world, if his mother was to know nothing of that acknowledgment?—Short-sighted, miserable palterer and huckster, thou hast been playing a most fond and foolish game with thyself? Fool and coward! Coward and fool! Tear thyself open, and read there the confounding story of thy blind dotishness! Thy two grand resolutions—the public acknowledgment of Isabel, and the charitable withholding of her existence from thy own mother,—these are impossible adjuncts.—Likewise, thy so magnanimous purpose to screen thy father's honourable memory from reproach, and thy other intention, the open vindication of thy fraternalness to Isabel,—these also are impossible adjuncts. And the having individually entertained four such resolves, without perceiving that once brought together, they all mutually expire; this, this ineffable folly, Pierre, brands thee in the forehead for an unaccountable infatuate!
Well may'st thou distrust thyself, and curse thyself, and tear thy Hamlet and thy Hell! Oh! fool, blind fool, and a million times an ass! Go, go, thou poor and feeble one! High deeds are not for such blind grubs as thou! Quit Isabel, and go to Lucy! Beg humble pardon of thy mother, and hereafter be a more obedient and good boy to her, Pierre—Pierre, Pierre,—infatuate!
Impossible would it be now to tell all the confusion and confoundings in the soul of Pierre, so soon as the above absurdities in his mind presented themselves first to his combining consciousness. He would fain have disowned the very memory and the mind which produced to him such an immense scandal upon his common sanity. Now indeed did all the fiery floods in the Inferno, and all the rolling gloom in Hamlet suffocate him at once in flame and smoke. The cheeks of his soul collapsed in him; he dashed himself in blind fury and swift madness against the wall, and fell dabbling in the vomit of his loathed identity.
