{"id":"01KG8AN10ZGF5KGMS5H2Q3QMWG","cid":"bafkreidz4tvctgtgujjm5zp7ctqupc4iwzum7enfvv4phatijnekgdj7mq","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":8886,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:52.921Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","start_line":8824,"text":"bitter presence there, but Isabel was become a thing of intense and\r\nfearful love for him; therefore, it was loathsome to him, that in the\r\nsmiling and ambiguous portrait, her sweet mournful image should be so\r\nsinisterly becrooked, bemixed, and mutilated to him.\r\n\r\nWhen, the first shock, and then the pause were over, he lifted the\r\nportrait in his two hands, and held it averted from him.\r\n\r\n\"It shall not live. Hitherto I have hoarded up mementoes and monuments\r\nof the past; been a worshiper of all heirlooms; a fond filer away of\r\nletters, locks of hair, bits of ribbon, flowers, and the\r\nthousand-and-one minutenesses which love and memory think they\r\nsanctify:--but it is forever over now! If to me any memory shall\r\nhenceforth be dear, I will not mummy it in a visible memorial for every\r\npassing beggar's dust to gather on. Love's museum is vain and foolish as\r\nthe Catacombs, where grinning apes and abject lizards are embalmed, as,\r\nforsooth, significant of some imagined charm. It speaks merely of decay\r\nand death, and nothing more; decay and death of endless innumerable\r\ngenerations; it makes of earth one mold. How can lifelessness be fit\r\nmemorial of life?--So far, for mementoes of the sweetest. As for the\r\nrest--now I know this, that in commonest memorials, the twilight fact of\r\ndeath first discloses in some secret way, all the ambiguities of that\r\ndeparted thing or person; obliquely it casts hints, and insinuates\r\nsurmises base, and eternally incapable of being cleared. Decreed by God\r\nOmnipotent it is, that Death should be the last scene of the last act of\r\nman's play;--a play, which begin how it may, in farce or comedy, ever\r\nhath its tragic end; the curtain inevitably falls upon a corpse.\r\nTherefore, never more will I play the vile pigmy, and by small memorials\r\nafter death, attempt to reverse the decree of death, by essaying the\r\npoor perpetuating of the image of the original. Let all die, and mix\r\nagain! As for this--this!--why longer should I preserve it? Why preserve\r\nthat on which one can not patient look? If I am resolved to hold his\r\npublic memory inviolate,--destroy this thing; for here is the one great,\r\ncondemning, and unsuborned proof, whose mysticalness drives me half\r\nmad.--Of old Greek times, before man's brain went into doting bondage,\r\nand bleached and beaten in Baconian fulling-mills, his four limbs lost\r\ntheir barbaric tan and beauty; when the round world was fresh, and rosy,\r\nand spicy, as a new-plucked apple;--all's wilted now!--in those bold\r\ntimes, the great dead were not, turkey-like, dished in trenchers, and\r\nset down all garnished in the ground, to glut the damned Cyclop like a\r\ncannibal; but nobly envious Life cheated the glutton worm, and\r\ngloriously burned the corpse; so that the spirit up-pointed, and visibly\r\nforked to heaven!\r\n\r\n\"So now will I serve thee. Though that solidity of which thou art the\r\nunsolid duplicate, hath long gone to its hideous church-yard\r\naccount;--and though, God knows! but for one part of thee it may have\r\nbeen fit auditing;--yet will I now a second time see thy obsequies\r\nperformed, and by now burning thee, urn thee in the great vase of air!\r\nCome now!\"\r\n\r\nA small wood-fire had been kindled on the hearth to purify the\r\nlong-closed room; it was now diminished to a small pointed heap of\r\nglowing embers. Detaching and dismembering the gilded but tarnished\r\nframe, Pierre laid the four pieces on the coals; as their dryness soon\r\ncaught the sparks, he rolled the reversed canvas into a scroll, and tied\r\nit, and committed it to the now crackling, clamorous flames. Steadfastly\r\nPierre watched the first crispings and blackenings of the painted\r\nscroll, but started as suddenly unwinding from the burnt string that had\r\ntied it, for one swift instant, seen through the flame and smoke, the\r\nupwrithing portrait tormentedly stared at him in beseeching horror, and\r\nthen, wrapped in one broad sheet of oily fire, disappeared forever.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AKVA6W3YEX64SSSCK6HPB","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AN10ZJ7KEBY94R9DBGKZJ","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AN10ZVKHA8DH5B2K2CT7B","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:56.351Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:23.681Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}