One must note however, this said, that there is much more than a tragic and lugubrious conception of existence in Hawthorne’s books. The favorite and latent theme of his novels is paganism and the joy of living, the love of love, the delight in voluptuousness. His characters would willingly abandon themselves to it if the Evil One did not prowl so near in the forest, and if the deacon, the alderman and the constable did not lend a helping hand. It is impossible to be mistaken; Hawthorne’s imagination was pagan. The two protagonists of “The Scarlet Letter,” considered his most puritanical book, are thoroughly immoral. They begin in anguish through the suppression of their desires and end in happiness through their abandonment to the freed libido. All of “The Marble Faun”--subject, characters and descriptions--is a plea for natural and instinctive expansion, a pagan plea. Donatello is an inspired symbol of this naturalistic conception of life. Donatello is the Faun, the beast become man, the man of nature, by definition good and happy until the awakening of his conscience. Hester Prynne, Miriam and Zenobia of “The Blithedale Romance” are seductive women, drawn without the slightest touch of hypocrisy or hesitation. Hawthorne is very susceptible to the qualities of the feminine mind. He has very sure, very penetrating, very profound intuitions about women, as his portraits of young girls show--like little Pearl in “The Scarlet Letter,” Phœbe in “The House of Seven Gables,” Hilda in “The Marble Faun,” Priscilla in “The Blithedale Romance.” He makes them very naïve, very sincere, in order, it would seem, to terrify them more by the discovery of evil, the knowledge of which is brought to them through the intermediation of one of their elders,--mother, sister or friend. * * * * *