{"id":"01KG8AN24V0ZWB6ZWMH703RCZM","cid":"bafkreige26ujayqpwwhtvxrz5fj66mt53sxmrhbsc2oqevemqgyfvok4nm","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":15712,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:52.924Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","start_line":15650,"text":"II.\r\n\r\nAs they hurried on, Pierre was silent; but wild thoughts were hurrying\r\nand shouting in his heart. The most tremendous displacing and\r\nrevolutionizing thoughts were upheaving in him, with reference to\r\nIsabel; nor--though at the time he was hardly conscious of such a\r\nthing--were these thoughts wholly unwelcome to him.\r\n\r\nHow did he know that Isabel was his sister? Setting aside Aunt\r\nDorothea's nebulous legend, to which, in some shadowy points, here and\r\nthere Isabel's still more nebulous story seemed to fit on,--though but\r\nuncertainly enough--and both of which thus blurredly conjoining\r\nnarrations, regarded in the unscrupulous light of real naked reason,\r\nwere any thing but legitimately conclusive; and setting aside his own\r\ndim reminiscences of his wandering father's death-bed; (for though, in\r\none point of view, those reminiscences might have afforded some degree\r\nof presumption as to his father's having been the parent of an\r\nunacknowledged daughter, yet were they entirely inconclusive as to that\r\npresumed daughter's identity; and the grand point now with Pierre was,\r\nnot the general question whether his father had had a daughter, but\r\nwhether, assuming that he had had, _Isabel_, rather than any other\r\nliving being, _was that daughter_;)--and setting aside all his own\r\nmanifold and inter-enfolding mystic and transcendental\r\npersuasions,--originally born, as he now seemed to feel, purely of an\r\nintense procreative enthusiasm:--an enthusiasm no longer so\r\nall-potential with him as of yore; setting all these aside, and coming\r\nto the plain, palpable facts,--how did he _know_ that Isabel was his\r\nsister? Nothing that he saw in her face could he remember as having seen\r\nin his father's. The chair-portrait, _that_ was the entire sum and\r\nsubstance of all possible, rakable, downright presumptive evidence,\r\nwhich peculiarly appealed to his own separate self. Yet here was another\r\nportrait of a complete stranger--a European; a portrait imported from\r\nacross the seas, and to be sold at public auction, which was just as\r\nstrong an evidence as the other. Then, the original of this second\r\nportrait was as much the father of Isabel as the original of the\r\nchair-portrait. But perhaps there was no original at all to this second\r\nportrait; it might have been a pure fancy piece; to which conceit,\r\nindeed, the uncharacterizing style of the filling-up seemed to furnish\r\nno small testimony.\r\n\r\nWith such bewildering meditations as these in him, running up like\r\nclasping waves upon the strand of the most latent secrecies of his soul,\r\nand with both Isabel and Lucy bodily touching his sides as he walked;\r\nthe feelings of Pierre were entirely untranslatable into any words that\r\ncan be used.\r\n\r\nOf late to Pierre, much more vividly than ever before, the whole story\r\nof Isabel had seemed an enigma, a mystery, an imaginative delirium;\r\nespecially since he had got so deep into the inventional mysteries of\r\nhis book. For he who is most practically and deeply conversant with\r\nmysticisms and mysteries; he who professionally deals in mysticisms and\r\nmysteries himself; often that man, more than any body else, is disposed\r\nto regard such things in others as very deceptively bejuggling; and\r\nlikewise is apt to be rather materialistic in all his own merely\r\npersonal notions (as in their practical lives, with priests of\r\nEleusinian religions), and more than any other man, is often inclined,\r\nat the bottom of his soul, to be uncompromisingly skeptical on all novel\r\nvisionary hypotheses of any kind. It is only the no-mystics, or the\r\nhalf-mystics, who, properly speaking, are credulous. So that in Pierre,\r\nwas presented the apparent anomaly of a mind, which by becoming really\r\nprofound in itself, grew skeptical of all tendered profundities;\r\nwhereas, the contrary is generally supposed.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AKHN2WX64FDGXMWFGVT5P","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AN251T3S0MPJ89R6CB3X5","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:57.499Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:35.267Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}