Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

hatred.
Sanctified by her love and her affliction, she went forth, and all the
people gazed after her till she had journeyed up the hill and was lost
behind its brow. She went, the apostle of her own unquiet heart, to
renew the wanderings of past years. For her voice had been already
heard in many lands of Christendom, and she had pined in the cells of
a Catholic Inquisition before she felt the lash and lay in the
dungeons of the Puritans. Her mission had extended also to the
followers of the Prophet, and from them she had received the courtesy
and kindness which all the contending sects of our purer religion
united to deny her. Her husband and herself had resided many months in
Turkey, where even the sultan's countenance was gracious to them; in
that pagan land, too, was Ilbrahim's birthplace, and his Oriental name
was a mark of gratitude for the good deeds of an unbeliever.
*
    When Pearson and his wife had thus acquired all the rights over
Ilbrahim that could be delegated, their affection for him became, like
the memory of their native land or their mild sorrow for the dead, a
piece of the immovable furniture of their hearts. The boy, also, after
a week or two of mental disquiet, began to gratify his protectors by
many inadvertent proofs that he considered them as parents and their
house as home. Before the winter snows were melted the persecuted
infant, the little wanderer from a remote and heathen country, seemed
native in the New England cottage and inseparable from the warmth and
security of its hearth. Under the influence of kind treatment, and in
the consciousness that he was loved, Ilbrahim's demeanor lost a
premature manliness which had resulted from his earlier situation; he
became more childlike and his natural character displayed itself with
freedom. It was in many respects a beautiful one, yet the disordered
imaginations of both his father and mother had perhaps propagated a
certain unhealthiness in the mind of the boy. In his general state
Ilbrahim would derive enjoyment from the most trifling events and from
every object about him; he seemed to discover rich treasures of
happiness by a faculty analogous to that of the witch-hazel, which
points to hidden gold where all is barren to the eye. His airy gayety,
coming to him from a thousand sources, communicated itself to the
family, and Ilbrahim was like a domesticated sunbeam, brightening
moody countenances and chasing away the gloom from the dark corners of
the cottage.
    On the other hand, as the susceptibility of pleasure is also that of
pain, the exuberant cheerfulness of the boy's prevailing temper
sometimes yielded to moments of deep depression. His sorrows could not
always be followed up to their original source, but most frequently
they appeared to flow—though Ilbrahim was young to be sad for such a
cause—from wounded love. The flightiness of his mirth rendered him
often guilty of offences against the decorum of a Puritan household,
and on these occasions he did not invariably escape rebuke. But the
slightest word of real bitterness, which he was infallible in
distinguishing from pretended anger, seemed to sink into his heart and
poison all his enjoyments till he became sensible that he was entirely
forgiven. Of the malice which generally accompanies a superfluity of
sensitiveness Ilbrahim was altogether destitute. When trodden upon, he
would not turn; when wounded, he could but die. His mind was wanting
in the stamina of self-support. It was a plant that would twine
beautifully round something stronger than itself; but if repulsed or
torn away, it had no choice but to wither on the ground. Dorothy's
acuteness taught her that severity would crush the spirit of the
child, and she nurtured him with the gentle care of one who handles a
butterfly. Her husband manifested an equal affection, although it grew
daily less productive of familiar caresses.
    The feelings of the neighboring people in regard to the Quaker infant
and his protectors had not undergone a