So much for the intellect! But where was the heart? That,
indeed, had withered,--had contracted.--had hardened,--had perished!
It had ceased to partake of the universal throb, He had lost his hold
of the magnetic chain of humanity. He was no longer a brother-man,
opening the chambers of the dungeons of our common nature by the key
of holy sympathy, which gave him a right to share in all its secrets;
he was now a cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his
experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his
puppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of
crime as were demanded for his study.
Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be so from the moment
that his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of improvement with
his intellect. And now, as his highest effort and inevitable
development,--as the bright and gorgeous flower, and rich, delicious
fruit of his life's labor,--he had produced the Unpardonable Sin!
"What more have I to seek? what more to achieve?" said Ethan Brand to
himself, "My task Is done, and well done!"
Starting from the log with a certain alacrity in his gait and
ascending the hillock of earth that was raised against the stone
circumference of the lime-kiln, he thus reached the top of the
structure. It was a space of perhaps ten feet across, from edge to
edge, presenting a view of the upper surface of the immense mass of
broken marble with which the kiln was heaped.
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