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Lifted Veil - George Eliot · Carmilla

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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
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  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
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  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
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  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
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  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 sceptid 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.
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  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
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  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: plants 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
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  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
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  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
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  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
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  Speaker 1: I looked up at the departing glow leaving one mountain
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  Speaker 1: top after the other, as if the prophet's chariot of
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  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
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  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
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  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.
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  Speaker 1: His real surname an English one, for he was of
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  Speaker 1: English extraction, having since become celebrated. He was an orphan
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  Speaker 1: who lived on a miserable pittance while he pursued the
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  Speaker 1: medical studies for which he had a special genius. Strange that,
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  Speaker 1: with my vague mind susceptible and unobservant, hating inquiry and
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  Speaker 1: given up to contemplation, I should have been drawn towards
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  Speaker 1: a youth whose strongest passion was science. But the bond
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  Speaker 1: was not an intellectual one. It came from a source
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  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.
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  Speaker 1: Charles was poor and ugly, derided by Genevive's gamer and
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  Speaker 1: not acceptable in drawing rooms. I saw that he was
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  Speaker 1: isolated as I was, though from a different cause, and
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  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
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  Speaker 1: much comradeship between us as our different habits would allow.
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  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
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  Speaker 1: to the monologues in which he unfolded his bold conceptions
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  Speaker 1: of future experiment and discovery. I mingled them confusedly in
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  Speaker 1: my thought, with glimpses of blue water and delicate floating cloud,
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  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
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  Speaker 1: to narrate in my subsequent life. This happier life at
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  Speaker 1: Geneva was put an end to by a severe illness,
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  Speaker 1: which is partly a blank to me, partly a time
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  Speaker 1: of dimly remembered, suffering with the presence of my father
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  Speaker 1: by my bed from time to time. Then came the
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  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
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  Speaker 1: and longer drives. On one of these more vividly remembered days,
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  Speaker 1: my father said to me, as he sat beside my sofa,
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  Speaker 1: when you are quite well enough to travel, Latimer, I
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  Speaker 1: shall take you home with me. The journey will amuse
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  Speaker 1: you and do you good. For I shall go through
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  Speaker 1: the Tyrol and Austria, and you will see many new places.
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  Speaker 1: Our neighbors, the Fillmoores are come. Alfred will join us
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  Speaker 1: at Basel, and we shall all go together to Vienna
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  Speaker 1: and back by Prague. My father was called away before
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  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
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  Speaker 1: a new and wondrous scene was breaking upon me, a
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  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,
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  Speaker 1: arrested in its course, unrefreshed for ages by dews of
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  Speaker 1: night or the rushing rain cloud scorching the dusty, weary,
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  Speaker 1: time eating and grandeur of a people doomed to live
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  Speaker 1: on in the stale repetition of memories like deposed and
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  Speaker 1: superannuated kings in their regal gold in woven tatters. The
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  Speaker 1: city looked so thirsty that the broad river seemed to
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  Speaker 1: me a sheet of metal, and the blackened statues, as
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  Speaker 1: I passed under their blank gaze along the unending bridge,
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  Speaker 1: with their ancient garments and their saintly crowns, seemed to
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  Speaker 1: me the real inhabitants and owners of this place, while
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  Speaker 1: the busy trivial men and women hurrying to and fro
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  Speaker 1: were 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,
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  Speaker 1: who are the fathers of ancient faded children in those tanned,
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  Speaker 1: time fretted dwellings that crowd the steep before me, Who
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  Speaker 1: pay their court in the worn and crumbling pomp of
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  Speaker 1: the palace, which which is its monotonous length on the height,
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  Speaker 1: Who worship wearily in the stifling air of the churches,
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  Speaker 1: urged by no fear or hope, but compelled by their
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  Speaker 1: doom to be ever old and undying to live on
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  Speaker 1: in the rigidity of habit as they live on in
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  Speaker 1: perpetual mid day, without the repose of night or the
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  Speaker 1: new birth of morning. A stunning clang of metal suddenly
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  Speaker 1: thrilled through me, and I became conscious of the objects
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  Speaker 1: in my room again. One of the fire irons had fallen.
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  Speaker 1: As Pierre opened the door to bring me my draft.
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  Speaker 1: My heart was palpitating violently, and I begged Pierre to
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  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
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  Speaker 1: a patch of rainbow light on the pavement, transmitted through
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  Speaker 1: a colored lamp, in the shape of the star of
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  Speaker 1: a strange city, quite unfamiliar to my imagination. I had
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  Speaker 1: seen no picture of Prague. It lay in my mind
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  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
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: twenty a tall, slim, willowy figure with luxuriant blonde hair
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: arranged in cunning braids and folds that looked almost too
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: massive for the slight figure and the small, featured, thin
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: lipped face. They crowned, but the face had not a
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: girlish expression. The features were sharp, the pale gray eyes
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: at once acute, restless, and sarcastic. They were fixed on
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: me in half smiling curiosity, and I felt a painful sensation,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: as if a sharp wind were cutting at me. The
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: pale green dress and the green leaves that seemed to
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: form a border about her pale blonde hair made me
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: think of a water nixy, For my mind was full
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: of German lyrics, and this pale, fatal eyed woman with
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: the green weeds looked like a berth from some cold,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: sedgy stream, the daughter of an aged river. Well, Latimer,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: you thought me long, my father said. But while the
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: last word was in my ears, the whole group vanished,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: and there was nothing between me and the Chinese printed
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: folding screen that stood before the door. I was cold
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: and trembling. I could only tott her forward and throw
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: myself on the sofa. This strange new power had manifested
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: itself again. But was it a power? Might it not
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: rather be a disease, a sort of intermittent delirium, concentrating
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: my energy of brain into moments of unhealthy activity and
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: leaving my saner hours all the more barren I felt
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: a dizzy sense of unreality in what my eye rested on.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: I grasped the bell convulsively, like one trying to free
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: himself from nightmare, and rang it twice. Pierre came with
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: a look of alarm in his face. Monsieur le sauscrufe papier,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: he said, anxiously. I'm tired of waiting. Pierre, I said,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: as distinctly and emphatically as I could, like a man
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: determined to be sober in spite of wine. I'm afraid
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: something has happened to my father. He's usually so punctual.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Run to the Hotel de Berg and see if he
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: is there. Pierre left the room at once with a
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: soothing Pierre monsieur, and I felt the better for this
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: scene of simple waking prose. Seeking to calm myself still further,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: I went into my bedroom, joining the salon and opened
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: a case of Eau de cologne, took out a bottle,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: went through the process of taking out the cork very neatly,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: and then rubbed the reviving spirit over my hands and
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: forehead and under my nostrils, drawing a new delight from
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: the scent because I had procured it by slow details
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: of labor and by no strange sudden madness. Already I
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: had begun to taste something of the horror that belongs
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: to the lot of a human being whose nature is
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: not adjusted to simple human conditions. Still enjoying the scent,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: I returned to the salon, but it was not unoccupied,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: as it had been before I left it. In front
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: of the Chinese folding screen, there was my father, with
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Missus Fillmore on his right hand, and on his left
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: the slim blonde haired girl with the keen face and
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: the keen eyes fixed on me in half smile, selling curiosity. Well, Latimer,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: you thought me long, my father said. I heard no more,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: felt no more till I became conscious that I was
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: lying with my head low on the sofa Pierre and
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: my father by my side. As soon as I was
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: thoroughly revived, my father left the room and presently returned, saying,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: I've been to tell the ladies how you are, Latimer.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: They were waiting in the next room. We shall put
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: off our shopping expedition to day. Presently, he said that
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: young lady is Bertha Grant, missus Fillmore's orphan niece. Pillmore
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: has adopted her, and she lives with them. So you
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: will have her for a neighbor when we go home,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: perhaps for a near relation, for there is a tenderness
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: between her and Alfred I suspect, and I should be
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: gratified by the match, since Fillmore means to provide for
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: her in every way as if she were his daughter.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: It had not occurred to me that you knew nothing
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: about her living with the Fillmoors. He made no further
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: allusion to the fact of my having fainted at the
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: moment of seeing her, and I would not for the
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: world have told him the reason. I shrank from the
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: idea of disclosing to anyone what might be regarded as
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: a pitiable peculiarity, most of all from betraying it to
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: my father, who would have suspected my sanity. Ever after,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: I do not mean to dwell with particularity on the
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: details of my experience. I have described these two cases
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: at length because they had definite, clearly traceable results in
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: my after lot. End of Chapter one, Part one, Chapter one,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Part two of The Lifted Veil. This LibriVox recording is
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: in the public domain recording by Bruce Pirie The Lifted
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Veil by George Elliot, Chapter one, Part two. Shortly after
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: this last occurrence, I think the very next day, I
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: began to be aware of a phase in my abnormal
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: sensibility to which, from the languid and slight nature of
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: my intercourse with others since my illness, I had not
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: been alive before, this was the obtrusion on my mind
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: of the mental process going forward in first one person
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: and then another with whom I happened to be in contact.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: The vagrant, frivolous ideas and emotions of some uninteresting acquaintance
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Missus Fillmore, for example, would force themselves on my consciousness,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: like an importunate ill played musical instrument, or the loud
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: activity of an imprisoned insect. But this unpleasant sensibility was
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: fit for and left me moments of rest, when the
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: souls of my companions were once more shut out from
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: me and I felt a relief such as silence brings
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: to wearied nerves. I might have believed this importunate insight
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: to be merely a diseased activity of the imagination, but
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: that my prevision of incalculable words and actions proved it
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: to have a fixed relation to the mental process in
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: other minds. But this superadded consciousness wearying and annoying enough
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: when it urged on me. The trivial experience of indifferent
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: people became an intense pain and grief when it seemed
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: to be opening to me the souls of those who
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: were in a close relation to me. When the rational talk,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: the graceful attentions, the wittily turned phrases, and the kindly
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: deeds which used to make the web of their characters
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: were seen as if thrust asunder by a microscopic vision
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: that showed all the intermediate frivolities, all the suppressed egoism,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: all the struggling chaos of puerilities, meanness, vague, capricious memories,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: and indolent makeshift thoughts from which human words and deeds
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: emerge like leaflets covering a fermenting heap. At Basle, we
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: were joined by my brother Alfred, now a handsome, self
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: confident man of six and twenty, a thorough contrast to
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: my fragile, nervous, ineffectual self. I believe I was held
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: to have a sort of half womanish, half ghostly beauty.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: For the portrait painters, who are thick as weeds at Geneva,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: had often asked me to sit to them, and I
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: had been the model of a dying minstrel in a
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: fancy picture. But I thoroughly disliked my own physique, and
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: nothing but the belief that it was a condition of
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: poetic genius would have reconciled me to it. That brief
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: hope was quite fled, and I saw in my face
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: now nothing but the stamp of a morbid organization, framed
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: for passive suffering, too feeble for the sublime resistance of
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: poetic production. Alfred, from whom I had been almost constantly separated,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: and who in his present stage of character and appearance,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: came before me as a perfect stranger, was bent on
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: being extremely friendly and brother like to me. He had
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: the superficial kindness of a good humored, self satisfied nature
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: that fears no rivalry and has encountered no contrarities. I
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: am not sure that my disposition was good enough for
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: 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,
• 36:07
  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 aware 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
• 37:16
  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
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: an unraveled destiny. I say it was this fact that
• 37:44
  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
• 38:31
  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
• 38:39
  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 liked 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
• 41:12
  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 subtilest 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 fluxu situations of hope and fear
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: confined to this one channel made each day in her
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: presence a delicious torment. There was one deliberate act of
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: hers which especially helped to intoxicate me. When we were
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: at Vienna, her twentieth birthday occurred, and as she was
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: very fond of ornaments, we all took the opportunity of
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: the splendid jeweler's shops in that Teutonic Paris to purchase
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: her a birthday present of jewelry. Mine, naturally was the
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: least expensive. It was an opal ring. The opal was
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: my favorite stone because it seems to blush and turn
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: pale as if it had a soul. I told Bertha
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: so when I gave it her, and said that it
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: was an emblem of the poetic nature changing with the
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: changing light of heaven and of woman's eyes. In the evening,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: she appeared elegantly dressed and wearing conspicuously all the birthday
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: pre except mine. I looked eagerly at her fingers, but
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: saw no opal. I had no opportunity of noticing this
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: to her during the evening, But the next day, when
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: I found her seated near the window alone after breakfast,
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: I said, you scorned to wear my poor opal. I
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: should have remembered that you despised poetic natures, and should
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: have given you coral or turquoise, or some other opaque,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: unresponsive stone. Do I despise it, she answered, taking hold
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: of a delicate gold chain which she always wore round
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: her neck, and drawing out the end from her bosom,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: with my ring hanging to it. It hurts me a little,
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: I 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 in 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.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: Now it was my father, and now my brother, now
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: Missus Fillmore, or her husband, and now our German courier,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: whose stream of thought rushed upon me like a ringing
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: in the ears, not to be got rid of, though
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: it allowed my own impulses and ideas to continue their
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: uninterrupted course. It was like a preternaturally heightened sense of hearing,
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: making audible to one a roar of sound where others
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: find perfect stillness. The weariness and disgust of this involuntary
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: intrusion into other souls was counteracted only by my ignorance
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: of Bertha and my growing passion for her, a passion
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: enormously stimulated, if not produced by that ignorance. She was
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: my oasis of mystery in the dreary desert of knowledge.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: I had never allowed my diseased condition to betray itself
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: or to drive me into any unusual speech or action,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: except once, when, in a moment of peculiar bitterness against
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: my brother, I had forestalled some words which I knew
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: he was going to utter, a clever observation which he
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: had prepared beforehand. He had occasionally a slightly affected hesitation
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: in his speech, and when he paused an instant after
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: the second word, my impatience and jealousy impelled me to
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: continue the speech for him, as if it were something
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: we had both learned by rote. He colored and looked
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: astonished as well as annoyed, and the words had no
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: sooner escaped my lips than I felt a shock of
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: alarm lest such an anticipation of words, very far from
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: being words, of course easy to divine, should have betrayed
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: me as an exceptional being, a sort of quiet energuman,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: whom everyone, Bertha above all, would shudder at and avoid.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: But I magnified, as usual the impression any word or
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: deed of mine could produce on others, for no one
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: gave any sign of having noticed my interruption as more
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: than a rudeness to be forgiven me on the score
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: of my feeble nervous condition. While this superadded consciousness of
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: the actual was almost constant with me, I had never
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: had a recurrence of that distinct prevision which I have
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: described in relation to my first interview with Bertha. And
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: I was waiting with eager curiosity to know whether or
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: not my vision of Prague would prove to have been
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: an instance of the same kind. A few days after
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: the incident of the Opal Ring, we were paying one
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: of our frequent visits to the Lichtenburg Palace. I could
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: never look at many pictures in succession, for pictures when
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: they are at all powerful, affect me so strongly that
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: one or two exhaust all my capability of contemplation. This
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: morning I had been looking at Giorgioni's picture of the
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: cruel eyed woman, said to be a likeness of Lucrezia Borgia.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: I had stood long alone before it, fascinated by the
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: terrible reality of that cunning, relentless face, till I felt
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: a strange, poisoned sensation, as if I had long been
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: inhaling a fatal odor and was just beginning to be
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: conscious of its effects. Perhaps even then I should not
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: have moved away, if the rest of the party had
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: not returned to this room and announced that they were
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: going to the Belvidere gallery to settle a bet which
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: had arisen between my brother and mister Fillmore about a portrait.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: I followed them dreamily, and was hardly alive to what
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: occurred till they had all gone up to the gallery,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: leaving me below, for I refused to come within sight
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: of another picture. That day, I made my way to
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: the Grand Terrace, since it was agreed that we should
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: saunter in the gardens. When the dispute had been decided.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: I had been sitting here a short space, vaguely conscious
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: of trim gardens, with a city in green hills in
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: the distance. When wishing to avoid the proximity of the sentinel,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: I rose and walked down the broad stone steps, intending
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: to seat myself farther on in the gardens. Just as
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: I reached the gravel walk, I felt an 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 mine,
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: 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
• 50:57
  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
• 51:37
  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.
• 51:50
  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 cloth 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
• 52:22
  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 minutie eye, as
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: if they had been burnt into my men. And yet
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: such is the madness of the human heart under the
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: influence of its immediate desires. I felt a wild, hell
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: braving joy that Bertha was to be mine for the
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: fulfillment of my former prevision concerning her first appearance before
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: me left me little hope that this last hideous glimpse
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: of the future was the mere diseased play of my
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: own mind, and had no relation to external realities. One
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: thing alone I looked towards as a possible means of
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: casting doubt on my terrible conviction, the discovery that my
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: vision of Prague had been false, and Prague was the
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: next city on our route. Meanwhile, I was no sooner
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: in Bertha's society again than I was as completely under
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: her sway as before. What if I saw into the
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: heart of Bertha, the matured woman, Bertha, my wife, Bertha
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: the girl was a fascinating secret to me. Still I
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: trembled under her touch. I felt the witchery of her presence.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: I yearned to be assured of her love. The fear
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: of poison is feeble against the sense of thirst. Nay,
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: I was just as jealous of my brother as before,
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: just as much irritated by his small, patronizing ways. For
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: my pride. My diseased sensibility were there as they had
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: always been, and winced as inevitably under every offense as
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: my eye winced from an intruding mote. The future, even
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: when brought within the compass of feeling by a vision
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: that made me shudder, had still no more than the
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: force of an idea. Compared with the force of present emotion,
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: of my love for Bertha, of my dislike and jealousy
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: towards my brother. It is an old story that men
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: sell themselves to the tempter and sign a bond with
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: their blood, because it is only to take effect at
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: a distant day. Then rush on to snatch the cup
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: their souls thirst after, with an impulse not the less savage,
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: because there is a dark shadow beside them forevermore. There
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: is no short cut, no patent tramroad to wisdom, after
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: all the centuries of invention. The soul's path lies through
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: the thorny wilderness, which must be still trodden in solitude
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: trodden by them of old time. My mind speculated eagerly
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: on the means by which I should become my brother's
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: successful rival, For I was still too timid in my
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: ignorance of Bertha's actual feeling to venture on any step
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: that would urge from her an avowal of it. I
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: thought I should gain confidence even for this, if my
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: vision of Prague proved to have been voracious. And yet
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: the horror of that certitude behind the slim girl Bertha,
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: whose words and looks I watched, for whose touch was bliss.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: There stood continually that Bertha, with the fuller form, the
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: harder eyes, the more rigid mouth, with the barren, selfish
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: soul laid bare, no longer a fascinating secret, but a
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: measured fact, urging itself perpetually on my unwilling sight. Are
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: you unable to give me your sympathy? You who read this?
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: Are you unable to imagine this double consciousness at work
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: within me, flowing on like two parallel streams which never
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: mingle their waters and blend into a common hue. Yet
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: you must have known something of the presentiments that spring
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: from an insight at war with passion, And my visions
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: were only like presentiments, intensified to horror. You have known
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: the powerlessness of ideas before the might of impulse, and
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: by visions, when once they had passed into memory, were
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: mere ideas, pale shadows that beckoned in vain while my
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: hand was grasped by the living and the loved. In
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: after days, I thought, with bitter regret, that if I
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: had foreseen something more, or something different, if instead of
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: that hideous vision which poisoned the passion it could not destroy,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: or if even along with it. I could have had
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: a foreshadowing of that moment when I looked on my
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: brother's face for the last time, Some softening influence would
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: have been shed over my feeling towards him. Pride and
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: hatred would surely have been subdued into pity, and the
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: record of those hidden sins would have been shortened. But
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: this is one of the vain thoughts with which we
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: men flatter ourselves. We try to believe that the egoism
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: within us would have easily been melted, and that it
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: was only the narrowness of our knowledge which hemmed in
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: our generosity, our awe, our human piety, and hindered them
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: from submerging. Our heart indifference to the sensations and emotions
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: of our fellows. Our tenderness and self renunciation seems strong
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: when our egoism has had its day, When after our
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: mean striving for a triumph that is to be another's loss,
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: the triumph comes suddenly and we shudder at it because
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: it is held out by the chill hand of death.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: Our arrival in Prague happened at night, and I was
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: glad of this, for it seemed like a deferring of
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: a terribly decisive moment to be in the city for
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: ours without seeing it. As we were not to remain
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: long in Prague, but to go on speedily to Dresden,
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: it was proposed that we should drive out the next
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: morning and take a general view of the place, as
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: well as visit some of its specially interesting spots, before
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: the heat became oppressive, for we were in August and
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: the season was hot and dry. But it happened that
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: the ladies were rather late at their morning toilet, and
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: to my father's politely repressed but perceptible annoyance, we were
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: not in the carriage till the morning was far advanced.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: I thought, with a sense of relief, as we entered
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: the Jews Quarter, where we were to visit the old Synagogue,
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: that we should be kept in this flat, shut up
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: part of the city until we should all be too
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: tired and too warm to go farther, and so we
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: should return without seeing more than the streets through which
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: we had already passed. That would give me another day's suspense.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Suspense the only form in which a fearful spirit knows
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: the solace of hope. But as as I stood under
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: the blackened, groined arches, of that old synagogue, made dimly
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: visible by the seven thin candles in the sacred lamp.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: While our Jewish cicerone reached down the Book of the
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: Law and read to us in its ancient tongue, I
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: felt a shuddering impression that this strange building, with its
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: shrunken lights, this surviving, withered remnant of medieval Judaism, was
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: of a peace with my vision. Those darkened, dusty Christian saints,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: with their loftier arches and their larger candles, needed the
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: consolatory scorn with which they might point to a more
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: shriveled death in life than their own, as I expected.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: When we left the Jews Quarter, the elders of our
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: party wished to return to the hotel. But now, instead
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: of rejoicing in this as I had done beforehand, I
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: felt a sudden, over powering impulse to go on at
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: once to the bridge and put an end to the
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: suspense I had been wishing to protract. I declared, with
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: unusual decision that I would get out of the carriage
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: and walk on alone. They might return without me. My father,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: thinking this merely a sample of my usual poetic nonsense,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: objected that I should only do myself harm by walking
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: in the heat. But when I persisted, he said angrily
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: that I might follow my own absurd devices, but that Schmidt,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: our courier, must go with me. I assented to this
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: and set off with Schmidt towards the bridge. I had
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: no sooner passed from under the archway of the grand
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: old Gate leading onto the bridge, than a trembling seized me,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: and I turned cold under the midday sun. Yet I
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: went on. I was in search of something, a small
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: detail which I remembered with special intensity as part of
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: my vision there. It was the patch of rainbow light
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: on the pavement, transmitted through a lamp in the shape
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: of a star. End of Chapter one, Chapter two, Part
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: one of The Lifted Veil. This LibriVox recording is in
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: the public domain recording by Bruce Pirie The Lifted Veil
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: by George Elliot, Chapter two. Before the autumn was at
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: an end, and while the brown leaves still stood thick
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: on the beaches in our park, my brother and Bertha
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: were engaged to each other, and it was understood that
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: their marriage was to take place early in the next spring.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: In spite of the certainty I had felt from that
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: moment on the bridge at Prague that Bertha would one
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: day be my wife. My constitutional timidity and distrust had
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: continued to benumb me, and the words in which I
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: had sometimes premeditated a confession of my love had died
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: away unuttered. The same conflict had gone on within me
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: as before, the longing for an assurance of love from
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: Bertha's lips. The dread lest a word of contempt and
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: denial should fall upon me like a corrosive acid. What
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: was the conviction of a distant necessity to me? I
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: trembled under a present glance. I hungered after a present joy.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: I was clogged and chilled by a present fear. And
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: so the days passed on. I witnessed Bertha's engagement and
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: heard her marriage discussed as if I were under a
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: 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
• 1:04:15
  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
• 1:04:31
  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
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: under the sense of our suffering than at the thought
• 1:04:42
  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
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: being finely organized for pain, but with hardly any fibers
• 1:04:53
  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
• 1:05:12
  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
• 1:05:35
  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
• 1:06:04
  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
• 1:06:22
  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.
• 1:06:59
  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 trimly 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
• 1:09:15
  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
• 1:09:29
  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,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: tas she said, seizing my wrist and peeping round into
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: my face. Are you really beginning to discern what a
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: heartless girl I am? Why you are not half the
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: poet I thought you were? You are actually capable of
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: believing the truth about me. The shadow passed from between
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: us and was no longer the object nearest to me,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: The girl whose light fingers grasped me, whose elfish, charming
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: face looked into mine, who I thought was betraying an
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: interest in my feelings that she would not have directly avowed.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: This warm, breathing presence again possessed my senses and imagination,
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: like a returning siren melody which had been overpowered for
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: an instant by the roar of threatening waves. It was
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: a moment as delicious to me as the waking up
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: to a consciousness of youth after a dream of middle age.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: I forgot everything but my passion, 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
• 1:11:13
  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 forere
• 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
• 1:11:54
  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
• 1:12:08
  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
• 1:12:15
  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
• 1:12:41
  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 insight into his inner self a
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: constant affliction to me. But now, as I went up
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: to him and stood beside him in sad silence, I
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: felt the presence of a new element that blended us
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: as we had never been blent before. My father had
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: been one of the most successful men in the money
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: 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
• 1:13:48
  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: compactis I had ever felt, I should have been stung
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: by the perception that my father transferred the inheritance of
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: an eldest son to me, with a mortified sense that
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: fate had compelled him to the unwelcome course of caring
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: for me as an important being. It was only in
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: spite of himself that he began to think of me
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: with anxious regard. There is hardly any neglected child for
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: whom death has made vacant a more favored place, who
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: will not understand what I mean. Gradually, However, my new
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: deference to his wishes, the effect of that patience, which
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: was born of my pity for him, won upon his affection,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: and he began to please himself with the endeavor to
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: make me fill my brother's place as fully as my
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: feebler personality would admit. I saw that the prospect which
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: by and by presented itself of my becoming birth's husband
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: was welcome to him, and he even contemplated in my
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: case what he had not intended in my brothers, that
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: his son and daughter in law should make one household
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: with him. My softened feelings towards my father made this
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: the happiest time I had known since childhood. These last
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: months in which I retained the delicious illusion of loving Bertha,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: of longing and doubting and hoping that she might love me,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: She behaved with a certain new consciousness and distance towards
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: me after my brother's death, and I too was under
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: a double constraint, that of delicacy towards my brother's memory
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: and of anxiety as to the impression my abrupt words
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: had left on her mind. But the additional screen, this
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: mutual reserve, erected between us, only brought me more completely
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: under her power, no matter how empty the adatum, so
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: that the veil be thick enough, so absolutely as our
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: soul's need of something hidden and uncertain, for the maintenance
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: of that doubt and hope and effort which are the
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: breath of its life, that if the whole future were
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: laid bare to us beyond today, the interest of all
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: mankind would be bent on the hours that lie between.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: We should pant after the uncertainties of our one morning
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: and our one afternoon. We should rush fiercely to the
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: exchange for our last possibility of speculation, of success, of disappointment.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: We should have a glut of political profits for telling
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: a crisis or a no crisis within the only twenty
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: four hours left open to prophecy. Conceive the condition of
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: the human mind if all propositions whatsoever were self evident,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: except one which was to become self evident at the
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: close of a summer's day, but in the meantime might
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: be the subject of question of hypothesis, of debate, art
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: and philosophy, littertre sure, and science would fasten like bees
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: on that one proposition which had the honey of probability
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: in it, and be the more eager because their enjoyment
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: would end with sunset. Our impulses, our spiritual activities no
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: more adjust themselves to the idea of their future nullity
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: than the beating of our heart or the irritability of
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: our muscles. Bertha, the slim, fair haired girl, whose present
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: thoughts and emotions were an enigma to me amidst the
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: fatiguing obviousness of the other minds around me, was as
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: absorbing to me as a single unknown today as a
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: single hypothetic proposition to remain problematic till sunset, And all
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: the cramped hemmed in belief and disbelief, trust, and distrust
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: 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 requitting her tone of badiinage 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
• 1:19:31
  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,
• 1:20:16
  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
• 1:20:44
  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 society among sane men. For he delighted in Bertha's
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: tact and acuteness, and felt sure she would be mistress
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: of me and make me what she chose. I was
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: only twenty one and madly in love with her. Poor
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: father he kept that hope a little while after our
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: first year of marriage, and it was not quite extinct
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: when paralysis came and saved him from utter disappointment. I
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: shall hurry through the rest of my story, not dwelling
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: so much as I have hitherto done on my inward experience.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: When people are well known to each other, they talk
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: rather of what befalls them externally, leaving their feelings and
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: sentiments to be inferred. We lived in a round of
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: visits for some time after our return home, giving splendid
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: dinner parties and making a sensation in our neighborhood by
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: the new luster of our equipage, for my father had
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: reserved this display of his increased wealth for the period
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: of his son's bad marriage, and we gave our acquaintances
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: liberal opportunity for remarking that it was a pity I
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: made so poor a figure as an heir and a bridegroom.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: The nervous fatigue of this existence, the insincerities and platitudes
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: which I had to live through twice over through my
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: inner and outward sense, would have been maddening to me
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: if I had not had that sort of intoxicated callousness
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: which came from the delights of a first passion. A
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: bride and bridegroom, surrounded by all the appliances of wealth,
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: hurried through the day by the whirl of society, filling
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: their solitary moments with hastily snatched caresses, are prepared for
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: their future life together, as the novice is prepared for
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: the cloister by experiencing its utmost contrast. Through all these crowded,
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: excited months, Bertha's inward self remained shrouded from me, and
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: I still read her thoughts only through the language of
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: her lips and demeanor. I still had the human interest
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: of wondering whether what I did and said pleased her,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: of longing to hear a word of affection, of giving
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: a delicious exaggeration of meaning to her smile. But I
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: was conscious of a growing difference in her manner towards me,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: sometimes strong enough to be called haughty, coldness, cutting and
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: chilling me, as the hail had done that came across
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: the sunshine on our marriage morning, sometimes only perceptible in
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: the dexterous avoidance of a tete a tete walk or
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: dinner to which I had been looking forward. I had
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: been deeply pained by this, had even felt a sort
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: of crushing of the heart from the sense that my
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: brief day of happiness was near its setting. But still
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: I remained dependent on Bertha, eager for the last rays
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: of a bliss that would soon be gone, forever, hoping
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: and watching for some afterglow more beautiful from the impending night.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: I remember, how should I not remember the time when
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: that dependence and hope utterly left me, When the sadness
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: I had felt in Berth's growing estrangement became a joy
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: that I looked back upon with longing, as a man
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: might look back on the last pains in a paralyzed limb.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: It was just after the close of my father's last illness,
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: which had necessarily withdrawn us from society and thrown us
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: more on each other. It was the evening of my
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: father's death. On that evening, the veil which had shrouded
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: Berth's soul from me had made me find in her
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: alone among my fellow beings, the blessed possibility of mystery
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: and doubt and expectation was first withdrawn. Perhaps it was
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: the first day since the beginning of my passion for her,
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: in which that passion was completely neutralized by the presence
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: of an absorbing feeling of another kind. I had been
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: watching by my father's death bed, I had been witnessing
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: the last fitful, yearning glance his soul had cast back
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: on the spent inheritance of life, the last faint consciousness
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: of love he had gathered from the pressure of my hand.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: What are all our personal loves when we have been
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: sharing in that supreme agony In the first moments, when
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: we come away from the presence of death, every other
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: relation to the living is merged to our feeling in
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: the great relation of a common nature and a common destiny.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: In that state of mind, I joined Bertha in her
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: private sitting room. She was seated in a leaning posture
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: on a settee, with her back towards the door, the
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: great rich coils of her pale blonde hair surmounting her
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: small neck visible above the back of the settee. I remember,
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: as I closed the door behind me, a cold tremulousness
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: seizing me, and a vague sense of being hated and lonely,
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: vague and strong, like a presentiment. I know how I
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: looked at that moment, for I saw myself in Bertha's thought,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: as she lifted her cutting gray eyes and looked at me,
• 1:26:21
  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
• 1:26:37
  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
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: blank prosaic wall. From that evening forth, through the sickening
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: years which followed, I saw all round the narrow room
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: of this woman's line soul, 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
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: of wreaking itself for Birthtio after her kind, felt the
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: bitterness of disillusion. She had believed that my wild poet's
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: passion for her would make me her slave, and that
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: being her slave I should execute her will in all
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: 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
• 1:27:59
  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
• 1:28:20
  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 ballrooms, and was capable
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: of that light repartee which from such a woman is
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: accepted as wit, was secure of carrying off all sympathy
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: from a husband who was sickly abstracted, and as some
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: suspected crack brained, even the servants in our house gave
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: her the balance of their regard and pity, for there
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: were no audible quarrels between us. Our alienation or repulsion
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: from each other lay within the silence of our own hearts.
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: And if the mistress went out a great deal and
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: seemed to dislike the Master's society. Was it not natural?
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: Poor thing? The Master was awed. I was kind and
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: just to my dependence, But I excited in them a
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: shrinking half contemptuous pity, For this class of men and
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: women are but slightly determined in their estimate of others
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: by general considerations or even experience of care character. They
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: judge of persons as they judge of coins, and value
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: those who pass current at a high rate. After a time,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: I interfered so little with Bertha's habits that it might
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: seem wonderful how her hatred towards me could grow so
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: intense and active as it did. But she had begun
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: to suspect, by some involuntary betrayal of mine, that there
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: was an abnormal power of penetration in me that fitfully
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: at least, I was strangely cognizant of her thoughts and intentions,
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: And she began to be haunted by a terror of me,
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: which alternated every now and then with defiance. She meditated
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: continually how the incubus could be shaken off her life,
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: how she could be freed from this hateful bond to
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: a being whom she at once despised as an imbecile
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: and dreaded as an inquisitor. For a long while, she
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: lived in the hope that my evident wretchedness would drive
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: me to the commission of suicide. But suicide was not
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: in my nature. I was too completely swayed by the
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: sense that I was in the grasp of unknown forces
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: to believe in my power of self release towards my
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: own destiny. I had become entirely passive, for my one
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: ardent desire had spent itself, and impulse no longer predominated
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: over knowledge. For this reason, I never thought of taking
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: any steps towards a complete separation, which would have made
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: our alienation evident to the world. Why should I rush
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: for help to a new course when I was only
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: suffering from the consequences of a deed which had been
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: the act of my intensest will. That would have been
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: the logic of one who had desires to gratify, And
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: I had no desires. But Bertha and I lived more
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: and more aloof from each other. The rich find it
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: easy to live married and apart. That course of our life,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: which I have indicated in a few sentences, filled the
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: space of years, so much misery, so slow and hideous,
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: a growth of hatred and sin may be compressed into
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: a sentence, and men judge of each other's lives through
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: this summary medium. They epitomize the experience of their fellow
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: mortal and pronounce judgment on him in neat syntax, and
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: feel themselves wise and virtuous conquerors over the temptations they
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: define in well selected predicates. Seven years of wretchedness glide
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: glibly over the lips of the man who has never
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: counted them out. In moments of chill, disappointment of head
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: and heart, throbbings of dread and vain, wrestling of remorse
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: and despair. We learn words by rote, but not their meaning,
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: that must be paid for with our life blood, and
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: printed in the subtile fireabors of our nerves. But I
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: will hasten to finish my story. Brevity is justified at
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: once to those who readily understand, and to those who
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: will never understand. End of Chapter two, Part one, Chapter two,
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: Part two of The Lifted Veil. This LibriVox recording is
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. Recording by Bruce Pirie. The Lifted
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: Veil by George Eliot. Chapter two Part two. Some years
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: after my father's death, I was sitting by the dim
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: firelight in my library one January evening, sitting in the
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: leather chair that used to be my father's, when Bertha
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: appeared at the door with a candle in her hand
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: and advanced towards us me. I knew the bal dress
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: she had on, the white bal dress with the green
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: jewels shone upon by the light of the wax candle,
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: which lit up the medallion of the dying Cleopatra on
• 1:34:11
  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
• 1:34:18
  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,
• 1:34:25
  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
• 1:34:33
  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
• 1:34:54
  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
• 1:35:07
  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.
• 1:35:19
  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
• 1:35:35
  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.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: But I shrank especially from the sight of this new maid,
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: because her advent had been announced to me at a
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: moment to which I could not cease to attach some fatality.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: I had a vague dread that I should find her
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: mixed up with the dreary drama of my life, that
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: some new, sickening vision would reveal her to me as
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: an evil genius. When at last I did unavoidably meet her,
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: the vague dread was changed into definite disgust. She was
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: a tall, wiry, dark eyed woman, this missus Archer, with
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: 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 wife had become so brief and so
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: rarely solitary, that I had no opportunity of perceiving these
• 1:37:06
  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
• 1:37:35
  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
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: through which the personal agitations and projects of others could
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: affect me. But with this relief from wearisome insight, there
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: was a new development of what I concluded, as I
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: have since found rightly to be a prevision of external scenes.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: It was as if the relation between me and my
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: fellow men was more and more deadened, and my relation
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: to what we call the inanimate was quickened into new life.
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: The more I lived apart from society, and in proportion
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: as my wretchedness subsided from the violent throb of agonized
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: passion into the dullness of habitual pain, the more frequent
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: and vivid became such visions as that I had had,
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: of prague, of strange cities, of sandy plains, of gigantic ruins,
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: of midnight skies with strange bright constellations, of mountain passes,
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: of grassy nooks flecked with the afternoon sunshine through the boughs.
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: I was in the midst of such scenes, and in
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: all of them, one presence seemed to weigh on me.
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: In all these mighty shapes, the presence of something unknown
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: and pitiless, For continual suffering had annihilated religious faith within me.
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: To the utterly miserable, the unloving, and the unloved, there
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: is no religion possible, no worship but a worship of devils.
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: And beyond all these, and continually recurring, was the vision
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: of my death, the pangs, the suffocation, the last struggle,
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: when life would be grasped at in vain things were
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: in this state near the end of the seventh year.
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: I have become entirely free from insight, from my abnormal
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: cognizance of any other consciousness than my own, and instead
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: of intruding involuntarily into the world of other minds, was
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: living continually in my own solitary future. Bertha was aware
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: that I was greatly changed. To my surprise, she had
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: of late seemed to seek opportunit unities of remaining in
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: my society, and had cultivated that kind of distant yet
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: familiar talk which is customary between a husband and wife
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: who live in polite and irrevocable alienation. I bore this
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: with languid submission and without feeling enough interest in her
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: motives to be roused into keen observation. Yet I could
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: not help perceiving something triumphant and excited in her carriage,
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: and the expression of her face, something too subtle to
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: express itself in words or tones, but giving one the
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: idea that she lived in a state of expectation or
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: hopeful suspense. My chief feeling was satisfaction that her inner
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: self was once more shut out from me, and I
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: almost reveled for the moment in the absent melancholy that
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: made me answer her at cross purposes and betray utter
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: ignorance of what she had been saying. I remember well
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: the look and the smile with which she one day said,
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: after a mistake of this kind on my part, I
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: used to think that you were a clairvote, and that
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: was the reason why you were so bitter against other clairvoyants,
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: wanting to keep your monopoly. But I see now that
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: you have become rather duller than the rest of the world.
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: I said nothing in reply. It occurred to me that
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: her recent obtrusion of herself upon me might have been
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: prompted by the wish to test my power of detecting
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: some of her secrets. But I let the thought drop again.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: At once. Her motives and her deeds had no interest
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: for me, and whatever plasues she might be seeking, I
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: had no wish to balk her. There was still pity
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: in my soul, for every living thing, and Bertha was living,
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: was surrounded with possibilities of misery. Just at this time
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: there occurred an event which roused me somewhat from my
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: inertia and gave me an interest in the passing moment
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: that I had thought impossible for me. It was a
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: visit from Charles Manier, who had written me word that
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: he was coming to England for relaxation from two strains
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: annus labor and would like to see me. Mounier had
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: now a European reputation, but his letter to me expressed
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: that keen remembrance of an early regard an early debt
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: of sympathy, which is inseparable from nobility of character, And
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: I too felt as if his presence would be to
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: me like a transient resurrection into a happier pre existence.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: He came, and as far as possible, I renewed our
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: old pleasure of making tete tete excursions, though instead of
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: mountains and glaciers and the wide blue lake, we had
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: to content ourselves with mere slopes and ponds and artificial plantations.
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: The years had changed us both, but with what different result.
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: Monie was now a brilliant figure in society, to whom
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: elegant women pretended to listen, and whose acquaintance was boasted
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: of by noblemen ambitious of brains. He repressed with the
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: utmost delicacy, all betrayal of the shock which I am
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: sure he must have received from our meeting, or of
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: a desire to penetrate into my condition and circumstances, and sought,
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: by the utmost exertion of his charming social powers, to
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: make our reunion agreeable. Bertha was much struck by the
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: unexpected fascinations of a visitor whom she had expected to
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: find presentable only on the score of his celebrity, and
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: put forth all her coquetries and accomplishments. Apparently she succeeded
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: in attracting his admiration, for his manner towards her was
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: attentive and flattering. The effect of his presence on me
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: was so benignant, especially in those renewals of our old
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: tete a tete wanderings, when he poured forth to me
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: wonderful narratives of his professional experience, that more than once,
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: when his talk turned on the psychological relations of disease,
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: the thought crossed my mind that if his stay with
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: me were long enough, I might pop pssibly bring myself
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: to tell this man the secrets of my lot. Might
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: there not lie some remedy for me too in his science?
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: Might there not at least lie some comprehension and sympathy
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: ready for me in his large and susceptible mind. But
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: the thought only flickered feebly now and then, and died
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: out before it could become a wish. The horror I
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: had of a game breaking in on the privacy of
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: another soul made me, by an irrational instinct, draw the
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: shroud of concealment more closely around my own as we
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: automatically perform the gesture we feel to be wanting in another.
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: When Mounier's visit was approaching its conclusion, there happened an
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: event which caused some excitement in our household, owing to
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: the surprisingly strong effect it appeared to produce on Bertha.
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: On Bertha, the self possessed, who usually seemed inaccessible to
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: feminine agitations and did even her hate in a self restrained,
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: hygienic manner, this event was the sudden severe illness of
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: her maid, missus Archer. I have reserved to this moment
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: the mention of a circumstance which had forced itself on
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: my notice shortly before Monier's arrival, namely, that there had
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: been some quarrel between Bertha and this maid, apparently during
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: a visit to a distant family in which she had
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: accompanied her mistress. I had overheard Archer speaking in a
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: tone of bitter insolence, which I should have thought an
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: adequate reason for immediate dismissal. No dismissal followed. On the contrary,
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: Bertha seemed to be silently putting up with personal inconveniences.
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: From the exhibitions of this woman's temper, I was the
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: more astonished to observe that her illness seemed a cause
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: of strong solicitude to Bertha, that she was at the
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: bedside night and day, and would allow no one else
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: to officiate, as had none. It happened that our family
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: doctor was out on a holiday an accident which made
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: Monie's presence in the house doubly welcome, and he apparently
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: entered into the case with an interest which seemed so
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: much stronger than the ordinary professional feeling that one day,
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: when he had fallen into a long fitt of silence
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: after visiting her, I said to him, is this a
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: very peculiar case of disease, Monie? No, he answered, it
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: is an attack of paraitonitis, which will be fatal, but
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: which does not differ physically from many other cases that
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: have come under my observation. But I'll tell you what
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: I have on my mind. I want to make an
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: experiment on this woman. If you will give me permission.
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: It can do her no harm, will give her no pain,
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: for I shall not make it until life is extinct
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: to all purposes of sensation. I want to try the
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: effect of transfusing blood into her archeries after the heart
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: has ceased to beat for some minutes. I have tried
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: the experiment again and again with animals that have died
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: of this disease with astounding results, and I want to
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: try it on a human subject. I have the small
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: tubes necessary in a case I have with me, and
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: the rest of the apparatus could be prepared readily. I
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: should use my own blood, take it from my own arm.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: This woman won't live through the night. I'm convinced, and
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: I want you to promise me your assistance in making
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: the experiment. I can't do without another hand, but it
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: would perhaps not be well to call in a medical
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: assistant from among your provincial doctors. A disagreeable, foolish version
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: of the thing might get abroad. Have you spoken to
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: my wife on the subject, I said, because she appears
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: to be peculiarly sensitive about this woman. She has been
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: a favorite maide to tell you the truth, said Manie,
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: I don't want her to know about it. There are
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: always insuperable difficulties with women in these matters, and the
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: effect on the supposed dead body may be startling. You
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: 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
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: leave the patient and take a knight's rest. But she
• 1:48:42
  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 taking precisely the course he expected. Once
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: he said to me, can you imagine any cause of
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: ill feeling this woman has against her mistress, who is
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: so devoted to her. I think there was some misunderstanding
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: between them before her illness. Why do you ask, because
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: There seems to be a strange prompting in her to
• 1:49:28
  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,
• 1:49:41
  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
• 1:50:04
  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
• 1:50:30
  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
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: lowered so as to conceal the large, dark eyes. After
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: a minute or two, Monie walked round to the other
• 1:50:52
  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 a state to
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: be conscious of an affectionate presence. Bertha was hesitating, apparently
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: almost willing to believe his assurance and to comply. She
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: looked round at the ghastly dying face as if to
• 1:51:16
  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
• 1:51:35
  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
• 1:51:47
  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
• 1:52:14
  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
• 1:52:45
  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
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: breeding about two unloving women's hearts. I felt that Bertha
• 1:52:57
  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, Manie had already opened the artery in
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: the long thin neck that lay rigid on the pillow,
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: and I dismissed them, ordering them to remain at a
• 1:53:33
  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 Manie
• 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
• 1:53:51
  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.
• 1:54:25
  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.
• 1:54:50
  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
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: face moved. The gas sping eager voice said, you mean
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: to 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
• 1:55:38
  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
• 1:56:14
  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,
• 1:56:23
  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.
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: Since then, Bertha and I have lived apart, she in
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: her own neighborhood, the mistress of half our wealth, I
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: as a wanderer in foreign countries, and till I came
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: to this Devonshire nest to die. Bertha lives pitied and
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: admired for what had I against that charming woman whom
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: everyone but myself could have been happy with. There had
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: been no witness of the scene in the dying room
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: except Manie, And while Mounier lived, his lips were sealed
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: by a promise to me once or twice. Weary of wandering,
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: I rested in a favorite spot, and my heart went
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: out towards the men and women and children whose faces
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: were becoming familiar to me. But I was driven away
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: again in terror at the approach of my old insight,
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: driven away to live continually with the one unknown presence,
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: revealed and yet hidden by the moving curtain of the
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: earth and sky, till at last disease took hold of
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: me and forced me to rest here, forced me to
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: live in dependence on my surf. And then the curse
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: of insight, of my double consciousness, came again and has
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: never left me. I know all their narrow thoughts, their
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: feeble regard, their half wearied pity. It is the twentieth
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: of September eighteen fifty. I know these figures I have
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: just written, as if they were a long familiar inscription.
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: I have seen them on this page in my desk,
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: unnumbered times, when the scene of my dying struggle has
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: opened upon me. End of Chapter two, End of The
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: Lifted Veil by George Eliot