{"id":"01KG8AN1K5EFSNKRFEJ82ASGQH","cid":"bafkreifr24fg2vhbyop7aifkpz3lm3hd26nhytzylnhyjxezv5pdzipxy4","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":3118,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","start_line":3049,"text":"become marbleized; so that things which in themselves were evanescent,\r\nthus became unchangeable and eternal. So, some rare waters in Derbyshire\r\nwill petrify birds'-nests. But if fate preserves the father to a later\r\ntime, too often the filial obsequies are less profound; the canonization\r\nless ethereal. The eye-expanded boy perceives, or vaguely thinks he\r\nperceives, slight specks and flaws in the character he once so wholly\r\nreverenced.\r\n\r\nWhen Pierre was twelve years old, his father had died, leaving behind\r\nhim, in the general voice of the world, a marked reputation as a\r\ngentleman and a Christian; in the heart of his wife, a green memory of\r\nmany healthy days of unclouded and joyful wedded life, and in the inmost\r\nsoul of Pierre, the impression of a bodily form of rare manly beauty and\r\nbenignity, only rivaled by the supposed perfect mould in which his\r\nvirtuous heart had been cast. Of pensive evenings, by the wide winter\r\nfire, or in summer, in the southern piazza, when that mystical\r\nnight-silence so peculiar to the country would summon up in the minds of\r\nPierre and his mother, long trains of the images of the past; leading\r\nall that spiritual procession, majestically and holily walked the\r\nvenerated form of the departed husband and father. Then their talk would\r\nbe reminiscent and serious, but sweet; and again, and again, still deep\r\nand deeper, was stamped in Pierre's soul the cherished conceit, that his\r\nvirtuous father, so beautiful on earth, was now uncorruptibly sainted in\r\nheaven. So choicely, and in some degree, secludedly nurtured, Pierre,\r\nthough now arrived at the age of nineteen, had never yet become so\r\nthoroughly initiated into that darker, though truer aspect of things,\r\nwhich an entire residence in the city from the earliest period of life,\r\nalmost inevitably engraves upon the mind of any keenly observant and\r\nreflective youth of Pierre's present years. So that up to this period,\r\nin his breast, all remained as it had been; and to Pierre, his father's\r\nshrine seemed spotless, and still new as the marble of the tomb of him\r\nof Arimathea.\r\n\r\nJudge, then, how all-desolating and withering the blast, that for\r\nPierre, in one night, stripped his holiest shrine of all over-laid\r\nbloom, and buried the mild statue of the saint beneath the prostrated\r\nruins of the soul's temple itself.\r\n\r\n\r\nII.\r\n\r\nAs the vine flourishes, and the grape empurples close up to the very\r\nwalls and muzzles of cannoned Ehrenbreitstein; so do the sweetest joys\r\nof life grow in the very jaws of its perils.\r\n\r\nBut is life, indeed, a thing for all infidel levities, and we, its\r\nmisdeemed beneficiaries, so utterly fools and infatuate, that what we\r\ntake to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands at the caprice of\r\nthe minutest event--the falling of a leaf, the hearing of a voice, or\r\nthe receipt of one little bit of paper scratched over with a few small\r\ncharacters by a sharpened feather? Are we so entirely insecure, that\r\nthat casket, wherein we have placed our holiest and most final joy, and\r\nwhich we have secured by a lock of infinite deftness; can that casket be\r\npicked and desecrated at the merest stranger's touch, when we think that\r\nwe alone hold the only and chosen key?\r\n\r\nPierre! thou art foolish; rebuild--no, not that, for thy shrine still\r\nstands; it stands, Pierre, firmly stands; smellest thou not its yet\r\nundeparted, embowering bloom? Such a note as thine can be easily enough\r\nwritten, Pierre; impostors are not unknown in this curious world; or the\r\nbrisk novelist, Pierre, will write thee fifty such notes, and so steal\r\ngushing tears from his reader's eyes; even as _thy_ note so strangely\r\nmade thine own manly eyes so arid; so glazed, and so arid,\r\nPierre--foolish Pierre!\r\n\r\nOh! mock not the poniarded heart. The stabbed man knows the steel; prate\r\nnot to him that it is only a tickling feather. Feels he not the interior\r\ngash? What does this blood on my vesture? and what does this pang in my\r\nsoul?\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AKSA026PMDP94GJN079TS","peer_type":"subsection","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AN1JRVGVJY918KKQH8XZ4","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AN1K58Y91G2R1Y3E4HPHC","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:56.933Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:09.566Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}