"Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Minister's Black Veil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

lawless wind, it was believed, respected his dreadful secret, and
never blew aside the veil. But still good Mr. Hooper sadly smiled at
the pale visages of the worldly throng as he passed by.

Among all its bad influences, the black veil had the one
desirable effect, of making its wearer a very efficient clergyman.
By the aid of his mysterious emblem- for there was no other apparent
cause- he became a man of awful power over souls that were in agony
for sin. His converts always regarded him with a dread peculiar to
themselves, affirming, though but figuratively, that, before he
brought them to celestial light, they had been with him behind the
black veil. Its gloom, indeed, enabled him to sympathize with all dark
affections. Dying sinners cried aloud for Mr. Hooper, and would not
yield their breath till he appeared; though ever, as he stooped to
whisper consolation, they shuddered at the veiled face so near their
own. Such were the terrors of the black veil, even when Death had
bared his visage! Strangers came long distances to attend service at
his church, with the mere idle purpose of gazing at his figure,
because it was forbidden them to behold his face. But many were made
to quake ere they departed! Once, during Governor Belcher's
administration, Mr. Hooper was appointed to preach the election
sermon. Covered with his black veil, he stood before the chief
magistrate, the council, and the representatives, and wrought so
deep an impression that the legislative measures of that year were
characterized by all the gloom and piety of our earliest ancestral
sway.

In this manner Mr. Hooper spent a long life, irreproachable in
outward act, yet shrouded in dismal suspicions; kind and loving,
though unloved, and dimly feared; a man apart from men, shunned in
their health and joy, but ever summoned to their aid in mortal
anguish. As years wore on, shedding their snows above his sable
veil, he acquired a name throughout the New England churches, and they
called him Father Hooper. Nearly all his parishioners, who were of
mature age when he was settled, had been borne away by many a funeral:
he had one congregation in the church, and a more crowded one in the
churchyard; and having wrought so late into the evening, and done
his work so well, it was now good Father Hooper's turn to rest.

Several persons were visible by the shaded candle-light, in the
death chamber of the old clergyman. Natural connections he had none.
But there was the decorously grave, though unmoved physician,
seeking only to mitigate the last pangs of the patient whom he could
not save. There were the deacons, and other eminently pious members of
his church. There, also, was the Reverend Mr. Clark, of Westbury, a
young and zealous divine, who had ridden in haste to pray by the
bedside of the expiring minister. There was the nurse, no hired
handmaiden of death, but one whose calm affection had endured thus
long in secrecy, in solitude, amid the chill of age, and would not
perish, even at the dying hour. Who, but Elizabeth! And there lay