She will be blameless, will Pearl, come what may.
And the world is simply a string of Pearls to-day. And America is a whole rope of these absolutely immaculate Pearls, who can't sin, let them do what they may. Because they've no god to sin against. Mere men, one after another. Men with no ghost to their name.
Oh, the irony, the bitter, bitter irony of the name! Oh, Nathaniel, you great man! Oh, America, you Pearl, you Pearl without a blemish!
How _can_ Pearl have a blemish, when there's no one but herself to judge Herself? Of course she'll be immaculate, even if, like Cleopatra, she drowns a lover a night in her dirty Nile. The Nilus Flux of her love.
By Hawthorne's day it was already Pearl. Before swine, of course. There never yet was a Pearl that wasn't cast before swine.
It's part of her game, part of her pearl-dom.
Because when Circe lies with a man, _he's_ a swine after it, if he wasn't one before. Not _she._ Circe is the great white impeccable Pearl.
And yet, oh. Pearl, there's a Nemesis even for you.
Doom! What a beautiful northern word. Doom.
When you don't have a Divine Father to sin against: and when you don't sin against the Son; which the Pearls don't, because they all are very strong on LOVE, stronger on LOVE than on anything: then there's nothing left for you to sin against except the Holy Ghost.
Now, Pearl, come, let's drop you in the vinegar.
And it's a ticklish thing sinning against the Holy Ghost. "It shall not be forgiven him."
The Father forgives: the Son forgives: but the Holy Ghost does _not_ forgive. So take that.
The Holy Ghost doesn't forgive because the Holy Ghost is within you. The Holy Ghost is you: your very You. So if, in your conceit of your ego, you make a break in your own YOU, in your own integrity, how can you be forgiven? You might as well make a rip in your own bowels. You _know_ if you rip your own bowels they will go rotten and _you_ will go rotten. And there's an end of you: in the body.
The same if you make a breach with your own Holy Ghost. You go soul-rotten. Like the Pearls.
These dear Pearls, they do anything they like, and remain pure. Oh, purity!
But they can't stop themselves from going rotten inside. Rotten Pearls, fair outside. Their _souls_ smell, because their souls are putrefying inside them.