VII.
But Pierre, though charged with the fire of all divineness,
his containing thing was made of clay. Ah, muskets the gods
have made to carry infinite combustions, and yet made them of
clay!
Save me from being bound to Truth, liege lord, as I am now.
How shall I steal yet further into Pierre, and show how this
heavenly fire was helped to be contained in him, by mere contingent
things, and things that he knew not. But I shall follow
the endless, winding way,—the flowing river in the cave of
man; careless whither I be led, reckless where I land.
Was not the face—though mutely mournful—beautiful, bewitchingly?
How unfathomable those most wondrous eyes
of supernatural light! In those charmed depths, Grief and
Beauty plunged and dived together. So beautiful, so mystical,
so bewilderingly alluring; speaking of a mournfulness infinitely
sweeter and more attractive than all mirthfulness; that face of
glorious suffering; that face of touching loveliness; that face
was Pierre's own sister's; that face was Isabel's; that face
Pierre had visibly seen; into those same supernatural eyes our
Pierre had looked. Thus, already, and ere the proposed encounter,
he was assured that, in a transcendent degree, womanly
beauty, and not womanly ugliness, invited him to champion
the right. Be naught concealed in this book of sacred truth.
How, if accosted in some squalid lane, a humped, and crippled,
hideous girl should have snatched his garment's hem, with—
“Save me, Pierre—love me, own me, brother; I am thy sister!”—Ah,
if man where wholly made in heaven, why catch we
hell-glimpses? Why in the noblest marble pillar that stands
beneath the all-comprising vault, ever should we descry the
sinister vein? We lie in nature very close to God; and
though, further on, the stream may be corrupted by the banks
it flows through; yet at the fountain's rim, where mankind
stand, there the stream infallibly bespeaks the fountain.
So let no censorious word be here hinted of mortal Pierre.
Easy for me to slyly hide these things, and always put him before
the eye as perfect as immaculate; unsusceptible to the
inevitable nature and the lot of common men. I am more
frank with Pierre than the best men are with themselves. I
am all unguarded and magnanimous with Pierre; therefore you
see his weakness, and therefore only. In reserves men build
imposing characters; not in revelations. He who shall be
wholly honest, though nobler than Ethan Allen; that man
shall stand in danger of the meanest mortal's scorn.
