国外英文文学系列 Ethan Brand

国外英文文学系列 Ethan Brand

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

BARTRAM the lime-burner, a rough, heavy-looking man, begrimed with charcoal, sat

watching his kiln, at nightfall, while his little son played at building houses with the

scattered fragments of marble, when, on the hill-side below them, they heard a roar

of laughter, not mirthful, but slow, and even solemn, like a wind shaking the boughs

of the forest.

"Father, what is that?" asked the little boy, leaving his play, and pressing betwixt his

father's knees.

"O, some drunken man, I suppose," answered the lime-burner; "some merry fellow

from the bar-room in the village, who dared not laugh loud enough within doors, lest

he should blow the roof of the house off. So here he is, shaking his jolly sides at the

foot of Gray-lock."

"But, father," said the child, more sensitive than the obtuse, middle-aged clown, "he

does not laugh like a man that is glad. So the noise frightens me!"

"Don't be a fool, child!" cried his father, gruffly. "You will never make a man, I do

believe; there is too much of your mother in you. I have known the rustling of a leaf

startle you. Hark! Here comes the merry fellow, now. You shall see that there is no

harm in him."

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Bartram and his little son, while they were talking thus, sat watching the same

lime-kiln that had been the scene of Ethan Brand's solitary and meditative life, before

he began his search for the Unpardonable Sin. Many years, as we have seen, had now

elapsed, since that portentous night when the IDEA was first developed. The kiln,

however, on the mountain-side, stood unimpaired, and was in nothing changed since

he had thrown his dark thoughts into the intense glow of its furnace, and melted

them, as it were, into the one thought that took possession of his life. It was a rude,

round, tower-like structure, about twenty feet high, heavily built of rough stones, and

with a hillock of earth heaped about the larger part of its circumference; so that the

blocks and fragments of marble might be drawn by cart-loads, and thrown in at the

top. There was an opening at the bottom of the tower, like an oven-mouth, but large

enough to admit a man in a stooping posture, and provided with a massive iron door.

With the smoke and jets of flame issuing from the chinks and crevices of this door,

which seemed to give admittance into the hill-side, it resembled nothing so much as

the private entrance to the infernal regions, which the shepherds of the Delectable

Mountains were accustomed to show to pilgrims.

There are many such lime-kilns in that tract of country, for the purpose of burning

the white marble which composes a large part of the substance of the hills. Some of

them, built years ago, and long deserted, with weeds growing in the vacant round of

the interior, which is open to the sky, and grass and wild-flowers rooting themselves

into the chinks of the stones, look already like relics of antiquity, and may yet be

overspread with the lichens of centuries to come. Others, where the lime-burner still

feeds his daily and nightlong fire, afford points of interest to the wanderer among the

hills, who seats himself on a log of wood or a fragment of marble, to hold a chat with

the solitary man. It is a lonesome, and, when the character is inclined to thought,

may be an intensely thoughtful occupation; as it proved in the case of Ethan Brand,

who had mused to such strange purpose, in days gone by, while the fire in this very

kiln was burning.

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The man who now watched the fire was of a different order, and troubled himself

with no thoughts save the very few that were requisite to his business. At frequent

intervals, he flung back the clashing weight of the iron door, and, turning his face

from the insufferable glare, thrust in huge logs of oak, or stirred the immense brands

with a long pole. Within the furnace were seen the curling and riotous flames, and

the burning marble, almost molten with the intensity of heat; while without, the

reflection of the fire quivered on the dark intricacy of the surrounding forest, and

showed in the foreground a bright and ruddy little picture of the hut, the spring

beside its door, the athletic and coal-begrimed figure of the lime-burner, and the

half-frightened child, shrinking into the protection of his father's shadow. And when

again the iron door was closed, then reappeared the tender light of the half-full

moon, which vainly strove to trace out the indistinct shapes of the neighboring

mountains; and, in the upper sky, there was a flitting congregation of clouds, still

faintly tinged with the rosy sunset, though thus far down into the valley the sunshine

had vanished long and long ago.

The little boy now crept still closer to his father, as footsteps were heard ascending

the hill-side, and a human form thrust aside the bushes that clustered beneath the

trees.

"Halloo! who is it?" cried the lime-burner, vexed at his son's timidity, yet half infected

by it. "Come forward, and show yourself, like a man, or I'll fling this chunk of marble

at your head!"

"You offer me a rough welcome," said a gloomy voice, as the unknown man drew

nigh. "Yet I neither claim nor desire a kinder one, even at my own fireside."

To obtain a distincter view, Bartram threw open the iron door of the kiln, whence

immediately issued a gush of fierce light, that smote full upon the stranger's face and

figure. To a careless eye there appeared nothing very remarkable in his aspect, which

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was that of a man in a coarse, brown, country-made suit of clothes, tall and thin, with

the staff and heavy shoes of a wayfarer. As he advanced, he fixed his eyes--which

were very bright--intently upon the brightness of the furnace, as if he beheld, or

expected to behold, some object worthy of note within it.

"Good evening, stranger," said the lime-burner; "whence come you, so late in the

day?"

"I come from my search," answered the wayfarer; "for, at last, it is finished."

"Drunk!--or crazy!" muttered Bartram to himself. "I shall have trouble with the fellow.

The sooner I drive him away, the better."

The little boy, all in a tremble, whispered to his father, and begged him to shut the

door of the kiln, so that there might not be so much light; for that there was

something in the man's face which he was afraid to look at, yet could not look away

from. And, indeed, even the lime-burner's dull and torpid sense began to be

impressed by an indescribable something in that thin, rugged, thoughtful visage, with

the grizzled hair hanging wildly about it, and those deeply-sunken eyes, which

gleamed like fires within the entrance of a mysterious cavern. But, as he closed the

door, the stranger turned towards him, and spoke in a quiet, familiar way, that made

Bartram feel as if he were a sane and sensible man, after all.

"Your task draws to an end, I see," said he. "This marble has already been burning

three days. A few hours more will convert the stone to lime."

"Why, who are you?" exclaimed the lime-burner. "You seem as well acquainted with

my business as I am myself."

"And well I may be," said the stranger; "for I followed the same craft many a long

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year, and here, too, on this very spot. But you are a newcomer in these parts. Did you

never hear of Ethan Brand?"

"The man that went in search of the Unpardonable Sin?" asked Bartram, with a

laugh.

"The same," answered the stranger. "He has found what he sought, and therefore he

comes back again."

"What! then you are Ethan Brand himself?" cried the lime-burner, in amazement. "I

am a newcomer here, as you say, and they call it eighteen years since you left the

foot of Gray-lock. But, I can tell you, the good folks still talk about Ethan Brand, in the

village yonder, and what a strange errand took him away from his lime-kiln. Well, and

so you have found the Unpardonable Sin?"

"Even so!" said the stranger, calmly.

"If the question is a fair one," proceeded Bartram, "where might it be?"

Ethan Brand laid his finger on his own heart.

"Here!" replied he.

And then, without mirth in his countenance, but as if moved by an involuntary

recognition of the infinite absurdity of seeking throughout the world for what was

the closest of all things to himself, and looking into every heart, save his own, for

what was hidden in no other breast, he broke into a laugh of scorn. It was the same

slow, heavy laugh, that had almost appalled the lime-burner when it heralded the

wayfarer's approach.

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The solitary mountain-side was made dismal by it. Laughter, when out of place,

mistimed, or bursting forth from a disordered state of feeling, may be the most

terrible modulation of the human voice. The laughter of one asleep, even if it be a

little child--the madman's laugh--the wild, screaming laugh of a born idiot--are

sounds that we sometimes tremble to hear, and would always willingly forget. Poets

have imagined no utterance of fiends or hobgoblins so fearfully appropriate as a

laugh. And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his nerves shaken, as this strange man

looked inward at his own heart, and burst into laughter that rolled away into the

night, and was indistinctly reverberated among the hills.

"Joe," said he to his little son, "scamper down to the tavern in the village, and tell the

jolly fellows there that Ethan Brand has come back, and that he has found the

Unpardonable Sin!"

The boy darted away on his errand, to which Ethan Brand made no objection, nor

seemed hardly to notice it. He sat on a log of wood, looking steadfastly at the iron

door of the kiln. When the child was out of sight, and his swift and light footsteps

ceased to be heard treading first on the fallen leaves and then on the rocky mountain

path, the lime-burner began to regret his departure. He felt that the little fellow's

presence had been a barrier between his guest and himself, and that he must now

deal, heart to heart, with a man who, on his own confession, had committed the one

only crime for which Heaven could afford no mercy. That crime, in its indistinct

blackness, seemed to overshadow him. The lime-burner's own sins rose up within

him, and made his memory riotous with a throng of evil shapes that asserted their

kindred with the Master Sin, whatever it might be, which it was within the scope of

man's corrupted nature to conceive and cherish. They were all of one family; they

went to and fro between his breast and Ethan Brand's, and carried dark greetings

from one to the other.

Then Bartram remembered the stories which had grown traditionary in reference to

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this strange man, who had come upon him like a shadow of the night, and was

making himself at home in his old place, after so long absence that the dead people,

dead and buried for years, would have had more right to be at home, in any familiar

spot, than he. Ethan Brand, it was said, had conversed with Satan himself in the lurid

blaze of this very kiln. The legend had been matter of mirth heretofore but looked

grisly now. According to this tale, before Ethan Brand departed on his search, he had

been accustomed to evoke a fiend from the hot furnace of the lime-kiln, night after

night, in order to confer with him about the Unpardonable Sin; the man and the

fiend each laboring to frame the image of some mode of guilt which could neither be

atoned for nor forgiven. And, with the first gleam of light upon the mountain-top, the

fiend crept in at the iron door, there to abide the intensest element of fire, until again

summoned forth to share in the dreadful task of extending man's possible guilt

beyond the scope of Heaven's else infinite mercy.

While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these thoughts, Ethan Brand

rose from the log, and flung open the door of the kiln. The action was in such

accordance with the idea in Bartram's mind, that he almost expected to see the Evil

One issue forth, red-hot from the raging furnace.

"Hold! hold!" cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for he was ashamed of his

fears, although they overmastered him. "Don't, for mercy's sake, bring out your devil

now!"

"Man!" sternly replied Ethan Brand, "what need have I of the devil? I have left him

behind me, on my track. It is with such halfway sinners as you that he busies himself.

Fear not because I open the door. I do but act by old custom, and am going to trim

your fire, like a lime-burner, as I was once."

He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and bent forward to gaze into the

hollow prison-house of the fire, regardless of the fierce glow that reddened upon his

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face. The lime-burner sat watching him, and half suspected his strange guest of a

purpose, if not to evoke a fiend, at least to plunge bodily into the flames, and thus

vanish from the sight of man. Ethan Brand, however, drew quietly back, and closed

the door of the kiln.

"I have looked, said he, "into many a human heart that was seven times hotter with

sinful passions than yonder furnace is with fire. But I found not there what I sought.

No, not the Unpardonable Sin!"

"What is the Unpardonable Sin?" asked the lime-burner; and then he shrank further

from his companion, trembling lest his question should be answered.

"It is a sin that grew within my own breast," replied Ethan Brand, standing erect, with

a pride that distinguishes all enthusiasts of his stamp. "A sin that grew nowhere else!

The sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and

reverence for God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims! The only sin

that deserves a recompense of immortal agony! Freely, were it to do again, would I

incur the guilt. Unshrinkingly I accept the retribution!"

"The man's head is turned," muttered the lime-burner to himself. "He may be a

sinner, like the rest of us--nothing more likely--but, I'll be sworn, he is a madman

too."

Nevertheless he felt uncomfortable at his situation, alone with Ethan Brand on the

wild mountain-side, and was right glad to hear the rough murmur of tongues, and

the footsteps of what seemed a pretty numerous party, stumbling over the stones

and rustling through the underbrush. Soon appeared the whole lazy regiment that

was wont to infest the village tavern comprehending three or four individuals who

had drunk flip beside the bar-room fire through all the winters, and smoked their

pipes beneath the stoop through all the summers, since Ethan Brand's departure.

8

Laughing boisterously, and mingling all their voices together in unceremonious talk,

they now burst into the moonshine and narrow streaks of fire-light that illuminated

the open space before the lime-kiln. Bartram set the door ajar again, flooding the

spot with light, that the whole company might get a fair view of Ethan Brand, and he

of them.

There, among other old acquaintances, was a once ubiquitous man, now almost

extinct, but whom we were formerly sure to encounter at the hotel of every thriving

village throughout the country. It was the stage-agent. The present specimen of the

genus was a wilted and smoke-dried man, wrinkled and red-nosed, in a smartly cut,

brown, bob-tailed coat, with brass buttons, who, for a length of time unknown, had

kept his desk and corner in the bar-room, and was still puffing what seemed to be

the same cigar that he had lighted twenty years before. He had great fame as a dry

joker, though, perhaps, less on account of any intrinsic humor than from a certain

flavor of brandy-toddy and tobacco-smoke, which impregnated all his ideas and

expressions, as well as his person. Another well-remembered though strangely

altered face was that of Lawyer Giles, as people still called him in courtesy; an elderly

ragamuffin, in his soiled shirt-sleeves and tow-cloth trousers. This poor fellow had

been an attorney, in what he called his better days, a sharp practitioner, and in great

vogue among the village litigants; but flip, and sling, and toddy, and cocktails,

imbibed at all hours, morning, noon, and night, had caused him to slide from

intellectual to various kinds and degrees of bodily labor, till, at last, to adopt his own

phrase, he slid into a soap-vat. In other words, Giles was now a soap-boiler, in a small

way. He had come to be but the fragment of a human being, a part of one foot

having been chopped off by an axe, and an entire hand torn away by the devilish grip

of a steam-engine. Yet, though the corporeal hand was gone, a spiritual member

remained; for, stretching forth the stump, Giles steadfastly averred that he felt an

invisible thumb and fingers with as vivid a sensation as before the real ones were

amputated. A maimed and miserable wretch he was; but one, nevertheless, whom

the world could not trample on, and had no right to scorn, either in this or any

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previous stage of his misfortunes, since he had still kept up the courage and spirit of

a man, asked nothing in charity, and with his one hand--and that the left one--fought

a stern battle against want and hostile circumstances.

Among the throng, too, came another personage, who, with certain points of

similarity to Lawyer Giles, had many more of difference. It was the village doctor; a

man of some fifty years, whom, at an earlier period of his life, we introduced as

paying a professional visit to Ethan Brand during the latter's supposed insanity. He

was now a purple-visaged, rude, and brutal, yet half-gentlemanly figure, with

something wild, ruined, and desperate in his talk, and in all the details of his gesture

and manners. Brandy possessed this man like an evil spirit, and made him as surly

and savage as a wild beast, and as miserable as a lost soul; but there was supposed

to be in him such wonderful skill, such native gifts of healing, beyond any which

medical science could impart, that society caught hold of him, and would not let him

sink out of its reach. So, swaying to and fro upon his horse, and grumbling thick

accents at the bedside, he visited all the sick chambers for miles about among the

mountain towns, and sometimes raised a dying man, as it were, by miracle, or quite

as often, no doubt, sent his patient to a grave that was dug many a year too soon.

The doctor had an everlasting pipe in his mouth, and, as somebody said, in allusion

to his habit of swearing, it was always alight with hell-fire.

These three worthies pressed forward, and greeted Ethan Brand each after his own

fashion, earnestly inviting him to partake of the contents of a certain black bottle, in

which, as they averred, he would find something far better worth seeking for than

the Unpardonable Sin. No mind, which has wrought itself by intense and solitary

meditation into a high state of enthusiasm, can endure the kind of contact with low

and vulgar modes of thought and feeling to which Ethan Brand was now subjected. It

made him doubt--and, strange to say, it was a painful doubt--whether he had indeed

found the Unpardonable Sin, and found it within himself. The whole question on

which he had exhausted life, and more than life, looked like a delusion.

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"Leave me," he said, bitterly, "ye brute beasts, that have made yourselves so,

shrivelling up your souls with fiery liquors! I have done with you. Years and years ago,

I groped into your hearts, and found nothing there for my purpose. Get ye gone!"

"Why, you uncivil scoundrel," cried the fierce doctor, "is that the way you respond to

the kindness of your best friends? Then let me tell you the truth. You have no more

found the Unpardonable Sin than yonder boy Joe has. You are but a crazy fellow--I

told you so twenty years ago--neither better nor worse than a crazy fellow, and the fit

companion of old Humphrey, here!"

He pointed to an old man, shabbily dressed, with long white hair, thin visage, and

unsteady eyes. For some years past this aged person had been wandering about

among the hills, inquiring of all travellers whom he met for his daughter. The girl, it

seemed, had gone off with a company of circus-performers; and occasionally tidings

of her came to the village, and fine stories were told of her glittering appearance as

she rode on horse-back in the ring, or performed marvellous feats on the tight-rope.

The white-haired father now approached Ethan Brand, and gazed unsteadily into his

face.

"They tell me you have been all over the earth," said he, wringing his hands with

earnestness. "You must have seen my daughter, for she makes a grand figure in the

world, and everybody goes to see her. Did she send any word to her old father, or say

when she was coming back?"

Ethan Brand's eye quailed beneath the old man's. That daughter, from whom he so

earnestly desired a word of greeting, was the Esther of our tale, the very girl whom,

with such cold and remorseless purpose, Ethan Brand had made the subject of a

psychological experiment, and wasted, absorbed, and perhaps annihilated her soul,

11

in the process.

"Yes," murmured he, turning away from the hoary wanderer; "it is no delusion. There

is an Unpardonable Sin!"

While these things were passing, a merry scene was going forward in the area of

cheerful light, beside the spring and before the door of the hut. A number of the

youth of the village, young men and girls, had hurried up the hill-side, impelled by

curiosity to see Ethan Brand, the hero of so many a legend familiar to their childhood.

Finding nothing, however, very remarkable in his aspect--nothing but a sun-burnt

wayfarer, in plain garb and dusty shoes, who sat looking into the fire, as if he fancied

pictures among the coals--these young people speedily grew tired of observing him.

As it happened, there was other amusement at hand. An old German Jew, travelling

with a diorama on his back, was passing down the mountain-road towards the village

just as the party turned aside from it, and, in hopes of eking out the profits of the day,

the showman had kept them company to the lime-kiln.

"Come, old Dutchman," cried one of the young men, "let us see your pictures, if you

can swear they are worth looking at!"

"O, yes, Captain," answered the Jew--whether as a matter of courtesy or craft, he

styled everybody Captain--"I shall show you, indeed, some very superb pictures!"

So, placing his box in a proper position, he invited the young men and girls to look

through the glass orifices of the machine, and proceeded to exhibit a series of the

most outrageous scratchings and daubings, as specimens of the fine arts, that ever

an itinerant showman had the face to impose upon his circle of spectators. The

pictures were worn out, moreover, tattered, full of cracks and wrinkles, dingy with

tobacco-smoke, and otherwise in a most pitiable condition. Some purported to be

cities, public edifices, and ruined castles in Europe; others represented Napoleon's

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battles and Nelson's sea-fights; and in the midst of these would be seen a gigantic,

brown, hairy hand--which might have been mistaken for the Hand of Destiny, though,

in truth, it was only the showman's--pointing its forefinger to various scenes of the

conflict, while its owner gave historical illustrations. When, with much merriment at

its abominable deficiency of merit, the exhibition was concluded, the German bade

little Joe put his head into the box. Viewed through the magnifying glasses, the boy's

round, rosy visage assumed the strangest imaginable aspect of an immense Titanic

child, the mouth grinning broadly, and the eyes and every other feature overflowing

with fun at the joke. Suddenly, however, that merry face turned pale, and its

expression changed to horror, for this easily impressed and excitable child had

become sensible that the eye of Ethan Brand was fixed upon him through the glass.

"You make the little man to be afraid, Captain," said the German Jew, turning up the

dark and strong outline of his visage, from his stooping posture. "But look again, and,

by chance, I shall cause you to see somewhat that is very fine, upon my word!"

Ethan Brand gazed into the box for an instant, and then starting back, looked fixedly

at the German. What had he seen? Nothing, apparently; for a curious youth, who

had peeped in almost at the same moment, beheld only a vacant space of canvas.

"I remember you now," muttered Ethan Brand to the showman.

"Ah, Captain," whispered the Jew of Nuremberg, with a dark smile, "I find it to be a

heavy matter in my show-box--this Unpardonable Sin! By my faith, Captain, it has

wearied my shoulders, this long day, to carry it over the mountain."

"Peace," answered Ethan Brand, sternly, "or get thee into the furnace yonder!"

The Jew's exhibition had scarcely concluded, when a great, elderly dog--who seemed

to be his own master, as no person in the company laid claim to him--saw fit to

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render himself the object of public notice. Hitherto, he had shown himself a very

quiet, well disposed old dog, going round from one to another, and, by way of being

sociable, offering his rough head to be patted by any kindly hand that would take so

much trouble. But now, all of a sudden, this grave and venerable quadruped, of his

own mere motion, and without the slightest suggestion from anybody else, began to

run round after his tail, which, to heighten the absurdity of the proceeding, was a

great deal shorter than it should have been. Never was seen such headlong

eagerness in pursuit of an object that could not possibly be attained; never was

heard such a tremendous outbreak of growling, snarling, barking, and snapping--as if

one end of the ridiculous brute's body were at deadly and most unforgivable enmity

with the other. Faster and faster, round about went the cur; and faster and still faster

fled the unapproachable brevity of his tail; and louder and fiercer grew his yells of

rage and animosity; until, utterly exhausted, and as far from the goal as ever, the

foolish old dog ceased his performance as suddenly as he had begun it. The next

moment he was as mild, quiet, sensible, and respectable in his deportment, as when

he first scraped acquaintance with the company.

As may be supposed, the exhibition was greeted with universal laughter, clapping of

hands, and shouts of encore, to which the canine performer responded by wagging

all that there was to wag of his tail, but appeared totally unable to repeat his very

successful effort to amuse the spectators.

Meanwhile, Ethan Brand had resumed his seat upon the log, and moved, it might be,

by a perception of some remote analogy between his own case and that of this

self-pursuing cur, he broke into the awful laugh, which, more than any other token,

expressed the condition of his inward being. From that moment, the merriment of

the party was at an end; they stood aghast, dreading lest the inauspicious sound

should be reverberated around the horizon, and that mountain would thunder it to

mountain, and so the horror be prolonged upon their ears. Then, whispering one to

another that it was late--that the moon was almost down--that the August night was

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growing chill--they hurried homewards leaving the lime-burner and little Joe to deal

as they might with their unwelcome guest. Save for these three human beings, the

open space on the hill-side was a solitude, set in a vast gloom of forest. Beyond that

darksome verge, the fire-light glimmered on the stately trunks and almost black

foliage of pines, intermixed with the lighter verdure of sapling oaks, maples, and

poplars, while here and there lay the gigantic corpses of dead trees, decaying on the

leaf-strewn soil. And it seemed to little Joe--a timorous and imaginative child--that

the silent forest was holding its breath, until some fearful thing should happen.

Ethan Brand thrust more wood into the fire, and closed the door of the kiln; then

looking over his shoulder at the lime-burner and his son, he bade, rather than

advised, them to retire to rest.

"For myself, I cannot sleep," said he. "I have matters that it concerns me to meditate

upon. I will watch the fire, as I used to do in the old time."

"And call the devil out of the furnace to keep you company, I suppose," muttered

Bartram, who had been making intimate acquaintance with the black bottle

above-mentioned. "But watch, if you like, and call as many devils as you like! For my

part, I shall be all the better for a snooze. Come, Joe!"

As the boy followed his father into the hut, he looked back at the wayfarer, and the

tears came into his eyes, for his tender spirit had an intuition of the bleak and terrible

loneliness in which this man had enveloped himself.

When they had gone, Ethan Brand sat listening to the crackling of the kindled wood,

and looking at the little spirts of fire that issued through the chinks of the door. These

trifles, however, once so familiar, had but the slightest hold of his attention, while

deep within his mind he was reviewing the gradual but marvellous change that had

been wrought upon him by the search to which he had devoted himself. He

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remembered how the night dew had fallen upon him--how the dark forest had

whispered to him--how the stars had gleamed upon him--a simple and loving man,

watching his fire in the years gone by, and ever musing as it burned. He remembered

with what tenderness, with what love and sympathy for mankind, and what pity for

human guilt and woe, he had first begun to contemplate those ideas which

afterwards became the inspiration of his life; with what reverence he had then

looked into the heart of man, viewing it as a temple originally divine, and, however

desecrated, still to be held sacred by a brother; with what awful fear he had

deprecated the success of his pursuit, and prayed that the Unpardonable Sin might

never be revealed to him. Then ensued that vast intellectual development, which, in

its progress, disturbed the counterpoise between his mind and heart. The Idea that

possessed his life had operated as a means of education; it had gone on cultivating

his powers to the highest point of which they were susceptible; it had raised him

from the level of an unlettered laborer to stand on a star-lit eminence, whither the

philosophers of the earth, laden with the lore of universities, might vainly strive to

clamber after him. So much for the intellect! But where was the heart? That, indeed,

had withered--had contracted--had hardened--had perished! It had ceased to partake

of the universal throb. He had lost his hold of the magnetic chain of humanity. He

was no longer a brother-man, opening the chambers or the dungeons of our

common nature by the key of holy sympathy, which gave him a right to share in all its

secrets; he was now a cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his

experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his puppets, and

pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of crime as were demanded for

his study.

Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be so from the moment that his

moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of improvement with his intellect. And

now, as his highest effort and inevitable development--as the bright and gorgeous

flower, and rich, delicious fruit of his life's labor--he had produced the Unpardonable

Sin!

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What more have I to seek? What more to achieve?" said Ethan Brand to himself. "My

task is done, and well done!"

Starting from the log with a certain alacrity in his gait, and ascending the hillock of

earth that was raised against the stone circumference of the lime-kiln, he thus

reached the top of the structure. It was a space of perhaps ten feet across, from edge

to edge, presenting a view of the upper surface of the immense mass of broken

marble with which the kiln was heaped. All these innumerable blocks and fragments

of marble were red-hot and vividly on fire, sending up great spouts of blue flame,

which quivered aloft and danced madly, as within a magic circle, and sank and rose

again, with continual and multitudinous activity. As the lonely man bent forward over

this terrible body of fire, the blasting heat smote up against his person with a breath

that, it might be scorched and shrivelled him up in a moment.

Ethan Brand stood erect, and raised his arms on high. The blue flames played upon

his face, and imparted the wild and ghastly light which alone could have suited its

expression; it was that of a fiend on the verge of plunging into his gulf of intensest

torment.

"O Mother Earth," cried he, "who art no more my Mother, and into whose bosom

this frame shall never be resolved! O mankind, whose brotherhood I have cast off,

and trampled thy great heart beneath my feet! O stars of heaven, that shone on me

of old, as if to light me onward and upward!--farewell all, and forever. Come, deadly

element of Fire--henceforth my familiar friend! Embrace me, as I do thee!"

That night the sound of a fearful peal of laughter rolled heavily through the sleep of

the lime-burner and his little son; dim shapes of horror and anguish haunted their

dreams, and seemed still present in the rude hovel, when they opened their eyes to

the daylight.

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"Up, boy, up!" cried the lime-burner, staring about him. "Thank Heaven, the night is

gone, at last; and rather than pass such another, I would watch my lime-kiln, wide

awake, for a twelvemonth. This Ethan Brand, with his humbug of an Unpardonable

Sin, has done me no such mighty favor, in taking my place!"

He issued from the hut, followed by little Joe, who kept fast hold of his father's hand.

The early sunshine was already pouring its gold upon the mountain-tops; and though

the valleys were still in shadow, they smiled cheerfully in the promise of the bright

day that was hastening onward. The village, completely shut in by hills, which swelled

away gently about it, looked as if it had rested peacefully in the hollow of the great

hand of Providence. Every dwelling was distinctly visible; the little spires of the two

churches pointed upwards, and caught a fore-glimmering of brightness from the

sun-gilt skies upon their gilded weather-cocks. The tavern was astir, and the figure of

the old, smoke-dried stage-agent, cigar in mouth, was seen beneath the stoop. Old

Graylock was glorified with a golden cloud upon his head. Scattered likewise over the

breasts of the surrounding mountains, there were heaps of hoary mist, in fantastic

shapes, some of them far down into the valley, others high up towards the summits

and still others, of the same family of mist or cloud, hovering in the gold radiance of

the upper atmosphere. Stepping from one to another of the clouds that rested on

the hills, and thence to the loftier brotherhood that sailed in air, it seemed almost as

if a mortal man might thus ascend into the heavenly regions. Earth was so mingled

with sky that it was a day-dream to look at it.

To supply that charm of the familiar and homely, which Nature so readily adopts into

a scene like this, the stage-coach was rattling down the mountain-road, and the

driver sounded his horn, while echo caught up the notes, and intertwined them into

a rich and varied and elaborate harmony, of which the original performer could lay

claim to little share. The great hills played a concert among themselves, each

contributing a strain of airy sweetness.

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Little Joe's face brightened at once.

"Dear father," cried he, skipping cheerily to and fro, "that strange man is gone, and

the sky and the mountains all seem glad of it!"

"Yes," growled the lime-burner, with an oath, "but he has let the fire go down, and no

thanks to him if five hundred bushels of lime are not spoiled. If I catch the fellow

hereabouts again, I shall feel like tossing him into the furnace!"

With his long pole in his hand, he ascended to the top of the kiln. After a moment's

pause, he called to his son.

"Come up here, Joe!" said he.

So little Joe ran up the hillock, and stood by his father's side. The marble was all

burnt into perfect, snow-white lime. But on its surface, in the midst of the

circle--snow-white too, and thoroughly converted into lime--lay a human skeleton, in

the attitude of a person who, after long toil, lies down to long repose. Within the

ribs--strange to say--was the shape of a human heart.

"Was the fellow's heart made of marble?" cried Bartram, in some perplexity at this

phenomenon. "At any rate, it is burnt into what looks like special good lime; and,

taking all the bones together, my kiln is half a bushel the richer for him."

So saying, the rude lime-burner lifted his pole, and, letting it fall upon the skeleton,

the relics of Ethan Brand were crumbled into fragments.

纳撒尼尔·霍桑（Nathaniel Hawthorne，1804年7月4日—1864年5月19日）。

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19世纪前半期美国最伟大的小说家。 霍桑出生于美国马萨诸塞州塞勒姆镇，1824年大学毕业，回到故乡，开始写作。其代表作品有短篇小说集《古宅青苔》、《重讲一遍的故事》等，长篇小说《红字》、《带七个尖顶的阁楼》、《福谷传奇》、《玉石人像》等。这些都是世界文学史上不可多得的经典名著。1864年5月19日霍桑与皮尔斯结伴旅游途中，在美国新罕布什尔州朴茨茅斯去世。

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