could sometimes see the reflection of the sunlight on its surface, but it was soon lost amidst the maze of trees and bushes that grew along its banks; here and there one came across some large rock covered with lichen. All these trees and these granite boulders seemed destined to make a mystery of the course of this little stream, fearing perhaps that its incessant talkativeness would reveal the stories of the ancient forest. Constantly, it is true, as the stream continued to glide onward , it gave rise to a soft, peaceful, and tranquil murmur, yet full of sweet melancholy, like the accent of a child who had spent the first years of its life without any companions of its own age to play with, and who did not know what joy meant, living among sad relatives and even sadder events. “Oh, little stream!” “Oh, mad, tiresome little brook!” cried Pearl, after listening for a while to its murmurings. “Why are you so sad? Take heart, and don’t be sighing and murmuring all the time!” But the brook, in the course of its existence among the trees of the forest, had passed through so solemn an experience that it could not but express it in the murmur of its ripples, and it seemed that it had nothing else to say. Pearl was like the brook, in that the current of her life had sprung from a mysterious fountain and had flowed through very somber scenes. But, quite unlike the brook, the child danced and played and chattered as her life went on. “What does this sad little brook say, Mother?” asked the child. “If you had any sorrow that was troubling you, the brook would tell you,” replied the mother, “just as it tells me of mine. But now, Pearl, I hear feet on the road, and the noise of parting branches in the trees; go and play, and let me talk awhile to the man who is coming far away. ” “Is it the Black Man?” asked Pearl. “Go and play,” repeated the mother, “but do not go too far into the wood, and take care that you come back the instant I call you. ” “Yes, mother,” replied Pearl, “but if it is the Black Man, will you not let me stay awhile and look at him with his big book under my arm?” “Go and play, you silly girl,” said the impatient mother, “it isn’t the Black Man. You can see him now through the trees. It’s the minister. ” “Yes, he is,” said the little girl. “And he has his hand on his heart, mother. That’s because when the minister wrote his name in the book, the Black Man put the mark on his breast. And why doesn’t he wear it like you do on the outside of your breast? ” “Go and play now, child, and torment me later as much as you like,” cried Esther. “But don’t go too far. Stay where you can hear the brook talking.” The little girl went off singing along the current of the brook, trying to mix some happier accents with the melancholy cadence of its waters. But the brook would not be comforted, and continued, as before, relating its unintelligible secret of something very sad and mysterious that had happened, or prophetically lamenting something that was about to happen in the gloomy forest. But Pearl, who had had plenty of shade in her short life, left the wailing brook and began to gather violets and anemones and a few scarlet flowers that she found growing in the gaps between a high rock. When the child had departed, Esther took a few steps toward the path that led through the forest, still remaining in the deep shade of the trees. She saw the minister advancing alone, leaning on a branch he had cut along the way. His appearance was that of a gaunt and weak person, and a dejection was evident throughout his entire being, such as had never been so evident in him, either during his walks through the town, or at any other time when he was believed to be observed . Here, in the intense solitude of the forest, it was painfully visible. There was a kind of weariness in his gait, as if he saw no reason for taking another step, nor felt any desire to do so, but would rather, with great pleasure, if anything could give him pleasure, have flung himself down at the foot of the nearest tree and lay down there to rest forever. The leaves might cover him, and the ground might gradually rise and form a mound over his body, regardless of whether it was animated by life or not. Death was too definite an object for him to long for or wish to avoid. To Esther, as far as she could see, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale presented no visible symptom of any real or deep distress, except, as Pearl had before observed, that he was always putting his hand to his heart. Chapter 17. The Pastor and His Parishioner. Slow as the minister walked, he had almost passed her before, before Esther could make herself heard and attract his attention. At last, she succeeded. “Arthur Dimmesdale!” she said, in a voice barely audible at first, but growing louder, though somewhat hoarse, “Arthur Dimmesdale! ” “Who summons me?” replied the minister. Quickly rising, he remained in that position, like a man caught in an attitude in which he did not wish to be seen. Casting his eyes anxiously in the direction from which the voice proceeded, he dimly perceived under the trees a form clad in so dark a garment, and so inconspicuous amidst the gloom that prevailed through the dense foliage, which scarcely admitted the light of noon, that he could scarcely distinguish whether it was a shadow or a woman. He advanced a step towards her, and uncovered the scarlet letter. “Esther! Esther Prynne!” he cried, “is it you? Are you alive? ” “Yes,” he answered, “with the life I have lived these last seven years! And you, Arthur Dimmesdale, are you still alive?” It is no wonder that they should have questioned each other’s real existence, and should have doubted their own bodily existence. In such a strange way did they meet in the twilight of that forest, that it seemed as if it were the first interview that two spirits who had been intimately associated in their earthly life, but who were now trembling, filled with mutual affection, had had beyond the grave. fear, not yet familiar with his present condition, nor accustomed to the company of disembodied souls. Each was a spirit gazing in wonder at another. They also felt a strange sensation about themselves, for at that moment each was vividly and intensely presented to him, all his own inmost history, all the bitter experience of life, such as occurs only at such moments in the course of our lives. The soul contemplates itself in the mirror of that fleeting moment. With fear, therefore, and tremblingly, as if driven by unavoidable necessity, Arthur Dimmesdale stretched out his death-cold hand and touched the icy hand of Hester Prynne. Frigid as the touch of those hands was, they at last felt themselves inhabiting the same sphere, and all the strangeness and mystery of the interview vanished. Without speaking a word, neither of them acting as a guide to their companion, but with silent and mutual consent, they slipped into the shadows of the wood from which Esther had emerged, and sat down on the same mossy tree trunk on which she and Pearl had been sitting before. When at last they were able to find a voice in which to speak to each other, they at first uttered only the observations and questions that any two acquaintances might have made, concerning the gloomy sky, the threatening bad weather, and then the health of each other. They then proceeded, so to speak, step by step, and with many detours, to discuss the topics that most deeply interested them and dearest to their hearts. Separated so long by fate and circumstances, they needed something light, casual, almost indifferent to occupy themselves before they began to give vent to the thoughts and ideas that truly filled their souls. After a while, the minister fixed his eyes on Esther’s. Esther, he said, have you found peace of mind? She smiled sadly, looking down at her breast. “Have you found it?” she asked him in turn. “No: no; only despair,” replied the minister. “Nor what else could I hope for, being what I am, and leading the life I lead ? If I were an atheist, if I were a man devoid of conscience, a wretch with gross and brutal instincts, I would have found peace long ago; nay, I would never have lost it. But such as my soul is, whatever capacity for good may originally have existed in me, all the choicest and most chosen gifts of God have become so many causes of spiritual torture. Esther, I am immensely unhappy! ” “The people reverence you,” said Esther, “and certainly your words do much good among them. Does this not bring you comfort?” “More suffering, Esther—only more suffering!” replied Dimmesdale, with a bitter smile. “As for any good I may seem to do, I have no faith in it. What can a lost soul like mine accomplish for the redemption of others? What can a tainted soul accomplish for the purification of others? And as for the reverence of the people, would that it were turned to hatred and contempt! Do you think, Esther, that it can be any comfort to me to mount my pulpit, and there expose myself to the gaze of so many who cast their eyes upon me, as if the light of heaven shone upon my face? Or to look upon my spiritual flock thirsting for truth, and hearing my words as if they were spoken by one of the Lord’s chosen , and then to look upon myself, and see nothing but the sad, black reality which they idolize? Ah!” I have laughed with intense bitterness and agony of spirit at the contrast between what I appear to be and what I truly am! And Satan laughs too! “You are unjust to yourself in this,” said Esther sweetly. “You have repented deeply and bitterly. Your fault is relegated to a time long past forever. Your present life is not less truly holy than it appears to men. Is there no power in the penitence to which they have set a seal, and to which your good works bear witness? And why should it not bring peace to your spirit? “No, Esther, no!” replied the minister. “There is no reality in it: it is cold, lifeless, and can do me no good. I have had many sufferings; penitence, none. Otherwise, I should have long ago put off this garment of apparent sanctity, and presented myself before men as they will see me on the day of Judgment. Happy you, Esther, who wear the scarlet letter uncovered on your breast! Mine burns me in secret! You do not know what a great relief it is, after seven years of fraud, to look into eyes that see me as I am.” If I had but a friend—or were he my worst enemy—to whom, when I am sickened by the praise of all other men, I could daily open my bosom, and let him see me as the vilest of sinners, I believe that by it I should regain new strength. Even that grain of truth, though it be so little, would save me…. But now, all is falsehood!—all is vanity!—all is death! Hester glanced at him, and would have spoken, but hesitated. However, as the minister gave vent to his long-suppressed emotions, and did so with such vehemence, his words offered Hester the opportunity of saying that for which she had sought him. She conquered her fears, and spoke. “Such a friend as you have now desired,” she said, “with whom you may weep over your fault, you have in me, the accomplice in that fault.” Again he hesitated , but at last, with a great effort, uttered these words: “As for an enemy, you have long had him, and have lived with him, under one roof.” The minister rose, gasping for air, and laying his hand upon his heart, as if he would tear it from his breast. “What! What are you saying?” he cried. “An enemy! And under my roof! What do you mean, Hester? ” Hester Prynne now perfectly understood the immense wrong done to this unfortunate man, and for which she was responsible, in allowing him to remain for so many years, nay, for a single moment, at the mercy of a man whose purpose and object could only be evil. The mere proximity of this enemy, under whatever disguise he chose to conceal himself, was sufficient to disturb so delicate a soul as Arthur Dimmesdale’s. There was a time when Hester did not sufficiently perceive all this; Or perhaps, in the profound contemplation of her own misfortune, she had allowed the minister to endure what she might imagine to be a more tolerable fate. But latterly, since that night of her vigil, she had felt a deep compassion for him, for she could now more accurately read his heart. She did not doubt that the continual presence of Roger Chillingworth—infecting the air around him with the poison of his malice—and his authoritative intervention, as a physician, in the minister’s physical and spiritual ailments—she did not doubt, no, that all these opportunities had been exploited for evil purposes. Yes, these opportunities had enabled her to keep her patient’s conscience in a state of constant irritation, not to cure him by means of pain, but to disorganize and corrupt his spiritual being. Its result on earth would undoubtedly be insanity; and beyond this life, that eternal estrangement from God and Truth, of which insanity is perhaps the earthly type. To such a state of misfortune and misery had she brought the man whom she had once—and, why not say it?—still passionately loved! Hester understood that the sacrifice of the clergyman’s good name, and even death itself, as she had told Roger Chillingworth, would have been infinitely preferable to the alternative she had been forced to choose. And now, rather than confess this fatal error, she would rather have thrown herself down among the forest leaves and died there at Arthur Dimmesdale’s feet. “Oh, Arthur!” cried Hester, “forgive me! In all things in this world I have tried to be truthful and faithful. The only virtue I could have clung to, and to which I clung to the very extremity, was truth; in every case I did so, except when it concerned your good, your life, your reputation; then I consented to the deception. But a lie is never good, even when death threatens. Do you not guess what I am going to say? That old man—that doctor—he they call Roger Chillingworth—he was my husband! ” Arthur Dimmesdale looked at her for a moment with all that violent passion which, interwoven in more than one way with her other, higher, purer, and calmer qualities, was really the part at which the enemy of the human race directed his attacks, and by which he sought to gain all the rest. Never was there such a grim and fierce expression of anger upon his face as Hesther then beheld. For the short space of time it lasted, it was truly a horrible transformation. But Dimmesdale’s temper had been so weakened by suffering that even such bursts of energy of a lesser degree could last but a fleeting moment. He flung himself upon the ground and buried his face in his hands. “I should have known him!” he murmured. “Yes, I did. Did not the inmost voice of my heart reveal that secret to me the first time I saw him, and every time I have seen him since? Why did I not understand it? O Hester Prynne, how little, how little you know the horror of it! And the shame! The shame! The horrible ugliness of exposing a diseased and guilty heart to the eyes of the man who would so rejoice in it! Woman, woman, you are responsible for this! I cannot forgive you!” “Yes, yes; you must forgive me,” cried Hester, throwing herself down beside him upon the leaves of the earth. “God strike me, but you must forgive me!” And with a quick, desperate burst of tenderness, she flung her arms about his neck and pressed his head to her bosom, not caring whether his cheek lay upon the scarlet letter. Dimmesdale endeavored in vain to extricate himself from the arms that thus clasped him. Hester would not let him go, for fear that he should cast a stern look upon her. The whole world had rejected her, and for seven long years had frowned upon this poor, solitary woman—and she had borne it all, without even returning to the world a glance from her steady, though sad, eyes. Heaven had frowned upon her, too, yet she had not yielded. But the frown of this pale, weak, sinful man, so overcome with grief, was what Esther could not bear and live on. “Do you not want to forgive me? Do you not want to forgive me?” she repeated again and again . “Do not reject me! Do you want to forgive me? ” “Yes, I forgive you, Esther,” replied the minister at last, with a deep accent that came from an abyss of sadness, but without anger. “I forgive you now with all my heart. So may God forgive us both. We are not the blackest sinners in the world, Esther. There is one who is even worse than this defiled minister of the altar! The vengeance of that old man has been blacker than my sin. In cold blood, he has violated the sanctity of a human heart. Neither you nor I, Esther, ever did it. ” “No: never, never,” she answered in a low voice. What we did had its consecration in itself, and so we understood. We told each other. Have you forgotten? “Hush, Hester, hush,” said Arthur Dimmesdale, rising from the ground; “no, I have not forgotten.” They sat down again side by side on the mossy trunk of the fallen tree, with their hands clasped together. It was a darker hour than this that life had ever brought them in all these years: it was the point to which their paths had been approaching for so long, growing darker and darker as they advanced; and yet there was a singular charm about it that made them pause for a moment. A moment, and another, and then another, and still another. Dark was the wood around them, and the branches of the trees creaked in violent gusts, while one solemn and ancient tree complained piteously, as if it were relating to another tree the sad tale of the pair who had sat there, or foretelling future evils. And there they remained still longer. How gloomy seemed the path that led to the town, where Hester Prynne would again bear the weight of her ignominy, and the minister would put on the mask of his good name! And so they remained a moment longer. No ray of light, however golden and bright, had ever been so precious as the darkness of this gloomy forest. Here, seen only by the minister’s eyes, the scarlet letter did not burn in the bosom of the fallen woman. Here, seen only through the eyes of Esther, Minister Dimmesdale, false to God and false to men, could be sincere for a brief moment. Dimmesdale started at a thought that suddenly occurred to him. “Esther!” he cried, “here is a new horror! Roger Chillingworth knows your purpose of revealing his true character to me. Will he then continue to keep our secret? What new form will his revenge now assume? ” “There is a strange discretion in his nature,” replied Esther thoughtfully, “born perhaps of his hidden devices of revenge. I do not believe that he will publish the secret, but that he will seek other means of satisfying his dark passion.” “And how shall I live any longer, breathing the same air as this mortal enemy of mine?” cried Dimmesdale, all trembling, and nervously laying his hand upon his heart, which had now become an involuntary act in his eyes. “Think for me, Esther; you are strong. Decide for me. ” “You must not dwell any longer under one roof with that man,” said Esther, slowly and resolutely. “Your heart must not remain any longer exposed to the malignity of his glances. ” “It were worse than death,” rejoined the minister; “but how can I help it? What choice is there? Shall I lie down again upon these dry leaves, where I flung myself when you told me who I was? Shall I sink down here and die at once? ” “Ah!” “What a misfortune you were a prey to!” said Hester, her eyes drowning in tears. “Do you wish to die of mere weakness of spirit? There is no other cause. ” “The judgment of God is upon me,” said the clergyman, whose conscience was struck as if by lightning. “It is too powerful to struggle against. ” “Heaven will pity you!” cried Hester. “Would that you had strength to profit by it! ” “Be strong for me,” replied Dimmesdale. “Advise me what I shall do. ” “Is the world so narrow?” cried Hester, fixing her profound gaze upon the minister’s eyes, and instinctively exerting a magnetic power over a spirit so annihilated and submissive that it could scarcely stand. “Is the universe confined within the limits of that town, which a short while ago was but a wilderness, as solitary as this forest in which we are standing? Whither does that path lead?” Back to the town, you say. Yes: on that side, it leads to it; but on the other side, it runs deeper and deeper into the solitude of the woods, until, for some miles from here, the yellow leaves no longer reveal any trace of human footsteps. There you are free! So short a journey will take you from a world where you have been so intensely unhappy, to another where you might yet be happy. Is there not, in all this boundless forest, a place where your heart may be hidden from the eyes of Roger Chillingworth? “Yes, Esther; but only beneath the fallen leaves,” replied the minister with a sad smile. “There is the wide path to the sea,” continued Esther. “He brought you here; if you will, he will take you home again. In our native land, whether in some remote village, or in vast London, or, surely, in Germany, in France, in Italy, you will find yourself far from the power and knowledge of that man. And what have you to do with all these iron-hearted men and their opinions? They have kept in abject servitude, too long, what is best and noblest in you. “It cannot be,” replied the minister, as if sleepily called upon to do. “I have not the strength to go. Wretched and sinful as I am, I have been inspired by no other thought than to drag out my earthly existence in the sphere in which Providence has placed me. Though my soul is lost, I will still continue to do what I can for the salvation of other souls. I dare not abandon my post, though I be a loose sentinel, whose sure reward will be death and dishonor when his sad watch is done.” “These seven years of misfortune and disgrace have weighed you down ,” replied Esther, determined to instill courage in him with her own energy. “But you must leave all that behind you. It must not slow your steps if you choose the forest path and wish to get away from the town; nor must you throw its weight on the ship if you prefer to cross the ocean. Leave these wrecks and these ruins here, on the spot where it happened. Cast it all aside. Begin all over again. Have you perhaps exhausted all possibilities of action in the failure of a single trial? Not at all. The future is still full of other trials, and ultimately of success. There is still happiness to be enjoyed! There is still much good to be done! Change this false life you lead for one of sincerity and truth.” If your spirit inclines you to that vocation, be the teacher and apostle of the native race, or—for perhaps it is more suited to your nature—be a sage and a scholar among the wisest and most renowned in the literary world. Preach! Write! Be a man of action. Do anything, except lie down and die. Put off your name, Arthur Dimmesdale, and create for yourself a new one, a lofty one, such as you can bear without fear or shame. Why should you endure one more day the torments that have so devoured your existence—that have made you weak of will and action, and will even deprive you of the strength to repent? —Courage; up, and onward. —O Esther! —cried Arthur Dimmesdale, whose eyes shone for a moment, only to be immediately extinguished by the enthusiasm of that woman. —O Esther! You are talking of setting out on the course to a man whose knees are shaking and trembling. I must die here! I have neither strength, nor courage, nor energy to launch myself into a strange, vast world, bristling with difficulties, and launch myself alone. This was the last expression of the dejection of a broken spirit. He lacked the energy to take advantage of the more favorable fortune that seemed within his reach. He repeated the word. “Alone, Esther! ” “You shall not go alone,” answered Esther, in a deep accent. And with that, all was said. Chapter 18. A FLOOD OF LIGHT. Arthur Dimmesdale fixed his eyes upon Esther with looks in which hope and joy were surely shining, though mingled with some fear and a species of horror, at the boldness with which she had expressed what he vaguely indicated and dared not say. But Hester Prynne, with a spirit full of native courage and activity, and for a long time not only segregated, but banished from society, had grown accustomed to a freedom of speculation quite foreign to the clergyman’s manner. Without any guide or rule of any kind, she had been wandering in a sort of spiritual wilderness; as vast, as intricate, as somber and savage as the forest in which they were now holding a conversation that was to decide the fate of both. Esther’s heart and mind might be said to have been in their element in the deserted places, which she roamed as freely as wild Indians through their woods. For years she had contemplated the human institutions, and everything established by religion or law, from a point of view peculiar to herself; criticizing everything with as little reverence as the jungle Indian would feel for the judicial gown, the pillory, the scaffold, or the church. Both her destiny and the events of her life had tended to free her spirit. The scarlet letter was her passport to regions other women dared not approach. Shame, Despair, Loneliness: such had been her teachers; harsh and severe, but they had made her strong, even if they led her into error. The minister, on the contrary, had never gone through an experience that would lead him to question generally accepted laws; although on only one occasion he had broken one of the most sacred. But this had been a sin committed by passion, not the consequence of determined principles, or even of purpose. Since that ill-fated period, he had observed with morbid zeal and minuteness, not his actions, for these were easily remedied, but every emotion, however slight, and even every thought. Being at the head of the social system, as the clergyman was at that time, he found himself, for that very reason, more enchained by its rules, its principles, and even its unjust precautions. As a minister of the altar, he was inevitably compressed by the mechanism of the institutional system. As a man who had once committed a fault, but who kept his conscience keen and painfully sensitive, thanks to the constant rubbing of a wound that had not healed, he might be supposed to be safer from sinning again than if he had never committed one. Thus, we seem to observe that, as regards Esther, the seven years of ignominy and social exile had been only a preparation for this hour. But what about Arthur Dimmesdale? If this man should commit another crime, what excuse could be offered to extenuate his crime? None, unless it were of some use to say that his strength was broken by long and intense suffering; that his spirit was darkened and confused by gnawing remorse; that between the alternative of fleeing like a confessed criminal or remaining a hypocrite, it would be difficult to find the most just course; that it is human nature to avoid the danger of death and infamy and the subtle machinations of an enemy; and, finally, that this poor, weak, sick, unhappy pilgrim saw unexpectedly, along his deserted and gloomy path, a ray of human affection and sympathy, a new life, full of sincerity, in exchange for the sad and burdensome life of atonement he was now leading. And let it also be said this bitter truth: the breach which crime has once made in the human soul is never completely closed while we remain in our mortal condition. It must be watched and guarded, lest the enemy should again penetrate the fortress, and perhaps choose other means of entry than those previously employed. But always there is the open wall, and beside it the artful enemy, who, cautiously and stealthily, seeks to obtain a more complete victory again. The struggle, if there was one, need not be described; suffice it to say that Dimmesdale resolved to flee, and not alone. “If in all these seven years past,” he thought, “I could remember one moment of peace or hope, I would still bear it all, trusting in the mercy of Heaven; but since I am irremediably condemned, why not enjoy the solace granted to the condemned before their execution? Or if this path, as Hester tries to persuade me, is the one that leads to a better life, why not follow it?” Nor can I live any longer without the company of Esther, whose strength to sustain me is as vigorous as her power to calm the anguish of my soul. O You, to whom I dare not lift my eyes, will You forgive me? “You will depart,” said Esther in a calm tone, as she met his gaze. Dimmesdale’s. The decision having been reached, a strange gleam of joy spread its wavering radiance over the minister’s anxious countenance. It was the cheering effect of a prisoner, just released from the dungeon of his own heart, breathing the free and stormy atmosphere of a lawless, unchecked, forest region . His spirits rose, as if at a stroke, to loftier heights than they had been able to attain during all the years that misfortune had kept him fast to the earth; and as he was of an exceedingly religious temperament, there was inevitably something spiritual about his present animation. “Do I feel joy again?” he asked himself, surprised at himself . “I thought the germ of all joy had died in me. Oh,
Hester, you are my good angel!” It seems to me that I threw myself down, sick, tainted by guilt, crushed by grief, upon these forest leaves , and that I have arisen a completely new man, with new strength to glorify Him Who has been so merciful. This is already a better life. Why did we not meet before? “Let us not look back,” replied Hester, “what’s past is past: why dwell on it now? Look! With this symbol I undo all that has been done and proceed as if it had never been.” And so saying, she undid the clasps that secured the scarlet letter, and tearing it from her breast, flung it a great distance among the dry leaves. The mystic symbol fell on the very bank of the brook, and would have fallen a little further into the water that would have carried it away in its melancholy current, adding a new sorrow to the story she was constantly relating in her murmurs. But there the embroidered letter remained, shining like a lost jewel that some ill-fated traveler might pick up, only to find himself haunted later, perhaps by strange dreams of murder, dejection of heart, and unparalleled misfortune . Once the fatal insignia was cast aside, Hester gave a long, deep sigh, freeing her spirit from the shame and anguish that had oppressed her. Oh, exquisite relief! She had not known its true burden until she felt herself free of it . Moved by another impulse, she removed the cap that imprisoned her hair, which fell upon her shoulders, rich and black, with a mixture of light and shadow in its abundance, imparting to her face all the charm of a gentle expression. A tender and radiant smile played upon her lips and shone in her eyes , which seemed to have its origin in her feminine heart. Her cheeks, so pale until then, seemed animated with a rosy hue. Her sex, her youth, and all the richness of her beauty seemed to have sprung up again from what is called the irrevocable past, and gathered around her with their virginal hope and a hitherto unknown happiness, all within the magic circle of this hour. And as if the darkness and sadness of the earth and the firmament had only been the reflection of what was passing in the hearts of these two mortals, they also vanished with their pain. Suddenly, as if with a sudden smile from heaven, the sun made a sort of irruption into the gloomy forest, pouring down a torrent of splendor, brightening every green leaf, turning the yellowish ones into gold, and shining between the blackish trunks of the solemn trees. The objects that until then had scattered only shadows were now luminous bodies . The course of the brook could be traced, thanks to its joyful murmur, far away in the mysterious center of that forest that had become witness to an even more mysterious joy. Such was Nature’s sympathy with the happiness of these two spirits. Love, whether it sprouts for the first time or arises from almost extinguished ashes, must always create a ray of sunlight that fills the heart with such splendor that it spreads throughout the entire interior world. If the forest had still retained its sad darkness, it would have seemed without bright in Esther’s eyes, and bright equally in Arthur Dimmesdale’s. Hester looked at him with a look full of the light of a new joy. “You must meet Pearl,” she said, “our little Pearl! You have seen her—yes, I know it—but you shall see her with different eyes now. She is a singular child. I hardly understand her. But you will love her tenderly, as I do, and advise me how to manage her. ” “Do you think the child will be glad to meet me?” asked the minister, evidently uneasy. “I have always kept aloof from children, because they often show a certain distrust, a sort of shrinking from entering into familiar relations with me. I have always been afraid of Pearl! ” “That was sad,” answered the mother, “but she will love you tenderly, and you will love her back. She is not far away. I will call her. Pearl! Pearl!” “I can see her from here,” observed the minister. “There she is, in the sunlight , across the brook. So you think the child will love me?” Hester smiled and called back to Pearl, who was visible at some distance, as the minister had said, and who seemed like a brilliant vision illuminated by a ray of sunlight that fell upon her through the branches of the trees. The ray wavered from side to side, making the child appear more or less confused, now like a human creature, now like some kind of spirit, as the splendor disappeared and returned. She heard her mother’s voice, and went slowly through the forest towards her. Pearl had not found the time long or tiresome while her mother and the minister talked. The great forest, which appeared so dark and severe to those who brought the guilt and anguish of the world there, became the playmate of this solitary child. It seemed that, to amuse her, it had adopted the most captivating and flattering manners: it offered her exquisite reddish berries, which the child picked, delighting in their wild flavor. The small inhabitants of that solitude hardly ever left the child’s path. It is true that a partridge, followed by ten partridges, advanced toward her with a threatening air, but it soon repented of its ferocity and calmly returned to the side of its tender offspring, as if telling them not to be afraid. A young pigeon, standing alone on a low branch, allowed Pearl to approach it and emitted a sound that could have been a greeting or a cry of alarm. A squirrel, from high in the tree where it made its home, chattered in a tone of anger or joy—for a squirrel is such a choleric and capricious little animal that it is very difficult to tell whether it is angry or in a good mood—and threw a nut at her head. A fox, startled by the light sound of the child’s footsteps on the leaves, looked curiously at Pearl , as if doubting whether to leave or continue its nap as before. It is said that a wolf—but here the story has degenerated into the improbable—approached Pearl, sniffed at the child’s dress, and bent its fierce head so that she could stroke it with her little paw. However , what seems to be the truth is that the forest, and all the wild creatures it sustained, recognized in that child a human being with a nature as free as their own. Here, too, the child displayed a gentler and softer disposition than in the grassy streets of the town, or at her mother’s dwelling. The flowers seemed to know her, and whispered to her as she passed by, “Adorn yourself with me, pretty child, adorn yourself with me.” And to gratify them, Pearl gathered violets, anemones, columbines, and a few sprigs of green, and adorned her hair and encircled her waist, transforming herself into a childlike nymph, a tender dryad, or something else in keeping with the ancient forest. She had so adorned herself when she heard her mother’s voice coming slowly towards her. Slowly, indeed, for she had seen the minister. Chapter 19. The Girl by the Brook. “You will love her tenderly,” repeated Hester, as they stood with Dimmesdale looking at Pearl. “Do you not think she is beautiful? And see with what natural art she has made these simple flowers into an ornament. Had she gathered pearls, and diamonds, and rubies in the wood, they would not have become her more. What a splendid child she is! But I know well what kind of brow hers resembles. ” “Do you know, Hester,” said Arthur Dimmesdale, with a troubled smile, “that this dear child, always skipping about beside you, has caused me many an alarm? It seemed to me—O Hester! What a thought! What a terrible thought! It seemed to me that the lines of my own features were partly reproduced in her face, and that every one might recognize them. Such is her likeness! But she is more than all your image. ” “No, not so,” answered the mother, with a tender smile. Wait a little while, not long, and you need not be alarmed at the thought of revealing whose daughter she is. But how singularly beautiful she appears in those wild flowers with which she has adorned her hair! One might say that one of the fairies we left in our dear England had dressed her to meet us. With a feeling which neither of them had ever before experienced, they watched Pearl’s slow march. In her was visible the bond that united them. During these seven years that had elapsed, the child had been to the world a living hieroglyph, revealing the secret which they had so endeavored to conceal: in this symbol was everything written, everything plainly evident, that there had ever been a prophet or a skillful magician capable of interpreting its fiery characters. Whatever their past evils might be, how could they doubt that their earthly lives and their future destinies were intertwined, when they saw before them both the material union and the spiritual idea in which both were fused, and in which they were to dwell immortally together? Thoughts of this nature—and perhaps others that were not confessed or described—invested the child with a kind of mysterious solemnity as she came forward. “Let her see nothing strange, nothing passionate, nor any anxiety in your manner of receiving and addressing her,” Esther said to the minister in a low voice. “Our Pearl is sometimes like a fantastic and capricious sprite. She especially cannot tolerate strong emotions when she does not fully understand their cause or object. But the child is capable of intense affections. She loves me and she will love you. ” “You have no idea,” said the minister, looking askance at Esther, “how much I dread this interview, and at the same time how much I long for it. But the truth is, as I have already told you, that I do not easily win the favor of children. They do not climb onto my knees, they do not whisper in my ear, they do not respond to my smile; but they keep aloof from me, and look at me in a strange manner. Even newborn babies cry aloud when I take them in my arms. Yet Pearl has been kind to me twice in her life. The first time— you know when it was! The last time, when you took her with you to the house of the stern old Governor. “And when you pleaded so valiantly on her behalf and mine,” replied the mother. “I remember it perfectly, and so must Pearl. Fear nothing! At first she may seem strange , even unsociable, but she will soon learn to love you. ” Pearl had now reached the bank of the brook, and there she stood silently gazing at Hester and the minister, who sat together on the mossy trunk of the old tree, waiting for her to come. Just where the child had stopped, the brook formed a pool so smooth and still that it reflected a perfect image of her little body, with all the picturesque brilliance of her beauty, enhanced by her adornment of flowers and leaves, although more spiritualized and delicate than in reality. This image, almost so identical to what Pearl was, seemed to communicate something of its intangible, floating quality to the child herself. The way Pearl stood there, staring at them Through the semi-darkness of the forest, she was truly a stranger; illuminated, however, by a ray of sunlight drawn thither by a certain hidden sympathy. Hester herself felt, in a vague and mysterious way, as if her daughter were estranged from her; as if, in her solitary walk through the forest, the latter had strayed entirely from the sphere in which she and her mother had once lived together, and were now trying, though in vain, to return to their lost home. And in this feeling there was both truth and error: daughter and mother now felt themselves strangers to each other, but it was Hester’s fault, not Pearl’s. While the child had been wandering alone, another being had been admitted into the sphere of the mother’s feelings, so changing the aspect of things that Pearl, returning from her walk, could not find her accustomed place and scarcely recognized her mother. “A singular idea has come over me,” said the sickly minister. “I fancy this brook forms the boundary between two worlds, and that you shall never find your Pearl again. Or is she some kind of sprite or enchanted spirit, who, as we were told in the tales of our childhood, are forbidden to cross a stream of water? I beg you to hurry, for this delay has already put my nerves to a commotion. ” “Come, dear child,” said Hester, encouraging her and stretching out her arms to her. “Come: how slow you are! When, before now, have you ever been so slack? Here is a friend of mine who also wants to be your friend. From now on you will have twice as much love as your mother alone can give you. Jump over the brook and come to us. You may jump like a roe deer.” Pearl, without in any way replying to these sweet expressions, remained on the other side of the brook, her bright eyes fixed now on her mother, now on the minister, or sometimes including both in the same glance, as if she wished to discover and explain what there was in common between them. From some inexplicable cause, Arthur Dimmesdale, feeling the child’s glances riveted upon him, laid his hand upon his heart, with that gesture so habitual to him, which had become an involuntary action. At last, assuming a certain singular air of authority, Pearl stretched out her hand, evidently pointing with her forefinger to her mother’s bosom. And below, in the glass of the brook, was the bright, flowery image of Pearl, also pointing with her little finger. “Odd child, why do you not come to me?” cried Hester. Pearl still held out her forefinger, and her brow furrowed, which conveyed a more remarkable significance, considering the childish features thus assumed. As her mother continued calling her, her face filling with unusual smiles, the child stamped her foot upon the ground with a still more imperious look and gesture, which was also reflected in the brook, as well as in the child’s extended finger and imperious gesture. “Hurry, Pearl, or I shall be in trouble,” cried Hester, who, accustomed to such conduct from her daughter on other occasions, naturally wished for somewhat better behavior under the present circumstances. “Jump over the brook, you naughty child, and run this way; otherwise, I will come to you.” But Pearl ignored her mother’s threats, just as she had ignored her mother’s kind words, but burst into a fit of rage, gesticulating violently and shaking her little body in the most extravagant contortions, accompanying this explosion of anger with shrill cries that resounded throughout the forest; so that, alone as she was in her childish and incomprehensible fury, it seemed as if a hidden multitude accompanied her and even encouraged her actions. And in the water of the brook was reflected once more the angry image of Pearl, crowned with flowers, stamping her foot, gesticulating violently and pointing with her index finger at Esther’s breast. “I know what this child wants,” Esther murmured to the minister, and turning pale, despite a great effort to hide her disgust and her mortification, he said: “Children will not suffer the slightest change in the accustomed appearance of things which are daily before their eyes. Pearl is missing something which she has always seen me wear. ” “If you have any means of pacifying the child,” said the minister, “I beg you to do it immediately. Except the fury of an old witch, like Mrs. Hibbins,” he added, trying to smile, “there is nothing that frightens me so much as a fit of anger like this in a child. In Pearl’s tender beauty, as in the wrinkles of the old witch, there is something supernatural about this fit. Pacify her, if you love me.” Hester addressed herself again to Pearl, her face flushed, giving the minister a sidelong glance, and then heaving a deep sigh; and before she had time to speak, the color of her cheeks turned to a deadly pallor. “Pearl,” she said sadly, “look at your feet… there… in front of you… across the brook. ” The child directed her gaze to the spot indicated, and there she saw the scarlet letter, so close to the bank of the stream that the gold embroidery was reflected in the water. “Bring it here,” said Esther. “Come and get it yourself,” replied Pearl. “No such child was ever seen!” Esther observed aside to the minister. “Oh! I have much to tell you about her. But in truth, in the matter of this odious symbol, she is right. I must suffer this torment for a while longer, a few days longer, until we have left this region and look upon it as a country of our dreams. The forest cannot hide it. The ocean will receive the letter from my hands and swallow it up forever!” So saying, she stepped forward to the edge of the brook, picked up the scarlet letter, and placed it once more upon her breast. A moment before, when Hester spoke of casting it into the bosom of the ocean, she had had a feeling of well- founded hope; now that she received this deadly symbol from the hand of fate again, she felt the sensation of an irrevocable sentence weighing upon her. She had cast it into infinite space—she had breathed for an hour the air of liberty—and here again was the scarlet letter, in all its torment, shining in its accustomed place. In the same way, an evil deed always assumes the character of inevitable destiny. Hester immediately gathered up her thick tresses and hid them beneath her cap. And as if there were a curse upon the sad letter, her beauty and all that was feminin disappeared, like a vanishing ray of sunlight, and as if a shadow had spread over her entire being. The dreadful change having taken place, she stretched out her hand to Pearl. “Do you know your mother now, child?” she asked, in a tone of reproach, though in a moderate tone. “Will you cross the brook and come to your mother, now that her ignominy is over again —now that she is sad? ” “Yes, now I will,” replied the child, crossing the brook and clasping her mother to her breast. “Now you are truly my mother, and I am your Pearl.” And with a tenderness that was not common to her, she drew her mother’s head towards her and kissed her forehead and cheeks. But then—from a sort of necessity which always prompted her to mingle with the joy she gave a measure of sorrow—Pearl kissed the scarlet letter also. “That is not good,” said Hester, “when you have shown me a little love, you mock me.” “Why is the minister sitting there?” asked Pearl. “He is waiting to greet you,” replied her mother. “Go and ask his blessing. He loves you, my little Pearl, and he loves your mother too. Will you not love him just the same? Go: he longs to caress you. ” “Does he really love us?” said Pearl, looking at her mother with an expression of lively intelligence. “Will he go with us, holding our hands, and will we three enter the town together? ” “Not now, my dear child,” replied Esther. “But in a few days we shall go together hand in hand, and we shall have a hearth and a house of our own.” and you shall sit upon his knee, and he shall teach you many things, and love you very tenderly. You shall love him too, shall you not? And will he always keep his hand upon his heart? What question is that, you fool? cried the mother; come and ask his blessing. But whether she was influenced by the jealousy which seems instinctive in all spoiled children in the presence of a dangerous rival, or whether it was a whim of her singular nature, Pearl would show no sign of affection to Arthur Dimmesdale. Her mother only forced her to lead her to the minister, and then she hung back, and showed her reluctance by strange expressions, of which, from her earliest childhood, she possessed a great variety, and could transform her mobile countenance into various forms, and always with a more or less perverse expression. The minister, sorely disconcerted, but hoping that a kiss might be a sort of talisman to gain him the child’s goodwill , bent down to her and kissed her forehead. Immediately, Pearl managed to free herself from her mother’s hands and, running to the brook, stood on the bank and bathed her brow in its waters until she thought the unwilling kiss she had received was completely washed away. Afterward, she stood on one side, silently gazing at Esther and the minister as they conversed together, making the arrangements suggested by their new position and the purposes they were soon to accomplish. And now this fateful interview was over. The spot where they stood would remain abandoned in its solitude among the shadowy and ancient trees of the forest, which, with their many tongues, would long whisper of what had passed there, leaving no mortal the wiser. And the melancholy little brook would add this new tale to the mysterious tales it had already heard, and continue its ancient murmur, no more cheerful than it had been for ages and ages. Chapter 20. The Minister Lost in a Maze. Arthur Dimmesdale started first, in advance of Hester and Pearl, and now at some distance he cast a backward glance, as if he expected to discover only some faint features or outlines of the mother and child slowly fading into the gloom of the forest. An event of such importance in his life, he could not conceive to be real. But there was Esther, dressed in her dun -colored gown, still standing by the trunk of the tree, which some tempestuous wind had long ago laid low, covered with moss, so that these two destined beings, their souls overwhelmed with grief, might sit there together and find one single hour of rest and solace. And there, too, was Pearl, dancing gaily on the banks of the brook, now that this strange intruder was gone, leaving her to resume her former place by her mother’s side. No, the minister had not fallen asleep, nor had he dreamed. In order to banish from his mind the vagueness and confusion of his impressions, which filled him with a strange restlessness, he began to recall with definite definiteness the plans and projects that he and Esther had outlined for their departure. It had been agreed between the two that the Old World, with its populous cities, would offer them better shelter and a greater opportunity to remain unnoticed than the forests of New England or all of America, with their alternating Indian huts or the few sparsely populated European cities scattered here and there along the coasts. All this without mentioning the poor health of the minister, who was certainly not suited to the toil and privations of forest life , when his natural gifts, his culture, and the development of all his faculties adapted him to live only among peoples of advanced civilization. In order for them to be able to carry out what they had decided, chance had it that there was a ship in the port, one of those vessels of dubious character, a very common thing in those times, who, without really being pirates, nevertheless roamed the seas with very little respect for the laws of property. This vessel had recently arrived from the Caribbean Sea , and was to sail in three days for Bristol, England. Esther, whose vocation as a Sister of Charity had brought her into contact with the captain and crew of the ship, would occupy herself with securing the passage of two individuals and a child, with all the secrecy that circumstances rendered more than necessary. The minister had inquired of Esther, with no little interest, the precise date on which the ship was to sail. It would probably be within four days from the day they were on. “Happy chance!” she said to herself. Why the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale considered it a happy chance, we hesitate to reveal. However, that the reader may know everything, we will say that in three days he was to preach the election sermon; And as such an act formed an honorable epoch in the life of a New England clergyman, Mr. Dimmesdale could not have chosen a more suitable opportunity for closing his professional career. “At least,” thought this exemplary man, “they will say of me that I have failed to perform any public duty, nor performed it ill.” “Sad indeed it is to see a man who could make so profound and minute a self-examination , so deceived! We have said worse things of him, and have yet to say; but none so pitifully weak; none so damnable an evidence of the subtle disease which had long since sapped the very foundation of his character. No man can long bear, so to speak, two faces, one in public, and one before his own conscience, without at last becoming ignorant of which is his true face.” The excitement Mr. Dimmesdale felt on his return from his interview with Esther, imparted to him an unusual physical energy, and caused him to walk rapidly toward the town. The path through the woods seemed wilder, more rugged with its natural obstacles, and less trodden by human feet, than when he had traversed it in the opposite direction. But he leaped over the marshy places, entered through the leafy branches, climbed where he found steep slopes to ascend, or descended into hollows; in short, he overcame every difficulty that met his path with an indefatigable activity that surprised even himself. He could not help remembering how wearily, and with how many stops for breath, he had traveled this same road only two days before. As he drew nearer the town, he fancied he perceived a change in the objects most familiar to him, as if not merely two or three days, but many years had elapsed since he left the village. The streets certainly presented the same appearance as before, as far as he remembered them, and the houses had the same peculiarities, with their multitude of eaves and a weather vane in the very place his memory pointed out. Nevertheless, the idea of change haunted him every moment, and the same phenomenon occurred with the familiar people he saw, and with all those who were familiar to him in the little town. He did not find them now younger or older; the beards of the old men were no whiter, nor could the child who had crawled yesterday move today with its feet. It was impossible to say in what way they differed from the people he had seen before he left; and yet something within him seemed to suggest that a change had taken place . He received an impression of this nature, in the most remarkable manner, as he passed by the church under his charge. The building presented itself to him with an appearance at once so strange and so familiar, that Mr. Dimmesdale wavered between these two ideas: either that he had hitherto seen it only in a dream, or that he was now simply dreaming. This phenomenon, in the various forms it took, indicated no external change, but a change so sudden and important in the spectator himself that the space of a single day’s interval had been to him equivalent to the lapse of several years. The will of the minister and of Esther, and the fate that weighed upon them, had wrought this transformation. It was the same city as before; but it was not the same minister who had returned from the forest. He might have said to the friends who greeted him, “I am not the man you take me for. I have left him there in the forest, withdrawn in a hidden valley, by the side of a mossy tree trunk, not far from a melancholy brook. Go, seek your minister, and see if his wasted frame, his gaunt cheeks, and his pale brow, furrowed with grief, have not been cast there like a garment that is falling apart.” Doubtless his friends would have insisted, saying, “You are the same man.” But the error would have lain with his friends, not with the minister’s. Before Mr. Dimmesdale arrived home, his innermost being gave him further proofs that a revolution had taken place in his thoughts and feelings. Indeed, it was only to such a complete and total revolution that the impulses that agitated the unfortunate minister could be attributed. At every step, he was moved by a desire to do something strange, unusual, violent, or wicked; with the conviction that it would be both involuntary and intentional, and in spite of himself ; but springing from a deeper sentiment than that which opposed the impulse. For instance, he met one of the deacons of his church, a fine old man, who greeted him with the paternal affection and patriarchal air to which his years, virtues, and position entitled him; and at the same time with the profound respect, almost veneration, which the public and private character of a minister required. Never was a more beautiful example seen , how the majesty and wisdom of age may be combined with the obedience and respect which a lower rank and intelligence owe to a person superior in those qualities. Now, during a conversation of a few moments between the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale and this excellent old deacon, it was only by the most careful circumspection, and almost by force, that the minister refrained from uttering certain heretical reflections which occurred to him on several religious points. He trembled and turned pale, fearing that his lips, in spite of himself, might utter some of the horrible thoughts which were passing through his mind. And yet, though his heart was filled with such terror, he could not help smiling at the conceit of the saintly man and patriarchal deacon at the impiety of his minister. We will relate another incident of a similar nature. As he hurried along the street, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale met face to face with one of the oldest members of his church, an elderly lady, the most pious and exemplary that could be imagined—poor, widowed, alone, and with her heart full of recollections of her dead husband and children, and of her long-departed friends. Yet all this, which might otherwise have been a most intense sorrow, was almost transformed to this pious soul into a solemn joy, by the religious consolations and truths of the Holy Scriptures, upon which she had been continually nourished for more than thirty years. Ever since the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale took her into his care, the good lady’s chief earthly comfort had been to see her spiritual shepherd, either purposely or by chance, and to feel her soul refreshed by a word breathing the comforting truths of the Gospel, and proceeding from those reverend lips, to penetrate her poor but attentive ear. But on this occasion, when the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale tried to open his lips, he could not recall a single passage from the Holy Scriptures. Scriptures, and all he could say was something brief and forcible, which, as it seemed to him at the time, amounted to an irrefutable argument against the immortality of the soul. The mere suggestion of such an idea would probably have brought this old lady to a senseless standstill , as if struck by an infusion of intensely deadly poison. What the minister actually said, she could never recall. Perhaps there was a certain obscurity in his words which prevented the good widow from fully grasping the idea Dimmesdale intended to convey, or perhaps she interpreted them after her own fashion. The fact is, when the minister looked back, he noticed on the saintly woman’s face an expression of rapture and divine gratitude, as if illuminated by the splendors of the divine city. We will still relate a third instance. After parting from the old widow, he found the youngest of her parishioners. She was a tender maiden, whom the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale’s sermon, preached the day after her all-nighter on the stage, had caused to exchange the transitory joys of the world for a heavenly hope, which would grow brighter as the shadows of life grew longer, and which would at last convert the last gloom into waves of glorious light. She was as pure and as beautiful as a lily that had blossomed in Paradise. The minister knew full well that her image was enshrined in the immaculate shrine of the maiden’s heart, that it mingled her religious enthusiasm with the sweet fire of love, and imparted to love all the purity of religion. Surely the enemy of mankind had that day taken the young maiden from her mother’s side, to set her before this man whom we may call lost and hopeless. As the young woman approached the minister, the evil spirit whispered in his ear to condense into the briefest form, and pour into the tender heart of the virgin, a germ of evil that would soon produce black flowers and even blacker fruits. Such was his conviction of his influence over this virginal soul, who thus entrusted herself to him, that the minister knew very well that it was within his power to wither this entire garden of innocence with a single perverse glance, or to make it blossom into virtue with a single kind word. Consequently, after sustaining a struggle with himself more intense than any he had already endured, he covered his face with his cloak and quickened his pace, not realizing that he had seen her, leaving the poor girl to interpret his rudeness as she wished. She searched her conscience, full of innocent little actions, and the unhappy woman reproached herself with a thousand imaginary faults, and the next day she went about her domestic duties with a bowed head and tearful eyes. Before the minister had had time to celebrate his victory over this last temptation, he experienced another impulse, not only ridiculous, but almost horrible. It was, we are ashamed to say, nothing less than to stop in the street and teach some very foul words to a group of Puritan children, who were just beginning to talk. Having resisted this impulse as completely unworthy of the dress she wore, she met a drunken sailor from the crew of the West Indian vessel we have spoken of; And this time, after so courageously repulsing all other wicked temptations, poor Mr. Dimmesdale was desirous at last to shake the hand of this tarry scoundrel, and amuse himself with some of those cheap jokes which sailors have such a store of, seasoned with a volley of suits and oaths to shake heaven. He was detained, not so much by his sound principles, as by his native modesty and the decorous habits acquired under his clerical garb. “What is it that haunts and tempts me thus?” asked the minister to himself, stopping in the street and striking his forehead. “Am I mad, or am I completely in the power of the “a wicked enemy? Did I make a compact with him in the jungle, and sign it with my own blood? And now he requires me to fulfill it, suggesting that I should perform all the iniquities his wicked imagination could devise?” While the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale was thus reasoning with himself, and striking his forehead with his hand, old Mrs. Hibbins, the lady reputed to be a sorceress, is said to have been passing by, dressed in a rich velvet gown, with her hair beautifully combed, and with a beautiful collar of a frill, all of which gave her the appearance of a person of many bells. As if the enchantress had read the minister’s thoughts, she stopped before him, fixed her gaze shrewdly upon his face, smiled maliciously, and, though not given to conversing with churchmen, engaged in the following conversation with him: “So, Reverend Sir, you have paid a visit to the forest,” observed the enchantress, inclining her large coiffure toward the minister. “The next time you go, I beg you to let me know in advance, and I shall consider myself greatly honored to accompany you. Without wishing to exaggerate my importance, I believe a word from me will serve to procure any strange gentleman an excellent reception from that potentate you know. ” “I assure you, madam,” replied the minister with a respectful bow, as the lady’s high rank and his good breeding required , “I assure you, upon my conscience and honor, that I am completely in the dark as to the meaning of your words.” I have not gone into the forest to seek the favor of any potentate, nor do I intend to make a future visit there, in order to gain the protection and favor of such a personage. My only object was to greet my pious friend, the Apostle Eliot, and to rejoice with him over the many precious souls he has wrested from idolatry. “Ha! ha! ha!” cried the old hag, still tilting her high coif towards the minister. “Well, well: we need not talk of this during the day; but at midnight, in the forest, we shall have another conversation together. ” The old hag continued on her way with her usual majesty, but from time to time she looked back and smiled, exactly as one who wished to imply that there existed between herself and the minister a secret and mysterious intimacy. “Have I sold myself,” the minister asked himself, “to the malignant spirit whom, if what is reported is true, this old, sallow , velvet-clad hag has chosen as her prince and lord? Unhappy minister! He had made a pact very similar to that of which he spoke. Deluded by a dream of happiness, he had deliberately yielded, as never before, to the temptation of what he knew to be a mortal sin; and the infecting poison of that sin had rapidly diffused itself through his entire moral being, lulling all his good impulses and awakening all his evil ones to vivid life. Hatred, contempt, unprovoked malice , the gratuitous desire to be wicked, to ridicule everything good and holy, were aroused in him to tempt him at the same time that they filled him with terror. And his meeting with the old witch Hibbins, had it actually happened, only served to show him her sympathies and companionship with wicked mortals and the world of evil spirits. By this time he had reached his home near the churchyard, and hastening upstairs, he took refuge in his study. The minister was greatly overjoyed to find himself at last in this asylum, without having sold himself out by committing one of those strange and malignant eccentricities to which he had been continually exposed while traversing the streets of the town. He entered his room and looked around, examining the books, the windows, the fire grate, and the tapestries, experiencing the same sensation of strangeness that had beset him during his journey from the forest to the city. In this room he had studied and written; here he had fasted and spent the sleepless nights, until he was almost half dead from fatigue and weakness; here he had striven to pray; here he had suffered a thousand torments and agonies. There lay his Bible, in the rich ancient Hebrew, with Moses and the Prophets speaking constantly to him, and the voice of God ringing throughout. There, on the table, with his pen by his side, lay an unfinished sermon, with one sentence unfinished just as he had left it when he went out on his visit two days before. He knew that he was the same, the thin, pale-cheeked minister who had done and suffered all these things, and was already well underway with his election sermon. But he seemed to stand apart, contemplating his former self with a certain disdainful, pitying, half-envious curiosity. That former self was gone, and another man had returned from the forest: wiser, endowed with a knowledge of hidden mysteries that the simplicity of the first could never have attained. Bitter knowledge indeed! While he was thus engaged, a tap sounded at the study door, and the minister said, “Come in,” not without some fear that it might be an evil spirit. Indeed it was! It was old Roger Chillingworth. The minister rose, pale and dumb, with one hand on the Scriptures, and the other upon his breast. “Welcome, reverend sir!” said the doctor. “And how did you find that holy man, the Apostle Eliot? But I fancy, my dear sir, that you look pale, as if your journey through the woods had been very trying. Do you not need my assistance to strengthen you somewhat, that you may be able to preach the election sermon? ” “No, I think not,” replied the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. “My journey, and the sight of the holy apostle, and the fresh, pure air I have breathed there, after so long a confinement in my study, have done me much good. I believe I shall have no further need of your drugs, my kind physician, good as they are, and administered by a friendly hand. ” During all this time, old Roger had been regarding the minister with the grave, steady eye of a physician toward his patient; but, in spite of these appearances, the minister was almost convinced that Chillingworth knew, or at least suspected, of his interview with Esther. The physician, therefore, knew that in the eyes of his patient he was no longer an intimate and loyal friend, but his bitterest enemy; it was only natural, therefore, that some of these feelings should assume a visible form. It is, however, a singular fact that so much time sometimes elapses before certain thoughts are expressed in words, and thus we see how surely two people, unwilling to discuss the matter they hold most dear, approach it to its very limits and withdraw without touching it. For this reason, the minister had no fear that the doctor would clearly and distinctly present the true position in which they mutually found themselves. However, old Roger, with his usual gloomy manner, came considerably closer to the matter of secrecy. “Would it not be better,” he said, “if you should make use of my lack of skill this evening ? Truly, my dear sir, we must strive and do all we can to ensure that you are strong and vigorous on the day of the election sermon . The public expects great things from you, fearing that by the time another year comes their pastor will be gone. ” “Yes, to another world,” replied the minister with pious resignation. “Heaven grant that it may be to a better world, for, truly , I scarcely believe that I shall be able to remain among my parishioners the swift seasons of another year. And as for your medicines, good sir, in the present state of my body, I have no need of them. ” “I am very glad to hear it,” replied the physician. “It may be that my remedies, administered so long in vain, will now begin to take effect. I should consider myself happy if it were so, for I should deserve the gratitude of New England, if I could effect such a cure. ” “I thank you with all my heart, vigilant friend,” said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, with a solemn smile, said, “I thank you, and I can only repay you with my prayers for your good services. ” “The prayers of a good man are the richest reward,” replied the old physician, as he took leave. “They are the gold coins common in the New Jerusalem, with the King’s image upon them.” When he was alone, the minister called a servant of the house and desired him something to eat, which was brought, and he devoured with a ravenous appetite; and casting into the flames what he had already written of his sermon, he immediately began to write another, with such a rush of thought and emotion that he believed himself truly inspired, wondering only that heaven should be pleased to transmit the grand and solemn music of its oracles through so unworthy a channel as he deemed himself. Leaving, however, this mystery to solve itself , or remain eternally unsolved, he continued his work with zeal and enthusiasm. And thus the night passed until morning appeared, throwing a golden ray into the study, where it surprised the minister, pen in hand, with innumerable pages written and scattered everywhere. Chapter 21. THE FEAST DAY IN NEW ENGLAND. Very early in the morning of the day on which the new Governor was to be elected by the people, Esther and Pearl went to the market place, which was already crowded with artisans and other commoners, inhabitants of the city in considerable numbers. Among these were many individuals of rough appearance, whose clothes, being made of deerskin, indicated that they belonged to some of the establishments situated in the forests surrounding the little metropolis of the colony. On this feast day, as on all other occasions during the past seven years, Esther wore a dress of coarse gray cloth, which, not so much from its color as from a certain indescribable peculiarity of its cut, had the effect of relegating her person to obscurity, as if to make her disappear from the gaze of all; while the scarlet letter, on the contrary, made her emerge from this sort of twilight or gloom, presenting her to the world in the moral aspect of its own brilliance. Her face, so long familiar to the people of the city, betrayed the marble calm they had been accustomed to behold. It was a kind of mask; or rather, it was the frozen calm of the features of a woman already dead, and this sad resemblance was due to the fact that Esther was actually dead, as far as she could claim any sympathy or affection, and that she had completely separated herself from the world with which she still seemed to mingle. Perhaps on this special day it might be said that there was an expression on Esther’s face never before seen, though not so marked as to be easily noticed, were it not by an observer endowed with such penetrating powers as to read, first, what was passing in the heart, and then to seek a corresponding reflection in the face and general appearance of the woman. Such an observer, or rather a diviner, might have thought that, after Esther had held the gaze of the multitude for seven long and ill-fated years, enduring them as a necessity, a penance, and a kind of severe religion, she now, for the last time, faced them freely and voluntarily, in order to convert what had been a prolonged agony into a kind of triumph . “Look for the last time at the scarlet letter and at her who wears it!” the victim of the people seemed to be saying to them. “Wait a little, and I shall be free of you.” A few hours, no more, and the mysterious and profound ocean will receive into its bosom, and will hide there forever, the symbol that you have made shine for so long in my breast! Nor would it be too great an inconsistency to suppose that Hester experienced a certain feeling of regret at those very moments when she was about to be freed from the pain that, one might say, had become deeply incarnated in her being. Was there not, perhaps, an irresistible desire in her to gulp down for the last time the cup of bitter absinthe she had been drinking for almost all the years of her youth? The liquor she would henceforth bring to her lips would surely be rich, delicious, invigorating, and in a polished golden vessel; or else it would produce an inevitable and tedious languor, following the dregs of bitterness she had hitherto gulped down like a cordial of intense potency. Perla was gaily attired. It would have been impossible to guess that this brilliant and luminous apparition owed its existence to that woman in the somber gown; or that the splendid, yet delicate, fancy that conceived the child’s dress was the same that accomplished the perhaps more difficult task of giving Esther’s simple dress its remarkable peculiar appearance. So fitting did Perlita’s dress become that it seemed the emanation, the inevitable development, and outward manifestation of her character, as impossible to separate from her as a butterfly’s wing is to shed its variegated brilliance, or the petals of a splendid flower are to shed their radiant color. On this extraordinary day, however, there was a certain singular restlessness and agitation in the child’s entire being, similar to the brilliance of diamonds that flash and scintillate in time with the beating of the breast in which they are displayed. Children always share the agitations of those with whom they are intimately associated; they always experience the unease due to some impending displeasure or disturbance of any kind in the domestic hearth; and therefore Perla, who was then the jewel of her mother’s restless heart, revealed in her very vivacity the emotions that no one could discover in the marble impassivity of Esther’s brow. This effervescence made her move like a bird, rather than walk beside her mother, continually breaking out into inarticulate, high-pitched, piercing exclamations. When they arrived at the market-place, she became even more restless and feverish at the bustle and movement there, for generally the place really had the appearance of a solitary meadow in front of a village church, and not the business center of a town. “What does this mean, mother?” cried the child. “Why has everyone left their work today? Is it a holiday for everyone? Look, there ‘s the blacksmith. He’s washed his dirty face and put on his Sunday clothes, and he looks as if he would be happy and cheerful, if only someone would show him how to be. And here is Mr. Brackett, the old jailer, smiling at me and waving me hello. Why does he do this, mother?” “He remembers when you were very little,” my child, “replied Esther. “That horrible, ugly, black old man must not smile at me or greet me,” said Pearl. “Let him do so with you, if he pleases, for you are dressed in a dark color and wear the scarlet letter. But look, mother, how many strange people there are, and among them Indians and sailors too! Why have all those men come to the market-place? ” “They are waiting for the procession to pass so they can see it,” said Esther, “for the Governor and the magistrates are to come, and the ministers, and all the noble and good people are to march with music and soldiers at their head. ” “And will the minister be there?” asked Pearl, “and will he stretch out both his hands toward me, as he did when you carried me to him from the brook?” “Yes, he will be there,” replied her mother, “but he will not greet you today, nor should you greet him. ” “What a sad, strange man the minister is!” said the child, as if she were speaking partly alone and to herself. “In the middle of the night he calls us and clasps your hand and mine, just as when we were together on the platform. And in the wood, where only the ancient trees can hear one another, and where only a little bit of sky can see us, we He sits there talking to you on a tree trunk. And he kisses my forehead in such a way that the brook can hardly wash away his kiss. But here, in the sunlight, and in the midst of all these people, he doesn’t know us, nor should we know him. Yes, a strange and sad man with his hand always on his heart! “Speak no more, Perla,” her mother told her, “you don’t understand these things. Don’t think about the minister now, but look at what’s happening around you and you’ll see how happy everyone seems today. The children have come from their schools, and the grown-ups have left their shops, their workshops, and the fields to enjoy themselves; for today a new Governor begins to govern them.” As Esther said, great joy and happiness shone on the faces of everyone present. On such a day, as was the case for the greater part of two centuries afterward, the Puritans indulged in all the public rejoicing and mirth they deemed permissible to human frailty; dissipating, in the space of a single holiday, that somber cloud in which they were always enveloped, yet in such a manner that they appeared scarcely less grave than other communities in times of general mourning. But perhaps we exaggerate the somber aspect that undoubtedly characterized the character of that time. The people who were present in the Boston market square were not all heirs to the stern and sad Puritan character. There were individuals there from England, whose parents had lived in the time of Queen Elizabeth, when English social life, considered as a whole, seems to have been as magnificent, lavish, and joyous as the world has ever witnessed. Had they followed their hereditary taste, the colonists of New England would have celebrated all events of public interest with bonfires, banquets, civic processions, all with great pomp and splendor. Nor would it have been difficult to combine, in the observance of the majestic ceremonies, joyful recreation with solemnity, as if the grand dress that a nation dons at such celebrations were adorned in a manner both brilliant and grotesque. Something similar existed in the manner of celebrating the day that inaugurated the political year of the colony. The vague reflection of a magnificence that lived on in memory, a pale and weak imitation of what they had witnessed in old London—we will not say of a royal coronation, but of the festivities with which the Lord Mayor of that great capital is inaugurated—could be traced in the customs observed by our ancestors at the annual installation of their magistrates. The fathers and founders of the Republic—the statesman , the priest, and the soldier—believed it their duty to clothe themselves on this occasion in all the pomp and majestic display that, according to ancient traditions, was considered the indispensable adjunct of public or social eminence. All became part of the procession that was to parade before the eyes of the people, thus imparting a certain dignity to the simple structure of a government so recently constituted. On such occasions, the people were permitted, and even encouraged, to relax and abandon their various labors and industries, to which they always seemed to apply themselves with the same rigidity and severity as to their austere religious practices. Of course, nothing similar could be expected here as had been seen at the popular festivals of England in the time of Queen Elizabeth: no crude theatrical performances, no minstrels with their harps and legendary ballads; nor street musicians with a monkey dancing to the music; nor sleight-of-hand players and puppeteers with their tricks and sorcery tricks; nor clowns and acrobats trying to entertain the crowd with their jokes, perhaps centuries old, but always having a good effect, because they address universal feelings disposed to joy and good humor. All this kind of Professors of the various branches of amusement and entertainment had been severely suppressed, not only by the rigid discipline of the law, but by the general sanction that constitutes the vitality of laws. However, even lacking all this, the honest and good-natured people smiled, perhaps with a certain harshness, but also with a swaying jaw. Needless to say, there was no lack of games and recreations of the kind the colonists had witnessed many years before at the country fairs of England, in which they perhaps took part, and considered it advisable to preserve in these new lands. For example, arm wrestling of various kinds could be seen here and there in the market square; on one corner there was a friendly clubbing match; and, most striking of all, on the pillory platform, which has already been referred to several times in these pages, two masters-at-arms were beginning to display their skills with buckler and broadsword. But to the great disappointment and displeasure of the spectators, this entertainment was suspended through the intervention of the town marshal, who would not allow the majesty of the law to be violated by such an abuse of one of its hallowed places. Though the colors of the picture of human life displayed in the market-place were generally somber, they were nevertheless animated with a variety of hues. There was a band of Indians in curiously embroidered deerskin robes, red and yellow belts, feathered heads, and armed with bows, arrows, and flint-tipped spears, who stood apart, as if separate from all the world, with countenances of an inflexible gravity that not even that of the Puritans could surpass. Yet, despite all this, these colorfully painted savages were hardly suitable as a type of the most violent or licentious of the people who were assembled there. Such an honor, if it existed, could have been more justly claimed by some of the sailors who formed part of the crew of the ship from the Caribbean Sea, who had also come ashore to enjoy themselves on election day. They were men who had poured their hearts into their hearts, with sun-tanned faces and long, thick beards. Their short, baggy trousers were held up by a belt, sometimes secured with gold plates or buckles, from which always hung a large knife, and in some cases a saber. Beneath the wide brims of their straw hats, eyes glittered that, even in moments of joy and good humor, possessed a kind of instinctive ferocity . Without fear or scruple of any kind, they violated the rules of good behavior to which everyone else was subject, smoking right under the nose of the town’s bailiff, although each puff of smoke would have cost any other resident of the city a good sum of reales in fines. They also gulped down, without hesitation, drams of wine or brandy from flasks they took from their pockets and offered liberally to the astonished crowd surrounding them. Nothing so characterizes the half-hearted morality of those times, which we today describe as rigid, as the license allowed to sailors. We are not speaking only of their shenanigans when on land, but even more so of their acts of violence and plunder when in their own element. A sailor of that era would today run the risk of being accused of piracy in a court of law. For example, there could be little doubt that the crew of the ship we have spoken of, although not among the worst of their kind, had been guilty of depredations against Spanish commerce of such a nature that they would put their lives at risk in a modern court of law. But in those ancient times, the sea was stirred, swelled, and rippled at will, or was subject only to stormy winds , with scarcely any attempt being made to establish any code to regulate the actions of those who sailed it. The buccaneer He could abandon his profession and, if he chose, become an honest and pious man by leaving the waves and settling on land; and even in the midst of his stormy life, he was not considered as an individual with whom it was unbecoming to have any dealings or social intercourse, even casually. Consequently, the old Puritans, in their black cloaks and pointed hats, could not help smiling at the boisterous and rough conduct of these merry sailors; it did not excite surprise or give rise to criticism to see so respectable a person as old Roger Chillingworth enter the market-place in intimate and friendly conversation with the captain of the disreputable vessel. It may be said that in all that crowd there assembled there was not a figure of such striking and gallant appearance, at least in respect of dress, as that captain. His dress was profusely covered with ribbons, and gold braid on his hat surrounded a small chain, also of gold, and adorned with a feather. He had a sword at his belt, and he bore a gash on his forehead, which, thanks to a certain arrangement of his hair, he seemed more eager to show than to conceal. A citizen who had not been a sailor would hardly have dared to wear such a dress and show such a face with such ease and arrogance, knowing that he was exposing himself to severe interrogation before a magistrate, probably incurring a heavy fine or a few days in prison. But in the case of a ship’s captain, everything was considered part of the profession, just as scales are part of a fish. After parting from the doctor, the captain of the ship bound for Bristol began to pace slowly about the market-place, until , by chance approaching where Esther stood, he seemed to recognize her, and did not hesitate to address her. As was generally the case wherever Esther happened to be, there was a small empty space formed around her , a sort of magic circle, into which, though the people were jostling and trampling at a very short distance, no one ventured or was disposed to enter. This was a vivid illustration of the moral solitude to which the scarlet letter condemned its wearer, owing partly to Esther’s reserve, and partly to the instinctive aloofness of her fellow-citizens, though they had long since ceased to be uncharitable towards her. Now, more than ever, it served her admirably, for it gave her a means of conversing with the sailor without danger of the bystanders being aware of her conversation. and such a change had taken place in Esther’s reputation in the public eye that the most eminent matron in the colony, in point of rigid morality, could not have permitted herself that interview without giving rise to scandal. “So, madam,” said the captain, “I must order my steward to prepare another cabin besides those you have hired. On this voyage there will be no fear of scurvy or typhus; for with the surgeon on board, and this other doctor, our only danger will be the pills or drugs they administer to us, as I have a good supply of medicines on board which I purchased from a Spanish vessel. ” “What are you saying?” asked Esther, with more alarm than she cared to show. “Have you another passenger? ” “What!” “Do you not know,” cried the captain of the ship, “that the doctor of this place, Chillingworth, as he calls himself, is willing to share my cabin with you? Yes, yes, you must know, for you tell me he is one of the company, and an intimate friend of the gentleman you spoke of, who is in danger here at the hands of these rough old Puritan rulers. ” “Yes, they are intimately acquainted,” replied Hester, with a serene countenance, though all filled with the deepest consternation, “they have lived together a long time. Nothing more passed between the sailor and Hester. But at that very instant she saw old Roger standing in the farthest corner of the square. market, smiling upon her; a smile which, across that vast expanse of ground, and amidst so much talk, gaiety, bustle, and animation, and such a diversity of interest and feeling, contained a secret and terrible significance. Chapter 22. THE PROCESSION. Before Hester could realize what was passing, and consider what could be done in view of this new and unexpected aspect of the affair, the strains of military music were heard approaching along one of the adjoining streets, signaling the progress of the procession of magistrates and citizens in the direction of the church, where, according to an ancient custom adopted in the early colonial days, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale was to preach the election sermon. Soon the head of the procession appeared, proceeding slowly and stately, turning a corner and forcing its way through the throng that thronged the market-place. First came the band of music, composed of a variety of instruments, perhaps imperfectly adapted to one another, and played without much art; nevertheless, the great object which the harmony of drums and bugle should produce in the multitude was achieved; namely, to invest the scene before them with a more heroic and elevated aspect. Perla, at first, began to clap her hands, but then, for a moment, she lost the feverish agitation that had kept her in a state of continual excitement all morning. She silently contemplated what was passing, and it seemed as if the sounds of the music, ravishing her spirit, caused her, like a water bird, to hover over those waves of harmony. But she returned to her former agitation when she saw, flashing in the rays of the sun, the arms and brilliant trappings of the soldiers who came immediately after the band of music, and formed the honor guard of the procession. This military corps, which still exists as an institution and continues its ancient existence with an ancient and honorable reputation, was not composed of salaried men, but of knights who, animated by martial zeal, desired to establish a sort of College of Arms where, as in an Association of Knights Templar, they could learn the science of war and its practices, as far as their usual peaceful occupations permitted. The high esteem in which military personnel were held at that time could be seen in the majestic bearing of each individual who comprised the company. Some, indeed, through their services in the Netherlands and on other fields of battle, had perfectly earned the right to use the name of soldier with all the pomp and prosopopeia of the office. That entire column, dressed in breastplates of shining steel and shining helmets crowned with plumes of feathers, presented a sight whose splendor no modern display of troops can equal. And yet, the men of civil eminence, who marched immediately after the military escort, were even more worthy of a thoughtful person’s observation. Their outward appearance bore a certain stamp of majesty that made the haughty bearing of the warrior seem vulgar, even absurd , beside it. It was a century in which talent deserved less esteem than it does now, with greater esteem reserved for the solid qualities that denoted firmness and dignity of character. The people, by heritage, were respectful and deferential; and the English colonists who had established their homes on these harsh shores, leaving behind them a king, nobles, and the entire social hierarchy, although with the idea of respect and obedience still deeply rooted in them, reserved it for gray hair and heads that age had made venerable; for unswerving integrity; for solid wisdom and the bitter experience of life; in short, for all those qualities that indicate weight and maturity and are included under the general term of respectability. Therefore, those primitive statesmen, Such as Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley, Bellingham, and their companions, who were raised to power by popular election, do not appear to have belonged to that class of men now called brilliant, but rather to have distinguished themselves as persons of maturity and weight, rather than of lively and extraordinary intelligence. They had strength of mind and confidence in their own powers, and in difficult or dangerous times, when the welfare of the public was at stake, they stood like a wall of rock against the battering of the stormy waves. The traits of character indicated here were perfectly displayed in the almost square faces and in the great physical development of the new colonial magistrates; and as far as bearing and natural authority were concerned, the mother country would not have been ashamed to admit these men to the House of Peers or the Sovereign’s Council. After the magistrates came the young and eminent ecclesiastic whose lips were to deliver the religious oration in celebration of the solemn act. At the time in question, his profession was far more conducive to the exercise of intellectual powers than politics . Those who saw Mr. Dimmesdale now observed that he had never displayed such energy in his countenance, or even in his gait, as he had in the procession. His step was not hesitant, as on other occasions, but firm; he did not walk so almost bent over, nor did he, as usual, place his hand upon his heart. Yet, on closer inspection, his vigor seemed not bodily but spiritual, as if it had been due to the special favor of angels; or perhaps it was the animation proceeding from an intellect absorbed in serious and profound thoughts; or perhaps his sensitive temperament was invigorated by the penetrating sounds of music, which, ascending to heaven, carried him along and moved him with unusual vivacity. Yet such was the abstraction of his looks that one might have thought Mr. Dimmesdale did not even hear the music. There was his body marching forward with unaccustomed vigor. But where was his spirit? Deep within his being, occupied with extraordinary activity in coordinating the legion of majestic thoughts that were soon to utter his lips; and consequently, he neither saw nor heard, nor had any idea of what surrounded him. But the spiritual part took hold of that weak structure and dragged it forward with it, unconsciously, and also transformed into spirit. Men of uncommon intelligence, who have acquired a certain morbid condition, sometimes possess this faculty of making a powerful effort in which they invest the vital force of many days, only to remain exhausted afterward for a long time. Esther, with her eyes fixed on the minister, felt dominated by sad thoughts, without knowing why or where they came from. She had imagined that a glance, however quick, had to be exchanged between the two. She remembered the dark forest with its solitary meadow, and the love and anguish she had witnessed; and the moldy trunk of the tree where, seated, hand in hand, they mingled their sad and passionate words with the melancholy murmur of the brook. What a profound knowledge they acquired then of what each of them really was! And was this the same man? She hardly knew him now. Was it he, this man who passed proudly to the beautiful music, in the company of the venerable and majestic magistrates—he, so inaccessible in his social position, and even more so as she saw him there now, lost in the unsympathetic thoughts that preoccupied him? Hester’s heart saddened at the thought that it had all been an illusion, and that however vivid her dream had been, there could be no true bond between her and the minister. And there was in Esther such a sum of feminine feeling that she could hardly forgive him, and even less now when the footsteps of Destiny approaching quickly could almost be heard, ever nearer , no, she could not forgive him for being so distracted. of the world that was common to them both, while she, lost in the darkness, stretched out her frozen hands, searching for him, but unable to find him. Pearl either saw and responded to her mother’s intimate thoughts, or she herself felt the minister’s withdrawal and thought she sensed the sort of inaccessible barrier that separated them. While the procession passed, the child was restless, moving and swaying like a bird about to take flight; but when it was all over, she looked Esther in the face and said: “Mother, is that the same minister who kissed me by the brook? ” “Be silent now, my dear Pearl,” her mother answered in a low voice. ” We must not always talk in the marketplace about what happens to us in the forest.” “I can’t be sure it’s him, he seems so different to me!” continued the child; “else I would have run up to him and asked him to kiss me now, in front of everybody, as he did there under those shady trees. What would the minister have said, mother? Would he have laid his hand on his heart, scolded me, and ordered me to go away? ” “What else could he have said, Pearl,” replied her mother, “but that this wasn’t the occasion for kissing anybody, and that kisses ought not to be exchanged in the market-place? You were perfectly right, you fool, not to speak to him. ” Another person also expressed her ideas about Mr. Dimmesdale. This person was Mrs. Hibbins, whose eccentricities, or rather, her madness, led her to do what few of the people would have dared to do, namely, to hold a conversation, before the public eye, with the wearer of the scarlet letter. Dressed in great magnificence, with a triple-collared collar, an embroidered waistline, a gown of rich velvet, and leaning upon a gold-headed cane, she had come out to view the civic procession. As this elderly lady had the reputation, which afterwards cost her her life, of being a principal party in all the necromancy works that were continually being performed, the crowd made a clear way for her and withdrew from her, seeming to dread the touch of her garments, as if they carried the pestilence concealed within their exquisite folds. Seen in company with Hester Prynne, notwithstanding the benevolent sentiment with which many regarded the latter, the terror that Mrs. Hibbins naturally inspired increased, and gave rise to a general withdrawal from the spot where the two women were. “What mortal imagination could conceive him?” said the old woman, in a low, confidential voice to Esther. “That religious man, that saint on earth, such as the people believed him to be, and as he really appears to be! Who , seeing him now in the procession, could possibly think that he has not long since left his study—I bet, murmuring a few phrases from the Hebrew Bible—for a stroll in the forest? Ah! We, Esther Prynne, know what that means. But, in truth, I cannot bring myself to believe that this is the same man. I have seen marching behind the music many a clergyman who has danced with me when Someone, whom I will not name here, played the violin; and who may be an Indian witch doctor or a Lappish wizard who greets us and shakes hands at other times. But that is a mere trifle to one who knows what the world is like. But this minister?” Will you be able to tell me for certain, Hester, whether this is the same man you met on the jungle path? ‘ ‘Madam, I don’t know what you are talking about,’ replied Hester, knowing, as she did, that Lady Hibbins was not in her right mind, but extremely surprised, and even terrified, at the confident assertion with which she asserted the personal relations existing between so many individuals—including Hester herself and the evil enemy. ‘It is not for me to speak lightly of so pious and wise a minister as the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. ‘ ‘Ha! ha! woman!’ cried the old lady, lifting her finger and shaking it significantly. ‘Do you think that after he has gone I have been to the forest so many times, would it not be possible for me to know those who have been there too? Yes; even if not a single leaf of the wild garlands with which they adorned their heads while they danced had remained in their hair. I know you, Esther; for I see the mark that distinguishes you from all the others. We can all see it in the light of the sun; but in the darkness it shines like a reddish flame. You carry it before the face of the world; so there is no need to ask you anything about this matter. But this minister!… Let me whisper it in your ear! When the Black Man sees one of his own servants with his mark and seal, and so careful not to let his ties be known, as is the case with the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, he has a way of arranging matters so that the mark will be visible to the public eye . What is it that the minister is trying to hide, with his hand always over his heart? Ah! Hester Prynne! “What is it that he hides, good Mrs. Hibbins?” asked Pearl earnestly . “Have you seen it? ” “Nothing, my dear child,” answered Mrs. Hibbins, curtsying low to Pearl. “You shall see it yourself some day. They say, child, that you are descended from the Prince of the Air. Will you come with me on a fine night to see your father?” Then you will know why the minister always places his hand on his heart. And laughing so loudly that all who were in the market-place could hear her, the old witch left Hester. While this was going on, the preliminary prayer had been said in the church, and the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale had begun his discourse. An irresistible feeling kept Hester near the temple. As the sacred building was so crowded that it could not accommodate another person, she placed herself near the pillory platform, and was close enough to the church to be able to hear the whole sermon in a vague but varied murmur, as well as the faint accent of the minister’s peculiar voice. Mr. Dimmesdale’s vocal organ was in itself a rich treasure, so that the listener, even if he understood nothing of the language in which the orator spoke, might yet be carried away by the simple sound and cadence of the words. Like all other music, they breathed passion and vehemence, and aroused emotions sometimes tender, sometimes lofty, in a language that all could understand. Despite the indistinctness of the sounds, Esther listened with such attention and such profound sympathy that the sermon had a meaning of its own, completely personal, and in no way related to the words; which , had she been able to hear them more clearly, would have been only a materialized medium obscuring her spiritual sense. Now she heard the low notes, like the wind that calms as if to rest; now she rose with the sounds, as if ascending by progressive gradations, now soft, now loud, until the volume of the voice seemed to envelop her in an atmosphere of respectful awe and solemn grandeur. And yet, despite how imposing that voice sometimes became, it always had something essentially plaintive about it. There was in it an expression of anguish, sometimes faint, sometimes keen, the murmur or cry, however you may conceive it, of suffering humanity, springing from a heart that was in pain and was about to wound the sensibilities of other hearts. Sometimes all that was perceived was this inarticulate expression of profound feeling, like a sob heard in profound silence. But even at those moments when the minister’s voice grew stronger and more vigorous, rising irresistibly with greater amplitude and volume, filling the church so that it seemed to break through the walls and spread into the spaces—even then, if the listener paid careful attention, with that specific object, he could also detect the same cry of pain. What was that? The complaint of a human heart, Overwhelmed by sorrow, perhaps guilty, he revealed his secret, whatever it might be, to the great heart of humanity, begging for its sympathy or its forgiveness—at every moment—in every accent—and never in vain. This deep, commanding note was what gave the minister much of his power . During all this time, Esther remained, like a statue, nailed to the foot of the fateful platform. If the minister’s voice had not kept her there, there would still have been an inevitable magnetism in that place, where the first hour of her life of ignominy began. Esther was reigned by the vague, confused idea, though it weighed heavily on her spirit, that the entire orbit of her life, both before and after that date, was related to that place, as if it were the point that gave unity to her existence. Pearl, meanwhile, had left her mother and was playing as she pleased in the marketplace, cheering the somber crowd with her movements and vivacity, like a bright-feathered bird lighting up a whole dark-leafed tree, hopping here and there, half visible and half hidden in the shadow of the thick leaves. Her movements were undulating, sometimes irregular, and indicated the restlessness of her spirit, which was all the more intense that day because it mirrored that of her mother. Wherever Pearl saw anything that excited her ever-vigilant curiosity, she quickly went there, and it might be said that the child took full possession of it, as if she considered it her own property. The Puritans looked at her and smiled; but they were none the less inclined to believe that the child was the offspring of an evil spirit, judging from the indescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone throughout her little body and manifested itself in her activity. She went up to the savage Indian and stared into his face, until the Indian realized that he was dealing with a being more savage than himself. From there, with innate audacity, but always with characteristic reserve, she ran into the midst of a group of tan-cheeked sailors, those savages of the ocean, as the Indians were of the land, who with surprise and admiration gazed at Perla as if a foam of the sea had taken the form of a little girl, and were endowed with a soul with that phosphorescence of the waves that one sees gleam at night beneath the prow of a ship as it cuts through the waters. One of these sailors, surely the captain, who had spoken with Esther, was so captivated by Perla’s appearance that he tried to seize her to kiss her; but seeing that this was as impossible as catching a hummingbird in the air, he took the gold chain that adorned his hat and threw it to the little girl. Pearl immediately placed it around her neck and waist with such skill that, when she saw it, it seemed to be a part of her, and it was difficult to imagine her without it. “Is that woman over there with the scarlet letter your mother?” said the captain. “Will you take her a message from me? ” “If the message pleases me, I will do it,” said Pearl. “Then tell her,” replied the captain, “that I have spoken again to the old brown-faced doctor, and that he undertakes to bring his friend, the gentleman she knows, on board my ship. Consequently, your mother has only herself and you to think of. Will you tell her this, witch-child? ” “Mrs. Hibbins says my father is the Prince of the Air,” exclaimed Pearl, with a wicked smile. “If you call me a witch again, I will tell her, and she will chase your ship with a tempest.” Crossing the market square, the girl returned to her mother and told her what the sailor had told her. Esther, despite her strong, calm, resolute, and steadfast spirit in the face of adversity, was almost fainting upon hearing this news, a harbinger of inevitable disaster, just at the moment when a path seemed to have opened for her and the minister to escape from the labyrinth of pain and anguish in which they were lost. Her spirits overwhelmed and her mind filled with terrible perplexity by the news conveyed to her by the ship’s captain, she found herself at that moment subjected to another kind of trial. There were present many individuals from the surrounding areas who had often heard of the scarlet letter, and to whom it had become a thing of terror by the thousands of false or exaggerated stories circulating about it, but who had never seen it with their own eyes. These individuals, having exhausted all other amusements, crowded around Esther in a rudely indiscreet manner. But unscrupulous as they were, they could not get within a few yards of her. There they stopped, thanks to the kind of repulsive force of repugnance that the mystic symbol inspired in them. The sailors, observing the throng of spectators and learning the significance of the scarlet letter, came with their sun-blackened faces, like men of pierced souls, to form part of the circle surrounding Esther. Even the Indians were caught in the white man’s curiosity, and, gliding through the crowd, fixed their black, serpent-like eyes on the poor woman’s bosom , perhaps believing that the bearer of this brightly embroidered emblem must be a person of high rank among their people. Finally, the townspeople, although they no longer took any interest in the matter, also flocked to that spot and tormented Esther, perhaps more than all the others present, with the cold, indifferent gaze they fixed on the symbol of her shame. Esther saw and recognized the same faces of that group of matrons who had been waiting for her release at the prison gate seven years before; all were there, except the youngest and only compassionate one among them, whose funeral garment she made after that event. In that final hour, when she believed she would soon cast off the burning letter forever, it had become singularly the center of the greatest attention and curiosity, searing her breast more painfully than at any time since the first day she bore it. While Esther remained within that magic circle of ignominy where the cruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed her forever, the admirable orator gazed from his pulpit upon an audience subjugated by the power of his word to the inmost fibers of their manifold being. The holy minister in the church! The woman with the scarlet letter in the marketplace! What imagination could be so lacking in reverence as to have suspected that both were marked with the same burning stigma? Chapter 23. THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER. The eloquent voice, which had so enraptured the souls of the hearers that they were tossed and turned as if they were tossed by the waves of a turbulent ocean, finally ceased to resound. There was a moment of silence, as profound as that which must follow the words of an oracle. Then there was a murmur, followed by a sort of tumultuous noise. It seemed as if the bystanders, finding themselves now freed from the influence of the magical charm which had transported them to the spheres hovering in the spirit of the orator, were returning to themselves, though still filled with the admiration and respect which it had inspired. A moment later, the multitude began to file out of the church doors; and as all was now over, they needed to breathe an atmosphere more suitable to the earthly life to which they had descended than that to which the preacher had raised them with his fiery words. Once in the open air, the listeners expressed their admiration in various ways: the street and the market square resounded from end to end with the praises lavished on the minister, and the bystanders found no rest until each had told his neighbor what he had said. thought he remembered or knew better than he. According to universal testimony, no man ever spoke with a spirit so wise, so lofty, and so holy as the minister that day; nor were mortal lips ever so evidently inspired as his. It might be said that this inspiration descended upon him and possessed his being, constantly lifting him above the written discourse that lay before his eyes, and filling him with ideas that must appear as wonderful to himself as to his audience. As can be gathered from the conversation of the multitude, the subject of the sermon had been the relation of Divinity to human societies, with special reference to the New England they had founded in the wilderness; And as he drew near to the close of his discourse, a spirit of prophecy fell upon him, compelling him to continue his theme, as had been the case with the ancient prophets of Israel; with this difference, however, that while they foretold the ruin and desolation of their country, Dimmesdale foretold a great and glorious destiny to the people there assembled. But throughout his whole discourse there was a certain deep, sad, pervading note, which could only be interpreted as the natural, melancholy feeling of one who was soon to depart from this world. Yes, their minister, whom they loved so much, and who loved them all so much that he could not depart for heaven without heaving a sigh of sorrow, had a presentiment that an untimely death awaited him, and that he would soon leave them in tears. This thought of his temporary stay on earth gave the final touch to the effect which the preacher had produced; It was as if an angel, in his passage across the firmament, had swept his luminous wings for an instant over the people, casting at once shadow and splendor, and showering a shower of truth upon the audience. Thus came to the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, as it comes to most men in their various spheres of endeavor, though often too late, a period of life more brilliant and triumphant than any he had ever experienced, or could ever have hoped for. He stood at that moment upon the summit of that height to which the gifts of intelligence, learning, oratory , and a name of unblemished purity, could elevate a clergyman in the early days of New England, when such a career was in itself a high pedestal. Such was the position the minister occupied when he bowed his head over the edge of the pulpit at the close of his discourse. Meanwhile, Hester Prynne stood at the foot of the pillory, the scarlet letter still burning in her heart. Again the strains of music were heard, and the measured tread of the military escort was issuing from the church door. The procession was to proceed to the town hall, where a solemn banquet was to complete the ceremonies of the day. Therefore, once more the train of venerable and stately city fathers began to move into the open space left by the people, moving respectfully to either side, as the Governor and magistrates, the aged and wise men, the saintly ministers of the altar, and all who were eminent and renowned in the town, advanced through the midst of the spectators. When they reached the market-place, their presence was greeted with a general acclamation; which, while it could be attributed to the feeling of loyalty that the people felt at that time towards their rulers, was also the irresistible explosion of enthusiasm that the elevated eloquence had awakened in the souls of the listeners, which still vibrated in their ears. Each one felt the impulse within himself and almost instantly this impulse became unanimous. Inside the church it could hardly be repressed; but beneath the vault of heaven it was not possible to contain its manifestation, grander than the roars of the hurricane, of thunder or of the sea, in that powerful wave of so many voices united in one great voice by the a universal impulse that from many hearts forms one. Never before had such a clamor resounded on the soil of New England. Never before had a man been so honored by his fellow citizens as the preacher now was. And what became of him? Were not the glittering particles of a halo around his head visible in the air ? Having become so ethereal, his admirers having achieved his apotheosis, did his feet tread the dust of the earth as he marched in the procession? As the ranks of the militiamen and the civil magistrates advanced, every eye was directed toward Mr. Dimmesdale’s place of march. The acclamation died away to a murmur as one after another of the spectators caught a glimpse of him. How pale and weak he appeared in the midst of all this triumph ! The energy, or rather the inspiration, that sustained him while he delivered the sacred message, communicated to him by his own strength, as if from heaven, had already left him, after he had so faithfully fulfilled his mission. The color that had formerly seemed to scorch his cheeks was extinguished like a flame that is irretrievably extinguished among the last glowing embers. The deadly pallor of his face was such that it scarcely resembled that of a living man; nor could he, who walked with such halting steps as if every moment he would fall, yet without doing so, be mistaken for a living being. One of his fellow clergymen, the venerable John Wilson, observing the condition of Mr. Dimmesdale after his speech, hurried forward to offer his support; but the minister, all trembling, yet in a determined manner, withdrew the arm that his elderly colleague offered him. He walked on, if walking can be called what seemed more like the faltering effort of a child at the sight of its mother’s arms stretched out to encourage it forward. And now, almost imperceptibly, despite the slowness of his last steps, he found himself face to face with that platform, the memory of which was never erased from his mind—that platform where, many years before, Hester Prynne had had to endure the ignominious glances of the world. There was Hester holding Pearl by the hand! And there was the scarlet letter on her breast! The minister halted here, although the music continued to play the stately and lively march in time with which the procession was marching. “Onward!” the music called to him, “onward to the banquet!” But the minister stood there as if rooted to the spot. Governor Bellingham, who for the last few moments had had his anxious eyes fixed upon the minister, now quitting his place in the procession, came forward to assist him, believing, from Mr. Dimmesdale’s appearance, that he would otherwise fall to the ground. But there was something in the expression of the minister’s eyes that made the magistrate draw back, though he was not a man to easily yield to the vague intimations of another. Meanwhile, the multitude looked on with awe and admiration. This earthly faintness was, they believed, only another aspect of the minister’s celestial strength; nor would it have been thought a miracle too surprising to behold him ascending before their eyes into space, becoming ever more transparent and more brilliant, until at last they beheld him vanish into the clearness of heaven. The minister approached the platform and stretched out his arms. “Esther!” he said, “come here! Come here also, Pearl!” The look he gave them was gloomy, but there was in it a certain tenderness, a strange expression of triumph. The child, with her characteristic bird-like movements , ran up to him and clasped the minister’s knees in her tender little arms. Hester, as if impelled by inevitable fate, and against all her will, approached Dimmesdale also, but He stopped before he could reach it. At this moment, old Roger Chillingworth forced his way through the crowd, or, so dark, malignant, and restless was his look, that it had sprung from some infernal region to prevent its victim from accomplishing his purpose. But be that as it may, the old physician hastily advanced to the minister and seized him by the arm. “Fool, stop! What are you trying to do?” he said in a low voice. “ Sign that woman away! Make this child go away too! It will be all right. Do not stain your good name, nor die in dishonor! I can still save you! Do you wish to cover your sacred profession with disgrace ? ” “Ah! tempter! I think you have come too late,” replied the minister, looking fearfully but firmly into the doctor’s eyes. “Your power is not what it once was.” With God’s help I will now escape your grasp. And again he stretched out his hand to the woman with the scarlet letter. “Esther Prynne,” he cried with piercing vehemence, “in the name of Him so dreadful and so merciful, who at this last moment grants me grace to do what, with grievous sin and endless agony, I have refrained from doing for seven years, come here now and assist me with your might. Lend me your aid, Esther, but let it be guided by the will God has given me. This wicked and wronged old man opposes it with all his might—with all his own power and that of the evil enemy. Come, Esther, come! Help me up that platform.” The crowd was in the utmost confusion. The men of rank and dignity who were nearest to the minister were so surprised and perplexed as to the meaning of what they saw, so unable to comprehend the explanation most easily offered to them, or to imagine any other, that they remained mute and calm spectators of the judgment which Providence seemed about to pronounce. They saw the minister, leaning on Esther’s shoulder, and supported by the arm with which she encircled him, approach the platform and mount its steps, holding in his hands those of the little girl born in sin. Old Roger Chillingworth followed him, as one intimately connected with the drama of guilt and sorrow in which they had all been actors, and therefore entitled to be present at the final scene. “If you had searched the whole earth,” he said, looking with somber eyes at the minister, “you would not have found so secret a place, so high, nor so low, where you could have gotten rid of me, as this scaffold where you now lie.” “Thanks be to Him who brought me here!” replied the minister. He was trembling, however, and turned to Esther with an expression of doubt and anxiety in his eyes, which was easily distinguished, from a faint smile on his lips. “Is not this better,” he murmured, “than what we imagined in the forest? ” “I don’t know! I don’t know!” she answered quickly. “Better? Yes: I wish we could both die here, and Pearl with us! ” “As for you and Pearl, let God command whatsoever!” said the minister, “and God is merciful. Let me do now what He has made plain before my eyes, for I am dying, Esther. Let me hasten, then, to take upon my soul my share of shame.” Partly supported by Esther, and holding Pearl by the hand, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale turned to the worthy and venerable magistrates, to the sacred ministers who were his brethren in the Lord, to the people whose great souls were utterly dismayed, yet full of sorrowful sympathy, as if they knew that some deep and vital affair, if fraught with guilt, was also fraught with anguish and repentance, was now about to be brought open to the public. The sun, having now passed its meridian, shed its light upon the minister, and brought his figure out perfectly, as if he had left the earth to confess his crime before the tribunal of the Eternal Justice. “People of New England!” he exclaimed, in a voice that rose above all those present, loud, solemn, and majestic, yet which was always somewhat tremulous, and at times resembled a cry that struggled up from an unfathomable abyss of remorse and sorrow, “you,” he continued, “who have loved me, you who have believed me holy, look here, look at the greatest sinner alive. At last, at last, I am standing where I should have been seven years ago: here, with this woman, whose arm, more than the little strength with which I have dragged myself hither, supports me in this dreadful moment and keeps me from falling face downwards! See there the scarlet letter that Hester wears! You have all trembled at the sight of it.” Wherever this woman has gone, wherever, under the weight of so much misfortune, she might have hoped to find rest, that letter has scattered around her a sad radiance that inspired dread and disgust. But in your midst stood a man before whose mark of infamy and sin you have never flinched! At this point, it seemed that the minister must leave the rest of his secret in silence; but he struggled against his bodily weakness, and even more against the weakness of mind that strove to subdue him. Then he threw off all bodily support and took a resolute step forward, leaving the woman and child behind him . “He had that mark!” he continued with a kind of fierce rapture. So determined was he to reveal all! “The eye of God saw her! The angels were always marking her!” The evil enemy knew it well and constantly rubbed it with his burning fingers! But he cunningly hid it from the gaze of men, and moved among you with a sorrowful countenance, like that of a very pure man in so sinful a world; and sad, because he missed his heavenly companions. Now, in the last moments of his life, he stands before you; he bids you behold Esther’s scarlet letter anew; and he tells you that, with all its mysterious horror, it is but the pale shadow of the one he bears on his own breast; and that even this red mark I bear here, this red mark of mine, is only the reflection of the one that is burning in the inmost part of his heart. Is there anyone here who can doubt God’s judgment upon a sinner? Look! Behold a dreadful testimony of that judgment! With a convulsive movement, he tore the ecclesiastical sash that he wore upon his breast. All was revealed! But it would be irreverent to describe that revelation. For a moment the eyes of the horrified crowd were riveted on the gloomy miracle, while the minister stood with a triumphant expression on his face, like that of a man who in the midst of a crisis of the most acute grief has won a victory. Then he fell limply upon the scaffold. Esther partially raised him and made him rest his head upon her breast. Old Roger knelt by his side with a somber, bewildered expression, with a face from which all life seemed to have been extinguished. “You have escaped me!” he repeated frequently. “You have escaped me! ” “God forgive you!” said the minister. “You, too, have sinned grievously!” He tore his dying glances from the old man and fixed them upon the woman and the child. “My little Pearl!” she said faintly, and a sweet and tender smile lit up her face, like that of a spirit entering into deep repose; or rather, now that the weight that weighed upon her soul was gone, she seemed to long to play with the child, “my dear little Pearl, will you kiss me now? You didn’t want to do it in the jungle! But now you will. ” Pearl kissed her on the mouth. The spell was broken. The great scene of sorrow in which the erratic child had played her part had ripened all her feelings and affections at once; and the tears she shed on her father’s cheeks were a pledge that she would grow between sorrow and joy, not to be always at war with the world, but to be a true woman in it. Regarding her mother, too, Pearl’s mission as a messenger of sorrow was fully accomplished. “Esther,” said the minister, “farewell! ” “Shall we not meet again?” murmured Esther, bowing her head beside the minister’s. “Shall we not spend our immortal lives together? Yes, yes, with all this sorrow we have redeemed each other. You are looking far away, into eternity, with your bright, dying eyes. Tell me, what do you see? ” “Hush, Esther, hush!” said the minister with tremulous solemnity. “The law we broke—the guilt so terribly revealed—be your sole thoughts.” I fear!… I fear!… Perhaps since we forgot our God, since we violated the mutual respect we owed to our souls, it has been in vain to hope that we could associate after this life in a pure and everlasting union. God alone knows, and He is merciful. He has shown His compassion, more than ever, in the midst of my afflictions, by giving me this burning torture that I carried in my breast; by sending me to that terrible and gloomy old man, who always kept this torture more and more alive; by bringing me here, to end my life with this death of triumphant ignominy before the eyes of the people. If any of these torments had been lacking, I would be lost forever ! Praise be to His name! His will be done! Farewell! With the last word, the minister also breathed his last. The crowd, hitherto silent, broke into a strange and profound murmur of fear and surprise, which could find no other expression than in that murmur which resounded so deeply after the departed soul. Chapter 24. Conclusion. After many days had elapsed, when the people had been able to coordinate their thoughts concerning the scene just described, there was more than one version of what had passed upon the pillory platform. Most of the spectators asserted that they had seen a scarlet letter printed upon the flesh of the unfortunate minister’s breast, a very exact reproduction of that which Hester had upon her dress. As to its origin, various explanations were given, all of which were merely conjecture. Some asserted that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the very day that Hester Prynne first wore her ignominious emblem, had begun a series of penances, which he afterwards continued in various forms, inflicting upon himself horrible bodily torture. Others maintained that the stigma had not been produced until a long time afterward, when old Roger Chillingworth, a powerful necromancer, had conjured it up by his magic arts and poisonous drugs. There were others—and these were the most likely to appreciate the exquisite sensibility of the minister and the marvelous influence his spirit exerted on his body—who thought that the terrible symbol was the effect of the constant, gnawing remorse that lay in the inmost recesses of the heart, the inexorable judgment of Heaven being at last manifested by the visible presence of the letter. The reader may choose from these theories the one that best suits him. It is singular, however, that several individuals, who were spectators of the whole scene, and maintained that they had never taken their eyes off the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, absolutely denied that any mark had been seen upon his breast. And judging from what these same people said, the dying man’s last words did not admit, even remotely, that there had been, on his part, the slightest connection with the guilt that forced Esther to wear the scarlet letter for so long. According to these witnesses, worthy of the greatest respect and consideration, the minister, who was conscious that he was dying and also that the reverence of the multitude already placed him among the number of saints and angels, had desired, breathing his last in the arms of the fallen woman, to express before the face of the world how utterly vain was what is called the virtue and perfection of man. After having spent his life in his efforts for the spiritual good of humanity, he had made his manner of dying into a sort of living parable, in order to impress upon the minds of his admirers the powerful and sad lesson that, compared with Infinite Purity, we are all equally sinners; to teach them also that the most immaculate among us has only been able to rise above his fellows so far as to discern more clearly the mercy that looks down upon us from on high, and to repudiate more absolutely the phantom of human merit that casts its gaze upwards. Without wishing to dispute the truth of this statement, we must be allowed to consider this version of Mr. Dimmesdale’s story as merely an instance of the dogged fidelity with which the friends of a man, and especially of a clergyman, defend his reputation, even when evidence, as clear as the noonday sun shining upon the scarlet letter, proclaims him a creature of earth, false, and stained with sin. The authority we have chiefly followed—namely, a manuscript of very ancient date, compiled in view of the oral testimony of several persons, some of whom had known Hester Prynne, while others had heard her story from eyewitnesses —fully confirms the opinion taken in the preceding pages. Among many moral conclusions which may be drawn from the poor minister’s painful experience, and which crowd upon our minds, we select this:—Be true! Be true! Be true! Show the world, without hesitation, if not the worst of your nature, at least some trait from which the worst may be inferred. Nothing was more striking than the change which took place almost immediately after Mr. Dimmesdale’s death in the appearance and manner of the old man known as Roger Chillingworth. All his vigor and energy, all his vital and intellectual force , seemed to leave him at once, so that he actually withered away, shrivelled up, and even vanished from the sight of mortals, like a weed uprooted and withered in the burning sun. This unhappy man had made the systematic prosecution and exercise of revenge the chief object of his existence; And once the most complete triumph was achieved, the malevolent principle that animated him had nothing else to employ itself on, and since there was no diabolical work to perform on earth, there was nothing left for that inhuman mortal to do but go where his Master provided him with sufficient work and rewarded him with due wages. But we wish to be merciful to all those intangible beings who have been our acquaintances for so long, both with Roger Chillingworth and with his companions. It is a matter worthy of investigation to know to what extent hatred and love are really the same thing. Each of these feelings, in its most complete development, presupposes a profound and intimate knowledge of the human heart; each of these feelings also presupposes that one individual depends on another for the satisfaction of his affections and his spiritual life; each of these sensations leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, in helplessness and desolation, from the moment the object of hatred or love disappears. Therefore , philosophically considered, the two sentiments we are speaking of are essentially one and the same, except that love is contemplated in the light of a celestial splendor, and hatred in the reflection of a somber and gloomy flame. In the spiritual world, the old doctor and the young minister, having both been mutual victims, have perhaps found the whole sum of their earthly hatred and antipathy transformed into love. But leaving this discussion aside, we will communicate to the reader some news of another nature. Upon the death of old Roger Chillingworth, which happened a year later, showed by his last will and testament, of which Governor Bellingham and the Reverend Mr. Wilson were executors, that he had bequeathed a considerable fortune, both in New England and in the mother country, to Perlita, the daughter of Hester Prynne. Consequently, Pearl, the goblin child, the offspring of the devil, as some people still persisted in regarding her, became the richest heiress of her time in that part of the New World; and probably this circumstance produced a very marked change in the public estimation, and had the mother and daughter remained in the town, little Pearl, upon reaching marriageable age, would have mingled her impetuous blood with that of the most devout Puritan line of the colony. But not long after the doctor’s death, the wearer of the scarlet letter disappeared from the town , and Pearl with her. For many years, although vague rumors occasionally reached them across the seas, no authentic news was received of the mother and daughter. The story of the scarlet letter became a legend; its fascination remained powerful for a long time, and both the fateful platform and the seaside cottage where Esther lived continued to be objects of a certain respectful awe. Several children playing one afternoon near the cottage saw a tall woman in a dark dress approach the door; it had not been opened even once in many years; but whether the woman opened it, or whether the door yielded to her hand, the wood and iron being in a state of decay, or whether she glided like a ghost through some obstacle—what is certain is that the woman entered the deserted and abandoned cottage. She paused upon the threshold, and cast a glance about her, for perhaps the thought of entering alone, after so many changes, into that dwelling in which she had also suffered so much, was a sadder and more horrible thing than she could bear. But her hesitation, though it lasted but an instant, was long enough to reveal a scarlet letter upon her breast. Hester Prynne had thus returned, and taken up again the badge of her disgrace, long forgotten. But where was Pearl? If she still lived, she was doubtless in all the brightness and bloom of her early youth. No one knew, nor was it ever known for certain, whether the spritely child had descended into an untimely grave, or whether her turbulent and exuberant nature had been calmed and softened, and rendered her capable of the peaceful happiness proper to a woman. But for the rest of Esther’s life, there were indications that the recluse of the scarlet letter was the object of the love and interest of some inhabitant of another land. Letters were received stamped with a coat of arms unknown in English heraldry. In the aforementioned cabin were found objects and articles of various kinds, even luxurious ones, that Esther would never have thought of using, but which only a wealthy person could have purchased, or which only affection for her could have thought of. Trifles, ornaments, charms, beautiful presents were seen there, indicating a constant memory and which must have been made by delicate fingers, prompted by a tender heart. Once Esther was seen embroidering a little dress for a tender child with such a profusion of gold that it would almost have caused a riot had a tender infant appeared in the streets of Boston wearing a dress of such workmanship. In short, the gossips of that time believed, and the customs administrator Mr. Pue, who investigated the matter a century later, believed equally, and one of his recent successors in the same position also believes wholeheartedly, that Perla not only lived, but was married, was happy, and remembered her mother, and that she would have been most happy to have that sad and solitary woman by her side and celebrated in her home. woman. But there was a more real life for Hester Prynne in New England than in the unknown region where Pearl had settled. Her guilt was committed in New England: here she suffered; and here she still had penance to do. Therefore she had returned, and again bore upon her breast, of her own free will, for not even the severest magistrate of that rigid period would have imposed it upon her, the symbol whose sombre history we have described, without ever ceasing to wear it upon her bosom afterward. But in the course of years of labor, meditation, and charitable works that constituted Hester’s life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma, attracting the malevolence and sarcasm of the world, and became an emblem of something gloomily, to be regarded with a certain fearful wonder, and yet with reverence. And since Esther Prynne had no selfish feelings , nor did she in any way live thinking only of her own well-being and personal satisfaction, people came to her to confide all their sorrows and tribulations and ask her advice, as if she had been through the most severe trials. The women especially, with the eternal history of souls wounded by affections ill-returned, or misplaced, or unappreciated , or as a consequence of mistaken or culpable passion, or overwhelmed under the heavy weight of an inflexible heart, which was neither sought nor esteemed by anyone, were the ones who especially came to Esther’s cottage to consult her, and to ask her why they felt so unhappy and what was the remedy for their troubles. Esther comforted and advised them as best she could, also reassuring them of her most firm belief that someday, when the world is ready to receive it, a new doctrine will be revealed that will establish the relations between man and woman on a more solid and more certain basis of mutual happiness. In the early days of her life, Esther had imagined, though in vain, that she herself might be the prophetess chosen by destiny for such a task; but she had long recognized the impossibility of entrusting the mission of making known so divine and mysterious a truth to a woman stained with guilt, humiliated by the shame of that guilt, or overwhelmed by a lifetime of sorrow. The angel, and at the same time the apostle of future revelation, must undoubtedly be a woman, but one exalted, pure, and beautiful; and also wise and prudent, not as a result of somber sorrow, but of the gentle warmth of joy, demonstrating how happy holy love can make us, by the example of a life devoted to that end with complete success. Thus spoke Esther Prynne, directing her sad glances at the scarlet letter. And after many, many years, a new grave was dug near an old, sunken one in the city cemetery, a space between them, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle; but one and the same tombstone served both graves. All around were monuments on which coats of arms were carved; and on this simple slab—as the curious investigator may still discern, even if he remains confused about its meaning—there was something resembling a coat of arms. It bore a motto whose heraldic terms might serve as an epigraph and be a sort of summary of the legend we are concluding: somber, and illumined only by a luminous point, sometimes more gloomy than the shadow itself: “ The Scarlet Letter” is not only a tale of punishment and damnation, but also a profound reflection on human nature and the consequences of personal choices. At the conclusion of this story, we are invited to question social norms and morality, understanding that the secrets and judgments we impose can have a lasting impact on a person’s life. A classic that remains relevant today.
📚 ¡Bienvenidos a un nuevo capítulo de *Ahora de Cuentos*! En este video, les traemos uno de los clásicos más emblemáticos de la literatura estadounidense: *La letra escarlata* de Nathaniel Hawthorne. 🌟
🌹 *La letra escarlata* es una obra que explora los oscuros rincones del alma humana, donde el pecado, la vergüenza y la redención se entrelazan a través de la historia de Hester Prynne. 🧐 Una mujer marcada por un pasado lleno de transgresiones, que lleva una vida de castigo en la sociedad puritana del siglo XVII.
🖋️ En esta obra, Hawthorne nos presenta temas profundos como la hipocresía, la moralidad y la lucha interna entre el pecado y la penitencia. Con una narrativa conmovedora y personajes complejos, *La letra escarlata* es una reflexión sobre el juicio social y el poder de la verdad.
👉 Si te apasiona la literatura clásica y los relatos de tensión moral, este libro es para ti. No olvides darle like 👍, suscribirte y activar la campanita 🔔 para más contenido literario.
💬 ¡Déjanos tus comentarios abajo sobre lo que más te impactó de la obra! ¿Qué piensas sobre el destino de Hester Prynne?
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-Los Argonautas 🚢⚓️ – Una Aventura Épica de Vicente Blasco Ibáñez [https://youtu.be/cjR84smUFmo]
-🧭 La Ruta del Aventurero ✨ Una odisea de libertad y destino [https://youtu.be/S5C3c8jHVvI]
-La letra escarlata 📖🔥: El símbolo de la culpa y el arrepentimiento [https://youtu.be/a_WaexLBVrU]
#LaLetraEscarlata #NathanielHawthorne #LiteraturaClásica #CuentosClásicos #LecturasRecomendadas #FicciónHistórica #LiteraturaAmericana #Redención #Cultura #LibrosQueImpactan #NovelaClásica #SociedadPuritana #Hipocresía #JuicioSocial #Moralidad #PersonajesComplejos #LibrosQueDejanHuella #HesterPrynne #CulturaLiteraria #AhoraDeCuentos #LecturaClásica
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