"Hawthorne, Nathaniel - Ethan Brand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

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!

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