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"People of New England!" cried he, with a voice that rose over
them, high, solemn, and majestic--yet had always a tremor
through it, and sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a
fathomless depth of remorse and woe--"ye, that have loved me!--ye,
that have deemed me holy!--behold me here, the one
sinner of the world! At last--at last!--I stand upon the
spot where, seven years since, I should have stood, here, with
this woman, whose arm, more than the little strength wherewith I
have crept hitherward, sustains me at this dreadful moment, from
grovelling down upon my face! Lo, the scarlet letter which
Hester wears! Ye have all shuddered at it! Wherever her walk
hath been--wherever, so miserably burdened, she may have hoped
to find repose--it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible
repugnance round about her. But there stood one in the midst of
you, at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not shuddered!"
It seemed, at this point, as if the minister must leave the
remainder of his secret undisclosed. But he fought back the
bodily weakness--and, still more, the faintness of heart--that
was striving for the mastery with him. He threw off all
assistance, and stepped passionately forward a pace before the
woman and the children.
"It was on him!" he continued, with a kind of
fierceness; so determined was he to speak out tile whole. "God's
eye beheld it! The angels were for ever pointing at it! (The
Devil knew it well, and fretted it continually with the touch of
his burning finger!) But he hid it cunningly from men, and walked
among you with the mien of a spirit, mournful, because so pure in
a sinful world! --and sad, because he missed his heavenly
kindred! Now, at the death-hour, he stands up before you! He
bids you look again at Hester's scarlet letter! He tells you,
that, with all its mysterious horror, it is but the shadow of
what he bears on his own breast, and that even this, his own red
stigma, is no more than the type of what has seared his inmost
heart! Stand any here that question God's judgment on a sinner!
Behold! Behold, a dreadful witness of it!"
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