The Scarlet Letter

"A wise sentence," remarked the stranger, gravely, bowing his

head. "Thus she will be a living sermon against sin, until the

ignominious letter be engraved upon her tombstone. It irks me,

nevertheless, that the partner of her iniquity should not at

least, stand on the scaffold by her side. But he will be

known--he will be known!--he will be known!"

He bowed courteously to the communicative townsman, and

whispering a few words to his Indian attendant, they both made

their way through the crowd.

While this passed, Hester Prynne had been standing on her

pedestal, still with a fixed gaze towards the stranger--so fixed

a gaze that, at moments of intense absorption, all other objects

in the visible world seemed to vanish, leaving only him and her.

Such an interview, perhaps, would have been more terrible than

even to meet him as she now did, with the hot mid-day sun

burning down upon her face, and lighting up its shame; with the

scarlet token of infamy on her breast; with the sin-born infant

in her arms; with a whole people, drawn forth as to a festival,

staring at the features that should have been seen only in the

quiet gleam of the fireside, in the happy shadow of a home, or

beneath a matronly veil at church. Dreadful as it was, she was

conscious of a shelter in the presence of these thousand

witnesses. It was better to stand thus, with so many betwixt him

and her, than to greet him face to face--they two alone. She

fled for refuge, as it were, to the public exposure, and dreaded

the moment when its protection should be withdrawn from her.

Involved in these thoughts, she scarcely heard a voice behind

her until it had repeated her name more than once, in a loud and

solemn tone, audible to the whole multitude.

"Hearken unto me, Hester Prynne!" said the voice.

It has already been noticed that directly over the platform on

which Hester Prynne stood was a kind of balcony, or open

gallery, appended to the meeting-house. It was the place whence

proclamations were wont to be made, amidst an assemblage of the

magistracy, with all the ceremonial that attended such public

observances in those days. Here, to witness the scene which we

are describing, sat Governor Bellingham himself with four

sergeants about his chair, bearing halberds, as a guard of

honour. He wore a dark feather in his hat, a border of

embroidery on his cloak, and a black velvet tunic beneath--a

gentleman advanced in years, with a hard experience written in

his wrinkles. He was not ill-fitted to be the head and

representative of a community which owed its origin and

progress, and its present state of development, not to the

impulses of youth, but to the stern and tempered energies of

manhood and the sombre sagacity of age; accomplishing so much,

precisely because it imagined and hoped so little. The other

eminent characters by whom the chief ruler was surrounded were

distinguished by a dignity of mien, belonging to a period when

the forms of authority were felt to possess the sacredness of

Divine institutions. They were, doubtless, good men, just and

sage. But, out of the whole human family, it would not have been

easy to select the same number of wise and virtuous persons, who

should be less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring

woman's heart, and disentangling its mesh of good and evil, than

the sages of rigid aspect towards whom Hester Prynne now turned

her face. She seemed conscious, indeed, that whatever sympathy

she might expect lay in the larger and warmer heart of the

multitude; for, as she lifted her eyes towards the balcony, the

unhappy woman grew pale, and trembled.