Page 35 - THE SCARLET LETTER

The Scarlet Letter

quadrupeds who knew him, might not improperly be
termed so,—I could discern the main points of his portrait.
It was marked with the noble and heroic qualities which
showed it to be not a mere accident, but of good right,

that he had won a distinguished name. His spirit could
never, I conceive, have been characterized by an uneasy
activity; it must, at any period of his life, have required an
impulse to set him in motion; but once stirred up, with
obstacles to overcome, and an adequate object to be
attained, it was not in the man to give out or fail. The heat
that had formerly pervaded his nature, and which was not
yet extinct, was never of the kind that flashes and flickers
in a blaze; but rather a deep red glow, as of iron in a
furnace. Weight, solidity, firmness—this was the
expression of his repose, even in such decay as had crept
untimely over him at the period of which I speak. But I
could imagine, even then, that, under some excitement
which should go deeply into his consciousness—roused by
a trumpets real, loud enough to awaken all of his energies
that were not dead, but only slumbering—he was yet
capable of flinging off his infirmities like a sick man’s
gown, dropping the staff of age to seize a battle-sword,
and starting up once more a warrior. And, in so intense a
moment his demeanour would have still been calm. Such

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