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More than once, Mr. Dimmesdale had gone into the pulpit, with a
purpose never to come down its steps until he should have spoken
words like the above. More than once he had cleared his throat,
and drawn in the long, deep, and tremulous breath, which, when
sent forth again, would come burdened with the black secret of
his soul. More than once--nay, more than a hundred times--he
had actually spoken! Spoken! But how? He had told his hearers
that he was altogether vile, a viler companion of the vilest, the worst
of sinners, an abomination, a thing of unimaginable iniquity, and
that the only wonder was that they did not see his wretched body
shrivelled up before their eyes by the burning wrath of the
Almighty! Could there be plainer speech than this? Would not
the people start up in their seats, by a simultaneous impulse,
and tear him down out of the pulpit which he defiled? Not so,
indeed! They heard it all, and did but reverence him the more.
They little guessed what deadly purport lurked in those
self-condemning words. "The godly youth!" said they among
themselves. "The saint on earth! Alas! if he discern such
sinfulness in his own white soul, what horrid spectacle would he
behold in thine or mine!" The minister well knew--subtle, but
remorseful hypocrite that he was!--the light in which his
vague confession would be viewed. He had striven to put a cheat
upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but had
gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, without
the momentary relief of being self-deceived. He had spoken the
very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood. And
yet, by the constitution of his nature, he loved the truth, and
loathed the lie, as few men ever did. Therefore, above all
things else, he loathed his miserable self!
His inward trouble drove him to practices more in accordance with
the old, corrupted faith of Rome than with the better light of
the church in which he had been born and bred. In Mr.
Dimmesdale's secret closet, under lock and key, there was a
bloody scourge. Oftentimes, this Protestant and Puritan divine had
plied it on his own shoulders, laughing bitterly at himself the
while, and smiting so much the more pitilessly because of that
bitter laugh. It was his custom, too, as it has been that of
many other pious Puritans, to fast--not however, like them, in
order to purify the body, and render it the fitter medium of
celestial illumination--but rigorously, and until his knees
trembled beneath him, as an act of penance. He kept vigils,
likewise, night after night, sometimes in utter darkness,
sometimes with a glimmering lamp, and sometimes, viewing his own
face in a looking-glass, by the most powerful light which he
could throw upon it. He thus typified the constant introspection
wherewith he tortured, but could not purify himself. In these
lengthened vigils, his brain often reeled, and visions seemed to
flit before him; perhaps seen doubtfully, and by a faint light of
their own, in the remote dimness of the chamber, or more vividly
and close beside him, within the looking-glass. Now it was a
herd of diabolic shapes, that grinned and mocked at the pale
minister, and beckoned him away with them; now a group of shining
angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow-laden, but grew more
ethereal as they rose. Now came the dead friends of his youth,
and his white-bearded father, with a saint-like frown, and his
mother turning her face away as she passed by Ghost of a
mother--thinnest fantasy of a mother--methinks she might yet have
thrown a pitying glance towards her son! And now, through the
chamber which these spectral thoughts had made so ghastly, glided
Hester Prynne leading along little Pearl, in her scarlet garb, and
pointing her forefinger, first at the scarlet letter on her bosom, and
then at the clergyman's own breast.
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