"The Scarlet Letter"
by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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     Then, indeed, Mr. Dimmesdale shuddered, and slightly stirred.

     After a brief pause, the physician turned away.

 

     But with what a wild look of wonder, joy, and horror! With what a ghastly rapture, as it were, too mighty to be expressed only by the eye and features, and therefore bursting forth through the whole ugliness of his figure, and making itself even riotously manifest by the extravagant gestures with which he threw up his arms towards the ceiling, and stamped his foot upon the floor! Had a man seen old Roger Chillingworth, at that moment of his ecstasy, he would have had no need to ask how Satan comports himself when a precious human soul is lost to heaven, and won into his kingdom.

     But what distinguished the physician's ecstasy from Satan's was the trait of wonder in it!

 
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