"Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Great Stone Face" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

bethought himself of his native valley, and resolved to go back
thither, and end his days where he was born. With this purpose in
view, he sent a skilful architect to build him such a palace as should
be fit for a man of his vast wealth to live in.

As I have said above, it had already been rumored in the valley
that Mr. Gathergold had turned out to be the prophetic personage so
long and vainly looked for, and that his visage was the perfect and
undeniable similitude of the Great Stone Face. People were the more
ready to believe that this must needs be the fact, when they beheld
the splendid edifice that rose, as if by enchantment, on the site of
his father's old weather-beaten farm-house. The exterior was of
marble, so dazzlingly white that it seemed as though the whole
structure might melt away in the sunshine, like those humbler ones
which Mr. Gathergold, in his young play-days, before his fingers
were gifted with the touch of transmutation, had been accustomed to
build of snow. It had a richly ornamented portico, supported by tall
pillars, beneath which was a lofty door, studded with silver knobs,
and made of a kind of variegated wood that had been brought from
beyond the sea. The windows, from the floor to the ceiling of each
stately apartment, were composed, respectively, of but one enormous
pane of glass, so transparently pure that it was said to be a finer
medium than even the vacant atmosphere. Hardly anybody had been
permitted to see the interior of this palace; but it was reported, and
with good semblance of truth, to be far more gorgeous than the
outside, insomuch that whatever was iron or brass in other houses, was
silver or gold in this; and Mr. Gathergold's bed-chamber,
especially, made such a glittering appearance that no ordinary man
would have been able to close his eyes there. But, on the other
hand, Mr. Gathergold was now so inured to wealth, that perhaps he
could not have closed his eyes unless where the gleam of it was
certain to find its way beneath his eyelids.

In due time, the mansion was finished; next came the
upholsterers, with magnificent furniture; then, a whole troop of black
and white servants, the harbingers of Mr. Gathergold, who, in his
own majestic person was expected to arrive at sunset. Our friend
Ernest, meanwhile, had been deeply stirred by the idea that the
great man, the noble man, the man of prophecy, after so many ages of
delay, was at length to be made manifest to his native valley. He
knew, boy as he was, that there were a thousand ways in which Mr.
Gathergold, with his vast wealth, might transform himself into an
angel of beneficence, and assume a control over human affairs as
wide and benignant as the smile of the Great Stone Face. Full of faith
and hope, Ernest doubted not that what the people said was true, and
that now he was to behold the living likeness of those wondrous
features on the mountain-side. While the boy was still gazing up the
valley, and fancying, as he always did, that the Great Stone Face
returned his gaze and looked kindly at him, the rumbling of wheels was
heard, approaching swiftly along the winding road.