Of all these people I took note, at first,
according to my custom. But I ceased to do so the moment that my
eyes fell on an individual who sat two or three seats below me,
immovable, apparently deep in thought, with his back, of course,
towards me, and his face turned steadfastly upon the platform.
After sitting awhile in contemplation of this person's familiar
contour, I was irresistibly moved to step over the intervening
benches, lay my hand on his shoulder, put my mouth close to his ear,
and address him in a sepulchral, melodramatic whisper: "Hollingsworth!
where have you left Zenobia?"
His nerves, however, were proof against my attack. He turned half
around, and looked me in the face with great sad eyes, in which there
was neither kindness nor resentment, nor any perceptible surprise.
"Zenobia, when I last saw her," he answered, "was at Blithedale."
He said no more. But there was a great deal of talk going on near me,
among a knot of people who might be considered as representing the
mysticism, or rather the mystic sensuality, of this singular age.
The nature of the exhibition that was about to take place had
probably given the turn to their conversation.
I heard, from a pale man in blue spectacles, some stranger stories
than ever were written in a romance; told, too, with a simple,
unimaginative steadfastness, which was terribly efficacious in
compelling the auditor to receive them into the category of
established facts. He cited instances of the miraculous power of one
human being over the will and passions of another; insomuch that
settled grief was but a shadow beneath the influence of a man
possessing this potency, and the strong love of years melted away
like a vapor.
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