{"id":"01KG8AN24VZ7F1GAK0ABFE9WT0","cid":"bafkreibgzwrqlbssj6gerklquxpcornjfxpime7ukiqtmodaugksxepo3i","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":15604,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:52.924Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 3","source_file":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","start_line":15553,"text":"not the abstract excellence always, but often the accidental\r\ncongeniality, which occasions this wonderful emotion. Still, the\r\nindividual himself is apt to impute it to a different cause; hence, the\r\nheadlong enthusiastic admiration of some one or two men for things not\r\nat all praised by--or at most, which are indifferent to--the rest of the\r\nworld;--a matter so often considered inexplicable.\r\n\r\nBut in this Stranger's Head by the Unknown Hand, the abstract general\r\nexcellence united with the all-surprising, accidental congeniality in\r\nproducing an accumulated impression of power upon both Pierre and\r\nIsabel. Nor was the strangeness of this at all impaired by the apparent\r\nuninterestedness of Lucy concerning that very picture. Indeed,\r\nLucy--who, owing to the occasional jolting of the crowd, had loosened\r\nher arm from Pierre's, and so, gradually, had gone on along the pictured\r\nhall in advance--Lucy had thus passed the strange painting, without the\r\nleast special pause, and had now wandered round to the precisely\r\nopposite side of the hall; where, at this present time, she was standing\r\nmotionless before a very tolerable copy (the only other good thing in\r\nthe collection) of that sweetest, most touching, but most awful of all\r\nfeminine heads--The Cenci of Guido. The wonderfulness of which head\r\nconsists chiefly, perhaps, in a striking, suggested contrast,\r\nhalf-identical with, and half-analogous to, that almost supernatural\r\none--sometimes visible in the maidens of tropical nations--namely, soft\r\nand light blue eyes, with an extremely fair complexion; vailed by\r\nfunereally jetty hair. But with blue eyes and fair complexion, the\r\nCenci's hair is golden--physically, therefore, all is in strict, natural\r\nkeeping; which, nevertheless, still the more intensifies the suggested\r\nfanciful anomaly of so sweetly and seraphically _blonde_ a being, being\r\ndouble-hooded, as it were, by the black crape of the two most horrible\r\ncrimes (of one of which she is the object, and of the other the agent)\r\npossible to civilized humanity--incest and parricide.\r\n\r\nNow, this Cenci and \"the Stranger\" were hung at a good elevation in one\r\nof the upper tiers; and, from the opposite walls, exactly faced each\r\nother; so that in secret they seemed pantomimically talking over and\r\nacross the heads of the living spectators below.\r\n\r\nWith the aspect of the Cenci every one is familiar. \"The Stranger\" was a\r\ndark, comely, youthful man's head, portentously looking out of a dark,\r\nshaded ground, and ambiguously smiling. There was no discoverable\r\ndrapery; the dark head, with its crisp, curly, jetty hair, seemed just\r\ndisentangling itself from out of curtains and clouds. But to Isabel, in\r\nthe eye and on the brow, were certain shadowy traces of her own\r\nunmistakable likeness; while to Pierre, this face was in part as the\r\nresurrection of the one he had burnt at the Inn. Not that the separate\r\nfeatures were the same; but the pervading look of it, the subtler\r\ninterior keeping of the entirety, was almost identical; still, for all\r\nthis, there was an unequivocal aspect of foreignness, of Europeanism,\r\nabout both the face itself and the general painting.\r\n\r\n\"Is it? Is it? Can it be?\" whispered Isabel, intensely.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 3"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AKHN2Y7S9TB0AHTHRD3XB","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AN251QDZVRXPTZ8RHSX3R","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AN25124ZPBQF6J0HNHFMY","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:57.499Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:34.967Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}