
be it sensual or moral, that exhales from books. But the air was too fresh and
chill to be long breathed, with comfort. So the minister, and the physician with
him, withdrew again within the limits of what their church defined as orthodox.
    Thus Roger Chillingworth scrutinized his patient carefully, both as he saw
him in his ordinary life, keeping an accustomed pathway in the range of thoughts
familiar to him, and as he appeared when thrown amidst other moral scenery, the
novelty of which might call out something new to the surface of his character.
He deemed it essential, it would seem, to know the man, before attempting to do
him good. Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the
physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these. In Arthur Dimmesdale,
thought and imagination were so active, and sensibility so intense, that the
bodily infirmity would be likely to have its groundwork there. So Roger
Chillingworth - the man of skill, the kind and friendly physician - strove to go
deep into his patient's bosom, delving among his principles, prying into his
recollections, and probing every thing with a cautious touch, like a
treasure-seeker in a dark cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, who
has opportunity and license to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow it
up. A man burdened with a secret should especially avoid the intimacy of his
physician. If the latter possess native sagacity, and a nameless something more,
- let us call it intuition; if he show no intrusive egotism, nor disagreeably
prominent characteristics of his own; if he have the power, which must be born
with him, to bring his mind into such affinity with his patient's, that this
last shall unawares have spoken what he imagines himself only to have thought;
if such revelations be received without tumult, and acknowledged not so often by
an uttered sympathy, as by silence, an inarticulate breath, and here and there a
word, to indicate that all is understood; if, to these qualifications of a
confidant be joined the advantages afforded by his recognized character as a
physician; - then, at some inevitable moment, will the soul of the sufferer be
dissolved, and flow forth in a dark, but transparent stream, bringing all its
mysteries into the daylight.
    Roger Chillingworth possessed all, or most, of the attributes above
enumerated. Nevertheless, time went on; a kind of intimacy, as we have said,
grew up between these two cultivated minds, which had as wide a field as the
whole sphere of human
