{"id":"01KG8AN1M4GDTZBRKXJCPHQS92","cid":"bafkreicqgwc4jauwyj7r5yudqf4nfzvhrxpsppw4j3wcoc63i2m4lor4ei","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":14962,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:52.924Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","start_line":14911,"text":"Or if Pierre were with her, then, smite him down by hook or crook, fair\r\nplay or foul; and then, away with Lucy! Or if Lucy systematically kept\r\nher room, then fall on Pierre in the most public way, fell him, and\r\ncover him from all decent recognition beneath heaps on heaps of hate and\r\ninsult; so that broken on the wheel of such dishonor, Pierre might feel\r\nhimself unstrung, and basely yield the prize.\r\n\r\nNot the gibbering of ghosts in any old haunted house; no sulphurous and\r\nportentous sign at night beheld in heaven, will so make the hair to\r\nstand, as when a proud and honorable man is revolving in his soul the\r\npossibilities of some gross public and corporeal disgrace. It is not\r\nfear; it is a pride-horror, which is more terrible than any fear. Then,\r\nby tremendous imagery, the murderer's mark of Cain is felt burning on\r\nthe brow, and the already acquitted knife blood-rusts in the clutch of\r\nthe anticipating hand.\r\n\r\nCertain that those two youths must be plotting something furious against\r\nhim; with the echoes of their scorning curses on the stairs still\r\nringing in his ears--curses, whose swift responses from himself, he, at\r\nthe time, had had much ado to check;--thoroughly alive to the\r\nsupernaturalism of that mad frothing hate which a spirited brother forks\r\nforth at the insulter of a sister's honor--beyond doubt the most\r\nuncompromising of all the social passions known to man--and not blind to\r\nthe anomalous fact, that if such a brother stab his foe at his own\r\nmother's table, all people and all juries would bear him out, accounting\r\nevery thing allowable to a noble soul made mad by a sweet sister's shame\r\ncaused by a damned seducer;--imagining to himself his own feelings, if\r\nhe were actually in the position which Frederic so vividly fancied to\r\nbe his; remembering that in love matters jealousy is as an adder, and\r\nthat the jealousy of Glen was double-addered by the extraordinary malice\r\nof the apparent circumstances under which Lucy had spurned Glen's arms,\r\nand fled to his always successful and now married rival, as if wantonly\r\nand shamelessly to nestle there;--remembering all these intense\r\nincitements of both those foes of his, Pierre could not but look forward\r\nto wild work very soon to come. Nor was the storm of passion in his soul\r\nunratified by the decision of his coolest possible hour. Storm and calm\r\nboth said to him,--Look to thyself, oh Pierre!\r\n\r\nMurders are done by maniacs; but the earnest thoughts of murder, these\r\nare the collected desperadoes. Pierre was such; fate, or what you will,\r\nhad made him such. But such he was. And when these things now swam\r\nbefore him; when he thought of all the ambiguities which hemmed him in;\r\nthe stony walls all round that he could not overleap; the million\r\naggravations of his most malicious lot; the last lingering hope of\r\nhappiness licked up from him as by flames of fire, and his one only\r\nprospect a black, bottomless gulf of guilt, upon whose verge he\r\nimminently teetered every hour;--then the utmost hate of Glen and\r\nFrederic were jubilantly welcome to him; and murder, done in the act of\r\nwarding off their ignominious public blow, seemed the one only congenial\r\nsequel to such a desperate career.\r\n\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AKHN6N7MJRN9SKDHFRVGD","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AN1KZ9H5EQ0Z86KRX4JFQ","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:56.964Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:34.179Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}