"People of New England!" cried he, with a voice that rose over
them, high, solemn, and majestic--yet had always a tremor
through it, and sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a
fathomless depth of remorse and woe--"ye, that have loved
me!--ye, that have deemed me holy!--behold me here, the one
sinner of the world! At last--at last!--I stand upon the spot
where, seven years since, I should have stood, here, with this
woman, whose arm, more than the little strength wherewith I have
crept hitherward, sustains me at this dreadful moment, from
grovelling down upon my face! Lo, the scarlet letter which
Hester wears! Ye have all shuddered at it! Wherever her walk
hath been--wherever, so miserably burdened, she may have hoped
to find repose--it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible
repugnance round about her. But there stood one in the midst of
you, at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not shuddered!"
It seemed, at this point, as if the minister must leave the
remainder of his secret undisclosed. But he fought back the
bodily weakness--and, still more, the faintness of heart--that
was striving for the mastery with him. He threw off all
assistance, and stepped passionately forward a pace before the
woman and the children.
"It was on him!" he continued, with a kind of fierceness; so
determined was he to speak out the whole. "God's eye beheld it!
The angels were for ever pointing at it! (The Devil knew it
well, and fretted it continually with the touch of his burning
finger!) But he hid it cunningly from men, and walked among you
with the mien of a spirit, mournful, because so pure in a sinful
world!--and sad, because he missed his heavenly kindred! Now, at
the death-hour, he stands up before you! He bids you look again
at Hester's scarlet letter! He tells you, that, with all its
mysterious horror, it is but the shadow of what he bears on his
own breast, and that even this, his own red stigma, is no more
than the type of what has seared his inmost heart! Stand any
here that question God's judgment on a sinner! Behold! Behold,
a dreadful witness of it!"
With a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band from
before his breast. It was revealed! But it were irreverent to
describe that revelation. For an instant, the gaze of the
horror-stricken multitude was concentrated on the ghastly
miracle; while the minister stood, with a flush of triumph in
his face, as one who, in the crisis of acutest pain, had won a
victory. Then, down he sank upon the scaffold! Hester partly
raised him, and supported his head against her bosom. Old Roger
Chillingworth knelt down beside him, with a blank, dull
countenance, out of which the life seemed to have departed.