d! They heard it all, and did but reverence him the more. They
little guessed what deadly purport lurked in those self-condemning
words. "The godly youth!" said they among themselves. "The saint on
earth! Alas, if he discern such sinfulness in his own white soul, what
horrid spectacle would he behold in thine or mine!" The minister well
knew--subtle, but remorseful hypocrite that he was!--the light in
which his vague confession would be viewed. He had striven to put a
cheat upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but
had gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, without
the momentary relief of being self-deceived. He had spoken the very
truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood. And yet, by the
constitution of his nature, he loved the truth, and loathed the lie,
as few men ever did. Therefore, above all things else, he loathed his
miserable self!

His inward trouble drove him to practices more in accordance with the
old, corrupted faith of Rome, than with the better light of the church
in which he had been born and bred. In Mr. Dimmesdale's secret closet,
under lock and key, there was a bloody scourge. Oftentimes, this
Protestant and Puritan divine had plied it on his own shoulders;
laughing bitterly at himself the while, and smiting so much the more
pitilessly because of that bitter laugh. It was his custom, too, as it
has been that of many other pious Puritans, to fast,--not, however,
like them, in order to purify the body and render it the fitter medium
of celestial illumination, but rigorously, and until his knees
trembled beneath him, as an act of penance. He kept vigils, likewise,
night after night, sometimes in utter darkness; sometimes with a
glimmering lamp; and sometimes, viewing his own face in a
looking-glass, by the most powerful light which he could throw upon
it. He thus typified the constant introspection wherewith he tortured,
but could not purify, himself. In these lengthened vigils, his brain
often reeled, and visions seemed to flit before him; perhaps seen
doubtfully, and by a faint light of their own, in the remote dimness
of the chamber, or more vividly, and close beside him, within the
looking-glass. Now it was a herd of diabolic shapes, that grinned and
mocked at the pale minister, and beckoned him away with them; now a
group of shining angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow-laden, but
grew more ethereal as they rose. Now came the dead friends of h