The Scarlet Letter

Yet Mr. Dimmesdale would perhaps have seen this individual's

character more perfectly, if a certain morbidness, to which sick

hearts are liable, had not rendered him suspicious of all

mankind. Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize

his enemy when the latter actually appeared. He therefore still

kept up a familiar intercourse with him, daily receiving the old

physician in his study, or visiting the laboratory, and, for

recreation's sake, watching the processes by which weeds were

converted into drugs of potency.

One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his elbow on the

sill of the open window, that looked towards the grave-yard, he

talked with Roger Chillingworth, while the old man was examining

a bundle of unsightly plants.

"Where," asked he, with a look askance at them--for it was the

clergyman's peculiarity that he seldom, now-a-days, looked

straight forth at any object, whether human or inanimate,

"where, my kind doctor, did you gather those herbs, with such a

dark, flabby leaf?"

"Even in the graveyard here at hand," answered the physician,

continuing his employment. "They are new to me. I found them

growing on a grave, which bore no tombstone, no other memorial

of the dead man, save these ugly weeds, that have taken upon

themselves to keep him in remembrance. They grew out of his

heart, and typify, it may be, some hideous secret that was

buried with him, and which he had done better to confess during

his lifetime."

"Perchance," said Mr. Dimmesdale, "he earnestly desired it, but

could not."

"And wherefore?" rejoined the physician.

"Wherefore not; since all the powers of nature call so earnestly

for the confession of sin, that these black weeds have sprung up

out of a buried heart, to make manifest, an outspoken crime?"

"That, good sir, is but a phantasy of yours," replied the

minister. "There can be, if I forbode aright, no power, short of

the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by

type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried in the human

heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must

perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall

be revealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted Holy Writ, as to

understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then

to be made, is intended as a part of the retribution. That,

surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these revelations, unless

I greatly err, are meant merely to promote the intellectual

satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting,

on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain. A

knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest

solution of that problem. And, I conceive moreover, that the

hearts holding such miserable secrets as you speak of, will

yield them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a

joy unutterable."