An irresistible feeling
kept Hester near the spot. As the sacred edifice was too much
thronged to admit another auditor, she took up her position
close beside the scaffold of the pillory. It was in sufficient
proximity to bring the whole sermon to her ears, in the shape of
an indistinct but varied murmur and flow of the minister's very
peculiar voice.
This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment, insomuch that a
listener, comprehending nothing of the language in which the
preacher spoke, might still have been swayed to and fro by the
mere tone and cadence. Like all other music, it breathed passion
and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to
the human heart, wherever educated. Muffled as the sound was by
its passage through the church walls, Hester Prynne listened
with such intenseness, and sympathized so intimately, that the
sermon had throughout a meaning for her, entirely apart from its
indistinguishable words. These, perhaps, if more distinctly
heard, might have been only a grosser medium, and have clogged
the spiritual sense. Now she caught the low undertone, as of the
wind sinking down to repose itself; then ascended with it, as it
rose through progressive gradations of sweetness and power,
until its volume seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere of awe
and solemn grandeur.
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