n and the physician, though externally the same, was really of
another character than it had previously been. The intellect of Roger
Chillingworth had now a sufficiently plain path before it. It was not,
indeed, precisely that which he had laid out for himself to tread.
Calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a
quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this
unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge
than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy. To make himself the
one trusted friend, to whom should be confided all the fear, the
remorse, the agony, the ineffectual repentance, the backward rush of
sinful thoughts, expelled in vain! All that guilty sorrow, hidden from
the world, whose great heart would have pitied and forgiven, to be
revealed to him, the Pitiless, to him, the Unforgiving! All that dark
treasure to be lavished on the very man, to whom nothing else could so
adequately pay the debt of vengeance!

The clergyman's shy and sensitive reserve had balked this scheme.
Roger Chillingworth, however, was inclined to be hardly, if at all,
less satisfied with the aspect of affairs, which Providence--using the
avenger and his victim for its own purposes, and, perchance, pardoning
where it seemed most to punish--had substituted for his black devices.
A revelation, he could almost say, had been granted to him. It
mattered little, for his object, whether celestial, or from what other
region. By its aid, in all the subsequent relations betwixt him and
Mr. Dimmesdale, not merely the external presence, but the very inmost
soul, of the latter, seemed to be brought out before his eyes, so that
he could see and comprehend its every movement. He became,
thenceforth, not a spectator only, but a chief actor, in the poor
minister's interior world. He could play upon him as he chose. Would
he arouse him with a throb of agony? The victim was forever on the
rack; it needed only to know the spring that controlled the
engine;--and the physician knew it well! Would he startle him with
sudden fear? As at the waving of a magician's wand, uprose a grisly
phantom,--uprose a thousand phantoms,--in many shapes, of death, or
more awful shame, all flocking round about the clergyman, and pointing
with their fingers at his breast!

All this was accomplished with a subtlety so perfect, that the
minister, though he had constantly a dim perception of some evil
influence watching