thrilling and electric impression of a powerful likeness between the
doomed and the doomer, for the first time in the trial, struck upon the
audience, and increased, though they scarcely knew why, the sensation of
pain and dread which the prisoner's last words excited. Perhaps it might
have chiefly arisen from a common expression of fierce emotion conquered
by an iron and stern character of mind; or perhaps, now that the ashy
paleness of exhaustion had succeeded the excited flush on the prisoner's
face, the similarity of complexion thus obtained made the likeness more
obvious than before; or perhaps the spectators had not hitherto fixed so
searching, or, if we may so speak, so alternating a gaze upon the two.
However that be, the resemblance between the men, placed as they were in
such widely different circumstances,--that resemblance which, as we have
hinted, had at certain moments occurred startlingly to Lucy,--was plain
and unavoidably striking: the same the dark hue of their complexions; the
same the haughty and Roman outline of their faces; the same the height of
the forehead; the same even a displeasing and sarcastic rigidity of
mouth, which made the most conspicuous feature in Brandon, and which was
the only point that deteriorated from the singular beauty of Clifford.
But, above all, the same inflexible, defying, stubborn spirit, though in
Brandon it assumed the stately cast of majesty, and in Clifford it seemed
the desperate sternness of the bravo, stamped itself in both. Though
Clifford ceased, he did not resume his seat, but stood in the same
attitude as that in which he had reversed the order of things, and merged
the petitioner in the accuser; and Brandon himself, without speaking or
moving, continued still to survey him; so, with erect fronts and marble
countenances, in which what was defying and resolute did not altogether
quell the mortal leaven of pain and dread, they looked as might have
looked the two men in the Eastern story who had the power of gazing each
other unto death.