orld. Here, there was the taint of
deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such
effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty,
and the more lost for the infant that she had borne.

The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest
the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, before society
shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering, at
it. The witnesses of Hester Prynne's disgrace had not yet passed
beyond their simplicity. They were stern enough to look upon her
death, had that been the sentence, without a murmur at its severity,
but had none of the heartlessness of another social state, which would
find only a theme for jest in an exhibition like the present. Even had
there been a disposition to turn the matter into ridicule, it must
have been repressed and overpowered by the solemn presence of men no
less dignified than the Governor, and several of his counsellors, a
judge, a general, and the ministers of the town; all of whom sat or
stood in a balcony of the meeting-house, looking down upon the
platform. When such personages could constitute a part of the
spectacle, without risking the majesty or reverence of rank and
office, it was safely to be inferred that the infliction of a legal
sentence would have an earnest and effectual meaning. Accordingly, the
crowd was sombre and grave. The unhappy culprit sustained herself as
best a woman might, under the heavy weight of a thousand unrelenting
eyes, all fastened upon her, and concentrated at her bosom. It was
almost intolerable to be borne. Of an impulsive and passionate nature,
she had fortified herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs
of public contumely, wreaking itself in every variety of insult; but
there was a quality so much more terrible in the solemn mood of the
popular mind, that she longed rather to behold all those rigid
countenances contorted with scornful merriment, and herself the
object. Had a roar of laughter burst from the multitude,--each man,
each woman, each little shrill-voiced child, contributing their
individual parts,--Hester Prynne might have repaid them all with a
bitter and disdainful smile. But, under the leaden infliction which it
was her doom to endure, she felt, at moments, as if she must needs
shriek out with the full power of her lungs, and cast herself from the
scaffold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once.

Yet there were