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

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.

"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, 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