At nightfall once in the olden time, on the rugged side of one of the
Crystal Hills, a party of adventurers were refreshing themselves after
a toilsome and fruitless quest for the Great Carbuncle. They had come
thither, not as friends nor partners in the enterprise, but each, save
one youthful pair, impelled by his own selfish and solitary longing for
this wondrous gem. Their feeling of brotherhood, however, was strong
enough to induce them to contribute a mutual aid in building a rude hut
of branches and kindling a great fire of shattered pines that had
drifted down the headlong current of the Amonoosuck, on the lower bank
of which they were to pass the night. There was but one of their
number, perhaps, who had become so estranged from natural sympathies by
the absorbing spell of the pursuit as to acknowledge no satisfaction at
the sight of human faces in the remote and solitary region whither they
had ascended. A vast extent of wilderness lay between them and the
nearest settlement, while scant a mile above their heads was that bleak
verge where the hills throw off their shaggy mantle of forest-trees and
either robe themselves in clouds or tower naked into the sky. The roar
of the Amonoosuck would have been too awful for endurance if only a
solitary man had listened while the mountain-stream talked with the
wind.
The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospitable greetings and welcomed
one another to the hut where each man was the host and all were the
guests of the whole company. They spread their individual supplies of
food on the flat surface of a rock and partook of a general repast; at
the close of which a sentiment of good-fellowship was perceptible among
the party, though repressed by the idea that the renewed search for the
Great Carbuncle must make them strangers again in the morning. Seven
men and one young woman, they warmed themselves together at the fire,
which extended its bright wall along the whole front of their wigwam.
As they observed the various and contrasted figures that made up the
assemblage, each man looking like a caricature of himself in the
unsteady light that flickered over him, they came mutually to the
conclusion that an odder society had never met in city or wilderness,
on mountain or plain.
The eldest of the group—a tall, lean, weatherbeaten man some sixty
years of age—was clad in the skins of wild animals whose fashion of
dress he did well to imitate, since the deer, the wolf and the bear had
long been his most intimate companions. He was one of those ill-fated
mortals, such as the Indians told of, whom in their early youth the
Great Carbuncle smote with a peculiar madness and became the passionate
dream of their existence. All who visited that region knew him as “the
Seeker,” and by no other name. As none could remember when he first
took up the search, there went a fable in the valley of the Saco that
for his inordinate lust after the Great Carbuncle he had been condemned
to wander among the mountains till the end of time, still with the same
feverish hopes at sunrise, the same despair at eve. Near this miserable
Seeker sat a little elderly personage wearing a high-crowned hat shaped
somewhat like a crucible. He was from beyond the sea—a Doctor
Cacaphodel, who had wilted and dried himself into a mummy by
continually stooping over charcoal-furnaces and inhaling unwholesome
fumes during his researches in chemistry and alchemy. It was told of
him—whether truly or not—that at the commencement of his studies he had
drained his body of all its richest blood and wasted it, with other
inestimable ingredients, in an unsuccessful experiment, and had never
been a well man since. Another of the adventurers was Master Ichabod
Pigsnort, a weighty merchant and selectman of Boston, and an elder of
the famous Mr. Norton’s church. His enemies had a ridiculous story that
Master Pigsnort was accustomed to spend a whole hour after prayer-time
every morning and evening in wallowing naked among an immense quantity
of pine-tree shillings, which were the earliest silver coinage of
Massachusetts. The fourth whom we shall notice had no name that his
companions knew of, and was chiefly distinguished by a sneer that
always contorted his thin visage, and by a prodigious pair of
spectacles which were supposed to deform and discolor the whole face of
nature to this gentleman’s perception. The fifth adventurer likewise
lacked a name, which was the greater pity, as he appeared to be a poet.
He was a bright-eyed man, but woefully pined away, which was no more
than natural if, as some people affirmed, his ordinary diet was fog,
morning mist and a slice of the densest cloud within his reach, sauced
with moonshine whenever he could get it. Certain it is that the poetry
which flowed from him had a smack of all these dainties. The sixth of
the party was a young man of haughty mien and sat somewhat apart from
the rest, wearing his plumed hat loftily among his elders, while the
fire glittered on the rich embroidery of his dress and gleamed
intensely on the jewelled pommel of his sword. This was the lord De
Vere, who when at home was said to spend much of his time in the
burial-vault of his dead progenitors rummaging their mouldy coffins in
search of all the earthly pride and vainglory that was hidden among
bones and dust; so that, besides his own share, he had the collected
haughtiness of his whole line of ancestry. Lastly, there was a handsome
youth in rustic garb, and by his side a blooming little person in whom
a delicate shade of maiden reserve was just melting into the rich glow
of a young wife’s affection. Her name was Hannah, and her husband’s
Matthew—two homely names, yet well enough adapted to the simple pair
who seemed strangely out of place among the whimsical fraternity whose
wits had been set agog by the Great Carbuncle.
Beneath the shelter of one hut, in the bright blaze of the same fire,
sat this varied group of adventurers, all so intent upon a single
object that of whatever else they began to speak their closing words
were sure to be illuminated with the Great Carbuncle. Several related
the circumstances that brought them thither. One had listened to a
traveller’s tale of this marvellous stone in his own distant country,
and had immediately been seized with such a thirst for beholding it as
could only be quenched in its intensest lustre. Another, so long ago as
when the famous Captain Smith visited these coasts, had seen it blazing
far at sea, and had felt no rest in all the intervening years till now
that he took up the search. A third, being encamped on a
hunting-expedition full forty miles south of the White Mountains, awoke
at midnight and beheld the Great Carbuncle gleaming like a meteor, so
that the shadows of the trees fell backward from it. They spoke of the
innumerable attempts which had been made to reach the spot, and of the
singular fatality which had hitherto withheld success from all
adventurers, though it might seem so easy to follow to its source a
light that overpowered the moon and almost matched the sun. It was
observable that each smiled scornfully at the madness of every other in
anticipating better fortune than the past, yet nourished a
scarcely-hidden conviction that he would himself be the favored one. As
if to allay their too sanguine hopes, they recurred to the Indian
traditions that a spirit kept watch about the gem and bewildered those
who sought it either by removing it from peak to peak of the higher
hills or by calling up a mist from the enchanted lake over which it
hung. But these tales were deemed unworthy of credit, all professing to
believe that the search had been baffled by want of sagacity or
perseverance in the adventurers, or such other causes as might
naturally obstruct the passage to any given point among the intricacies
of forest, valley and mountain.
In a pause of the conversation the wearer of the prodigious spectacles
looked round upon the party, making each individual in turn the object
of the sneer which invariably dwelt upon his countenance.
“So, fellow-pilgrims,” said he, “here we are, seven wise men and one
fair damsel, who doubtless is as wise as any graybeard of the company.
Here we are, I say, all bound on the same goodly enterprise. Methinks,
now, it were not amiss that each of us declare what he proposes to do
with the Great Carbuncle, provided he have the good hap to clutch
it.—What says our friend in the bearskin? How mean you, good sir, to
enjoy the prize which you have been seeking the Lord knows how long
among the Crystal Hills?”
“How enjoy it!” exclaimed the aged Seeker, bitterly. “I hope for no
enjoyment from it--that folly has past, long ago! I keep up the search
for this accursed stone, because the vain ambition of my youth has
become a fate upon me, in old age. The pursuit alone is my
strength--the energy of my soul--the warmth of my blood, and the pith
and marrow of my bones! Were I to turn my back upon it, I should fall
down dead, on the hither side of the Notch, which is the gate-way of
this mountain region. Yet, not to have my wasted life time back again,
would I give up my hopes of the Great Carbuncle! Having found it, I
shall bear it to a certain cavern that I wot of, and there, grasping it
in my arms, lie down and die, and keep it buried with me for ever.”
“Oh, wretch, regardless of the interests of science!” cried Doctor
Cacaphodel, with philosophic indignation. “Thou art not worthy to
behold, even from afar off, the lustre of this most precious gem that
ever was concocted in the laboratory of Nature. Mine is the sole
purpose for which a wise man may desire the possession of the Great
Carbuncle. Immediately on obtaining it--for I have a presentiment, good
people, that the prize is reserved to crown my scientific reputation--I
shall return to Europe, and employ my remaining years in reducing it to
its first elements. A portion of the stone will I grind to impalpable
powder; other parts shall be dissolved in acids, or whatever solvents
will act upon so admirable a composition; and the remainder I design to
melt in the crucible, or set on fire with the blow-pipe. By these
various methods, I shall gain an accurate analysis, and finally bestow
the result of my labours upon the world, in a folio volume.”
“Excellent!” quoth the man with the spectacles. “Nor need you hesitate,
learned Sir, on account of the necessary destruction of the gem; since
the perusal of your folio may teach every mother’s son of us to concoct
a Great Carbuncle of his own.”
“But, verily,” said Master Ichabod Pigsnort, “for mine own part, I
object to the making of these counterfeits, as being calculated to
reduce the marketable value of the true gem. I tell ye frankly, Sirs, I
have an interest in keeping up the price. Here have I quitted my
regular traffic, leaving my warehouse in the care of my clerks, and
putting my credit to great hazard, and furthermore, have put myself to
peril of death or captivity by the accursed heathen savages--and all
this without daring to ask the prayers of the congregation, because the
quest for the Great Carbuncle is deemed little better than a traffic
with the evil one. Now think ye that I would have done this grievous
wrong to my soul, body, reputation and estate, without a reasonable
chance of profit?”
“Not I, pious Master Pigsnort,” said the man with the spectacles. “I
never laid such a great folly to thy charge.”
“Truly, I hope not,” said the merchant. “Now, as touching this Great
Carbuncle, I am free to own that I have never had a glimpse of it, but,
be it only the hundredth part so bright as people tell, it will surely
outvalue the Great Mogul’s best diamond, which he holds at an
incalculable sum; wherefore I am minded to put the Great Carbuncle on
shipboard and voyage with it to England, France, Spain, Italy, or into
heathendom if Providence should send me thither, and, in a word,
dispose of the gem to the best bidder among the potentates of the
earth, that he may place it among his crown-jewels. If any of ye have a
wiser plan, let him expound it.”
“That have I, thou sordid man!” exclaimed the poet. “Dost thou desire
nothing brighter than gold, that thou wouldst transmute all this
ethereal lustre into such dross as thou wallowest in already? For
myself, hiding the jewel under my cloak, I shall hie me back to my
attic-chamber in one of the darksome alleys of London. There night and
day will I gaze upon it. My soul shall drink its radiance; it shall be
diffused throughout my intellectual powers and gleam brightly in every
line of poesy that I indite. Thus long ages after I am gone the
splendor of the Great Carbuncle will blaze around my name.”
“Well said, Master Poet!” cried he of the spectacles. “Hide it under
thy cloak, sayest thou? Why, it will gleam through the holes and make
thee look like a jack-o’-lantern!”
“To think,” ejaculated the lord De Vere, rather to himself than his
companions, the best of whom he held utterly unworthy of his
intercourse—“to think that a fellow in a tattered cloak should talk of
conveying the Great Carbuncle to a garret in Grubb street! Have not I
resolved within myself that the whole earth contains no fitter ornament
for the great hall of my ancestral castle? There shall it flame for
ages, making a noonday of midnight, glittering on the suits of armor,
the banners and escutcheons, that hang around the wall, and keeping
bright the memory of heroes. Wherefore have all other adventurers
sought the prize in vain but that I might win it and make it a symbol
of the glories of our lofty line? And never on the diadem of the White
Mountains did the Great Carbuncle hold a place half so honored as is
reserved for it in the hall of the De Veres.”
“It is a noble thought,” said the cynic, with an obsequious sneer.
“Yet, might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral
lamp, and would display the glories of Your Lordship’s progenitors more
truly in the ancestral vault than in the castle-hall.”
“Nay, forsooth,” observed Matthew, the young rustic, who sat hand in
hand with his bride, “the gentleman has bethought himself of a
profitable use for this bright stone. Hannah here and I are seeking it
for a like purpose.”
“How, fellow?” exclaimed His Lordship, in surprise. “What castle-hall
hast thou to hang it in?”
“No castle,” replied Matthew, “but as neat a cottage as any within
sight of the Crystal Hills. Ye must know, friends, that Hannah and I,
being wedded the last week, have taken up the search of the Great
Carbuncle because we shall need its light in the long winter evenings
and it will be such a pretty thing to show the neighbors when they
visit us! It will shine through the house, so that we may pick up a pin
in any corner, and will set all the windows a-glowing as if there were
a great fire of pine-knots in the chimney. And then how pleasant, when
we awake in the night, to be able to see one another’s faces!”
There was a general smile among the adventurers at the simplicity of
the young couple’s project in regard to this wondrous and invaluable
stone, with which the greatest monarch on earth might have been proud
to adorn his palace. Especially the man with spectacles, who had
sneered at all the company in turn, now twisted his visage into such an
expression of ill-natured mirth that Matthew asked him rather peevishly
what he himself meant to do with the Great Carbuncle.
“The Great Carbuncle!” answered the cynic, with ineffable scorn. “Why,
you blockhead, there is no such thing in _rerum naturâ_. I have come
three thousand miles, and am resolved to set my foot on every peak of
these mountains and poke my head into every chasm for the sole purpose
of demonstrating to the satisfaction of any man one whit less an ass
than thyself that the Great Carbuncle is all a humbug.”
Vain and foolish were the motives that had brought most of the
adventurers to the Crystal Hills, but none so vain, so foolish, and so
impious too, as that of the scoffer with the prodigious spectacles. He
was one of those wretched and evil men whose yearnings are downward to
the darkness instead of heavenward, and who, could they but extinguish
the lights which God hath kindled for us, would count the midnight
gloom their chiefest glory.
As the cynic spoke several of the party were startled by a gleam of red
splendor that showed the huge shapes of the surrounding mountains and
the rock-bestrewn bed of the turbulent river, with an illumination
unlike that of their fire, on the trunks and black boughs of the
forest-trees. They listened for the roll of thunder, but heard nothing,
and were glad that the tempest came not near them. The stars—those
dial-points of heaven—now warned the adventurers to close their eyes on
the blazing logs and open them in dreams to the glow of the Great
Carbuncle.
The young married couple had taken their lodgings in the farthest
corner of the wigwam, and were separated from the rest of the party by
a curtain of curiously-woven twigs such as might have hung in deep
festoons around the bridal-bower of Eve. The modest little wife had
wrought this piece of tapestry while the other guests were talking. She
and her husband fell asleep with hands tenderly clasped, and awoke from
visions of unearthly radiance to meet the more blessed light of one
another’s eyes. They awoke at the same instant and with one happy smile
beaming over their two faces, which grew brighter with their
consciousness of the reality of life and love. But no sooner did she
recollect where they were than the bride peeped through the interstices
of the leafy curtain and saw that the outer room of the hut was
deserted.
“Up, dear Matthew!” cried she, in haste. “The strange folk are all
gone. Up this very minute, or we shall lose the Great Carbuncle!”
In truth, so little did these poor young people deserve the mighty
prize which had lured them thither that they had slept peacefully all
night and till the summits of the hills were glittering with sunshine,
while the other adventurers had tossed their limbs in feverish
wakefulness or dreamed of climbing precipices, and set off to realize
their dreams with the curliest peep of dawn. But Matthew and Hannah
after their calm rest were as light as two young deer, and merely
stopped to say their prayers and wash themselves in a cold pool of the
Amonoosuck, and then to taste a morsel of food ere they turned their
faces to the mountain-side. It was a sweet emblem of conjugal affection
as they toiled up the difficult ascent gathering strength from the
mutual aid which they afforded.
After several little accidents, such as a torn robe, a lost shoe and
the entanglement of Hannah’s hair in a bough, they reached the upper
verge of the forest and were now to pursue a more adventurous course.
The innumerable trunks and heavy foliage of the trees had hitherto shut
in their thoughts, which now shrank affrighted from the region of wind
and cloud and naked rocks and desolate sunshine that rose immeasurably
above them. They gazed back at the obscure wilderness which they had
traversed, and longed to be buried again in its depths rather than
trust themselves to so vast and visible a solitude.
“Shall we go on?” said Matthew, throwing his arm round Hannah’s waist
both to protect her and to comfort his heart by drawing her close to
it.
But the little bride, simple as she was, had a woman’s love of jewels,
and could not forego the hope of possessing the very brightest in the
world, in spite of the perils with which it must be won.
“Let us climb a little higher,” whispered she, yet tremulously, as she
turned her face upward to the lonely sky.
“Come, then,” said Matthew, mustering his manly courage and drawing her
along with him; for she became timid again the moment that he grew
bold.
And upward, accordingly, went the pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, now
treading upon the tops and thickly-interwoven branches of dwarf pines
which by the growth of centuries, though mossy with age, had barely
reached three feet in altitude. Next they came to masses and fragments
of naked rock heaped confusedly together like a cairn reared by giants
in memory of a giant chief. In this bleak realm of upper air nothing
breathed, nothing grew; there was no life but what was concentred in
their two hearts; they had climbed so high that Nature herself seemed
no longer to keep them company. She lingered beneath them within the
verge of the forest-trees, and sent a farewell glance after her
children as they strayed where her own green footprints had never been.
But soon they were to be hidden from her eye. Densely and dark the
mists began to gather below, casting black spots of shadow on the vast
landscape and sailing heavily to one centre, as if the loftiest
mountain-peak had summoned a council of its kindred clouds. Finally the
vapors welded themselves, as it were, into a mass, presenting the
appearance of a pavement over which the wanderers might have trodden,
but where they would vainly have sought an avenue to the blessed earth
which they had lost. And the lovers yearned to behold that green earth
again—more intensely, alas! than beneath a clouded sky they had ever
desired a glimpse of heaven. They even felt it a relief to their
desolation when the mists, creeping gradually up the mountain,
concealed its lonely peak, and thus annihilated—at least, for them—the
whole region of visible space. But they drew closer together with a
fond and melancholy gaze, dreading lest the universal cloud should
snatch them from each other’s sight. Still, perhaps, they would have
been resolute to climb as far and as high between earth and heaven as
they could find foothold if Hannah’s strength had not begun to fail,
and with that her courage also. Her breath grew short. She refused to
burden her husband with her weight, but often tottered against his
side, and recovered herself each time by a feebler effort. At last she
sank down on one of the rocky steps of the acclivity.
“We are lost, dear Matthew,” said she, mournfully; “we shall never find
our way to the earth again. And oh how happy we might have been in our
cottage!”
“Dear heart, we will yet be happy there,” answered Matthew. “Look! In
this direction the sunshine penetrates the dismal mist; by its aid I
can direct our course to the passage of the Notch. Let us go back,
love, and dream no more of the Great Carbuncle.”
“The sun cannot be yonder,” said Hannah, with despondence. “By this
time it must be noon; if there could ever be any sunshine here, it
would come from above our heads.”
“But look!” repeated Matthew, in a somewhat altered tone. “It is
brightening every moment. If not sunshine, what can it be?”
Nor could the young bride any longer deny that a radiance was breaking
through the mist and changing its dim hue to a dusky red, which
continually grew more vivid, as if brilliant particles were interfused
with the gloom. Now, also, the cloud began to roll away from the
mountain, while, as it heavily withdrew, one object after another
started out of its impenetrable obscurity into sight with precisely the
effect of a new creation before the indistinctness of the old chaos had
been completely swallowed up. As the process went on they saw the
gleaming of water close at their feet, and found themselves on the very
border of a mountain-lake, deep, bright, clear and calmly beautiful,
spreading from brim to brim of a basin that had been scooped out of the
solid rock. A ray of glory flashed across its surface. The pilgrims
looked whence it should proceed, but closed their eyes, with a thrill
of awful admiration, to exclude the fervid splendor that glowed from
the brow of a cliff impending over the enchanted lake.
For the simple pair had reached that lake of mystery and found the
long-sought shrine of the Great Carbuncle. They threw their arms around
each other and trembled at their own success, for as the legends of
this wondrous gem rushed thick upon their memory they felt themselves
marked out by fate, and the consciousness was fearful. Often from
childhood upward they had seen it shining like a distant star, and now
that star was throwing its intensest lustre on their hearts. They
seemed changed to one another’s eyes in the red brilliancy that flamed
upon their cheeks, while it lent the same fire to the lake, the rocks
and sky, and to the mists which had rolled back before its power. But
with their next glance they beheld an object that drew their attention
even from the mighty stone. At the base of the cliff, directly beneath
the Great Carbuncle, appeared the figure of a man with his arms
extended in the act of climbing and his face turned upward as if to
drink the full gush of splendor. But he stirred not, no more than if
changed to marble.
“It is the Seeker,” whispered Hannah, convulsively grasping her
husband’s arm. “Matthew, he is dead.”
“The joy of success has killed him,” replied Matthew, trembling
violently. “Or perhaps the very light of the Great Carbuncle was
death.”
“‘The Great Carbuncle’!” cried a peevish voice behind them. “The great
humbug! If you have found it, prithee point it out to me.”
They turned their heads, and there was the cynic with his prodigious
spectacles set carefully on his nose, staring now at the lake, now at
the rocks, now at the distant masses of vapor, now right at the Great
Carbuncle itself, yet seemingly as unconscious of its light as if all
the scattered clouds were condensed about his person. Though its
radiance actually threw the shadow of the unbeliever at his own feet as
he turned his back upon the glorious jewel, he would not be convinced
that there was the least glimmer there.
“Where is your great humbug?” he repeated. “I challenge you to make me
see it.”
“There!” said Matthew, incensed at such perverse blindness, and turning
the cynic round toward the illuminated cliff. “Take off those
abominable spectacles, and you cannot help seeing it.”
Now, these colored spectacles probably darkened the cynic’s sight in at
least as great a degree as the smoked glasses through which people gaze
at an eclipse. With resolute bravado, however, he snatched them from
his nose and fixed a bold stare full upon the ruddy blaze of the Great
Carbuncle. But scarcely had he encountered it when, with a deep,
shuddering groan, he dropped his head and pressed both hands across his
miserable eyes. Thenceforth there was in very truth no light of the
Great Carbuncle, nor any other light on earth, nor light of heaven
itself, for the poor cynic. So long accustomed to view all objects
through a medium that deprived them of every glimpse of brightness, a
single flash of so glorious a phenomenon, striking upon his naked
vision, had blinded him for ever.
“Matthew,” said Hannah, clinging to him, “let us go hence.”
Matthew saw that she was faint, and, kneeling down, supported her in
his arms while he threw some of the thrillingly-cold water of the
enchanted lake upon her face and bosom. It revived her, but could not
renovate her courage.
“Yes, dearest,” cried Matthew, pressing her tremulous form to his
breast; “we will go hence and return to our humble cottage. The blessed
sunshine and the quiet moonlight shall come through our window. We will
kindle the cheerful glow of our hearth at eventide and be happy in its
light. But never again will we desire more light than all the world may
share with us.”
“No,” said his bride, “for how could we live by day or sleep by night
in this awful blaze of the Great Carbuncle?”
Out of the hollow of their hands they drank each a draught from the
lake, which presented them its waters uncontaminated by an earthly lip.
Then, lending their guidance to the blinded cynic, who uttered not a
word, and even stifled his groans in his own most wretched heart, they
began to descend the mountain. Yet as they left the shore, till then
untrodden, of the spirit’s lake, they threw a farewell glance toward
the cliff and beheld the vapors gathering in dense volumes, through
which the gem burned duskily.
As touching the other pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, the legend goes
on to tell that the worshipful Master Ichabod Pigsnort soon gave up the
quest as a desperate speculation, and wisely resolved to betake himself
again to his warehouse, near the town-dock, in Boston. But as he passed
through the Notch of the mountains a war-party of Indians captured our
unlucky merchant and carried him to Montreal, there holding him in
bondage till by the payment of a heavy ransom he had woefully
subtracted from his hoard of pine-tree shillings. By his long absence,
moreover, his affairs had become so disordered that for the rest of his
life, instead of wallowing in silver, he had seldom a sixpence-worth of
copper. Doctor Cacaphodel, the alchemist, returned to his laboratory
with a prodigious fragment of granite, which he ground to powder,
dissolved in acids, melted in the crucible and burnt with the blowpipe,
and published the result of his experiments in one of the heaviest
folios of the day. And for all these purposes the gem itself could not
have answered better than the granite. The poet, by a somewhat similar
mistake, made prize of a great piece of ice which he found in a sunless
chasm of the mountains, and swore that it corresponded in all points
with his idea of the Great Carbuncle. The critics say that, if his
poetry lacked the splendor of the gem, it retained all the coldness of
the ice. The lord De Vere went back to his ancestral hall, where he
contented himself with a wax-lighted chandelier, and filled in due
course of time another coffin in the ancestral vault. As the funeral
torches gleamed within that dark receptacle, there was no need of the
Great Carbuncle to show the vanity of earthly pomp.
The cynic, having cast aside his spectacles, wandered about the world a
miserable object, and was punished with an agonizing desire of light
for the wilful blindness of his former life. The whole night long he
would lift his splendor-blasted orbs to the moon and stars; he turned
his face eastward at sunrise as duly as a Persian idolater; he made a
pilgrimage to Rome to witness the magnificent illumination of Saint
Peter’s church, and finally perished in the Great Fire of London, into
the midst of which he had thrust himself with the desperate idea of
catching one feeble ray from the blaze that was kindling earth and
heaven.
Matthew and his bride spent many peaceful years and were fond of
telling the legend of the Great Carbuncle. The tale, however, toward
the close of their lengthened lives, did not meet with the full
credence that had been accorded to it by those who remembered the
ancient lustre of the gem. For it is affirmed that from the hour when
two mortals had shown themselves so simply wise as to reject a jewel
which would have dimmed all earthly things its splendor waned. When our
pilgrims reached the cliff, they found only an opaque stone with
particles of mica glittering on its surface. There is also a tradition
that as the youthful pair departed the gem was loosened from the
forehead of the cliff and fell into the enchanted lake, and that at
noontide the Seeker’s form may still be seen to bend over its
quenchless gleam.
Some few believe that this inestimable stone is blazing as of old, and
say that they have caught its radiance, like a flash of summer
lightning, far down the valley of the Saco. And be it owned that many a
mile from the Crystal Hills I saw a wondrous light around their
summits, and was lured by the faith of poesy to be the latest pilgrim
of the Great Carbuncle.