`` Matthew , he is dead . '' `` The joy of success has killed him , '' replied Matthew , trembling violently . `` Or perhaps the very light of the Great Carbuncle was death . '' '' ` The Great Carbuncle ' ! '' cried a peevish voice behind them . `` The great humbug ! If you have found it , prithee point it out to me . '' They turned their heads , and there was the cynic with his prodigious spectacles set carefully on his nose , staring now at the lake , now at the rocks , now at the distant masses of vapor , now right at the Great Carbuncle itself , yet seemingly as unconscious of its light as if all the scattered clouds were condensed about his person . Though its radiance actually threw the shadow of the unbeliever at his own feet as he turned his back upon the glorious jewel , he would not be convinced that there was the least glimmer there . `` Where is your great humbug ? '' he repeated . `` I challenge you to make me see it . '' `` There ! '' said Matthew , incensed at such perverse blindness , and turning the cynic round toward the illuminated cliff . `` Take off those abominable spectacles , and you can not help seeing it . '' Now , these colored spectacles probably darkened the cynic 's sight in at least as great a degree as the smoked glasses through which people gaze at an eclipse . With resolute bravado , however , he snatched them from his nose and fixed a bold stare full upon the ruddy blaze of the Great Carbuncle . But scarcely had he encountered it when , with a deep , shuddering groan , he dropped his head and pressed both hands across his miserable eyes . Thenceforth there was in very truth no light of the Great Carbuncle , nor any other light on earth , nor light of heaven itself , for the poor cynic . So long accustomed to view all objects through a medium that deprived them of every glimpse of brightness , a single flash of so glorious a phenomenon , striking upon his naked vision , had blinded him for ever .
`` Matthew , '' said Hannah , clinging XXXXX him , `` let us go hence . ''
If Though at of on through to toward upon with