La sanguijuela y su paciente

Old Roger Chillingworth, throughout life, had been calm in temperament, kindly, though not of warm affections, but ever, and in all his relations with the world, a pure and upright man.

He had begun an investigation, as he imagined, with the severe and equal integrity of a judge, desirous only of truth, even as if the question involved no more than the air-drawn lines and figures of a geometrical problem, instead of human passions, and wrongs inflicted on himself.

But, as he proceeded, a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce, though still calm, necessity, seized the old man within its grip, and never set him free again, until he had done all its bidding.

He now dug into the poor clergyman’s heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man’s bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption.

Alas for his own soul, if these were what he sought!

A veces, una luz brillaba en los ojos del médico, ardiendo azul y ominosa, como el reflejo de un horno, o digamos, como uno de esos destellos de fuego espantoso que brotaban de la terrible puerta de Bunyan en la ladera y titilaban en el rostro del peregrino.

La tierra donde este oscuro minero estaba trabajando había mostrado tal vez indicios que lo alentaban.