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remoteness, however, had his spirit now withdrawn into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!
After the incident last described, the intercourse
between the clergyman and the physician, though externally
the same, was really of another character than it
had previously been. The intellect of Roger
Chillingworth had now a sufficiently plain path before
it. It was not, indeed, precisely that which
he had laid out for himself to tread. Calm,
gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet,
we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent,
but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which
led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any
mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy. To make
himself the one trusted friend, to whom should be
confided all the fear, the remorse, the agony, the
ineffectual repentance, the backward rush of sinful
thoughts, expelled in vain! All that guilty sorrow,
hidden from the world, whose great heart would have
pitied and forgiven, to be revealed to him, the Pitiless—to
him, the Unforgiving! All that dark treasure
to be lavished on the very man, to whom nothing else
could so adequately pay the debt of vengeance!
