 seen this individual's character more
perfectly, if a certain morbidness, to which sick hearts are liable, had not
rendered him suspicious of all mankind. Trusting no man as his friend, he could
not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared. He therefore still
kept up a familiar intercourse with him, daily receiving the old physician in
his study; or visiting the laboratory, and, for recreation's sake, watching the
processes by which weeds were converted into drugs of potency.
    One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his elbow on the sill of the
open window, that looked towards the graveyard, he talked with Roger
Chillingworth, while the old man was examining a bundle of unsightly plants.
    »Where,« asked he, with a look askance at them, - for it was the clergyman's
peculiarity that he seldom, now-a-days, looked straightforth at any object,
whether human or inanimate, - »where, my kind doctor, did you gather those
herbs, with such a dark, flabby leaf?«
    »Even in the grave-yard, here at hand,« answered the physician, continuing
his employment. »They are new to me. I found them growing on a grave, which bore
no tombstone, nor other memorial of the dead man, save these ugly weeds that
have taken upon themselves to keep him in remembrance. They grew out of his
heart, and typify, it may be, some hideous secret that was buried with him, and
which he had done better to confess during his lifetime.«
    »Perchance,« said Mr. Dimmesdale, »he earnestly desired it, but could not.«
    »And wherefore?« rejoined the physician. »Wherefore not; since all the
powers of nature call so earnestly for the confession of sin, that these black
weeds have sprung up out of a buried heart, to make manifest an unspoken crime?«
    »That, good Sir, is but a fantasy of yours,« replied the minister. »There
can be, if I forebode aright, no power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose,
whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried
with a human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must
perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be revealed. Nor
have I so read or interpreted Holy Writ, as to understand that the disclosure of
human thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as a part of the
retribution.
