But the most striking is the fashion in which Hawthorne endeavors to surprise Dimmesdale’s secret. For that purpose he invented a very curious secondary character, Doctor Chillingworth. He is in many respects a melodramatic villain worthy of a serial by Eugene Süe. He is Hester Prynne’s deceived husband. Once acquainted with Chillingworth, we become very indulgent of poor Hester’s sin. More than half necromancer, Chillingworth passed a large part of his life among the Indians, who taught him their magic; that is the fantastic side of his character. From the psychological point of view Chillingworth is Suppressed Hatred. The readers of “The Scarlet Letter” will remember the diabolic plan for vengeance formed by the necromancer-doctor who suspects Dimmesdale of having been his wife’s lover. Little by little he attaches himself to the unfortunate minister under the cover of friendship. He tortures him by besieging him with insidious questions. During the course of these searching examinations, Hawthorne shows himself again a very subtle psychologist and a precursor and pioneer of psychoanalysis. All the conditions in these scenes are so worked out that Dimmesdale’s resistance takes on a truly Freudian aspect. Dimmesdale will release his secret for no consideration. In fact, to the very end, Chillingworth gets no further for all his trouble, but the cross-examination to which he subjects the Reverend is curious, and Dimmesdale has a narrow escape. Here are, for example, a few remarks made by the novelist himself on these examinations: A man burdened with a secret should especially avoid the intimacy of his physician. If the latter possess native sagacity, and a nameless something more, let us call it intuition; if he show no intrusive egotism, nor disagreeably prominent characteristics of his own; if he have the power, which must be born with him, to bring his mind into such affinity with his patient’s that this last shall unawares have spoken what he imagines himself only to have thought; if such revelations be received without tumult, and acknowledged not so often by silence, an inarticulate breath, and here and there a word, to indicate that all is understood; if to these qualifications of a confidant be joined the advantages afforded by his recognized character as a physician; then, at some inevitable moment, will the soul of the sufferer be dissolved, and flow forth in a dark but transparent stream, bringing all its mysteries into the daylight. Dimmesdale’s mind had become so familiar to Chillingworth that, Hawthorne tells us, his whole “stream of consciousness,” as William James would say, passed before the physician’s eyes. Chillingworth became, in his researches, a true adept of Freud. After having begun the study of Dimmesdale objectively, he ended by becoming passionately absorbed in his case. Chillingworth experienced a veritable fascination, we are told: