Latest / Weird Fiction Audiobooks: Cosmic Horror, Strange Realities & Uncanny Tales / 🟡 Lifted Veil (Full Audiobook) | George Eliot

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🟡 Lifted Veil (Full Audiobook) | George Eliot · Weird Fiction Audiobooks: Cosmic Horror, Strange Realities & Uncanny Tales

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  Speaker 1: Chapter one, Part one of The Lifted Veil. This is
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  Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Bruce Pirie The Lifted Veil by George Eliot.
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  Speaker 1: Give me no light great heaven, but such as turns
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  Speaker 1: to energy of human fellowship, no powers beyond the growing
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  Speaker 1: heritage that makes completer manhood. Chapter one. The time of
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: my end approaches. I have lately been subject to attacks
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  Speaker 1: of angina pectoris, and in the ordinary course of things,
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  Speaker 1: my physician tells me, I may fairly hope that my
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  Speaker 1: life will not be protracted many months, unless then I
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  Speaker 1: am cursed with an exceptional physical constitution, as I am
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  Speaker 1: cursed with an exceptional mental care character, I shall not
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  Speaker 1: much longer groan under the wearisome burthen of this earthly existence.
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  Speaker 1: If it were to be otherwise, if I were to
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  Speaker 1: live on to the age most men desire and provide for,
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  Speaker 1: I should for once have known whether the miseries of
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  Speaker 1: delusive expectation can outweigh the miseries of true pre vision.
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  Speaker 1: For I foresee when I shall die and everything that
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  Speaker 1: will happen in my last moments. Just a month from
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  Speaker 1: this day, on September twentieth, eighteen fifty, I shall be
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  Speaker 1: sitting in this chair in this study at ten o'clock
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  Speaker 1: at night, longing to die, weary of incessant insight and foresight,
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  Speaker 1: without delusions, and without hope. Just as I am watching
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  Speaker 1: a tongue of blue flame rising in the fire, and
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  Speaker 1: my lamp is burning low, the horrible contraction will begin
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  Speaker 1: at my chest. I shall only have time to reach
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  Speaker 1: the bell and pull it violently before the sense of
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  Speaker 1: suffocation will come. No one will answer my bell. I
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  Speaker 1: know why. My two servants are lovers and will have quarreled.
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  Speaker 1: My housekeeper will have rushed out of the house in
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  Speaker 1: a fury two hours before, hoping that Perry will believe
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  Speaker 1: she has gone to drown herself. Parry is alarmed at
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  Speaker 1: last and is gone out after her. The little scullery
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  Speaker 1: maid is asleep on a bench. She never answers the bell.
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  Speaker 1: It does not wake her. The sense of suffocation increases.
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  Speaker 1: My lamp goes out with a horrible stench. I make
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  Speaker 1: a great effort and snatch at the bell again. I
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  Speaker 1: long for life, and there is no help. I thirsted
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  Speaker 1: for the unknown. The thirst is gone, O God, Let
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  Speaker 1: me stay with the known and be weary of it.
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  Speaker 1: I am content agony of pain and suffocation. And all
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  Speaker 1: the while the earth, the fields, the pebbly brook at
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  Speaker 1: the bottom of the rookery, the fresh scent after the rain,
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  Speaker 1: the light of the morning through my chamber window, the
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  Speaker 1: warmth of the hearth after the frosty air. Will darkness
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  Speaker 1: close over them forever darkness, darkness, no pain, nothing but darkness.
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  Speaker 1: But I am passing on and on through the darkness.
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  Speaker 1: My thought stays in the darkness, but always with a
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  Speaker 1: sense of moving onward. Before that time comes, I wish
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  Speaker 1: to use my last hours of ease and strength in
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  Speaker 1: telling the strange story of my experience. I have never
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  Speaker 1: fully unbosomed myself to any human being. I have never
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  Speaker 1: been encouraged to trust much in the sympathy of my
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  Speaker 1: fellow men. But we have all a chance of meeting
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  Speaker 1: with some pity, some tenderness, some charity when we are dead.
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  Speaker 1: It is the living only who cannot be forgiven, the
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  Speaker 1: living only from whom men's indulgence and rare are held off,
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  Speaker 1: like the rain by the hard east. Wind, while the
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  Speaker 1: heart beats, bruise it it is your only opportunity. While
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  Speaker 1: the eye can still turn towards you with moist, timid entreaty,
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  Speaker 1: freeze it with an icy, unanswering gaze. While the ear
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  Speaker 1: that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary of the soul,
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  Speaker 1: can still take in the tones of kindness. Put it
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  Speaker 1: off with hard civility or sneering compliment or envious affectation
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  Speaker 1: of indifference. While the creative brain can still throb with
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  Speaker 1: the sense of injustice, with the yearning for brotherly recognition.
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  Speaker 1: Make haste oppress it with your ill considered judgments, your
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  Speaker 1: trivial comparisons, your careless misrepresentations. The heart will by and
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  Speaker 1: by be still ubisaiva indignatio ultarious corlacare niquet. The eye
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  Speaker 1: will cease to entreat, the ear will be deaf, the
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  Speaker 1: brain will have ceased from all wants as well as
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  Speaker 1: from all work. Then your charitable speeches may find vent.
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  Speaker 1: Then you may remember and pity the toil and the struggle,
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  Speaker 1: and the failure. Then you may give due honor to
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  Speaker 1: the work achieved. Then you may find extenuation for errors,
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  Speaker 1: and may consent to bury them. That is a trivial
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  Speaker 1: schoolboy text. Why do I dwell on it? It has
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  Speaker 1: little reference to me, For I shall leave no works
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  Speaker 1: behind me for men to honor. I have no near
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  Speaker 1: relatives who will make up by weeping over my grave
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  Speaker 1: for the wounds they inflicted on me when I was
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  Speaker 1: among them. It is only the story of my life
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  Speaker 1: that will perhaps win a little more sympathy from strangers
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  Speaker 1: when I am dead than I ever believed it would
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  Speaker 1: obtain from my friends while I was living. My childhood
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  Speaker 1: perhaps seems happier to me than it really was by
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  Speaker 1: contrast with all the after years. For then the curtain
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  Speaker 1: of the future was as impenetrable to me as two
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  Speaker 1: other children. I had all their delight in the present hour,
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  Speaker 1: their sweet, indefinite hopes for the morrow. And I had
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  Speaker 1: a tender mother. Even now, after the dreary lapse of
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  Speaker 1: long years, A slight trace of sensation accompanies the remembrance
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  Speaker 1: of her caress as she held me on her knee,
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  Speaker 1: her arms round my little body, her cheek pressed on mine.
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  Speaker 1: I had a complaint of the eyes that made me
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  Speaker 1: blind for a little while, and she kept me on
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  Speaker 1: her knee from morning till night. That unequaled love soon
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  Speaker 1: vanished out of my life, and even to my childish consciousness,
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  Speaker 1: it was as if that life had become mort chill.
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  Speaker 1: I rode my little white pony, with the groom by
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  Speaker 1: my side, as before, but there were no loving eyes
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  Speaker 1: looking at me as I mounted, no glad arms opened
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  Speaker 1: to me when I came back. Perhaps I missed my
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  Speaker 1: mother's love more than most children of seven or eight
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  Speaker 1: would have done, to whom the other pleasures of life
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  Speaker 1: remained as before. For I was certainly a very sensitive child.
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  Speaker 1: I remember still the mingled trepidation and delicious excitement with
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  Speaker 1: which I was affected by the tramping of the horses
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  Speaker 1: on the pavement in the echoing stables, by the loud
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  Speaker 1: resonance of the groom's voices, by the booming bark of
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  Speaker 1: the dogs as my father's carriage thundered under the archway
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  Speaker 1: of the courtyard, by the din of the gong as
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  Speaker 1: it gave notice of luncheon and dinner. The measured tramp
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  Speaker 1: of soldiery, which I sometimes heard from my father's house
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: lay near a county town where there were large barracks,
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  Speaker 1: made me sob and tremble, And yet when they were
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  Speaker 1: gone past. I longed for them to come back again.
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  Speaker 1: I fancy my father thought me an odd child and
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  Speaker 1: had little fondness for me, though he was very careful
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  Speaker 1: in fulfilling what he regarded as a parent's duties. But
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: he was already past the middle of life, and I
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  Speaker 1: was not his only son. My mother had been his
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  Speaker 1: second wife, and he was five and forty when he
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  Speaker 1: married her. He was a firm, unbending, intensely orderly man
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  Speaker 1: in root and stem, a banker, but with a flourishing
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  Speaker 1: graft of the act of landholder, aspiring to county influence.
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  Speaker 1: One of those people who are always like themselves from
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  Speaker 1: day to day, who are uninfluenced by the weather, and
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  Speaker 1: neither no melancholy nor high spirits. I held him in
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  Speaker 1: great awe, and appeared more timid and sensitive in his
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  Speaker 1: presence than at other times, a circumstance which perhaps helped
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  Speaker 1: to confirm him in the intention to educate me on
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  Speaker 1: a different plan from the prescriptive one with which he
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  Speaker 1: had complied in the case of my elder brother. Already
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: a tall youth at Eton. My brother was to be
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  Speaker 1: his representative and successor. He must go to Eton and
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  Speaker 1: Oxford for the sake of making connections. Of course, my
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  Speaker 1: father was not a man to underrate the bearing of
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  Speaker 1: Latin satirists or Greek dramatists on the attainment of an
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  Speaker 1: aristocratic position. But intrinsically he had slight esteem for those
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  Speaker 1: dead but sceptard spirits, having qualified himself for forming an
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  Speaker 1: independent opinion by reading Potter's Eschylus and dipping into Francis Horace.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: To this negative view he added a positive one, derived
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  Speaker 1: from a recent connection with mining speculations, namely, that a
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  Speaker 1: scientific education was the really useful training for a younger son. Moreover,
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  Speaker 1: it was clear that a shy, sensitive boy like me
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  Speaker 1: was not fit to encounter the rough experience of a
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  Speaker 1: public school. Mister Leatherall had said so very decided. Mister
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  Speaker 1: Letherall was a large man in spectacles, who one day
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  Speaker 1: took my small head between his large hands and pressed
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  Speaker 1: it here and there in an exploratory, auspicious manner. Then
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  Speaker 1: placed each of his great thumbs on my temples, and
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  Speaker 1: pushed me a little way from him, and stared at
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  Speaker 1: me with glittering spectacles. The contemplation appeared to displease him,
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  Speaker 1: for he frowned sternly and said to my father, drawing
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  Speaker 1: his thumbs across my eyebrows. The deficiency is there, sir.
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  Speaker 1: There and here, he added, touching the upper sides of
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  Speaker 1: my head, here is the excess that must be brought out, sir,
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  Speaker 1: and this must be laid to sleep. I was in
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  Speaker 1: a state of tremor, partly at the vague idea that
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  Speaker 1: I was the object of reprobation, partly in the agitation
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  Speaker 1: of my first hatred, hatred of this big spectacled man
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  Speaker 1: who pulled my hit about us if he wanted to
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  Speaker 1: buy and cheapen it. I am not aware how much
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  Speaker 1: mister Leatherall had to do with the system afterwards adopted
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  Speaker 1: towards me, but it was presently clear that private tutors,
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  Speaker 1: natural history, science, and the modern languages were the appliances
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  Speaker 1: by which the defects of my organization were to be remedied.
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  Speaker 1: I was very stupid about machines, so I was to
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  Speaker 1: be greatly occupied with them. I had no memory for classification,
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  Speaker 1: so it was particularly necessary that I should study systematic
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  Speaker 1: zoology and botany. I was hungry for human deeds and
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  Speaker 1: humane motions, so I was to be plentifully crammed with
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  Speaker 1: the mechanical powers, the elementary bodies, and the phenomena of
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  Speaker 1: electricity and magnetism. A better constituted boy would certainly have
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  Speaker 1: profited under my intelligent tutors with their scientific apparatus, and
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  Speaker 1: would doubtless have found the phenomena of electricity and magnetism
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  Speaker 1: as fascinating as I was every Thursday. Assured they were
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  Speaker 1: as it was, I could have pared off for ignorance
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  Speaker 1: of whatever was taught me with the worst Latin scholar
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  Speaker 1: that was ever turned out of a classical academy. I
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  Speaker 1: read Plutarch and Shakespeare and Don Quixote by the sly,
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  Speaker 1: and supplied myself in that way with wandering thoughts. While
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  Speaker 1: my tutor was assuring me that an improved man, as
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  Speaker 1: distinguished from an ignorant one, was a man who knew
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: the reason why water ran downhill. I had no desire
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  Speaker 1: to be this improved man. I was glad of the
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  Speaker 1: running water. I could watch it and listen to it
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  Speaker 1: gurgling among the pebbles and bathing the bright green water
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  Speaker 1: plant by the hour together. I did not want to
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  Speaker 1: know why it ran. I had perfect confidence that there
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  Speaker 1: were good reasons for what was so very beautiful there
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: is no need to dwell on this part of my life.
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  Speaker 1: I have said enough to indicate that my nature was
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  Speaker 1: of the sensitive, unpractical ord, and that it grew up
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  Speaker 1: in an uncongenial medium which could never foster it into happy,
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  Speaker 1: healthy development. When I was sixteen, I was sent to
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  Speaker 1: Geneva to complete my course of education, and the change
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  Speaker 1: was a very happy one to me. For the first
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: sight of the Alps with the setting sun on them
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  Speaker 1: as we descended the Jura, seemed to me like an
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  Speaker 1: entrance into heaven. And the three years of my life
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  Speaker 1: there were spent in a perpetual sense of exaltation, as
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  Speaker 1: if from a draft of delicious wine, at the presence
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  Speaker 1: of nature in all her awful loveliness. You will think,
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  Speaker 1: perhaps that I must have been a poet from this
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  Speaker 1: early sensibility to nature. But my lot was not so
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  Speaker 1: happy as that a poet pours forth his song and
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  Speaker 1: believes in the listening, ear and answering soul to which
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  Speaker 1: his song will be floated sooner or later. But the
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  Speaker 1: poet's sensibility without his voice, the poet's sensibility that finds
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  Speaker 1: no vent but in silent tears on the sunny bank,
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  Speaker 1: when the noonday light sparkles on the water, or in
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  Speaker 1: an inward shudder at the sound of harsh human tones,
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  Speaker 1: the sight of a cold human eye. This dumb passion
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: brings with it a fatal solitude of soul in the
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  Speaker 1: society of one's fellow men. My least solitary moments were
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  Speaker 1: those in which I pushed off in my boat at
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  Speaker 1: evening towards the center of the lake. It seemed to
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  Speaker 1: me that the sky and the glowing mountain tops and
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  Speaker 1: the wide blue water surrounded me with a cherishing love
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  Speaker 1: such as no human face had shed on me since
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  Speaker 1: my mother's love had vanished out of my life. I
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  Speaker 1: used to do as Jean Jacques did, lie down in
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  Speaker 1: my boat and let it glide where it would, while
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: I looked up at the departing glow leaving one mountain
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: top after the other, as if the prophet's chariot of
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: fire were passing over them on its way to the
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  Speaker 1: home of Light. Then, when the white summits were all
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  Speaker 1: sad and corpse like, I had to push homeward, for
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: I was under careful surveillance and was allowed no late wanderings.
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  Speaker 1: This disposition of mine was not favorable to the formation
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  Speaker 1: of intimate friendships among the numerous youths of my own
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  Speaker 1: age who are always to be found studying at Geneva.
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  Speaker 1: Yet I made one such friendship, and singularly enough, it
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: was with a youth whose intellectual tendencies were the very
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  Speaker 1: reverse of my own. I shall call him Charles Mounier.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: His real surname an English one, for he was of
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: English extraction, having since become celebrated. He was an orphan
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: who lived on a miserable pittance while he pursued the
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: medical studies for which he had a special genius. Strange that,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: with my vague mind susceptible and unobservant, hating inquiry and
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: given up to contemplation, I should have been drawn towards
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: a youth whose strongest passion was science. But the bond
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: was not an intellectual one. It came from a source
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: that can happily blend the stupid with the brilliant, the
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  Speaker 1: dreamy with the practical. It came from community of feeling.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Charles was poor and ugly, derided by Genevive's gamer and
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: not acceptable in drawing rooms. I saw that he was
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: isolated as I was, though from a different cause, and
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: stimulated by a sympathetic resentment, I made timid advances towards him.
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  Speaker 1: It is enough to say that there sprang up as
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: much comradeship between us as our different habits would allow.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: And in Charles's rare holidays, we went up the sleeve together,
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  Speaker 1: or took the boat to Vevais. While I listened dreamily
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: to the monologues in which he unfolded his bold conceptions
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: of future experiment and discovery. I mingled them confusedly in
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: my thought, with glimpses of blue water and delicate floating cloud,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: with the notes of birds and the distant glitter of
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  Speaker 1: the glacier. He knew quite well that my mind was
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  Speaker 1: half absent, Yet he liked to talk to me in
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  Speaker 1: this way, For don't we talk of our hopes and
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  Speaker 1: our projects, even to dogs and birds when they love us.
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  Speaker 1: I have mentioned this one friendship because of its connection
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  Speaker 1: with a strange and terrible scene which I shall have
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: to narrate in my subsequent life. This happier life at
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Geneva was put an end to by a severe illness,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: which is partly a blank to me, partly a time
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: of dimly remembered suffering with the presence of my father
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: by my bed from time to time. Then came the
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: languid monotony of convalescence, the days gradually breaking into variety
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: and distinctness as my strength enabled me to take longer
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: and longer drives. On one of these more vividly remembered days,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: my father said to me, as he sat beside my sofa,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: when you are quite well enough to travel, Latimer, I
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: shall take you home with me. The journey will amuse
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: you and do you good. For I shall go through
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: the Tyrol and Austria, and you will see many new places.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Our neighbors, the Fillmoores are come. Alfred will join us
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: at Basel, and we shall all go together to Vienna
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: and back by Prague. My father was called away before
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: he had finished his sentence, and he left my mind
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: resting on the word Prague, with a strange sense that
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: a new and wondrous scene was breaking upon me, a
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: city under the broad sunshine that seemed to me as
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: if it were the summer sunshine of a long past century,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: arrested in its course, unrefreshed for ages by dews of night,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: or the rushing rain cloud scorching the dusty, weary, time
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: eating and grandeur of a people doomed to live on
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: in the stale repetition of memories like deposed and superannuated
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: kings in their regal gold in woven tatters. The city
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: looked so thirsty that the broad river seemed to me
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: a sheet of metal, and the blackened statues, as I
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: passed under their blank gaze along the unending bridge, with
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: their ancient garments and their saintly crowns, seemed to me
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: the real inhabitants and owners of this place, while the
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: busy trivial men and women hurrying to and fro were
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: a swarm of ephemeral visitants infesting it. For a day.
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  Speaker 1: It was such grim stony beings as these, I thought,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Who are the fathers of ancient faded children in those tanned,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: time fretted dwellings that crowd the steep before me, Who
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: pay their court in the worn and crumbling pomp of
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: the palace, which which is its monotonous length on the height,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: Who worship wearily in the stifling air of the churches,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: urged by no fear or hope, but compelled by their
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: doom to be ever old and undying to live on
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: in the rigidity of habit as they live on in
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: perpetual mid day, without the repose of night or the
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: new birth of morning. A stunning clang of metal suddenly
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: thrilled through me, and I became conscious of the objects
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: in my room again. One of the fire irons had fallen.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: As Pierre opened the door to bring me my draft.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: My heart was palpitating violently, and I begged Pierre to
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: leave my draft beside me. I would take it presently.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: As soon as I was alone again, I began to
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: ask myself whether I had been sleeping. Was this a dream?
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: This wonderfully distinct vision, minute in its distinctness, down to
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: a patch of rainbow light on the pavement, transmitted through
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: a colored lamp, in the shape of the star of
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: a strange city quite unfamiliar to my imagination. I had
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: seen no picture of Prague. It lay in my mind
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: as a mere name, with vaguely remembered historical associations, ill
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: defined memories of imperial grandeur and religious wars. Nothing of
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: this sort had ever occurred in my dreaming experience before,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: for I had often been humiliated because my dreams were
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: only saved from being utterly disjointed and commonplace by the
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: frequent terrors of nightmare. But I could not believe that
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: I had been asleep, for I remembered distinctly the gradual
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: breaking inn of the vision upon me, like the new
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: images in a dissolving view, or the growing distinctness of
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: the landscape as the sun lifts up the veil of
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: the morning mist. And while I was conscious of this
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: incipient vision, I I was also conscious that Pierre came
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: to tell my father mister Fillmore was waiting for him,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: and that my father hurried out of the room. No,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: it was not a dream, was it? The thought was
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: full of tremulous exultation. Was it the poet's nature in me,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: hitherto only a troubled yearning sensibility, now manifesting itself suddenly
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: as spontaneous creation. Surely it was in this way that
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Homer saw the plane of Troy, that Dante saw the
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: abodes of the departed, that Milton saw the earthward flight
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: of the tempter. Was it that my illness had wrought
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: some happy change in my organization, given a firmer tension
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: to my nerves, carried off some dull obstruction I had
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: often read of such effects in works of fiction, at least, nay,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: in genuine biographies. I had read of the subtilezing or
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: exalting influence of some diseases on the mental powers. Did
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: not Novalis feel his inspiration intensified under the progress of consumption.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: When my mind had dwelt for some time on this
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: blissful idea, it seemed to me that I might perhaps
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: test it by an exertion of my will. The vision
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: had begun when my father was speaking of our going
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: to Prague. I did not, for a moment believe it
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: was really a representation of that city. I believed, I
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: hoped it was a picture that my newly liberated genius
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: had painted in fiery haste, with the colors snatched from
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: leezy memory. Suppose I were to fix my mind on
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: some other place, Venice, for example, which was far more
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: familiar to my imagination than Prague, perhaps the same sort
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: of result would follow. I concentrated my thoughts on Venice.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: I stimulated my imagination with poetic memories, and strove to
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: feel myself present in Venice, as I had felt myself
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: present in Prague, but in Vain I was only coloring
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: the Caneletto engravings that hung in my old bedroom at home.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: The picture was a shifting one, my mind wandering uncertainly
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: in search of more vivid images. I could see no
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: accident of form or shadow without conscious labor after the
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: necessary conditions. It was all prosaic effort, not rapt passivity,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: such as I had experienced half an hour before. I
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: was discouraged, but I remembered that inspiration was fitful. For
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: several days I was in a state of excited expectation,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: watching for a recurrence of my new gift. I sent
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: my thoughts ranging over my world of knowledge in the
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: hope that they would find some object which would send
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: a reawakening vibration through my slumbering genius. But no, my
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: world remained as dim as ever, and that flash of
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: strange light refused to come again, though I watched for
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: it with palpitating eagerness. My father accompanied me every day
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: in a drive and a gradually lengthening walk as my
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: powers of walking increased, and one evening he had agreed
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: to come and fetch me at twelve the next day
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: that we might go together to select a musical box
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: and other purchases. Rigorously demanded of a rich Englishman visiting Geneva.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: He was one of the most punctual of men and bankers,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: and I was always nervously anxious to be quite ready
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: for him at the appointed time. But to my surprise,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: at a quarter past twelve, he had not appeared. I
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: felt all the impatience of a convalescent who has nothing
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: particular to do, and who has just taken a tonic
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: in the prospect of immediate exercise that would carry off
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: the stimulus. Unable to sit still and reserve my strength,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: I walked up and down the room, looking out on
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: the current of the Rhone, just where it leads the
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: dark blue lagth, but thinking all the while of the
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: possible causes that could detain my father. Suddenly I was
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: conscious that my father was in the room, but not alone.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: There were two persons with him. Strange. I had heard
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: no footstep, I had not seen the door open, but
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: I saw my father and at his right hand our neighbor,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Missus Fillmore, whom I remembered very well, though I had
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: not seen her for five years. She was a commonplace
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: middle aged woman in silk and cashmere. But the lady
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: on the left of my father was not more than twenty,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: A tall, slim, willowy figure with luxuriant blonde hair arranged
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: in cunning braids and folds that looked almost too massive
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: for the slight figure and the small, featured, thin lipped face.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: They crowned, but the face had not a girlish expression.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: The features were sharp, the pale gray eyes at once acute, restless,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: and sarcastic. They were fixed on me in half smiling curiosity,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: and I felt a painful sensation, as if a sharp
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: wind were cutting at me. The pale green dress and
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: the green leaves that seemed to form a border about
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: her pale blonde hair made me think of a water nixy,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: For my mind was full of German lyrics, and this pale,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: fatal eyed woman with the green weeds looked like a
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: berth from some cold, sedgy stream, the daughter of an
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: aged river. Well, Latimer, you thought me long, my father said.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: But while the last word was in my ears, the
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: whole group vanished, and there was nothing between me and
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: the Chinese printed folding screen that stood before the door.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: I was cold and trembling. I could only tott her
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: forward and throw myself on the sofa, this strange new
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: power had manifested itself again. But was it a power?
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Might it not rather be a disease, a sort of
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: intermittent delirium, concentrating my energy of brain into moments of
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: unhealthy activity and leaving my saner hours all the more
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Barren I felt a dizzy sense of unreality in what
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: my eye rested on. I grasped the bell convulsively, like
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: one trying to free himself from nightmare, and rang it twice.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Pierre came with a look of alarm in his face. Monsieur,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: le sauscrufe papier, he said, anxiously. I'm tired of waiting. Pierre,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: I said, as distinctly and emphatically as I could, like
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: a man determined to be sober in spite of wine.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I'm afraid something has happened to my father. He's usually
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: so punctual. Run to the Hotel de Berg and see
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: if he is there. Pierre left the room at once
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: with a soothing Pierre Monsieur, and I felt the better
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: for this scene of simple waking prose. Seeking to calm
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: myself still further, I went into my bedroom, joining the salon,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: and opened a case of eau de cologne, took out
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: a bottle, went through the process of taking out the
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: cork very neatly, and then rubbed the reviving spirit over
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: my hands and forehead and under my nostrils, drawing a
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: new delight from the scent because I had procured it
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: by slow details of labor and by no strange sudden madness.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Already I had begun to taste something of the horror
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: that belongs to the lot of a human being whose
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: nature is not adjusted to simple human conditions. Still enjoying
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: the scent, I returned to the salon, but it was
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: not unoccupied, as it had been before I left it.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: In front of the Chinese folding screen, there was my father,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: with Missus Fillmore on his right hand, and on his
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: left the slim blonde haired girl with the keen face
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: and the keen eyes fixed on me in half smile,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: selling curiosity. Well, Latimer, you thought me long, my father said.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: I heard no more, felt no more till I became
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: conscious that I was lying with my head low on
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: the sofa Pierre and my father by my side. As
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: soon as I was thoroughly revived, my father left the
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: room and presently returned, saying I've been to tell the
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: ladies how you are, Latimer. They were waiting in the
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: next room. We shall put off our shopping expedition to
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: day presently. He said that young lady is Bertha Grant,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: missus Fillmore's orphan niece. Pillmore has adopted her, and she
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: lives with them. So you will have her for a
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: neighbor when we go home, perhaps for a near relation,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: for there is a tenderness between her and Alfred, I suspect,
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: and I should be gratified by the match, since Fillmore
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: means to provide for her in every way as if
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: she were his daughter. It had not occurred to me
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: that you knew nothing about her living with the Fillmoors.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: He made no further allusion to the fact of my
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: having fainted at the moment of seeing her, and I
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: would not for the world have told him the reason.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: I shrank from the idea of disclosing to anyone what
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: might be regarded as a pitiable peculiarity, most of all
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: from betraying it to my father, who would have suspected
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: my sanity. Ever after, I do not mean to dwell
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: with particularity on the details of my experience. I have
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: described these two cases at length because they had definite,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: clearly traceable results in my after lot. End of Chapter one,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Part one, Chapter one, Part two of The Lifted Veil.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Bruce Pirie The Lifted Veil by George Elliot, Chapter one,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Part two. Shortly after this last occurrence, I think the
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: very next day I began to be aware of a
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: phase in my abnormal sensibility to which, from the languid
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: and slight nature of my intercourse with others since my illness,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: I had not been alive before, this was the obtrusion
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: on my mind of the mental process going forward in
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: first one person and then another with whom I happened
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: to be in contact. The vagrant, frivolous ideas and emotions
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: of some uninteresting acquaintance Missus Fillmore, for example, would force
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: themselves on my consciousness, like an importunate ill played musical instrument,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: or the loud activity of an imprisoned insect. But this
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: unpleasant sensibility was fitful and left me moments of rest
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: when the souls of my companions were once more shut
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: out from me, and I felt a relief such as
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: silence brings to wearied nerves. I might have believed this
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: importunate insight to be merely a diseased activity of the imagination,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: but that my prevision of incalculable words and actions proved
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: it to have a fixed relation to the mental process
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: in other minds. But this superadded consciousness wearying and annoying
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: enough when it urged on me. The trivial experience of
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: indifferent people became an intense pain and grief when it
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: seemed to be opening to me the souls of those
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: who were in a close relation to me. When the
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: rational talk, the graceful attentions, the wittily turned phrases, and
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: the kindly deeds which used to make the web of
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: their characters were seen as if thrust asunder by a
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: microscopic Vives vision that showed all the intermediate frivolities, all
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: the suppressed egoism, all the struggling chaos of puerilities, meanness, vague,
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: capricious memories, and indolent makeshift thoughts from which human words
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: and deeds emerge like leaflets covering a fermenting heap. At Basel,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: we were joined by my brother Alfred, now a handsome,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: self confident man of six and twenty, a thorough contrast
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: to my fragile, nervous, ineffectual self. I believe I was
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: held to have a sort of half womanish, half ghostly
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: beauty for the portrait painters, who are thick as weeds
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: at Geneva, had often asked me to sit to them,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: and I had been the model of a dying minstrel
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: in a fancy picture. But I thoroughly disliked my own physique,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: and nothing but the belief that it was a condition
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: of poetic genius would have reconciled me to it. That
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: brief hope was quite fled, and I saw in my
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: face now nothing but the stamp of a morbid organization,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: framed for passive suffering, too feeble for the sublime resistance
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: of poetic production. Alfred, from whom I had been almost
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: constantly separated, and who in his present stage of character
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: and appearance, came before me as a perfect stranger, was
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: bent on being extremely friendly and brother like to me.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: He had the superficial kindness of a good humored, self
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: satisfied nature that fears no rivalry and has encountered no contrarities.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: I am not sure that my disposition was good enough
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: for me to have been quite free from envy towards him.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Even if our desires had not clashed, and if I
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: had been in the healthy human condition which admits of
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: generous confidence and charitable construction, there must always have been
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: an antipathy between our nature. As it was, he became
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: in a few weeks an object of intense hatred to me,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: and when he entered the room, still more when he spoke,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: it was as if a sensation of grating metal had
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: set my teeth on edge. My diseased consciousness was more
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: intensely and continually occupied with his thoughts and emotions than
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: with those of any other person who came in my way.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: I was perpetually exasperated with the petty promptings of his conceit,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: and his love of patronage, with his self complacent belief
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: in Bertha Grant's passion for him, with his half pitying
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: contempt for me, seen not in the ordinary indications of
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: intonation and phrase and slight action which an acute and
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: suspicious mind is on the watch for, but in all
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: their naked, skinless complication. For we were rivals, and our
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: desires clashed, though he was not away of it. I
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: have said nothing yet of the effect Bertha Grant produced
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: in me on a nearer acquaintance. That effect was chiefly
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: determined by the fact that she made the only exception
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: among all the human beings about me to my unhappy
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: gift of insight. About Bertha, I was always in a
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: state of uncertainty. I could watch the expression of her
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: face and speculate on its meaning. I could ask for
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: her opinion with the real interest of ignorance. I could
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: listen for her words and watch for her smile with
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: hope and fear. She had for me the fascination of
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: an unraveled destiny. I say it was this fact that
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: chiefly determined the strong effect she produced on me. For
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: in the abstract, no womanly character could seem to have
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: less affinity for that of a shrinking, romantic, passionate youth
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: than Bertha's. She was keen, sarcastic, un imaginative, prematurely cynical,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: remaining critical and unmoved in the most impressive scenes, inclined
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: to dissect all my favorite poems, and especially contemptuous towards
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: the German lyrics, which were my pet literature at that time.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: To this moment, I am unable to define my feeling
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: towards her. It was not ordinary boyish admiration, for she
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: was the very opposite, even to the color of her hair,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: of the ideal woman who still remained to me the
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: type of loveliness. And she was without that enthusiasm for
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: the great and good, which, even at the moment of
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: her strongest dominion over me, I should have declared to
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: be the highest element of character. But there is no
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: tyranny more complete than that which a self centered, negative
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: nature exercises over a morbidly sensitive nature, perpetually craving sympathy
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: and support. The most independent people feel the effect of
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: a man's silence in heightening their value for his opinion,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: feel an additional triumph in conquering the reverence of a
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: critic habitually captious and satirical. No wonder, then, that an enthusiastic,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: self distrusting youth should watch and wait before the closed
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: secret of a sarcastic woman's face, as if it were
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: the shrine of the doubtfully benignant deity who ruled his destiny.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: For a young enthusiast is unable to imagine the total
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: negation in another mind of the emotions which are stirring
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: his own. They may be feeble, latent, inactive, he thinks,
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: but they are there. They may be called forth sometimes
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: in moments of happy hallucination. He believes they may be
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: there in all the greater strength, because he sees no
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: outward sign of them. And this effect, as I have intimated,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: was heightened to its utmost intensity in me because Bertha
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: was the only being who remained for me in the
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: mysterious seclusion of soul that renders such youthful delusion possible. Doubtless,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: there was another sort of fascination at work, that subtle
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: physical attraction which delights in cheating our psychological predictions and
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: in compelling the men who paint sylphs to fall in
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: love with some banne A brave thumb, heavy healed, and freckled.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Bertha's behavior towards me was such as to encourage all
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: my illusions, to heighten my boyish passion, and make me
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: more and more dependent on her smiles. Looking back with
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: my present wretched knowledge, I conclude that her vanity and
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: love of power were intensely gratified by the belief that
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: I had fainted on first seeing her, purely from the
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: strong impression her person had produced on me. The most
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: prosaic woman likes to believe herself the object of a violent,
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: a poetic passion, and without a grain of romance in her,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: Bertha had that spirit of intrigue which gave piquancy to
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: the idea that the brother of the man she meant
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: to marry was dying with love and jealousy for her sake.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: That she meant to marry my brother was what at
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: that time I did not believe. For though he was
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: assiduous in his attentions to her, and I knew well
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: enough that both he and my father had made up
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: their minds to this result, there was not yet an
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: understood engagement. There had been no explicit declaration, and Bertha habitually,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: while she flirted with my brother and accepted his homage
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: in a way that implied to him a thorough recognition
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: of its intention, made me believe, by the subtlest looks
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: and phrases, feminine nothings which could never be quoted against her,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: that he was really the object of her secret ridicule,
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: that she thought him as I did a coxcomb whom
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: she would have pleasure in disappointing me. She openly patted
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: in my brother's presence, as if I were too young
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: and sickly ever to be thought of as a lover.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: And that was the view he took of me. But
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: I believe she must inwardly have delighted in the tremors
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: into which she threw me, by the coaxing way in
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: which she patted my curls while she laughed at my quotations.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: Such caresses were always given in the presence of our friends,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: for when we were alone together, she affected a much
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: greater distance towards me and now and then took the opportunity,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: by words or slight actions, to stimulate my foolish, timid
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: hope that she really preferred me, and why should she
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: not follow her inclination. I was not in so advantageous
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: a position as my brother, but I had fortune. I
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: was not a year younger than she was, and she
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: was an heiress who would soon be of age to
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: decide for herself. The fluxtualuations of hope and fear confined
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: to this one channel, made each day in her presence
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: a delicious torment. There was one deliberate act of hers,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: which especially helped to intoxicate me. When we were at Vienna,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: her twentieth birthday occurred, and as she was very fond
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: of ornaments, we all took the opportunity of the splendid
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: jeweler's shops in that Teutonic Paris to purchase her a
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: birthday present of jewelry. Mine, naturally was the least expensive.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: It was an opal ring. The opal was my favorite
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: stone because it seems to blush and turn pale as
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: if it had a soul. I told Bertha so when
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: I gave it her, and said that it was an
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: emblem of the poetic nature changing with the changing light
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: of heaven and of woman's eyes. In the evening, she
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: appeared elegantly dressed and wearing conspicuously all the birthday present
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: except mine. I looked eagerly at her fingers, but saw
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: no opal. I had no opportunity of noticing this to
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: her during the evening, But the next day, when I
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: found her seated near the window alone after breakfast, I said,
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: you scorned to wear my poor opal. I should have
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: remembered that you despised poetic natures and should have given
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: you coral or turquoise or some other opaque unresponsive stone.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: Do I despise it, she answered, taking hold of a
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: delicate gold chain which she always wore round her neck,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: and drawing out the end from her bosom, with my
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: ring hanging to it. It hurts me a little, I
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: can tell you, she said, with her usual dubious smile,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: to wear it in that secret place. And since your
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: poetical nature is so stupid as to prefer a more
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: public position, I shall not endure the pain any longer.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: She took off the ring from the chain and put
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: it on her finger, smiling still, while the blood rushed
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: to my cheeks, and I could not trust myself to
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: say a word of entreaty that she would keep the
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: ring where it was before. I was completely fooled by this,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: and for two days shut myself up in my own
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: room whenever Bertha was absent, that I might intoxicate myself
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: afresh with the thought of this scene and all that
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: it implied. I should mention that during these two months,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: which seemed a long life to me, from the novelty
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: and intensity of the pleasures and pains, I underwent my
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: diseased anticipation in other people's consciousness continued to torment me. Now
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: it was my father, and now my brother, now Missus Fillmore,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: or her husband, and now our German courier, whose stream
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: of thought rushed upon me like a ringing in the ears,
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: not to be got rid of, though it allowed my
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: own impulses and ideas to continue their uninterrupted course. It
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: was like a preternaturally heightened sense of hearing, making audible
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: to one a roar of sound where others find perfect stillness.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: The weariness and disgust of this involuntary intrusion into other
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: souls was counteracted only by my ignorance of Bertha and
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: my growing passion for her, a passion enormously stimulated, if
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: not produced by that ignorance. She was my oasis of
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: mystery in the dreary desert of knowledge. I had never
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: allowed my diseased condition to betray itself or to drive
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: me into any unusual speech or action, except once, when
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: in a moment of peculiar bitterness against my brother, I
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: had forestalled some words which I knew he was going
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: to utter, a clever observation which he had prepared beforehand.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: He had occasionally a slightly affected hesitatation in his speech,
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: and when he paused an instant after the second word,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: my impatience and jealousy impelled me to continue the speech
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: for him, as if it were something we had both
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: learned by rote. He colored and looked astonished as well
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: as annoyed, and the words had no sooner escaped my
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: lips than I felt a shock of alarm lest such
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: an anticipation of words, very far from being words, of
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: course easy to divine, should have betrayed me as an
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: exceptional being, a sort of quiet and erghuman whom everyone,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: Bertha above all, would shudder at and avoid. But I magnified,
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: as usual the impression any word or deed of mine
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: could produce on others, for no one gave any sign
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: of having noticed my interruption as more than a rudeness
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: to be forgiven me on the score of my feeble
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: nervous condition. While this superadded consciousness of the actual was
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: almost constant with me, I had never had a recurrence
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: of that distinct prevision which I have described in relation
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: to my first interview with Bertha. And I was waiting
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: with eager curiosity to know whether or not my vision
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: of Prague would prove to have been an instance of
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: the same kind. A few days after the incident of
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: the Opal Ring, we were paying one of our frequent
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: visits to the Lichtenburg Palace. I could never look at
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: many pictures in succession, for pictures when they are at
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: all powerful, affect me so strongly that one or two
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: exhaust all my capability of contemplation. This morning, I had
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: been looking at Giorgioni's picture of the cruel eyed woman,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: said to be a likeness of Lucrezia Borgia. I had
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: stood long alone before it, fascinated by the terrible reality
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: of that cunning, relentless face, till I felt a strange,
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: poisoned sensation, as if I had long been inhaling a
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: fatal odor and was just because to be conscious of
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: its effects. Perhaps even then I should not have moved
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: away if the rest of the party had not returned
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: to this room and announced that they were going to
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: the Belvidere Gallery to settle a bet which had arisen
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: between my brother and mister Fillmore about a portrait. I
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: followed them dreamily and was hardly alive to what occurred
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: till they had all gone up to the gallery, leaving
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: me below. For I refused to come within sight of
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: another picture. That day, I made my way to the
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: Grand Terrace, since it was agreed that we should saunter
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: in the gardens. When the dispute had been decided, I
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: had been sitting here a short space, vaguely conscious of
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: trim gardens, with a city in green Hills in the distance.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: When wishing to avoid the proximity of the sentinel, I
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: rose and walked down the broad stone steps, intending to
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: seat myself farther on in the gardens. Just as I
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: reached the gravel walk, I felt an ar arm slipped
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: within mine, and a light hand gently pressing my wrist.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: In the same instant, a strange, intoxicating numbness passed over me,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: like the continuance or climax of the sensation I was
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: still feeling from the gaze of Lucrezia Borgia, the gardens,
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: the summer sky, the consciousness of Bertha's arm being within
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: mine all vanished, and I seemed to be suddenly in darkness,
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: out of which there gradually broke a dim firelight, and
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: I felt myself sitting in my father's leather chair in
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: the library at home. I knew the fireplace, the dogs
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: for the wood fire, the black marble chimney piece with
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: the white marble medallion of the dying Cleopatra in the center.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: Intense and hopeless misery was pressing on my soul. The
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: light became stronger, for Bertha was entering with a candle
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: in her hand. Bertha, my wife, with cruel eyes, with
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: green jewels and green leaves on her white ball dress.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Every hateful thought within her present to me, madman, idiot,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: why don't you kill yourself? Then it was a moment
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: of hell. I saw into her pitiless soul, saw its
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: barren worldliness, its scorching hate, and felt it clothe me
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: round like an air. I was obliged to breathe. She
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: came with her candle and stood over me with a
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: bitter smile of contempt. I saw the great Emerald brooch
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: on her bosom, a studded serpent with diamond eyes. I shuddered.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: I despised this woman with the barren soul and mean thoughts.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: But I felt helpless before her, as if she clutched
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: my bleeding heart and would clutch till the last drop
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: of life blood ebbed away. She was my wife, and
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: we hated each other. Gradually the hearth, the dim library,
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: the candle light disappeared, seemed to melt away into a
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: background of light, the green serpent with the diamond eyes
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: remaining a dark image on the retina. Then I had
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: a sense of my eyelids quivering, and the living daylight
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: broke in upon me. I saw gardens and heard voices.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: I was seated on the steps of the Belvidere Terrace,
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: and my friends were round me. The tumult of mind
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: into which I was thrown by this hideous vision made
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: me ill for several days and prolonged our stay at Vienna.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: I shuddered with horror as the scene recurred to me,
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: and it recurred constantly, with all its minutieye, as if
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: they had been burnt into my memory. And yet such
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: is the madness of the human heart under the influence
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: of its immediate desires. I felt a wild, hell braving
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: joy that Bertha was to be mine for the fulfillment
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: of my former prevision concerning her first appearance before me.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: Left me little hope that this last hideous glimpse of
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: the future was the mere diseased play of my own
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: mind and had no relation to external realities. One thing alone,
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: I looked towards as a possible means of casting doubt
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: on my terrible conviction, the discovery that my vision of
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: Prague had been false, and Prague was the next city
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: on our route. Meanwhile, I was no sooner in Bertha's
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: society again than I was as completely under her sway
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: as before. What if I saw into the heart of Bertha,
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: the matured woman, Bertha, my wife, Bertha the girl was
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: a fascinating secret to me. Still I trembled under her touch.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: I felt the witchery of her presence. I yearned to
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: be assured of her love. The fear of poison is
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: feeble against the sense of thirst. Nay, I was just
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: as jealous of my brother as before, just as much
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: irritated by his small, patronizing ways for my pride. My
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: diseased sensibility were there as they had always been, and
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: winced as inevitably under every offense as my eye winced
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: from an intruding mote. The future, even when brought within
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: the compass of feeling by a vision that made me shudder,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: had still no more than the force of an idea
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: compared with the force of present emotion of my love
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: for Bertha, of my dislike and jealousy towards my brother.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: It is an old story that men sell themselves to
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: the tempter and sign a bond with their blood, because
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: it is only to take effect at a distant day.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: Then rush on to snatch the cup their souls thirst after,
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: with an impulse not the less savage, because there is
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: a dark shadow beside them. For evermore, there is no
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: short cut, no patent tram road to wisdom. After all
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: the centuries of invention. The soul's path lies through the
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: thorny wilderness, which must be still trodden in solitude, with
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: by them of old time. My mind speculated eagerly on
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: the means by which I should become my brother's successful rival,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: For I was still too timid in my ignorance of
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: Bertha's actual feeling to venture on any step that would
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: urge from her an avowal of it. I thought I
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: should gain confidence even for this, if my vision of
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: Prague proved to have been voracious. And yet the horror
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: of that certitude behind the slim girl Bertha, whose words
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: and looks I watched, for whose touch was bliss. There
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: stood continually that Bertha, with the fuller form, the harder eyes,
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: the more rigid mouth, with the barren, selfish soul laid bare,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: no longer a fascinating secret, but a measured fact, urging
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: itself perpetually on my unwilling sight. Are you unable to
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: give me your sympathy? You who read this? Are you
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: unable to imagine this double consciousness at work within me,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: flowing on like two parallel streams which never mingle their
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: waters and blend into a common hue. Yet you must
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: have known something of the presentiments that spring from an
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: insight at war with passion, And my visions were only
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: like presentiments, intensified to horror. You have known the powerlessness
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: of ideas before the might of impulse, and by visions,
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: when once they had passed into memory, were mere ideas,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: pale shadows that beckoned in vain while my hand was
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: grasped by the living and the loved. In after days,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: I thought with bitter regret that if I had foreseen
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: something more, or something different, if instead of that hideous
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: vision which poisoned the passion it could not destroy, or
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: if even along with it, I could have had a
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: foreshadowing of that moment when I looked on my brother's
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: face for the last time, some softening influence would have
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: been shed over my feeling towards him. Pride and hatred
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: would surely have been subdued into pity, and the record
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: of those hidden sins would have been shortened. But this
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: is one of the vain thoughts with which we men
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: flatter ourselves. We try to believe that the egoism within
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: us would have easily been melted, and that it was
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: only the narrowness of our knowledge which hemmed in our generosity,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: our awe, our human piety, and hindered them from submerging.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: Our heart indifference to the sensations and emotions of our fellows.
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: Our tenderness and self renunciation seems strong when our egoism
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: has had its day, When after our mean striving for
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: a triumph that is to be another's loss, the triumph
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: comes suddenly and we shudder at it because it is
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: held out by the chill hand of death. Our arrival
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: in Prague happened at night, and I was glad of this,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: for it seemed like a deferring of a terribly decisive moment.
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: To be in the city for ours without seeing it.
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: As we were not to remain long in Prague, but
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: to go on so speedily to Dresden, it was proposed
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: that we should drive out the next morning and take
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: a general view of the place, as well as visit
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: some of its specially interesting spots, before the heat became oppressive,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: for we were in August and the season was hot
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: and dry. But it happened that the ladies were rather
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: late at their morning toilet, and to my father's politely
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: repressed but perceptible annoyance, we were not in the carriage
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: till the morning was far advanced. I thought, with a
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: sense of relief, as we entered the Jews Quarter, where
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: we were to visit the old Synagogue, that we should
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: be kept in this flat, shut up part of the
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: city until we should all be too tired and too
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: warm to go farther, and so we should return without
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: seeing more than the streets through which we had already passed.
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: That would give me another day's suspense, suspense the only
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: form in which a fearful spirit knows the solace of hope.
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: But as I stood under the blackened, groined arches of
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: that old synagogue, made dimly visible by the seven thin
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: candles in the sacred lamp. While our Jewish cicerone reached
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: down the Book of the Law and read to us
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: in its ancient tongue, I felt a shuddering impression that
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: this strange building, with its shrunken lights, this surviving, withered
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: remnant of medieval Judaism, was of a piece with my vision.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: Those darkened, dusty Christian saints, with their loftier arches and
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: their larger candles, needed the consolatory scorn with which they
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: might point to a more shriveled death in life than
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: their own, as I expected. When we left the Jews quarter,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: the elders of our party wished to return to the hotel.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: But now, instead of rejoicing in this as I had
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: done beforehand, I felt a sudden, over powering impulse to
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: go on at once to the bridge and put an
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: end to the suspense I had been wishing to protract.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: I declared, with unusual decision that I would get out
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: of the carriage and walk on alone. They might return
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: without me. My father, thinking this merely a sample of
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: my usual poetic nonsense, objected that I should only do
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: myself harm by walking in the heat. But when I persisted,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: he said angrily that I might follow my own absurd devices,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: but that Schmidt, our courier, must go with me. I
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: assented to this and set off with Schmidt towards the bridge.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: I had no sooner passed from under the archway of
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: the grand old Gate leading onto the bridge, than a
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: trembling seized me, and I turned cold under the midday sun.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: Yet I went on. I was in search of something,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: a small detail which I remembered with special intensity as
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: part of my vision there. It was the patch of
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: rainbow light on the pavement, transmitted through a lamp in
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: the shape of a star, end of Chapter one, Chapter two,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: Part one of The Lifted Veil. This LibriVox recording is
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: in the public domain recording by Bruce Pirie The Lifted
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: Veil by George Elliot, Chapter two. Before the autumn was
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: at an end, and while the brown leaves still stood
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: thick on the beaches in our park, my brother and
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: Bertha were engaged to each other, and it was understood
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: that their marriage was to take place early in the
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: next spring. In spite of the certainty I had felt
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: from that moment on the bridge at prague that Bertha
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: would one day be my wife. My constitutional timidity and
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: distrust had continued to benumb me, and the words in
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: which I had sometimes premeditated a confession of my love
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: had died away unuttered. The same conflict had gone on
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: within me as before, the longing for an assurance of
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: love from Bertha's lips, The dread lest a word of
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: contempt and denial should fall upon me like a corrosive acid.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: What was the conviction of a distant necessity to me?
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: I trembled under a present glance. I hungered after a
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: present joy. I was clogged and chilled by a present fear.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: And so the days passed on. I witnessed Bertha's engagement
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: and heard her marriage discussed as if I were under
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: a conscious nightmare, knowing it was a dream that would vanish,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: but feeling stifled under the grasp of hard, clutching fingers.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: When I was not in Bertha's presence, and I was
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: with her very often, for she continued to treat me
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: with a playful patronage that wakened no jealousy in my brother.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: I spent my time chiefly in wandering, in strolling, or
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: taking long rides while the daylight lasted, and then shutting
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: myself up with my unread books, for books had lost
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: the power of chaining my attention. My self consciousness was
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: heightened to that pitch of intensity in which our own
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: emotions take the form of a drama, which urges itself
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: imperatively on our contemplation, and we begin to weep less
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: under the sense of our suffering than at the thought
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: of it. I felt a sort of pitying anguish over
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: the pathos of my own lot, the lot of a
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: being finely organized for pain, but with hardly any fibers
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: that responded to pleasure. To whom the idea of future
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: evil robbed the present of its joy, and for whom
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: the idea of future good did not still the uneasiness
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: of a present yearning or a present dread. I went
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: dumbly through that stage of the poet's suffering, in which
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: he feels the delicious pang of utterance and makes an
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: image of his sorrows. I was left entirely without remonstrance
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: concerning this dreamy wayward life. I knew my father's thought
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: about me, that lad will never be good for anything
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: in life. He may waste his years in an insignificant way.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: On the income that falls to him, I shall not
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: trouble myself about a career for him. One mild morning
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: in the beginning of November, it happened that I was
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: standing outside the portico, patting lazy old Caesar, a Newfoundland
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: almost blind with age, the only dog that ever took
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: any notice of me, for the very dogs shunned me
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: and fond on the happier people around me. When the
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: groom brought up my brother's horse, which was to carry
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: him to the hunt, and my brother himself appeared at
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: the door, florid, broad chested, and self complacent, feeling what
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: a good natured fellow he was not to behave insolently
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: to us all on the strength of his great advantages. Latimer,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: old boy, he said to me, in a tone of
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: compassionate cordiality, what a pity it is you don't have
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: a run with the hounds now and then? The finest
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: thing in the world for low spirits. Low spirits, I
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: thought bitterly, as he rode away. That is the sort
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: of phrase with which coarse, narrow natures like yours think
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: to describe experience of which you can know no more
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: than your horse knows. It is to such as you
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: that the good of this world falls ready. Dullness, healthy selfishness,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: good tempered conceit, these are the keys to happiness. The
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: quick thought came that my selfishness was even stronger than his.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: It was only a suffering selfishness instead of an enjoying one.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: But then again, my exasperating insight into Alfred's self complacent soul,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: his freedom from all the doubts and fears, the unsatisfied yearnings,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: the exquisite tortures of sensitiveness that had made the web
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: of my life, seemed to absolve me from all bonds
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: towards him. This man needed no pity, no love. Those
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: fine influences would have been as little felt by him
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: as the delicate white mist is felt by the rock
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: it caresses. There was no evil in store for him.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: If he was not to marry Bertha, it would be
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: because he had found a lot pleasanter to himself. Mister
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: Fillmore's house lay not more than half a mile beyond
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: our own gates, and whenever I knew my brother was
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: gone in another direction, I went there for the chance
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: of finding Bertha at home later on in the day
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: I walked thither by a rare accident. She was alone,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: and we walked out in the grounds together, for she
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: seldom went on foot beyond the train swept gravel walks.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: I remember, what a beautiful sylph she looked to me
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: as the low November sun shone on her blonde hair,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: and she tripped along, teasing me with her usual light banter,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: to which I listened half fondly, half moodily. It was
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: all the sign Bertha's mysterious in herself ever made to
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: me to day. Perhaps the moodiness predominated, for I had
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: not yet shaken off the access of jealous hate which
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: my brother had raised in me by his parting patronage.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: Suddenly I interrupted and startled her by saying, almost fiercely, Bertha,
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: how can you love Alfred? She looked at me with
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: surprise for a moment, but soon her light smile came again,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: and she answered, sarcastically, why do you suppose I love him?
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: How can you ask that, Bertha, what your wisdom thinks?
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: I must love the man I'm going to marry, the
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: most unpleasant thing in the world. I should quarrel with him.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: I should be jealous of him. Our manage would be
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: conducted in a very ill bred manner. A little quiet
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: contempt contributes greatly to the elegance of life. Bertha, that
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: is not your real feeling. Why do you delight in
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: trying to deceive me by inventing such cynical speeches? I
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: need never take the trouble of invention in order to
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: deceive you, my small Tasso. That was the mocking name
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: she usually gave me. The easiest way to deceive a
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: poet is to tell him the truth. She was testing
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: the validity of her epigram in a daring way, and
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: for a moment, the shadow of my vision, the Bertha,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: whose soul was no secret to me, passed between me
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: and the radiant girl, the playful sylph, whose feelings were
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: a fascinating mystery. I suppose I must have shuddered or
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: betrayed in some other way my momentary chill of horror, Tasso,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: she said, seizing my wrist and peeping round into my face.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: Are you really beginning to discern what a heartless girl
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: I am? Why you are not half the poet I
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: thought you were. You are actually capable of believing the
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: truth about me. The shadow passed from between us and
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: was no longer the object nearest to me, The girl
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: whose light fingers grasped me, whose elfish, charming face looked
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: into mine, who I thought was betraying an interest in
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: my feelings that she would not have directly avowed. This warm,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: breathing presence again possessed my senses and imagination, like a
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: returning siren melody which had been overpowered for an instant
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: by the roar of threatening waves. It was a moment
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: as delicious to me as the waking up to a
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: consciousness of youth after a dream of middle age. I
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: forgot everything but my pasweression and said, with swimming eyes, Bertha,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: shall you love me when we are first married? I
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: wouldn't mind if you really loved me only for a
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: little while. Her look of astonishment as she loosed my
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: hand and started away from me recalled me to a
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: sense of my strange, my criminal indiscretion. Forgive me, I said, hurriedly,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: as soon as I could speak again. I did not
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: know what I was saying. Ah Tasso's mad fit has
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: come on, I see, she answered quietly, for she had
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: recovered herself sooner than I had let him go home
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: and keep his head cool. I must go in where
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: the sun is setting. I left her full of indignation
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: against myself. I had let slip words which, if she
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: reflected on them, might rouse in her a suspicion of
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: my abnormal mental condition, a suspicion which, of all things,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: I dreaded. And besides that, I was ashamed of the
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: apparent baseness I had committed in uttering them to my
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: brother's betrothed wife. I wandered home, slowly, entering our park
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: through a private gate instead of by the lodges. As
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: I approached the house, I saw a man dashing off
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: at full speed from the stable yard across the park.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: Had any accident happened at home? No, perhaps it was
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: only one of my father's peremptory business errands that required
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: this headlong haste. Nevertheless, I quickened my pace without any
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: distinct motive, and was soon at the house. I will
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: not dwell on the scene I found there. My brother
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: was dead, had been pitched from his horse and killed
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: on the spot by a concussion of the brain. I
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: went up to the room where he lay, and where
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: my father was seated beside him, with a look of
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: rigid despair. I had shunned my father more than any
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: one since our return home, for the radical antipathy between
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: our natures made my inn sight into his inner self
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: a constant affliction to me. But now as I went
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: up to him and stood beside him in sad silence,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: I felt the presence of a new element that blended
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: us as we had never been blent before. My father
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: had been one of the most successful men in the
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: money getting world. He had had no sentimental sufferings, no illness.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: The heaviest trouble that had befallen him was the death
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: of his first wife. But he married my mother soon after,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: and I remember he seemed exactly the same to my
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: keen childish observation the week after her death as before.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: But now at last a sorrow had come, the sorrow
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: of old age, which suffers the more from the crushing
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: of its pride and its hopes in proportion as the
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: pride and hope are narrow and prosaic. His son was
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: to have been married soon would probably have stood for
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: the borough at the next election. That son's existence was
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: the best motive that could be alleged for making new
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: purchases of land every year to round off the estate.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: It is a dreary thing to live on doing the
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: same things year after year without knowing why we do them.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: Perhaps the tragedy of disappointed youth and passion is less
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: piteous than the tragedy of disappointed age and worldliness. As
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: I saw into the desolation of my father's heart, I
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: felt a movement of deep pity towards him, which was
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: the beginning of a new affection, an affection that grew
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: and strengthened in spite of the strange bitterness with which
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: he regarded me in the first month or two after
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: my brother's death. If it had not been for the
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: softening influence of my compassion for him, the first deep
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: compassion when I had ever felt, I should have been
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: stung by the perception that my father transferred the inheritance
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: of an eldest son to me with a mortified sense
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: that fate had compelled him to the unwelcome course of
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: caring for me as an important being. It was only
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: in spite of himself that he began to think of
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: me with anxious regard. There is hardly any neglected child
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: for whom death has made vacant a more favored place,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: who will not understand what I mean. Gradually, however, my
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: new deference to his wishes, the effect of that patience,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: which was born of my pity for him, won upon
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: his affection, and he began to please himself with the
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: endeavor to make me fill my brother's place as fully
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: as my feebler personality would admit. I saw that the
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: prospect which by and by presented itself of my becoming
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: birth's husband was welcome to him, and he even contemplated
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: in my case what he had not intended in my brothers,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: that his son and daughter in law should make one
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: household with him. My softened feelings towards my father made
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: this the happiest time I had known since childhood, These
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: last months in which I retained the delicious illusion of
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: loving Bertha, of longing and doubting and hoping that she
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: might love me. She behaved with a certain new consciousness
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: and distance towards me after my brother's death, and I
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: too was under a double constraint, that of delicacy towards
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: my brother's memory, and of anxiety as to the impression
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: my abrupt words had left on her mind. But the
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: additional screen this mutual reserve erected between us only brought
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: me more completely under her power, no matter how empty
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: the adatum, so that the veil be thick enough, So
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: absolute is I our soul's need of something hidden and uncertain,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: for the maintenance of that doubt and hope and effort
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: which are the breath of its life. That if the
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: whole future were laid bare to us beyond today, the
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: interest of all mankind would be bent on the hours
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: that lie between. We should pant after the uncertainties of
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: our one morning and our one afternoon. We should rush
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: fiercely to the exchange for our last possibility of speculation,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: of success, of disappointment. We should have a glut of
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: political profits for telling a crisis or a no crisis
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: within the only twenty four hours left open to prophecy.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: Conceive the condition of the human mind. If all propositions
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: whatsoever were self evident, except one which was to become
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: self evident at the close of a summer's day, but
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: in the meantime might be the subject of question of hypothesis,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: of debate, art and philosophy, literature, science, would fasten like
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: bees on that one proposition which had the honey of
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: probability in it, and be the more eager because their
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: enjoyment would end with sunset. Our impulses, our spiritual activities
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: no more adjust themselves to the idea of their future
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: nullity than the beating of our heart or the irritability
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: of our muscles. Bertha, the slim, fair haired girl whose
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: present thoughts and emotions were an enigma to me amidst
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: the fatiguing obviousness of the other minds around me, was
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: as absorbing to me as a single unknown today as
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: a single hypothetic proposition to remain problematic till sunset, And
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: all the cramped hemmed in belief and disbelief, trust, and
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: distrust of my nature welled out in this one narrow channel,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: and she made me believe that she loved me, without
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: ever quitting her tone of badinage and playful superiority. She
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: intoxicated me with the sense that I was necessary to her,
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: that she was never at ease unless I was near her,
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: submitting to her playful tyranny. It cost a woman so
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: little effort to beset us in this way. A half
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: repressed word, a moment's unexpected silence, even an easy fit
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: of petulance on our account, will serve us as hashish
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: for a long while. Out of the subtlest web of
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: scarcely perceptible signs, she set me weaving the fancy that
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: she had always unconsciously loved me better than Alfred, but
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: that with the ignorant, fluttered sensibility of a young girl,
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: she had been imposed on by the charm that lay
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: for her. In the distinction of being admired and chosen
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: by a man who made so brilliant a figure in
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: the world as my brother, she satirized herself in a
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: very graceful way for her vanity and ambition. What was
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: it to me that I had the light of my
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: wretched pre vision on the fact that now it was
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: I who possessed at least all but the personal part
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: of my brother's advantages. Our sweet illusions are half of them,
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: conscious illusions, like effects of color that we know to
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: be made up of tinsel, broken glass, and rags. We
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: were married eighteen months after Alfred's death, one cold clear
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: morning in April, when there came hail and sunshine both together,
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: and Bertha in her white silk and pale green leaves,
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: and the pale hues of her hair and face looked
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: like the spirit of the morning. My father was happier
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: than he had thought of being again. My marriage, he
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: felt sure would complete the desirable modification of my character
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: and make me practical and worldly enough to take my
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: place in Sia society among sane men. For he delighted
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: in Bertha's tact and acuteness, and felt sure she would
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: be mistress of me and make me what she chose.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: I was only twenty one and madly in love with her.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: Poor father he kept that hope a little while after
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: our first year of marriage, and it was not quite
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: extinct when paralysis came and saved him from utter disappointment.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: I shall hurry through the rest of my story, not
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: dwelling so much as I have hitherto done on my
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: inward experience. When people are well known to each other,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: they talk rather of what befalls them externally, leaving their
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: feelings and sentiments to be inferred. We lived in a
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: round of visits for some time after our return home,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: giving splendid dinner parties and making a sensation in our
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: neighborhood by the new luster of our equipage. For my
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: father had reserved this display of his increased wealth for
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: the period of his son's mesay marriage, and we gave
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: our acquaintances liberal opportunity for remarking that it was a
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: pity I made so poor a figure as an heir
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: and a bridegroom. The nervous fatigue of this existence, the
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: insincerities and platitudes which I had to live through twice
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: over through my inner and outward sense, would have been
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: maddening to me if I had not had that sort
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: of intoxicated callousness which came from the delights of a
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: first passion. A bride and bridegroom, surrounded by all the
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: appliances of wealth, hurried through the day by the whirl
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: of society, filling their solitary moments with hastily snatched caresses,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: are prepared for their future life together, as the novice
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: is prepared for the cloister by experiencing its utmost contrast.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: Through all these crowded, excited months, Bertha's inward self remained
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: shrouded from me, and I still read her thoughts only
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: through the life language of her lips and demeanor. I
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: still had the human interest of wondering whether what I
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: did and said pleased her, of longing to hear a
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: word of affection, of giving a delicious exaggeration of meaning
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: to her smile. But I was conscious of a growing
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: difference in her manner towards me, sometimes strong enough to
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: be called haughty, coldness, cutting and chilling me, as the
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: hail had done that came across the sunshine on our
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: marriage morning, sometimes only perceptible in the dexterous avoidance of
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: a tete a tete walk or dinner to which I
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: had been looking forward. I had been deeply pained by this,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: had even felt a sort of crushing of the heart
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: from the sense that my brief day of happiness was
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: near its setting. But still I remained dependent on Bertha,
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: eager for the last rays of a bliss that would
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: soon be gone, forever, hoping and watching for some afterglow
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: more beautiful from the impending night. I remember, how should
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: I not remember the time when that dependence and hope
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: utterly left me, When the sadness I had felt in
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: Berth's growing estrangement became a joy that I looked back
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: upon with longing, as a man might look back on
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: the last pains in a paralyzed limb. It was just
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: after the close of my father's last illness, which had
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: necessarily withdrawn us from society and thrown us more on
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: each other. It was the evening of my father's death.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: On that evening, the veil which had shrouded Bertha's soul
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: from me had made me find in her alone among
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: my fellow beings, the blessed possibility of mystery and doubt
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: and expectation was first withdrawn. Perhaps it was the first
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: day since the beginning of my passion for her, in
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: which that passion was completely neutralized by the presence of
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: an absorbing feeling of another kind. I had been watching.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: By my father's deathbed, I had been witnessing the last fitful,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: yearning glance his soul had cast back on the spent
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: inheritance of life, the last faint consciousness of love he
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: had gathered from the pressure of my hand. What are
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: all our personal loves when we have been sharing in
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: that supreme agony in the first moments, when we come
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: away from the presence of death, every other relation to
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: the living is merged to our feeling, in the great
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: relation of a common nature and a common destiny. In
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: that state of mind, I joined Bertha in her private
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: sitting room. She was seated in a leaning posture on
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: a settee, with her back towards the door, the great
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: rich coils of her pale blonde hair surmounting her small neck,
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: visible above the back of the settee. I remember, as
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: I closed the door behind me, a cold tremulousness seizing me,
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: and a vague sense of being hated and lonely, vague
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: and strong, like a presentiment. I know how I looked
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: at that moment, for I saw myself in Bertha's thought,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: as she lifted her cutting gray eyes and looked at me,
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: a miserable ghost seer surrounded by phantoms in the noonday,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: trembling under a breeze, when the leaves were still, without
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: appetite for the common objects of human desires, but pining
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: after the moonbeams. We were front to front with each
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: other and judged each other. The terrible moment of complete
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: illumination had come to me, and I saw that the
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: darkness had hidden no landscape from me, but only a blank,
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: prosaic wall. From that evening forth through the sickening years
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: which followed, I saw all round the narrow room of
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: this woman's soul. All saw petty artifice and mere negation.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: Where I had delighted to believe in coy sensibilities and
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: in wit at war with latent feeling, saw the light
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: floating vanities of the girl defining themselves into the systematic coquetry.
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: The scheming, selfishness of the woman, saw repulsion and antipathy
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: harden into cruel hatred, giving pain only for the sake
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: of wreaking itself for birth TiO, after her kind felt
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: the bitterness of disillusion. She had believed that my wild
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: poet's passion for her would make me her slave, and
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: that being her slave, I should execute her will in
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: all things with the essential shallowness of a negative, unimaginative nature.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: She was unable to conceive the fact that sensibilities were
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: anything else than weaknesses. She had thought my weaknesses would
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: put me in her power, and she found them unmanageable forces.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: Our positions were reversed. Before marriage, she had completely mastered
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: my imagination, for she was a secret to me, and
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: I created the unknown thought before which I trembled as
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: if it were hers. But now that her soul was
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: laid open to me, now that I was compelled to
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: share the privacy of her motives to follow all the
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: petty devices that preceded her words and acts. She found
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: herself powerless with me except to produce in me the
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: chill shudder of repulsion. Powerless because I could be acted
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: on by no lever within her reach. I was dead
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: to worldly ambitions, to social vanities, to all the incentives
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: within the compass of her narrow imagination. And I lived
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: under influences utterly invisible to her. She was really pitiable
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: to have such a husband, and so all the world
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: thought a graceful, brilliant woman like Bertha, who smiled on
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: morning callers, made a figure in ball rooms, and was
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: capable of that light repartee which from such a woman
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: is accepted as wit, was secure of carrying off all
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: sympathy from a husband who was sickly abstracted, And as
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: some suspected crack brained, even the servants in our house
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: gave her the balance of their regard and pity, for
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: there were no audible quarrels between us. Our alienation or
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: repulsion from each other lay within the silence of our
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: own hearts. And if the mistress went out a great
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: deal and seemed to dislike the Master's society. Was it
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: not natural? Poor thing? The Master was awed. I was
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: kind and just to my dependence. But I excited in
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: them a shrinking half contemptuous pity. For this class of
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: men and women are but slightly determined in their estimate
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: of others by general considerations or even experience of carrying.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: They judge of persons as they judge of coins, and
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: value those who pass current at a high rate. After
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: a time, I interfered so little with Bertha's habits that
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: it might seem wonderful how her hatred towards me could
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: grow so intense and active as it did. But she
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: had begun to suspect, by some involuntary betrayal of mine,
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: that there was an abnormal power of penetration in me
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: that fitfully at least, I was strangely cognizant of her
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: thoughts and intentions, And she began to be haunted by
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: a terror of me, which alternated every now and then
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: with defiance. She meditated continually how the incubus could be
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: shaken off her life, how she could be freed from
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: this hateful bond to a being whom she at once
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: despised as an imbecile and dreaded as an inquisitor. For
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: a long while, she lived in the hope that my
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: evident wretchedness would drive me to the commission of suicide.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: But suicide was not in my nature. I was too
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: completely swayed by the sense that I was in the
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: grasp of unknown forces to believe in my power of
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: self release towards my own destiny. I had become entirely passive,
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: for my one ardent desire had spent itself, and impulse
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: no longer predominated over knowledge. For this reason, I never
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: thought of taking any steps towards a complete separation, which
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: would have made our alienation evident to the world. Why
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: should I rush for help to a new course when
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: I was only suffering from the consequences of a deed
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: which had been the act of my intensest will. That
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: would have been the logic of one who had desires
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: to gratify, and I had no desires. But Bertha and
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: I lived more and more aloof from each other. The
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: rich find it easy to live married and apart. That
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: course of our life, which I have indicated in a
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: few sentences, filled the space of years so much misery,
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: so slow and hideous. A growth of hatred and sin
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: may be compressed into a sentence, and men judge of
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: each other's lives through this summary medium. They epitomize the
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: experience of their fellow mortal and pronounce judgment on him
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: in neat syntax, and feel themselves wise and virtuous conquerors
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: over the temptations they define in well selected predicates. Seven
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: years of wretchedness glide glibly over the lips of the
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: man who has never counted them out. In moments of chill,
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: disappointment of head and heart, throbbings of dread and vain,
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: wrestling of remorse and despair. We learn words by rote,
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: but not their meaning, that must be paid for with
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: our life blood and printed in the subtile fibers of
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: our nerves. But I will hasten to finish my story.
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: Brevity is justified at once to those who readily understand,
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: and to those who will never understand. End of Chapter two,
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: Part one, Chapter two, Part two of The Lifted Veil.
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: Bruce Pirie. The Lifted Veil by George Eliot, Chapter two,
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: Part two. Some years after my father's death, I was
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: sitting by the dim firelight in my library one January evening,
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: sitting in the leather chair that used to be my father's,
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: when Bertha appeared at the door with a candle in
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: her hand and advanced towards me. I knew the bal
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: dress she had on, the white bal dress with the
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: green jewels shone upon by the light of the wax candle,
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: which lit up the medallion of the dying Cleopatra on
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: the mantelpiece. Why did she come to me before going out?
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: I had not seen her in the library, which was
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: my habitual place for months. Why did she stand before
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: me with the candle in her hand, with her cruel,
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: contemptuous eyes fixed on me, and the glittering serpent like
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: a familiar demon on her breast. For a moment, I
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: thought this fulfillment of my vision at Vienna marked some
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: dreadful crisis in my fate. But I saw nothing in
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: Bertha's mind as she stood before me except scorn for
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: the look of overwhelming misery with which I sat before her.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: Fool idiot, Why don't you kill yourself? Then? That was
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: her thought? But at length her thoughts reverted to her errand,
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: and she spoke aloud the apparently indifferent nature of the
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: errand seemed to make a ridiculous anticlimax to my prevision
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: and my agitation. I have had to hire a new maid.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: Fletcher is going to be married, and she wants me
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: to ask you to let her husband have the public
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: house and farm at Molton. I wish him to have it.
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: You must give the promise now, because Fletcher is going
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: tomorrow morning, and quickly, because I am in a hurry.
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: Very well, you may promise her, I said indifferently, and
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: Bertha swept out of the library again. I always shrank
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: from the sight of a new person, and all the
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: more when it was a person whose mental life was
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: likely to weary my reluctant insight with worldly, ignorant trivialities.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: But I shrank especially from the sight of this new
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: maid because her advent had been announced to me at
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: a moment to which I could not cease to attach
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: some fatality. I had a vague dread that I should
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: find her mixed up with the dreary drama of my life,
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: that some new, sickening vision would reveal her to me
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: as an evil genius. When at last I did unavoidably
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: meet her, the vague dread was changed into definite disgust.
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: She was a tall, wiry, dark eyed woman, this missus Archer,
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: with a face handsome enough to give her coarse, hard nature,
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: the odious finish of bold, self confident coquetry that was
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: enough to make me avoid her. Quite apart from the
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: contemptuous feeling with which she contemplated me, I seldom saw her,
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: but I perceived that she rapidly became a favorite with
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: her mistress, And after the lapse of eight or nine months,
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: I began to be aware that there had arisen in
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: Bertha's mind towards this woman a mingled feeling of fear
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: and dependence, and that this feeling was associated with ill
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: defined images of candle light scenes in her dressing room
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: and the locking up of something in Bertha's cabinet. My
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: interviews with my life had become so brief and so
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: rarely solitary, that I had no opportunity of perceiving these
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: images in her mind with more definiteness. The recollections of
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: the past become contracted in the rapidity of thought, till
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: they sometimes bear hardly a more distinct resemblance to the
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: external reality than the forms of an oriental alphabet to
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: the objects that suggested them. Besides, for the last year
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: or more, a modification had been going forward in my
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: mental condition, and was growing more and more marked. My
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: insight into the minds of those around me was becoming
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: dimmer and more fitful, and the ideas that crowded my
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: double consciousness became less and less dependent on any personal contact.
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: All that was personal in me seemed to be suffering
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: a gradual death, so that I was losing the organ
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: through which the personal agitations and projects of others could
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: affect me. But along with this relief from wearisome insight,
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: there was a new development of what I concluded, as
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: I have since found rightly to be a prevision of
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: external scenes. It was as if the relation between me
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: and my fellow men was more and more deadened, and
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: my relation to what we call the inanimate was quickened
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: into new life. The more I lived apart from society,
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: and in proportion as my wretchedness subsided from the violent
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: throb of agonized passion into the dullness of habitual pain,
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: the more frequent and vivid became such visions as that
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: I had had of prague, of strange cities, of sandy plains,
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: of gigantic ruins, of midnight skies with strange bright constellations,
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: of mountain passes, of grassy nooks flecked with the afternoon
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: sunshine through the boughs. I was in the midst of
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: such scenes, and in all of them, one presence seemed
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: to weigh on me. In all all these mighty shapes,
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: the presence of something unknown and pitiless, For continual suffering
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: had annihilated religious faith within me. To the utterly miserable,
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: the unloving, and the unloved, there is no religion possible,
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: no worship but a worship of devils. And beyond all these,
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: and continually recurring, was the vision of my death, the pangs,
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: the suffocation, the last struggle, when life would be grasped
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: at in vain things were in this state near the
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: end of the seventh year. I have become entirely free
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: from insight, from my abnormal cognizance of any other consciousness
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: than my own, and instead of intruding involuntarily into the
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: world of other minds, was living continually in my own
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: solitary future. Bertha was aware that I was greatly changed
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: to my surprise, she had of late seemed to seek
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: opportunity ye of remaining in my society, and had cultivated
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: that kind of distant yet familiar talk which is customary
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: between a husband and wife who live in polite and
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: irrevocable alienation. I bore this with languid submission, and without
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: feeling enough interest in her motives to be roused into
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: keen observation. Yet I could not help perceiving something triumphant
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: and excited in her carriage, and the expression of her face,
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: something too subtle to express itself in words or tones,
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: but giving one the idea that she lived in a
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: state of expectation or hopeful suspense. My chief feeling was
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: satisfaction that her inner self was once more shut out
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: from me, and I almost reveled for the moment in
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: the absent melancholy that made me answer her at cross
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: purposes and betray utter ignorance of what she had been saying.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: I remember well the look and the smile with which
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: she one day said, after a mistake of this kind
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: on my part, I used to think that you were
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: a clairvoyant, and that was the reason why you were
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: so bitter against other clairvoyants, wanting to keep your monopoly.
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: But I see now that you have become rather duller
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: than the rest of the world. I said nothing in reply.
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: It occurred to me that her recent obtrusion of herself
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: upon me might have been prompted by the wish to
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: test my power of detecting some of her secrets. But
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: I let the thought drop again. At once. Her motives
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: and her deeds had no interest for me, and whatever
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: plusues she might be seeking, I had no wish to
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: balk her. There was still pity in my soul, for
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: every living thing and Bertha was living was surrounded with
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: possibilities of misery. Just at this time there occurred an
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: event which roused me somewhat from my inertia and gave
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: me an interest in the passing moment that I had
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: thought impossible for me. It was a visit from Charles Manier,
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: who had written me word that he was coming to
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: England for relaxation from two strenuos labor and would like
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: to see me. Mounier had now a European reputation, but
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: his letter to me expressed that keen remembrance of an
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: early regard, an early debt of sympathy, which is inseparable
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: from nobility of character, And I too felt as if
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: his presence would be to me like a transient resurrection
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: into a happier pre existence. He came, and as far
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: as possible, I renewed our old pleasure of making tete
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: tete excursions, though instead of mountains and glaciers and the
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: wide blue lake, we had to content ourselves with mere
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: slopes and ponds and artificial plantations. The years had changed
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: us both, but with what different result. Monier was now
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: a brilliant figure in society, to whom elegant women pretended
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: to listen, and whose acquaintance was boasted of by noblemen
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: ambitious of brains. He repressed with the utmost delicacy, all
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: betrayal of the show shock which I am sure he
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: must have received from our meeting, or of a desire
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: to penetrate into my condition and circumstances, and sought, by
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: the utmost exertion of his charming social powers, to make
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: our reunion agreeable. Bertha was much struck by the unexpected
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: fascinations of a visitor whom she had expected to find
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: presentable only on the score of his celebrity. And put
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: forth all her coquetries and accomplishments. Apparently she succeeded in
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: attracting his admiration, for his manner towards her was attentive
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: and flattering. The effect of his presence on me was
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: so benignant, especially in those renewals of our old tete
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: tete wanderings, when he poured forth to me wonderful narratives
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: of his professional experience, that more than once, when his
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: talk turned on the psychological relations of disease, the thought
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: crossed my mind that if his stay with me were
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: long enough, I might possible bring myself to tell this
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: man the secrets of my lot. Might there not lie
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: some remedy for me too in his science? Might there
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: not at least lie some comprehension and sympathy ready for
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: me in his large and susceptible mind. But the thought
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: only flickered feebly now and then, and died out before
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: it could become a wish. The horror I had of
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: a game breaking in on the privacy of another soul
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: made me, by an irrational instinct, draw the shroud of
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: concealment more closely around my own as we automatically perform
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: the gesture we feel to be wanting in another. When
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: Mounie's visit was approaching its conclusion, there happened an event
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: which caused some excitement in our household, owing to the
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: surprisingly strong effect it appeared to produce on Bertha. On Bertha,
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: the self possessed, who usually seemed inaccessible to feminine agitations
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: and did even her hate in a self restrained, hygienic manner,
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: this event was the sudden severe illness of her maid,
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: missus Archer. I have reserved to this moment the mention
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: of a circumstance which had forced itself on my notice
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: shortly before Monie's arrival, namely, that there had been some
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: quarrel between Bertha and this maid, apparently during a visit
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: to a distant family in which she had accompanied her mistress.
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: I had overheard Archer speaking in a tone of bitter insolence,
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: which I should have thought an adequate reason for immediate dismissal.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: No dismissal followed. On the contrary, Bertha seemed to be
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: silently putting up with personal inconveniences. From the exhibitions of
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: this woman's temper, I was the more astonished to observe
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: that her illness seemed a cause of strong solicitude to Bertha,
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: that she was at the bedside night and day, and
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: would allow no one else to officiate as head Maarrian.
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: It happened that our family doctor was out on a holiday,
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: an accident which made Mounier's presence in the house doubly welcome,
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: and he apparently entered into the case with an interest
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: which seemed so much stronger than the ordinary professional feeling
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: that one day, when he had fallen into a long
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: fitt of silence after visiting her, I said to him,
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: is this a very peculiar case of disease, Monie? No,
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: he answered, it is an attack of paratonitis, which will
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: be fatal, but which does not differ physically from many
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: other cases that have come under my observation. But I'll
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: tell you what I have on my mind. I want
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: to make an experiment on this woman. If you will
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: give me permission. It can do her no harm, will
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: give her no pain, for I shall not make it
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: until life is extinct to all purposes of sensation. I
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: want to try the effect of transfusing blood into her
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: arteries after the heart has ceased to beat for some minutes.
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: I have tried the experiment again and again with animals
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: that have died of this disease with astounding results, and
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: I want to try it on a human subject. I
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: have the small tubes necessary in a case I have
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: with me, and the rest of the apparatus could be
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: prepared readily. I should use my own blood, take it
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: from my own arm. This woman won't live through the night.
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: I'm convinced, and I want you to promise me your
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: assistance in making the experiment. I can't do without another hand.
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: But it would perhaps not be well to call in
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: a medical assistant from among your provincial doctors. A disagreeable,
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: foolish version of the thing might get abroad. Have you
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: spoken to my wife on the subject, I said, because
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: she appears to be peculiarly sensitive about this woman. She
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: has been a favorite maid to tell you the truth,
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: said Manie, I don't want her to know about it.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: There are always insuperable difficulties with women in these matters,
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: and the effect on the supposed dead body may be startling.
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: You and I will sit up together and be in readiness.
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: When certain symptoms appear. I shall take you in and
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: at the right moment, we must manage to get every
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: one else out of the room. I need not give
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: our farther conversation on the subject. He entered very fully
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: into the details, and overcame my repulsion from them by
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: exciting in me a mingled awe and curiosity concerning the
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: possible results of his experiment. We prepared everything, and he
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: instructed me in my part as assistant. He had not
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: told Bertha of his absolute conviction that Archer would not
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: survive through the night, and endeavored to persuade her to
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: leave the patient and take a knight's rest. But she
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: was obstinate, suspecting the fact that death was at hand,
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: and supposing that he wished merely to save her nerves,
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: she refused to leave the sick room. Monier and I
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: sat up together in the library, he making frequent visits
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: to the sick room and returning with the information that
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: the case was taken king precisely the course he expected.
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: Once he said to me, can you imagine any cause
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: of ill feeling this woman has against her mistress, who
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: is so devoted to her. I think there was some
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: misunderstanding between them before her illness. Why do you ask,
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: because I have observed for the last five or six hours,
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: since I fancy she has lost all hope of recovery.
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: There seems to be a strange prompting in her to
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: say something which pain and failing strength forbid her to utter.
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: And there is a look of hideous meaning in her eyes,
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: which she turns continually towards her mistress. In this disease,
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: the mind often remains singularly clear to the last. I
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: am not surprised at an indication of malevolent feeling in her,
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: I said, she is a woman who has always inspired
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: me with distrust and dislike, but she managed to insinuate
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: herself into her mistress's favor. He was silent after this,
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: looking at the fire with an air of absorption, till
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: he went upstairs again. He stayed away longer than usual,
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: and on returning, said to me quietly, come now. I
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: followed him to the chamber, where death was hovering. The
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: dark hangings of the large bed made a background that
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: gave a strong relief to Bertha's pale face. As I entered.
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: She started forward as she saw me enter, and then
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: looked at Monie with an expression of angry inquiry. But
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: he lifted up his hand as if to impose silence,
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: while he fixed his glance on the dying woman and
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: felt her pulse. The face was pinched and ghastly. A
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: cold perspiration was on the forehead, and the eyelids were
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: lowered so as to conceal the large, dark eyes. After
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: a minute or two, Monie walked round to the other
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: side of the bed where Bertha stood, and with his
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: usual air of gentle politeness towards her, begged her to
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: leave the patient under our care. Everything should be done
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: for her. She was no longer in the state to
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: be conscious of an affectionate presence. Bertha was hesitating, apparently
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: almost willing to believe his assurance and to comply. She
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: looked round at the ghastly dying face as if to
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: read the confirmation of that assurance, when for a moment
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: the lowered eyelids were raised again, and it seemed as
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: if the eyes were looking towards Bertha, but blankly. A
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: shudder passed through Bertha's frame, and she returned to her
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: station near the pillow, tacitly, implying that she would not
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: leave the room. The eyelids were lifted no more. Once
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: I looked at Bertha as she watched the face of
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: the dying one. She wore a rich pennoir, and her
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: blonde hair was half covered by a lace cap. In
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: her attire, she was, as always an elegant woman, fit
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: to figure in a picture of modern aristocratic life. But
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: I asked myself how that face of hers could ever
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: have seemed to me the face of a woman born
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: of woman with memories of childhood, capable of pain, needing
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: to be fondled. The features at that moment seemed so
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: preternaturally sharp, The eyes were so hard and eager. She
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: looked like a cruel immortal finding her spiritual feast in
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: the agonies of a dying race. For across those hard
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: features there came something like a flash, when the last
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: hour had been breathed out, and we all felt that
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: the dark veil had completely fallen. What secret was there
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: between Bertha and this woman? I turned my eyes from
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: her with a horrible dread, lest my insight should return
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: and I should be obliged to see what had been
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: breeding about two unloving women's hearts. I felt that Bertha
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: had been watching for the moment of death as the
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: ceiling of her secret. I thanked heaven it could remain
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: sealed for me. Monie said quietly, she is gone. He
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: then gave his arm to Bertha, and she submitted to
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: be led out of the room. I suppose it was
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: at her order that two female attendants came into the
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: room and dismissed the younger one who had been present before.
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: When they entered, Maniere had already opened the artery in
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: the long thin neck that lay rigid on the pillow,
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: and I dismissed them, ordering them to remain at a
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: distance till we rang. The doctor, I said, had an
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: operation to perform. He was not sure about the death.
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: For the next twenty minutes, I forgot everything but Manier
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: and the experiment in which he was so absorbed that
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: I think his senses would have been closed against all
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: sounds or sights which had no relation to it. It
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: was my task at first to keep up the artificial
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: respiration in the body after the transfusion had been effected.
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: But presently Monie relieved me, and I could see the
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: wondrous slow return of life. The breast began to heave,
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: the inspirations became stronger, the eyelids quivered, and the soul
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: seemed to have returned beneath them. The artificial respiration was withdrawn. Still,
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: the breathing continued, and there was a movement of the lips.
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: Just then I heard the handle of the door moving.
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: I supposed Bertha had heard from the women that they
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: had been dismissed. Probably a vague fear had arisen in
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: her mind, for she entered with a look of alarm.
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: She came to the foot of the bed and gave
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: a stifled cry. The dead woman's eyes were wide open
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: and met hers in full recognition, the recognition of hate.
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: With a sudden, strong effort, the hand that Bertha had
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: thought forever still was pointed towards her, and the haggard
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: face moved. The gasping, eager voice said, you mean to
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: poison your husband. The poison is in the black cabinet.
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: I got it for you. You laughed at me and
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: told lies about me behind my back, to make me
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: disgusting because you were jealous. Are you sorry now? The
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: lips continued to murmur, but the sounds were no longer distinct.
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: Soon there was no sound, only a slight movement. The
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: flame had leaped out and was being extinguished. The faster
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: the wretched woman's heart strings had been set to hatred
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: and vengeance. The spirit of life had swept the chords
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: for an instant and was gone again forever. Great God,
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: is this what it is to live again? To wake
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: up with our unstilled thirst upon us, with our unuttered
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: curses rising to our lips, with our muscles ready to
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: act out their half committed sins. Bertha stood pale at
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: the foot of the bed, quivering and helpless, despairing of devices,
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: like a cunning animal whose hiding places are surrounded by swift,
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: advancing flame. Even Manier looked paralyzed life for that moment
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: ceased to be a scientific problem to him. As for me,
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: this scene seemed of one texture with the rest of
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: my existence. Horror was my familiar, and this new revelation
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: was only like an old pain, recurring with new circumstances.
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: Since then, Bertha and I have lived apart, she in
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: her own neighborhood, the mistress of half our wealth, I
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: as a wanderer in foreign countries, until I came to
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: this Devonshire nest to die. Bertha lives pitied and admired
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: for what had I against that charming woman whom everyone
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: but myself could have been happy with There had been
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: no witness of the scene in the dying room except Mounie.
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: And while Munie lived, his lips were sealed by a
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: promise to me once or twice. Weary of wandering, I
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: rested in a favorite spot, and my heart went out
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: towards the men and women and children whose faces were
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: becoming familiar to me. But I was driven away again
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: in terror at the approach of my old insight, driven
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: away to live continually with the one unknown presence, revealed
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: and yet hidden by the moving curtain of the earth
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: and sky, till at last disease took hold of me
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: and forced me to rest here, forced me to live
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: in dependence on my servant. And then the curse of insight,
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: of my double consciousness, came again and has never left me.
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: I know all their narrow thoughts, their feeble regard, their
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: half wearied pity. It is the twentieth of September eighteen fifty.
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: I know these figures I have just written, as if
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: they were a long familiar inscription. I have seen them
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: on this page in my desk, unnumbered times, when the
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: scene of my dying struggle has opened upon me end
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: of Chapter two, End of the Lifted Veil by George
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: Eliot