The Scarlet Letter

His inward trouble drove him to practices more in accordance

with the old, corrupted faith of Rome than with the better light

of the church in which he had been born and bred. In Mr.

Dimmesdale's secret closet, under lock and key, there was a

bloody scourge. Oftentimes, this Protestant and Puritan divine

had plied it on his own shoulders, laughing bitterly at himself

the while, and smiting so much the more pitilessly because of

that bitter laugh. It was his custom, too, as it has been that

of many other pious Puritans, to fast--not however, like them,

in order to purify the body, and render it the fitter medium of

celestial illumination--but rigorously, and until his knees

trembled beneath him, as an act of penance. He kept vigils,

likewise, night after night, sometimes in utter darkness,

sometimes with a glimmering lamp, and sometimes, viewing his own

face in a looking-glass, by the most powerful light which he

could throw upon it. He thus typified the constant introspection

wherewith he tortured, but could not purify himself. In these

lengthened vigils, his brain often reeled, and visions seemed to

flit before him; perhaps seen doubtfully, and by a faint light

of their own, in the remote dimness of the chamber, or more

vividly and close beside him, within the looking-glass. Now it

was a herd of diabolic shapes, that grinned and mocked at the

pale minister, and beckoned him away with them; now a group of

shining angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow-laden, but

grew more ethereal as they rose. Now came the dead friends of

his youth, and his white-bearded father, with a saint-like

frown, and his mother turning her face away as she passed by.

Ghost of a mother--thinnest fantasy of a mother--methinks she

might yet have thrown a pitying glance towards her son! And now,

through the chamber which these spectral thoughts had made so

ghastly, glided Hester Prynne leading along little Pearl, in her

scarlet garb, and pointing her forefinger, first at the scarlet

letter on her bosom, and then at the clergyman's own breast.

None of these visions ever quite deluded him. At any moment, by

an effort of his will, he could discern substances through their

misty lack of substance, and convince himself that they were not

solid in their nature, like yonder table of carved oak, or that

big, square, leather-bound and brazen-clasped volume of

divinity. But, for all that, they were, in one sense, the truest

and most substantial things which the poor minister now dealt

with. It is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his,

that it steals the pith and substance out of whatever realities

there are around us, and which were meant by Heaven to be the

spirit's joy and nutriment. To the untrue man, the whole

universe is false--it is impalpable--it shrinks to nothing

within his grasp. And he himself in so far as he shows himself

in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.

The only truth that continued to give Mr. Dimmesdale a real

existence on this earth was the anguish in his inmost soul, and

the undissembled expression of it in his aspect. Had he once

found power to smile, and wear a face of gaiety, there would

have been no such man!