{"id":"01KG8AMXWEW5TKRSAD5DDPZ48W","cid":"bafkreib6atqzkggudl4enicziecv5m7d4rcfioquksbvl4svadlbbv5czm","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":206,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","start_line":162,"text":"II.\r\n\r\nPierre was the only son of an affluent, and haughty widow; a lady who\r\nexternally furnished a singular example of the preservative and\r\nbeautifying influences of unfluctuating rank, health, and wealth, when\r\njoined to a fine mind of medium culture, uncankered by any inconsolable\r\ngrief, and never worn by sordid cares. In mature age, the rose still\r\nmiraculously clung to her cheek; litheness had not yet completely\r\nuncoiled itself from her waist, nor smoothness unscrolled itself from\r\nher brow, nor diamondness departed from her eyes. So that when lit up\r\nand bediademed by ball-room lights, Mrs. Glendinning still eclipsed far\r\nyounger charms, and had she chosen to encourage them, would have been\r\nfollowed by a train of infatuated suitors, little less young than her\r\nown son Pierre.\r\n\r\nBut a reverential and devoted son seemed lover enough for this widow\r\nBloom; and besides all this, Pierre when namelessly annoyed, and\r\nsometimes even jealously transported by the too ardent admiration of the\r\nhandsome youths, who now and then, caught in unintended snares, seemed\r\nto entertain some insane hopes of wedding this unattainable being;\r\nPierre had more than once, with a playful malice, openly sworn, that the\r\nman--gray-beard, or beardless--who should dare to propose marriage to\r\nhis mother, that man would by some peremptory unrevealed agency\r\nimmediately disappear from the earth.\r\n\r\nThis romantic filial love of Pierre seemed fully returned by the\r\ntriumphant maternal pride of the widow, who in the clear-cut lineaments\r\nand noble air of the son, saw her own graces strangely translated into\r\nthe opposite sex. There was a striking personal resemblance between\r\nthem; and as the mother seemed to have long stood still in her beauty,\r\nheedless of the passing years; so Pierre seemed to meet her half-way,\r\nand by a splendid precocity of form and feature, almost advanced himself\r\nto that mature stand-point in Time, where his pedestaled mother so long\r\nhad stood. In the playfulness of their unclouded love, and with that\r\nstrange license which a perfect confidence and mutual understanding at\r\nall points, had long bred between them, they were wont to call each\r\nother brother and sister. Both in public and private this was their\r\nusage; nor when thrown among strangers, was this mode of address ever\r\nsuspected for a sportful assumption; since the amaranthiness of Mrs.\r\nGlendinning fully sustained this youthful pretension.--Thus freely and\r\nlightsomely for mother and son flowed on the pure joined current of\r\nlife. But as yet the fair river had not borne its waves to those\r\nsideways repelling rocks, where it was thenceforth destined to be\r\nforever divided into two unmixing streams.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AKK0KDVWMBNKBZ5DS6NFR","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AMXWEBXBTZDHJBQEB6ATP","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:53.134Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:01.270Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}