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!
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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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