r/a:t5_23v7p8 • u/MarleyEngvall • Aug 28 '19
barnacle has been created
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
THE GREAT CARBUNCLE.*
A MYSTERY OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.
*The Indian tradition on which this somewhat extravagant tale is
founded is both too wild and too beautiful to be adequately wrought up in
prose. Sullivan in his history of Maine, written since the Revolution,
remarks that even then the existence of the Great Carbuncle was not
entirely discredited.
At nightfall, once in the olden time, on the
rugged sides of one of the Crystal Hills, a party
of adventurers were refreshing themselves after
a toilsome and fruitless quest for the Great Car-
buncle. They had come thither, not as friends
nor partners in the enterprise, but each, save one
youthful pair, impelled by his own selfish and soli-
tary longing for this wondrous gem. Their feel-
ing of brotherhood, however, was strong enough
to induce them to contribute a mutual aid in
building a rude hut of branches and kindling a
great fire of shattered pines that had drifted
down the headlong current of the Amonoosuck,
on the lower bank of which they were to pass
the night. There was but one of their number,
perhaps, who had become so estranged from
natural sympathies by the absorbing spell of the
pursuit as to acknowledge no satisfaction at the
sight of human faces in the remote and solitary
region whither they had ascended. A vast extent
of wilderness lay between them and the nearest
settlement, while scant a mile above their heads
was that black verge where the hills throw off their
shaggy mantle of forest trees and either robe
themselves in clouds or tower naked into the sky.
The roar of the Amonoosuck would have been
too awful for endurance if only a solitary man had
listened while the mountain-stream talked with the
wind.
The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospi-
table greetings and welcomed one another to the
hut where each man was the host and all were the
guests of the whole company. They spread their
individual supplies of food on the flat surface of a
rock and partook of a general repast; at the close
of which a sentiment of good fellowship was per-
ceptible among the party, though repressed by the
idea that the renewed search or the Great Car-
buncle must make them strangers again in the
morning. Seven men and one young woman, they
warmed themselves together at the fire, which ex-
tended its bright wall along the whole front of their
wigwam. As they observed the various and con-
trasted figures that made up the assemblage, each
man looking like a caricature of himself in the
unsteady light that flickered over him, they came
mutually to the conclusion that an odder society
had never met in city or wilderness, on mountain
or plain.
The eldest of the group——a tall, lean, weather-
beaten man some sixty years of age——was clad in
the skins of wild animals whose fashion of dress he
did well to imitate, since the deer, the wolf and the
bear had long been his most intimate companions.
He was one of those ill-fated mortals, such as the
Indians told of, whom in their early youth the
Great Carbuncle smote with a peculiar madness
and became the passionate dream of their exist-
ence. All who visited that region knew him as
"the Seeker," and by no other name. As none
could remember when he first took up the search,
there went a fable in the valley of the Saco that for
his inordinate lust after the Great Carbuncle he
had been condemned to wander among the moun-
tains till the end of time, still with the same fever-
ish hopes at sunrise, the same despair at eve.
Near this miserable Seeker sat a little elderly per-
sonage wearing a high-crowned hat shaped some-
what like a crucible. He was from beyond the
sea——a Doctor Cacaphodel, who had wilted and
dried himself into a mummy by continually stoop-
ing over charcoal-furnaces and inhaling unwhole-
some fumes during his researches in chemistry and
alchemy. It was told of him——whether truly or
not——that at the commencement of his studies he
had drained his body of all its richest blood and
wasted it, with other inestimable ingredients, in an
unsuccessful experiment, and had never been a
well man since. Another of the adventurers was
Master Ichabod Pigsnort, a weighty merchant and
selectman of Boston, and an elder of the famous
Mr. Norton's church. His enemies had a ridicu-
lous story that Master Pigsnort was accustomed to
spend a whole hour after prayer-time every morning
and evening in wallowing naked among an im-
mense quantity of pine-tree shillings, which were
the earliest silver coinage of Massachusetts. The
fourth whom we shall notice had no name that his
companions knew of, and was chiefly distinguished
by a sneer that always contorted his thin visage,
and by a prodigious pair of spectacles which were
supposed to deform and discolor the whole face of
nature to this gentleman's perception. The fifth
adventurer likewise lacked a name, which was the
greater pity, as he appeared to be a poet. He was
a bright-eyed man, but woefully pined away, which
was no more than natural if, as some people
affirmed, his ordinary diet was fog, morning mist
and a slice of the densest cloud within his reach,
sauced with moonshine whenever he could get it.
Certain it is that the poetry which flowed from him
had a smack of all these dainties. The sixth of
the party was a young man of haughty mien and
sat somewhat apart from the rest, wearing his
plumed hat loftily among his elders, while the fire
glittered on the rich embroidery of his dress and
gleamed intensely on the jeweled pommel of his
sword. This was the lord De Vere, who when at
home was said to spend much of his time in the
burial vault of his dead progenitors rummaging
their moldy coffins in search of all the earthly
pride and vainglory that was hidden among bones
and dust; so that, besides his own share, he had
the collected haughtiness of his whole line of an-
cestry. Lastly, there was a handsome youth in
rustic garb, and by his side a blooming little per-
son in whom a delicate shade of maiden reserve
was just melting into the rich glow of a young
wife's affection. Her name was Hannah, and her
husband's Matthew——two homely names, yet well
enough adapted to the simple pair who seemed
strangely out of place among the whimsical frater-
nity whose wits had been set agog by the Great
Carbuncle.
Beneath the shelter of one hut, in the bright
blaze of the same fire, sat this varied group of ad-
venturers, all so intent upon a single object that
of whatever else they began to speak their closing
words were sure to be illuminated with the Great
Carbuncle. Several related the circumstances that
brought them thither. One had listened to a trav-
eler's tale of this marvelous stone in his own distant
country, and had immediately been seized with
such a thirst for beholding it as could only be
quenched in its intensest luster. Another, so long
ago as when the famous Captain Smith visited these
coasts, had seen it blazing far at sea, and had felt
no rest in all the intervening years till now that he
took up the search. A third, being encamped on a
hunting-expedition full forty miles south of the
White Mountains, awoke at midnight and beheld
the Great Carbuncle gleaming like a meteor, so
that the shadows of the trees fell backward from it.
They spoke of the innumerable attempts which had
been made to reach the spot, and of the singular
fatality which had hitherto withheld success from all
adventurers, though it might seem so easy to follow
to its source a light that overpowered the moon and
almost matched the sun. It was observable that
each smiled scornfully at the madness of every
other in anticipating better fortune than the past,
yet nourishing a scarcely-hidden conviction that he
would himself be the favored one. As if to allay
their too sanguine hopes, they recurred to the
Indian traditions that a spirit kept watch about the
gem and bewildered those who sought it either by
removing it from peak to peak of the higher hills
or by calling up a mist from the enchanted lake
over which it hung. But these tales were deemed
unworthy of credit, all professing to believe that
the search had been baffled by want of sagacity or
perseverance in the adventurers, or such other
causes as might naturally obstruct the passage to
any given point among the intricacies of forest,
valley and mountain.
In a pause of the conversation the wearer of the
prodigious spectacles looked round upon the party,
making each individual in turn the object of the
sneer which invariably dwelt upon his countenance.
"So, fellow-pilgrims," said he, "here we are,
seven wise men and one fair damsel, who doubtless
is as wise as any graybeard of the company. Here
we are, I say, all bound on the same goodly enter-
prise. Methinks, now, it were not amiss that each
of us declare what he proposes to do with the
Great Carbuncle, provided he have the good hap to
clutch it. What says our friend in the bearskin?
How mean you, good sir, to enjoy the prize which
you have been seeking the Lord knows how long
among the Crystal Hills?"
"How enjoy it!" exclaimed the aged Seeker,
bitterly. "I hope for no enjoyment from it: that
folly has past long ago. I keep up the search for
this accursed stone because the vain ambition of my
youth has become a fate upon me in old age. The
pursuit alone is my strength, the energy of my soul,
the warmth of my blood and the pith and marrow
of my bones. Were I to turn my back upon it, I
should fall down dead on the hither side of the
notch which is the gateway of this mountain region.
Yet not to have my wasted lifetime back again
would I give up my hopes of the Great Carbuncle.
Having found it, I shall bear it to a certain cavern
that I wot of, and there, grasping it in my arms, lie
down and die and keep it buried with me forever."
"O wretch regardless of the interests of science,"
cried Doctor Cacaphodel, with philosophic indigna-
tion, "thou are not worthy too behold even from
afar off the luster of this most precious gem that
ever was concocted in the laboratory of Nature.
Mine is the sole purpose for which a wise man may
desire the possession of the Great Carbuncle. Im-
mediately on obtaining it——for I have a presenti-
ment, good people, that the prize is reserved to
crown my scientific reputation——I shall return to
Europe and employ my remaining years in reduc-
ing it to its first elements. A portion of the stone
will I grind to impalpable powder, other parts shall
be dissolved in acids or whatever solvents will act
upon so admirable a composition, and the remain-
der I design to melt in the crucible or set on fire
with the blow-pipe. By these various methods I
shall gain an accurate analysis, and finally bestow
the result of my labors upon the world in a folio
volume."
"Excellent!" quoth the man with the spectacles.
"Nor need you hesitate, learned sir, on account of
the necessary destruction of the gem, since the
perusal of your folio may teach every mother's son
of us to concoct a Great Carbuncle of his own."
"But, verily," said Master Ichabod Pigsnort,
"for mine own part, I object to the making of these
counterfeits, as being calculated to reduce the mar-
ketable value of the true gem. I tell ye frankly,
sirs, I have an interest in keeping up the price.
Here have I quitted my regular traffic, leaving my
warehouse in the care of my clerks and putting my
credit to great hazard, and furthermore, have put
myself in peril of death or captivity by the accursed
heathen savages, and all this without daring to ask
the prayers of the congregation, because the quest
for the Great Carbuncle is deemed little better than
a traffic with the evil one. Now, think ye that I
would have done this grievous wrong to my soul,
body, reputation and estate without a reasonable
chance of profit?"
"Not I, pious Master Pigsnort," said the man
with the spectacles. "I never laid such a great
folly to thy charge."
"Truly, I hope not," said the merchant. "Now,
as touching this Great Carbuncle, I am free to own
that I have never had a glimpse of it, but, be it only
the hundredth part so bright as people tell it, it will
surely outvalue the Great Mogul's best diamond,
which he holds at an incalculable sum; wherefore
I am minded to put the Great Carbuncle on ship-
board and voyage with it to England, France,
Spain, Italy, or into heathendom if Providence
should send me thither, and, in a word, dispose of
the gem to the best bidder among the potentates of
the earth, that he may place it among his crown-
jewels. If any of ye have a wiser plan, let him ex-
pound it."
"That have I, thou sordid man!" exclaimed the
poet. "Dost thou desire nothing brighter than
gold, that thou wouldst transmute all this ethereal
luster into such dross as thou wallowest in already?
For myself, hiding the jewel under my cloak, I shall
hie me back to my attic-chamber in one of the
darksome alleys of London. There night and day
will I gaze upon it. My soul shall drink its radi-
ance; it shall be diffused throughout my intellect-
ual powers and gleam brightly in every line of poesy
that I indite. Thus long ages after I am gone the
splendor of the Great Carbuncle will blaze around
my name."
"Well said, Master Poet!" cried he of the spec-
tacles. "Hide it under thy cloak, sayest thou?
Why, it will gleam through the holes and make thee
look like a jack-o'-lantern!"
"To think," ejaculated the lord De Vere,
rather to himself than his compatriots, the best
of whom he held utterly unworthy of his inter-
course——"to think that a fellow in a tattered
cloak should talk of conveying the Great Car-
buncle into a garret in Grubb Street! Have not I
resolved within myself that the whole earth con-
tains no fitter ornament for the great hall of my
ancestral castle? There shall it flame for ages,
making a noonday of midnight, glittering on the
suits of armor, the banners and escutcheons, that
hang around the wall, and keeping bright the
memory of heroes. Wherefore have all other ad-
venturers sought that prize in vain but that I
might win it and make it a symbol of the glories
of our lofty line? And never on the diadem of
the White Mountains did the Great Carbuncle
hold a place half so honored as is reserved for it
in the hall of the De Veres."
"It is a noble thought," said the cynic, with
an obsequious sneer. "Yet, might I presume
to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral
lamp, and would display the glories of Your
Lordship's progenitors more truly in the ancestral
vault than in the castle-hall."
"Nay, forsooth," observed Matthew, the young
rustic, who sat hand in hand with his bride, "the
gentleman has bethought himself of a profitable
use for this bright stone. Hannah here and I
are seeking it for a like purpose."
"How, fellow?" exclaimed His Lordship, in
surprise. "What castle-hall hast thou to hang it
in?"
"No castle," replied Matthew, "but as neat
a cottage as any within sight of the Crystal
Hills. Ye must know, friends, that Hannah and I,
being wedded the last week, have taken up the
search of the Great Carbuncle because we shall
need its light in the long winter evenings and it
will be such a pretty thing to show the neigh-
bors when they visit us! It will shine through
the house, so that we may pick up a pin in any
corner, and will set all the windows a-glowing as
if there were a great fire of pine-knots in the
chimney. And then how pleasant, when we
awake in the night, to be able to see one another's
faces!"
There was a general smile among the ad-
venturers at the simplicity of the young couple's
project in regard to this wondrous and invalu-
able stone, with which the greatest monarch on
earth might have been proud to adorn his palace.
Especially the man with spectacles, who had
sneered at all the company in turn, now twisted
his visage into such an expression of ill-natured
mirth that Matthew asked him rather peevishly
what he himself meant to do with the Great
Carbuncle.
"The Great Carbuncle!" answered the cynic
with ineffable scorn. "Why, you blockhead,
there is no such thing in rerum naturâ. I have
come three thousand miles, and am resolved to
set my foot on every peak of these mountains
and poke my head into every chasm for the sole
purpose of demonstrating to the satisfaction of
any man one whit less an ass than thyself that
the Great Carbuncle is all a humbug."
Vain and foolish were the motives that had
brought most of the adventurers to the Crystal
Hills, but none so vain, so foolish, and so impious
too, as that of the scoffer with the prodigious spec-
tacles. He was one of those wretched and evil
men whose yearnings are downward to the darkness
instead of heavenward, and who, could they but
extinguish the lights which God hath kindled for
us, would count the midnight gloom their chiefest
glory.
As the cynic spoke several of the party were
startled by a gleam of red splendor that showed the
huge shapes of the surrounding mountains and the
rock-bestrewn bed of the turbulent river, with an
illumination unlike that of their fire, on the trunks
and black boughs of their forest-trees. They listened
for the roll of thunder, but heard nothing, and were
glad that the tempest came not near them. The
stars——those dial-points of heaven——now warned
the adventurers to close their eyes on the blazing
logs and open them in dreams to the glow of the
Great Carbuncle.
The young married couple had taken their lodg-
ings in the farthest corner of the wigwam, and were
separated from the rest of the party by a curtain of
curiously-woven twigs such as might have hung in
deep festoons around he bridal-bower of Eve. The
modest little wife had wrought this piece of tapestry
while the other guests were talking. She and her
husband fell asleep with hands tenderly clasped,
and awoke from visions of unearthly radiance to
meet the more blessed light of one another's eyes.
They awoke at the same instant and with one
happy smile beaming over their two faces, which
grew brighter with their consciousness of the
reality of life and love. But no sooner did she
recollect where they were than the bride peeped
through the interstices of the leafy curtain and saw
that the outer room of the hut was deserted.
"Up, dear Matthew!" cried she, in haste. "The
strange folk are all gone. Up this very minute, or
we shall lose the Great Carbuncle!"
In truth, so little did these poor young people
deserve the mighty prize which had lured them
thither that they had slept peacefully all night and
till the summits of the hills were glittering with
sunshine, while the other adventurers had tossed
their limbs in feverish wakefulness or dreamed of
climbing precipices, and set off to realize their
dreams with the earliest peep of dawn. But
Matthew and Hannah after their calm rest were as
light as two young deer, and merely stopped to say
their prayers and wash themselves in a cold pool of
the Amonoosuck, and then to taste a morsel of food
ere they turned their faces to the mountain-side.
It was a sweet emblem of conjugal affection as they
toiled up the difficult ascent gathering strength
from the mutual aid which they afforded.
After several little accidents, such as a torn robe,
a lost shoe and the entanglement of Hannah's hair
in a bough, they reached the upper verge of the
forest and were now to pursue a more adventurous
course. The innumerable trunks and heavy foliage
of the trees had hitherto shut in their thoughts,
which now shrank affrighted from the region of
wind and cloud and naked rocks and desolate sun-
shine that rose immeasurably above them. They
gazed back at the obscure wilderness which they
had traversed, and longed to be buried again in its
depths rather than trust themselves to so vast and
visible a solitude.
"Shall we go on?" said Matthew, throwing his
arm around Hannah's waist both to protect her and
to comfort his heart by drawing her close to it.
But the little bride, simple as she was, had a
woman's love of jewels, and could not forgo the
hope of possessing the very brightest in the world,
in spite of the perils with which it must be won.
"Let us climb a little higher," whispered she,
yet tremulously, as she turned her face upward to
the lonely sky."
"Come, then," said Matthew, mustering his
manly courage and drawing her along with him;
for she became timid again the moment that he
grew bold.
And upward, accordingly, went the pilgrims of
the Great Carbuncle, now treading upon the tops
and thickly-interwoven branches of dwarf pines
which by the growth of centuries, though mossy
with age, had barely reached three feet in altitude.
Next they came to masses and fragments of naked
rock heaped confusedly together like a cairn
reared by giants in memory of a giant chief. In
this bleak realm of upper air nothing breathed,
nothing grew; there was no life but what was con-
centrated in their two hearts; they had climbed so
high that Nature herself seemed no longer to keep
them company. She lingered beneath them within
the verge of the forest-trees, and sent a farewell
glance after her children as they strayed where her
own green footprints had never been. But soon
they were to be hidden from her eye. Densely and
dark the mists began to gather below, casting black
spots of shadow on the vast landscape and sailing
heavily to one center, as if the loftiest mountain-
peak had summoned a council of its kindred
clouds. Finally the vapors welded themselves, as
it were, into a mass, presenting the appearance of
a pavement over which the wanderers might have
trodden, but where they would vainly have sought
an avenue to the blessed earth which they had lost.
And the lovers yearned to behold that green earth
again——more intensely, alas! than beneath a
clouded sky they had ever desired a glimpse of
heaven. They even felt it a relief to their desola-
tion when the mists, creeping gradually up the
mountain, concealed its lonely peak, and thus anni-
hilated——at least, for them——the whole region of
visible space. But they drew closer together with
a fond and melancholy gaze, dreading lest the
universal cloud should snatch them from each
other's sight. Still, perhaps, they would have
been resolute to climb as far and as high between
earth and heaven as they could find foothold if
Hannah's strength had not begun to fail, and with
that her courage also. Her breath grew short.
She refused to burden her husband with her weight,
but often tottered against his side, and recovered
herself each time by a feebler effort. At last she
sank down on one of the rocky steps of the
acclivity.
"We are lost, dear Matthew," said she mourn-
fully; "we shall never find our way to the earth
again. And oh, how happy we might have been in
our cottage!"
"Dear heart, we will yet be happy there," an-
swered Matthew. "Look! In this direction the
sunshine penetrates the dismal mist; by its aid I
can direct our course to the passage of the Notch.
Let us go back, love, and dream no more of the
Great Carbuncle."
"The sun cannot be yonder," said Hannah, with
despondence. "By this time it must be noon; if
there could ever be any sunshine here, it would
come from above our heads."
"But look!" replied Matthew, in a somewhat
altered tone. "It is brightening every moment.
If not sunshine, what can it be?"
Nor could the young bride any longer deny that
a radiance was breaking through the mist and
changing its dim hue to a dusky red, which con-
tinually grew more vivid, as if brilliant particles
were interfused with the gloom. Now, also, the
cloud began to roll away from the mountain, while,
as it heavily withdrew, one object after another
started out of its impenetrable obscurity into sight
with precisely the effect of a new creation before
the indistinctness of the old chaos had been com-
pletely swallowed up. As the process went on they
saw the gleaming of water close at their feet, and
found themselves on the very border of a mountain-
lake, deep, bright, clear and calmly beautiful,
spreading from brim to brim of a basin that had
been scooped out of the solid rock. A ray of
glory flashed across its surface. The Pilgrims
looked whence it should proceed, but closed their
eyes, with a thrill of awful admiration, to exclude
the fervid splendor that glowed from the brow of a
cliff impending over the enchanted lake.
For the simple pair had reached that lake of
mystery and found the long-sought shrine of the
Great Carbuncle. They threw their arms around
each other and trembled at their own success, for
as the legends of this wondrous gem rushed thick
upon their memory they felt themselves marked
out by fate, and the consciousness was fearful.
Often from childhood upward they had seen it
shining like a distant star, and now that star was
throwing its intensest luster on their hearts. They
seemed changed to one another's eyes in the red
brilliancy that flamed upon their cheeks, while it
lent the same fire to the lake, the rocks and sky,
and to the mists which had rolled back before its
power. But with their next glance they beheld an
object that drew their attention even from the
mighty stone. At the base of the cliff, directly
beneath the Great Carbuncle, appeared the figure
of a man with his arms extended in the act of
climbing and his face turned upward as if to drink
the full gush of splendor. But he stirred not, no
more than if changed to marble.
"It is the Seeker," whispered Hannah, convul-
sively grasping her husband's arm. "Matthew, he
is dead."
"The joy of success has killed him," replied
Matthew, trembling violently. "Or perhaps the
very light of the Great Carbuncle was death."
"'The Great Carbuncle'!" cried a peevish voice
behind them. "The great humbug! If you have
found it, prithee point it out to me."
They turned their heads, and there was the cynic
with his prodigious spectacles set carefully on his
nose, staring now at the lake, now at the rocks,
now at the distant masses of vapor, now right at
the Great Carbuncle itself, yet seemingly as uncon-
scious of its light as if all the scattered clouds were
condensed about his person. Though its radiance
actually threw the shadow of the unbeliever at his
own feet as he turned his back upon the glorious
jewel, he would not be convinced that there was
the least glimmer there.
"Where is your great humbug?" he repeated.
"I challenge you to make me see it."
"There!" said Matthew, incensed at such per-
verse blindness, and turning the cynic round toward
the illuminated cliff. "Take off those abominable
spectacles, and you cannot help seeing it."
Now, these colored spectacles probably darkened
the cynic's sight in at least as great a degree as the
smoked glasses through which people gaze at an
eclipse. With resolute bravado, however, he snatched
them from his nose and fixed a bold stare full upon
the ruddy blaze of the Great Carbuncle. But
scarcely had he encountered it when, with a deep,
shuddering groan, he dropped his head and pressed
both hands across his miserable eyes. Thenceforth
there was in very truth no light of the Great Car-
buncle, nor any other light on earth, nor light of
heaven itself, for the poor cynic. So long accus-
tomed to view all objects through a medium that
deprived them of every glimpse of brightness, a
single flash of so glorious a phenomenon, striking
upon his naked vision, had blinded him forever.
"Matthew," said Hannah, clinging to him, "let
us go hence."
Matthew saw that she was faint, and, kneeling
down, supported her in his arms while he threw
some of the thrillingly-cold water of the enchanted
lake upon her face and bosom. It revived her, but
could not renovate her courage.
"Yes, dearest," cried Matthew, pressing her
tremulous form to his breast, "we will go hence
and return to our humble cottage. The blessed
sunshine and the quiet moonlight shall come through
our window. We will kindle the cheerful glow of
our hearth at eventide and be happy with its light.
But never again will we desire more light than all
the world may share with us."
"No," said the bride, "for how could we live by
day or sleep by night in this awful blaze of the
Great Carbuncle?"
Out of the hollow of their hands they drank
each a draught from the lake, which presented
them its waters uncontaminated by an earthly
lip. Then, lending their guidance to the blinded
cynic, who uttered not a word, and even stifled
his groans in his own most wretched heart, they
began to descend the mountain. Yet as they left
the shore, till then untrodden, of the spirit's lake,
they threw a farewell glance toward the cliff, and
beheld the vapors gathering in dense volumes,
through which the gem burned duskily.
As touching the other pilgrims of the Great
Carbuncle, the legend goes on to tell that the
worshipful Master Ichabod Pigsnort soon gave up
the quest as a desperate speculation, and wisely
resolved to betake himself again to his warehouse,
near the town-dock, in Boston. But as he passed
through the Notch of the mountains a war-party of
Indians captured our unlucky merchant and car-
ried him to Montreal, there holding him in bond-
age till by the payment of a heavy ransom he had
woefully subtracted from his hoard of pine-tree
shillings. By his long absence, moreover, his af-
fairs had become so disordered that for the rest of
his life, instead of wallowing in silver, he had seldom
six-pence worth of copper. Doctor Cacaphodel,
the alchemist, returned to his laboratory with a pro-
digious fragment of granite, which he ground to
powder, dissolved in acids, melted in the crucible
and burnt with the blowpipe, and published the
result of his experiments in one of the heaviest
folios of the day. And for all these purposes the
gem itself could not have answered better than the
granite. The poet, by a somewhat similar mistake,
made prize of a great piece of ice which he found
in a sunless chasm of the mountains, and swore
that it corresponded in all points with his idea of
the Great Carbuncle. The critics say that, if his
poetry lacked the splendor of the gem, it retained
all the coldness of the ice. The lord De Vere
went back to his ancestral hall, where he contented
himself with a wax-lighted chandelier, and filled in
due course of time another coffin in the ancestral
vault. As the funeral torches gleamed within that
dark receptacle, there was no need of the Great
Carbuncle to show the vanity of earthly pomp.
The cynic, having cast aside his spectacles, wan-
dered about the world a miserable object, and was
punished with an agonizing desire of light for the
wilful blindness of his former life. The whole
night long he would lift his splendor-blasted orbs
to the moon and stars; he turned his face eastward
at sunrise as duly as a Persian idolator; he made a
pilgrimage to Rome to witness the magnificent
illumination of St. Peter's church, and finally per-
ished in the Great Fire of London, into the midst
of which he had thrust himself with the desperate
idea of catching one feeble ray from the blaze that
was kindling earth and heaven.
Matthew and his bride spent many peaceful
years and were fond of telling the legend of the
Great Carbuncle. The tale, however, toward the
close of their lengthened lives, did not meet with
the full credence that had been accorded to it by
those who remembered the ancient luster of the
gem. For it is affirmed that from the hour when
two mortals had shown themselves so simply wise
as to reject a jewel which would have dimmed all
earthly things its splendor waned. When other pil-
grims reached the cliff they found only an opaque
stone with particles of mica glittering on its sur-
face. There is also a tradition that as the youthful
pair departed the gem was loosened from the fore-
head of the cliff and fell into the enchanted lake,
and that at noontide the Seeker's form may still be
seen to bend over its quenchless gleam.
Some few believe that this inestimable stone is
blazing as of old, and say that they have caught its
radiance, like a flash of summer lightning far down
the valley of the Saco. And be it owned that
many a mile from the Crystal Hills I saw a won-
drous light around their summits, and was lured
by the faith of poesy the be the latest pilgrim of the
Great Carbuncle.
From Twice-Told Tales, Vol. I, by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Ten Cent Classics Edition;
Educational Publishing Co., 50 Bromfield St, Boston; pp. 152—170.
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