The Scarlet Letter

Pearl either saw and responded to her mother's feelings, or

herself felt the remoteness and intangibility that had fallen

around the minister. While the procession passed, the child was

uneasy, fluttering up and down, like a bird on the point of

taking flight. When the whole had gone by, she looked up into

Hester's face-"Mother," said she, "was that the same minister that kissed me

by the brook?"

"Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!" whispered her mother. "We

must not always talk in the marketplace of what happens to us in

the forest."

"I could not be sure that it was he--so strange he looked,"

continued the child. "Else I would have run to him, and bid him

kiss me now, before all the people, even as he did yonder among

the dark old trees. What would the minister have said, mother?

Would he have clapped his hand over his heart, and scowled on

me, and bid me begone?"

"What should he say, Pearl," answered Hester, "save that it was

no time to kiss, and that kisses are not to be given in the

market-place? Well for thee, foolish child, that thou didst not

speak to him!"

Another shade of the same sentiment, in reference to Mr.

Dimmesdale, was expressed by a person whose

eccentricities--insanity, as we should term it--led her to do

what few of the townspeople would have ventured on--to begin a

conversation with the wearer of the scarlet letter in public. It

was Mistress Hibbins, who, arrayed in great magnificence, with a

triple ruff, a broidered stomacher, a gown of rich velvet, and a

gold-headed cane, had come forth to see the procession. As this

ancient lady had the renown (which subsequently cost her no less

a price than her life) of being a principal actor in all the

works of necromancy that were continually going forward, the

crowd gave way before her, and seemed to fear the touch of her

garment, as if it carried the plague among its gorgeous folds.

Seen in conjunction with Hester Prynne--kindly as so many now

felt towards the latter--the dread inspired by Mistress Hibbins

had doubled, and caused a general movement from that part of the

market-place in which the two women stood.

"Now, what mortal imagination could conceive it?" whispered the

old lady confidentially to Hester. "Yonder divine man! That

saint on earth, as the people uphold him to be, and as--I must

needs say--he really looks! Who, now, that saw him pass in the

procession, would think how little while it is since he went

forth out of his study--chewing a Hebrew text of Scripture in

his mouth, I warrant--to take an airing in the forest! Aha! we

know what that means, Hester Prynne! But truly, forsooth, I find

it hard to believe him the same man. Many a church member saw I,

walking behind the music, that has danced in the same measure

with me, when Somebody was fiddler, and, it might be, an Indian

powwow or a Lapland wizard changing hands with us! That is but a

trifle, when a woman knows the world. But this minister. Couldst

thou surely tell, Hester, whether he was the same man that

encountered thee on the forest path?"