The Scarlet Letter

We have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; that little

creature, whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutable

decree of Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the

rank luxuriance of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to

the sad woman, as she watched the growth, and the beauty that

became every day more brilliant, and the intelligence that threw

its quivering sunshine over the tiny features of this child! Her

Pearl--for so had Hester called her; not as a name expressive of

her aspect, which had nothing of the calm, white, unimpassioned

lustre that would be indicated by the comparison. But she named

the infant "Pearl," as being of great price--purchased with all

she had--her mother's only treasure! How strange, indeed! Man

had marked this woman's sin by a scarlet letter, which had such

potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could

reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct

consequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her a

lovely child, whose place was on that same dishonoured bosom, to

connect her parent for ever with the race and descent of

mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven!

Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynne less with hope than

apprehension. She knew that her deed had been evil; she could

have no faith, therefore, that its result would be good. Day

after day she looked fearfully into the child's expanding

nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity

that should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her

being.

Certainly there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape,

its vigour, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its

untried limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forth

in Eden: worthy to have been left there to be the plaything of

the angels after the world's first parents were driven out. The

child had a native grace which does not invariably co-exist with

faultless beauty; its attire, however simple, always impressed

the beholder as if it were the very garb that precisely became

it best.

But little Pearl was not clad in rustic weeds. Her

mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better understood

hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be

procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in

the arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child

wore before the public eye. So magnificent was the small figure

when thus arrayed, and such was the splendour of Pearl's own

proper beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which might

have extinguished a paler loveliness, that there was an absolute

circle of radiance around her on the darksome cottage floor. And

yet a russet gown, torn and soiled with the child's rude play,

made a picture of her just as perfect. Pearl's aspect was imbued

with a spell of infinite variety; in this one child there were

many children, comprehending the full scope between the

wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the pomp, in

little, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, there

was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never

lost; and if in any of her changes, she had grown fainter or

paler, she would have ceased to be herself--it would have been

no longer Pearl!