As the
life and good fame of yonder man were in your hands there seemed
no choice to me, save to be silent in accordance with your
behest. Yet it was not without heavy misgivings that I thus
bound myself, for, having cast off all duty towards other human
beings, there remained a duty towards him, and something
whispered me that I was betraying it in pledging myself to keep
your counsel. Since that day no man is so near to him as you.
You tread behind his every footstep. You are beside him,
sleeping and waking. You search his thoughts. You burrow and
rankle in his heart! Your clutch is on his life, and you cause
him to die daily a living death, and still he knows you not. In
permitting this I have surely acted a false part by the only man
to whom the power was left me to be true!"
"What choice had you?" asked Roger Chillingworth. "My finger,
pointed at this man, would have hurled him from his pulpit into
a dungeon, thence, peradventure, to the gallows!"
"It had been better so!" said Hester Prynne.
"What evil have I done the man?" asked Roger Chillingworth
again. "I tell thee, Hester Prynne, the richest fee that ever
physician earned from monarch could not have bought such care as
I have wasted on this miserable priest! But for my aid his life
would have burned away in torments within the first two years
after the perpetration of his crime and thine.
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