The Scarlet Letter

"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 the 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!"

With a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band from

before his breast. It was revealed! But it were irreverent to

describe that revelation. For an instant, the gaze of the

horror-stricken multitude was concentrated on the ghastly

miracle; while the minister stood, with a flush of triumph in

his face, as one who, in the crisis of acutest pain, had won a

victory. Then, down he sank upon the scaffold! Hester partly

raised him, and supported his head against her bosom. Old Roger

Chillingworth knelt down beside him, with a blank, dull

countenance, out of which the life seemed to have departed.