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THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 11

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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 read.
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.


The clergyman's shy and sensitive reserve had balked this scheme. Roger
Chillingworth, however, was inclined to be hardly, if at all, less
satisfied with the aspect of affairs, which Providence- using the avenger
and his victim for its own purposes, and, perchance, pardoning,
where it seemed most to punish- had substituted for his black
devices. A revelation, he could almost say, had been granted to
him. It mattered little, for his object, whether celestial, or from what
other region. By its aid, in all the subsequent relations betwixt him
and Mr. Dimmesdale, not merely the external presence, but the very inmost
soul, of the latter seemed to be brought out before his eyes, so
that he could see and comprehend its every movement. He became, thenceforth,
not a spectator only, but a chief actor, in the poor minister's
interior world. He could play upon him as he chose. Would he
arouse him with a throb of agony? The victim was for ever on the rack;
it needed only to know the spring that controlled the engine- and
the physician knew it well! Would be startle him with sudden fear? As
at the waving of a magician's wand, uprose a grisly phantom- uprose a
thousand phantoms- in many shapes, of death, or more awful shame, all
flocking round about tie clergyman, and pointing with their fingers
at his breast!


All this was accomplished with a subtlety so perfect, that the minister,
though he had constantly a dim perception of some evil influence
watching over him, could never gain a knowledge of its actual
nature. True, he looked doubtfully, fearfully- even, at times,
with horror and the bitterness of hatred- at the deformed figure
of the old physician. His gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard,
his slightest and most indifferent acts, the very fashion of his
garments, were odious in the clergyman's sight; a token implicitly to
be relied on, of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the latter than
he was willing to acknowledge to himself. For, as it was impossible
to assign a reason for such distrust and abhorrence, so Mr. Dimmesdale,
conscious that the poison of one morbid spot was infecting his
heart's entire substance, attributed all his presentiments to no other

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