The Scarlet Letter

"A rare case," he muttered. "I must needs look deeper into it.

A strange sympathy betwixt soul and body! Were it only for the

art's sake, I must search this matter to the bottom."

It came to pass, not long after the scene above recorded, that

the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, noon-day, and entirely unawares,

fell into a deep, deep slumber, sitting in his chair, with a

large black-letter volume open before him on the table. It must

have been a work of vast ability in the somniferous school of

literature. The profound depth of the minister's repose was the

more remarkable, inasmuch as he was one of those persons whose

sleep ordinarily is as light as fitful, and as easily scared

away, as a small bird hopping on a twig. To such an unwonted

remoteness, however, had his spirit now withdrawn into itself

that he stirred not in his chair when old Roger Chillingworth,

without any extraordinary precaution, came into the room. The

physician advanced directly in front of his patient, laid his

hand upon his bosom, and thrust aside the vestment, that

hitherto had always covered it even from the professional eye.

Then, indeed, Mr. Dimmesdale shuddered, and slightly stirred.

After a brief pause, the physician turned away.

But with what a wild look of wonder, joy, and horror! With what

a ghastly rapture, as it were, too mighty to be expressed only

by the eye and features, and therefore bursting forth through

the whole ugliness of his figure, and making itself even

riotously manifest by the extravagant gestures with which he

threw up his arms towards the ceiling, and stamped his foot upon

the floor! Had a man seen old Roger Chillingworth, at that

moment of his ecstasy, he would have had no need to ask how

Satan comports himself when a precious human soul is lost to

heaven, and won into his kingdom.

But what distinguished the physician's ecstasy from Satan's was

the trait of wonder in it!