{"id":"01KG8AM5XX40QJD5B93EMQ66FW","cid":"bafkreiflsducghdh2gixafmnhm67wndx2j4mnn3rukooecjdoppns7hvhq","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":1517,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:26.981Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","start_line":1453,"text":"                                   XI\r\n\r\n\r\n                      Pale ire, envy and despair.\r\n\r\n\r\nThat Claggart’s figure was not amiss, and his face, save the chin, well\r\nmoulded, has already been said. Of these favourable points he seemed not\r\ninsensible, for he was not only neat but careful in his dress. But the\r\nform of Billy Budd was heroic; and if his face was without the\r\nintellectual look of the pallid Claggart’s, not the less was it lit,\r\nlike his, from within, though from a different source. The bonfire in\r\nhis heart made luminous the rose-tan in his cheek.\r\n\r\nIn view of the marked contrast between the persons of the twain, it is\r\nmore than probable that when the master-at-arms in the scene last given\r\napplied to the sailor the proverb ‘_Handsome is as handsome does_,’ he\r\nthere let escape an ironic inkling, not caught by the young sailors who\r\nheard it, as to what it was that had first moved him against Billy,\r\nnamely, his significant personal beauty.\r\n\r\nNow envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason, nevertheless\r\nin fact may spring conjoined like Chang and Eng in one birth. Is envy\r\nthen such a monster? Well, though many an arraigned mortal has in hopes\r\nof mitigated penalty pleaded guilty to horrible actions, did ever\r\nanybody seriously confess to envy? Something there is in it universally\r\nfelt to be more shameful than even felonious crime. And not only does\r\neverybody disown it, but the better sort are inclined to incredulity\r\nwhen it is in earnest imputed to an intelligent man. But since its\r\nlodgment is in the heart, not the brain, no degree of intellect supplies\r\na guarantee against it. But Claggart’s was no vulgar form of the\r\npassion. Nor, as directed toward Billy Budd, did it partake of that\r\nstreak of apprehensive jealousy that marred Saul’s visage perturbedly\r\nbrooding on the comely young David. Claggart’s envy struck deeper. If\r\naskance he eyed the good looks, cheery health, and frank enjoyment of\r\nyoung life in Billy Budd, it was because these happened to go along with\r\na nature that, as Claggart magnetically felt, had in its simplicity\r\nnever willed malice, or experienced the reactionary bite of that\r\nserpent. To him, the spirit lodged within Billy and looking out from his\r\nwelkin eyes as from windows, that ineffability which made the dimple in\r\nhis dyed cheek, suppled his joints, and danced in his yellow curls, made\r\nhim pre-eminently the Handsome Sailor. One person excepted, the\r\nmaster-at-arms was perhaps the only man in the ship intellectually\r\ncapable of adequately appreciating the moral phenomenon presented in\r\nBilly Budd, and the insight but intensified his passion, which assuming\r\nvarious secret forms within him, at times assumed that of cynic\r\ndisdain--disdain of innocence. To be nothing more than innocent! Yet in\r\nan æsthetic way he saw the charm of it, the courageous free-and-easy\r\ntemper of it, and fain would have shared it, but he despaired of it.\r\n\r\nWith no power to annul the elemental evil in himself, though he could\r\nhide it readily enough; apprehending the good, but powerless to be it;\r\nwhat recourse is left to a nature like Claggart’s, surcharged with\r\nenergy as such natures almost invariably are, but to recoil upon itself,\r\nand, like the scorpion for which the Creator alone is responsible, act\r\nout to the end its allotted part.\r\n\r\nPassion, and passion in its profoundest, is not a thing demanding a\r\npalatial stage whereon to play its part. Down among the groundlings,\r\namong the beggars and rakers of the garbage, profound passion is\r\nenacted. And the circumstances that provoke it, however trivial or mean,\r\nare no measure of its power. In the present instance the stage is a\r\nscrubbed gun-deck, and one of the external provocations a man-of-war’s\r\nman’s spilled soup.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJV0AJKMAB9KHX69BW1DR","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AM5XY403K3K2219JQP6AC","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:28.605Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:35.705Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}