THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM

and Other Tales of Mystery and Imagination
Read by William Roberts
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THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM
and Other Tales of
Mystery and Imagination

By Edgar Allan Poe

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and Naxos Digital Services Ltd.
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 Contents
The Pit and the Pendulum...........................................................................................1

The Tell-Tale Heart ....................................................................................................22

The Masque of the Red Death...................................................................................29

Ligeia...........................................................................................................................38

The Raven ...................................................................................................................60

The Cask of Amontillado...........................................................................................66

The Fall of the House of Usher .................................................................................77

The Black Cat...........................................................................................................104

The Premature Burial.............................................................................................. 118

The Facts in the Case of M Valdemar ....................................................................138

The Pit and the Pendulum

I WAS sick -- sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length

unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me.

The sentence -- the dread sentence of death -- was the last of distinct

accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial

voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul

the idea of revolution -- perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a

mill wheel. This only for a brief period; for presently I heard no more. Yet, for a

while, I saw; but with how terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips of the

black-robed judges. They appeared to me white -- whiter than the sheet upon

which I trace these words -- and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the

intensity of their expression of firmness -- of immoveable resolution -- of stern

contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was Fate, were

still issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw them

fashion the syllables of my name; and I shuddered because no sound succeeded. I

saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly imperceptible

waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment. And

then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table. At first they wore

the aspect of charity, and seemed white and slender angels who would save me;

but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt

every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery,

1
while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I

saw that from them there would be no help. And then there stole into my fancy,

like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave.

The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full

appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain

it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall

candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of

darkness supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing

descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, night were the

universe.

I had swooned; but still will not say that all of consciousness was lost. What

of it there remained I will not attempt to define, or even to describe; yet all was

not lost. In the deepest slumber -- no! In delirium -- no! In a swoon -- no! In

death -- no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man.

Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of

some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we

remember not that we have dreamed. In the return to life from the swoon there

are two stages; first, that of the sense of mental or spiritual; secondly, that of the

sense of physical, existence. It seems probable that if, upon reaching the second

stage, we could recall the impressions of the first, we should find these

impressions eloquent in memories of the gulf beyond. And that gulf is -- what?

How at least shall we distinguish its shadows from those of the tomb? But if the

2
impressions of what I have termed the first stage, are not, at will, recalled, yet,

after long interval, do they not come unbidden, while we marvel whence they

come? He who has never swooned, is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly

familiar faces in coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad

visions that the many may not view; is not he who ponders over the perfume of

some novel flower -- is not he whose brain grows bewildered with the meaning of

some musical cadence which has never before arrested his attention.

Amid frequent and thoughtful endeavors to remember; amid earnest

struggles to regather some token of the state of seeming nothingness into which

my soul had lapsed, there have been moments when I have dreamed of success;

there have been brief, very brief periods when I have conjured up remembrances

which the lucid reason of a later epoch assures me could have had reference only

to that condition of seeming unconsciousness. These shadows of memory tell,

indistinctly, of tall figures that lifted and bore me in silence down -- down -- still

down -- till a hideous dizziness oppressed me at the mere idea of the

interminableness of the descent. They tell also of a vague horror at my heart, on

account of that heart's unnatural stillness. Then comes a sense of sudden

motionlessness throughout all things; as if those who bore me (a ghastly train!)

had outrun, in their descent, the limits of the limitless, and paused from the

wearisomeness of their toil. After this I call to mind flatness and dampness; and

then all is madness -- the madness of a memory which busies itself among

forbidden things.

3
 Very suddenly there came back to my soul motion and sound -- the

tumultuous motion of the heart, and, in my ears, the sound of its beating. Then a

pause in which all is blank. Then again sound, and motion, and touch -- a

tingling sensation pervading my frame. Then the mere consciousness of existence,

without thought -- a condition which lasted long. Then, very suddenly, thought,

and shuddering terror, and earnest endeavor to comprehend my true state. Then

a strong desire to lapse into insensibility. Then a rushing revival of soul and a

successful effort to move. And now a full memory of the trial, of the judges, of

the sable draperies, of the sentence, of the sickness, of the swoon. Then entire

forgetfulness of all that followed; of all that a later day and much earnestness of

endeavor have enabled me vaguely to recall.

So far, I had not opened my eyes. I felt that I lay upon my back, unbound. I

reached out my hand, and it fell heavily upon something damp and hard. There I

suffered it to remain for many minutes, while I strove to imagine where and what

I could be. I longed, yet dared not to employ my vision. I dreaded the first glance

at objects around me. It was not that I feared to look upon things horrible, but

that I grew aghast lest there should be nothing to see. At length, with a wild

desperation at heart, I quickly unclosed my eyes. My worst thoughts, then, were

confirmed. The blackness of eternal night encompassed me. I struggled for

breath. The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me. The

atmosphere was intolerably close. I still lay quietly, and made effort to exercise

my reason. I brought to mind the inquisitorial proceedings, and attempted from

4
that point to deduce my real condition. The sentence had passed; and it appeared

to me that a very long interval of time had since elapsed. Yet not for a moment

did I suppose myself actually dead. Such a supposition, notwithstanding what we

read in fiction, is altogether inconsistent with real existence; -- but where and in

what state was I? The condemned to death, I knew, perished usually at the

autos-da-fe, and one of these had been held on the very night of the day of my

trial. Had I been remanded to my dungeon, to await the next sacrifice, which

would not take place for many months? This I at once saw could not be. Victims

had been in immediate demand. Moreover, my dungeon, as well as all the

condemned cells at Toledo, had stone floors, and light was not altogether

excluded.

A fearful idea now suddenly drove the blood in torrents upon my heart, and

for a brief period, I once more relapsed into insensibility. Upon recovering, I at

once started to my feet, trembling convulsively in every fibre. I thrust my arms

wildly above and around me in all directions. I felt nothing; yet dreaded to move

a step, lest I should be impeded by the walls of a tomb. Perspiration burst from

every pore, and stood in cold big beads upon my forehead. The agony of suspense

grew at length intolerable, and I cautiously moved forward, with my arms

extended, and my eyes straining from their sockets, in the hope of catching some

faint ray of light. I proceeded for many paces; but still all was blackness and

vacancy. I breathed more freely. It seemed evident that mine was not, at least, the

most hideous of fates.

5
 And now, as I still continued to step cautiously onward, there came

thronging upon my recollection a thousand vague rumors of the horrors of

Toledo. Of the dungeons there had been strange things narrated -- fables I had

always deemed them -- but yet strange, and too ghastly to repeat, save in a

whisper. Was I left to perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness;

or what fate, perhaps even more fearful, awaited me? That the result would be

death, and a death of more than customary bitterness, I knew too well the

character of my judges to doubt. The mode and the hour were all that occupied

or distracted me.

My outstretched hands at length encountered some solid obstruction. It was

a wall, seemingly of stone masonry -- very smooth, slimy, and cold. I followed it

up; stepping with all the careful distrust with which certain antique narratives

had inspired me. This process, however, afforded me no means of ascertaining

the dimensions of my dungeon; as I might make its circuit, and return to the

point whence I set out, without being aware of the fact; so perfectly uniform

seemed the wall. I therefore sought the knife which had been in my pocket, when

led into the inquisitorial chamber; but it was gone; my clothes had been

exchanged for a wrapper of coarse serge. I had thought of forcing the blade in

some minute crevice of the masonry, so as to identify my point of departure. The

difficulty, nevertheless, was but trivial; although, in the disorder of my fancy, it

seemed at first insuperable. I tore a part of the hem from the robe and placed the

fragment at full length, and at right angles to the wall. In groping my way

6
around the prison, I could not fail to encounter this rag upon completing the

circuit. So, at least I thought: but I had not counted upon the extent of the

dungeon, or upon my own weakness. The ground was moist and slippery. I

staggered onward for some time, when I stumbled and fell. My excessive fatigue

induced me to remain prostrate; and sleep soon overtook me as I lay.

Upon awaking, and stretching forth an arm, I found beside me a loaf and a

pitcher with water. I was too much exhausted to reflect upon this circumstance,

but ate and drank with avidity. Shortly afterward, I resumed my tour around the

prison, and with much toil came at last upon the fragment of the serge. Up to the

period when I fell I had counted fifty-two paces, and upon resuming my walk, I

had counted forty-eight more; -- when I arrived at the rag. There were in all,

then, a hundred paces; and, admitting two paces to the yard, I presumed the

dungeon to be fifty yards in circuit. I had met, however, with many angles in the

wall, and thus I could form no guess at the shape of the vault; for vault I could

not help supposing it to be.

I had little object -- certainly no hope these researches; but a vague curiosity

prompted me to continue them. Quitting the wall, I resolved to cross the area of

the enclosure. At first I proceeded with extreme caution, for the floor, although

seemingly of solid material, was treacherous with slime. At length, however, I

took courage, and did not hesitate to step firmly; endeavoring to cross in as

direct a line as possible. I had advanced some ten or twelve paces in this manner,

when the remnant of the torn hem of my robe became entangled between my legs.

7
I stepped on it, and fell violently on my face.

In the confusion attending my fall, I did not immediately apprehend a

somewhat startling circumstance, which yet, in a few seconds afterward, and

while I still lay prostrate, arrested my attention. It was this -- my chin rested

upon the floor of the prison, but my lips and the upper portion of my head,

although seemingly at a less elevation than the chin, touched nothing. At the

same time my forehead seemed bathed in a clammy vapor, and the peculiar smell

of decayed fungus arose to my nostrils. I put forward my arm, and shuddered to

find that I had fallen at the very brink of a circular pit, whose extent, of course, I

had no means of ascertaining at the moment. Groping about the masonry just

below the margin, I succeeded in dislodging a small fragment, and let it fall into

the abyss. For many seconds I hearkened to its reverberations as it dashed

against the sides of the chasm in its descent; at length there was a sullen plunge

into water, succeeded by loud echoes. At the same moment there came a sound

resembling the quick opening, and as rapid closing of a door overhead, while a

faint gleam of light flashed suddenly through the gloom, and as suddenly faded

away.

I saw clearly the doom which had been prepared for me, and congratulated

myself upon the timely accident by which I had escaped. Another step before my

fall, and the world had seen me no more. And the death just avoided, was of that

very character which I had regarded as fabulous and frivolous in the tales

respecting the Inquisition. To the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of

8
death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral

horrors. I had been reserved for the latter. By long suffering my nerves had been

unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in

every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me.

Shaking in every limb, I groped my way back to the wall; resolving there to

perish rather than risk the terrors of the wells, of which my imagination now

pictured many in various positions about the dungeon. In other conditions of

mind I might have had courage to end my misery at once by a plunge into one of

these abysses; but now I was the veriest of cowards. Neither could I forget what I

had read of these pits -- that the sudden extinction of life formed no part of their

most horrible plan.

Agitation of spirit kept me awake for many long hours; but at length I again

slumbered. Upon arousing, I found by my side, as before, a loaf and a pitcher of

water. A burning thirst consumed me, and I emptied the vessel at a draught. It

must have been drugged; for scarcely had I drunk, before I became irresistibly

drowsy. A deep sleep fell upon me -- a sleep like that of death. How long it lasted

of course, I know not; but when, once again, I unclosed my eyes, the objects

around me were visible. By a wild sulphurous lustre, the origin of which I could

not at first determine, I was enabled to see the extent and aspect of the prison.

In its size I had been greatly mistaken. The whole circuit of its walls did not

exceed twenty-five yards. For some minutes this fact occasioned me a world of

vain trouble; vain indeed! for what could be of less importance, under the

9
terrible circumstances which environed me, then the mere dimensions of my

dungeon? But my soul took a wild interest in trifles, and I busied myself in

endeavors to account for the error I had committed in my measurement. The

truth at length flashed upon me. In my first attempt at exploration I had counted

fifty-two paces, up to the period when I fell; I must then have been within a pace

or two of the fragment of serge; in fact, I had nearly performed the circuit of the

vault. I then slept, and upon awaking, I must have returned upon my steps --

thus supposing the circuit nearly double what it actually was. My confusion of

mind prevented me from observing that I began my tour with the wall to the left,

and ended it with the wall to the right.

I had been deceived, too, in respect to the shape of the enclosure. In feeling

my way I had found many angles, and thus deduced an idea of great irregularity;

so potent is the effect of total darkness upon one arousing from lethargy or sleep!

The angles were simply those of a few slight depressions, or niches, at odd

intervals. The general shape of the prison was square. What I had taken for

masonry seemed now to be iron, or some other metal, in huge plates, whose

sutures or joints occasioned the depression. The entire surface of this metallic

enclosure was rudely daubed in all the hideous and repulsive devices to which the

charnel superstition of the monks has given rise. The figures of fiends in aspects

of menace, with skeleton forms, and other more really fearful images, overspread

and disfigured the walls. I observed that the outlines of these monstrosities were

sufficiently distinct, but that the colors seemed faded and blurred, as if from the

10
effects of a damp atmosphere. I now noticed the floor, too, which was of stone. In

the centre yawned the circular pit from whose jaws I had escaped; but it was the

only one in the dungeon.

All this I saw indistinctly and by much effort: for my personal condition had

been greatly changed during slumber. I now lay upon my back, and at full length,

on a species of low framework of wood. To this I was securely bound by a long

strap resembling a surcingle. It passed in many convolutions about my limbs and

body, leaving at liberty only my head, and my left arm to such extent that I could,

by dint of much exertion, supply myself with food from an earthen dish which

lay by my side on the floor. I saw, to my horror, that the pitcher had been

removed. I say to my horror; for I was consumed with intolerable thirst. This

thirst it appeared to be the design of my persecutors to stimulate: for the food in

the dish was meat pungently seasoned.

Looking upward, I surveyed the ceiling of my prison. It was some thirty or

forty feet overhead, and constructed much as the side walls. In one of its panels a

very singular figure riveted my whole attention. It was the painted figure of Time

as he is commonly represented, save that, in lieu of a scythe, he held what, at a

casual glance, I supposed to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum such as

we see on antique clocks. There was something, however, in the appearance of

this machine which caused me to regard it more attentively. While I gazed

directly upward at it (for its position was immediately over my own) I fancied

that I saw it in motion. In an instant afterward the fancy was confirmed. Its

11
sweep was brief, and of course slow. I watched it for some minutes, somewhat in

fear, but more in wonder. Wearied at length with observing its dull movement, I

turned my eyes upon the other objects in the cell.

A slight noise attracted my notice, and, looking to the floor, I saw several

enormous rats traversing it. They had issued from the well, which lay just within

view to my right. Even then, while I gazed, they came up in troops, hurriedly,

with ravenous eyes, allured by the scent of the meat. From this it required much

effort and attention to scare them away.

It might have been half an hour, perhaps even an hour, (for in cast my I

could take but imperfect note of time) before I again cast my eyes upward. What

I then saw confounded and amazed me. The sweep of the pendulum had

increased in extent by nearly a yard. As a natural consequence, its velocity was

also much greater. But what mainly disturbed me was the idea that had

perceptibly descended. I now observed -- with what horror it is needless to say --

that its nether extremity was formed of a crescent of glittering steel, about a foot

in length from horn to horn; the horns upward, and the under edge evidently as

keen as that of a razor. Like a razor also, it seemed massy and heavy, tapering

from the edge into a solid and broad structure above. It was appended to a

weighty rod of brass, and the whole hissed as it swung through the air.

I could no longer doubt the doom prepared for me by monkish ingenuity in

torture. My cognizance of the pit had become known to the inquisitorial agents --

the pit whose horrors had been destined for so bold a recusant as myself -- the pit,

12
typical of hell, and regarded by rumor as the Ultima Thule of all their

punishments. The plunge into this pit I had avoided by the merest of accidents, I

knew that surprise, or entrapment into torment, formed an important portion of

all the grotesquerie of these dungeon deaths. Having failed to fall, it was no part

of the demon plan to hurl me into the abyss; and thus (there being no alternative)

a different and a milder destruction awaited me. Milder! I half smiled in my

agony as I thought of such application of such a term.

What boots it to tell of the long, long hours of horror more than mortal,

during which I counted the rushing vibrations of the steel! Inch by inch -- line by

line -- with a descent only appreciable at intervals that seemed ages -- down and

still down it came! Days passed -- it might have been that many days passed --

ere it swept so closely over me as to fan me with its acrid breath. The odor of the

sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils. I prayed -- I wearied heaven with my

prayer for its more speedy descent. I grew frantically mad, and struggled to force

myself upward against the sweep of the fearful scimitar. And then I fell suddenly

calm, and lay smiling at the glittering death, as a child at some rare bauble.

There was another interval of utter insensibility; it was brief; for, upon

again lapsing into life there had been no perceptible descent in the pendulum.

But it might have been long; for I knew there were demons who took note of my

swoon, and who could have arrested the vibration at pleasure. Upon my recovery,

too, I felt very -- oh, inexpressibly sick and weak, as if through long inanition.

Even amid the agonies of that period, the human nature craved food. With

13
painful effort I outstretched my left arm as far as my bonds permitted, and took

possession of the small remnant which had been spared me by the rats. As I put a

portion of it within my lips, there rushed to my mind a half formed thought of

joy -- of hope. Yet what business had I with hope? It was, as I say, a half formed

thought -- man has many such which are never completed. I felt that it was of joy

-- of hope; but felt also that it had perished in its formation. In vain I struggled

to perfect -- to regain it. Long suffering had nearly annihilated all my ordinary

powers of mind. I was an imbecile -- an idiot.

The vibration of the pendulum was at right angles to my length. I saw that

the crescent was designed to cross the region of the heart. It would fray the serge

of my robe -- it would return and repeat its operations -- again -- and again.

Notwithstanding terrifically wide sweep (some thirty feet or more) and the its

hissing vigor of its descent, sufficient to sunder these very walls of iron, still the

fraying of my robe would be all that, for several minutes, it would accomplish.

And at this thought I paused. I dared not go farther than this reflection. I dwelt

upon it with a pertinacity of attention -- as if, in so dwelling, I could arrest here

the descent of the steel. I forced myself to ponder upon the sound of the crescent

as it should pass across the garment -- upon the peculiar thrilling sensation

which the friction of cloth produces on the nerves. I pondered upon all this

frivolity until my teeth were on edge.

Down -- steadily down it crept. I took a frenzied pleasure in contrasting its

downward with its lateral velocity. To the right -- to the left -- far and wide --

14
with the shriek of a damned spirit; to my heart with the stealthy pace of the tiger!

I alternately laughed and howled as the one or the other idea grew predominant.

Down -- certainly, relentlessly down! It vibrated within three inches of my

bosom! I struggled violently, furiously, to free my left arm. This was free only

from the elbow to the hand. I could reach the latter, from the platter beside me,

to my mouth, with great effort, but no farther. Could I have broken the

fastenings above the elbow, I would have seized and attempted to arrest the

pendulum. I might as well have attempted to arrest an avalanche!

Down -- still unceasingly -- still inevitably down! I gasped and struggled at

each vibration. I shrunk convulsively at its every sweep. My eyes followed its

outward or upward whirls with the eagerness of the most unmeaning despair;

they closed themselves spasmodically at the descent, although death would have

been a relief, oh! how unspeakable! Still I quivered in every nerve to think how

slight a sinking of the machinery would precipitate that keen, glistening axe upon

my bosom. It was hope that prompted the nerve to quiver -- the frame to shrink.

It was hope -- the hope that triumphs on the rack -- that whispers to the

death-condemned even in the dungeons of the Inquisition.

I saw that some ten or twelve vibrations would bring the steel in actual

contact with my robe, and with this observation there suddenly came over my

spirit all the keen, collected calmness of despair. For the first time during many

hours -- or perhaps days -- I thought. It now occurred to me that the bandage, or

surcingle, which enveloped me, was unique. I was tied by no separate cord. The

15
first stroke of the razorlike crescent athwart any portion of the band, would so

detach it that it might be unwound from my person by means of my left hand.

But how fearful, in that case, the proximity of the steel! The result of the slightest

struggle how deadly! Was it likely, moreover, that the minions of the torturer had

not foreseen and provided for this possibility! Was it probable that the bandage

crossed my bosom in the track of the pendulum? Dreading to find my faint, and,

as it seemed, in last hope frustrated, I so far elevated my head as to obtain a

distinct view of my breast. The surcingle enveloped my limbs and body close in

all directions -- save in the path of the destroying crescent.

Scarcely had I dropped my head back into its original position, when there

flashed upon my mind what I cannot better describe than as the unformed half

of that idea of deliverance to which I have previously alluded, and of which a

moiety only floated indeterminately through my brain when I raised food to my

burning lips. The whole thought was now present -- feeble, scarcely sane,

scarcely definite, -- but still entire. I proceeded at once, with the nervous energy

of despair, to attempt its execution.

For many hours the immediate vicinity of the low framework upon which I

lay, had been literally swarming with rats. They were wild, bold, ravenous; their

red eyes glaring upon me as if they waited but for motionlessness on my part to

make me their prey. "To what food," I thought, "have they been accustomed in

the well?"

They had devoured, in spite of all my efforts to prevent them, all but a small

16
remnant of the contents of the dish. I had fallen into an habitual see-saw, or wave

of the hand about the platter: and, at length, the unconscious uniformity of the

movement deprived it of effect. In their voracity the vermin frequently fastened

their sharp fangs in my fingers. With the particles of the oily and spicy viand

which now remained, I thoroughly rubbed the bandage wherever I could reach it;

then, raising my hand from the floor, I lay breathlessly still.

At first the ravenous animals were startled and terrified at the change -- at

the cessation of movement. They shrank alarmedly back; many sought the well.

But this was only for a moment. I had not counted in vain upon their voracity.

Observing that I remained without motion, one or two of the boldest leaped upon

the frame-work, and smelt at the surcingle. This seemed the signal for a general

rush. Forth from the well they hurried in fresh troops. They clung to the wood --

they overran it, and leaped in hundreds upon my person. The measured

movement of the pendulum disturbed them not at all. Avoiding its strokes they

busied themselves with the anointed bandage. They pressed -- they swarmed

upon me in ever accumulating heaps. They writhed upon my throat; their cold

lips sought my own; I was half stifled by their thronging pressure; disgust, for

which the world has no name, swelled my bosom, and chilled, with a heavy

clamminess, my heart. Yet one minute, and I felt that the struggle would be over.

Plainly I perceived the loosening of the bandage. I knew that in more than one

place it must be already severed. With a more than human resolution I lay still.

Nor had I erred in my calculations -- nor had I endured in vain. I at length

17
felt that I was free. The surcingle hung in ribands from my body. But the stroke

of the pendulum already pressed upon my bosom. It had divided the serge of the

robe. It had cut through the linen beneath. Twice again it swung, and a sharp

sense of pain shot through every nerve. But the moment of escape had arrived.

At a wave of my hand my deliverers hurried tumultuously away. With a steady

movement -- cautious, sidelong, shrinking, and slow -- I slid from the embrace of

the bandage and beyond the reach of the scimitar. For the moment, at least, I was

free.

Free! -- and in the grasp of the Inquisition! I had scarcely stepped from my

wooden bed of horror upon the stone floor of the prison, when the motion of the

hellish machine ceased and I beheld it drawn up, by some invisible force, through

the ceiling. This was a lesson which I took desperately to heart. My every motion

was undoubtedly watched. Free! -- I had but escaped death in one form of agony,

to be delivered unto worse than death in some other. With that thought I rolled

my eves nervously around on the barriers of iron that hemmed me in. Something

unusual -- some change which, at first, I could not appreciate distinctly -- it was

obvious, had taken place in the apartment. For many minutes of a dreamy and

trembling abstraction, I busied myself in vain, unconnected conjecture. During

this period, I became aware, for the first time, of the origin of the sulphurous

light which illumined the cell. It proceeded from a fissure, about half an inch in

width, extending entirely around the prison at the base of the walls, which thus

appeared, and were, completely separated from the floor. I endeavored, but of

18
course in vain, to look through the aperture.

As I arose from the attempt, the mystery of the alteration in the chamber

broke at once upon my understanding. I have observed that, although the

outlines of the figures upon the walls were sufficiently distinct, yet the colors

seemed blurred and indefinite. These colors had now assumed, and were

momentarily assuming, a startling and most intense brilliancy, that gave to the

spectral and fiendish portraitures an aspect that might have thrilled even firmer

nerves than my own. Demon eyes, of a wild and ghastly vivacity, glared upon me

in a thousand directions, where none had been visible before, and gleamed with

the lurid lustre of a fire that I could not force my imagination to regard as

unreal.

Unreal! -- Even while I breathed there came to my nostrils the breath of the

vapour of heated iron! A suffocating odour pervaded the prison! A deeper glow

settled each moment in the eyes that glared at my agonies! A richer tint of

crimson diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood. I panted! I gasped for

breath! There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors -- oh! most

unrelenting! oh! most demoniac of men! I shrank from the glowing metal to the

centre of the cell. Amid the thought of the fiery destruction that impended, the

idea of the coolness of the well came over my soul like balm. I rushed to its

deadly brink. I threw my straining vision below. The glare from the enkindled

roof illumined its inmost recesses. Yet, for a wild moment, did my spirit refuse to

comprehend the meaning of what I saw. At length it forced -- it wrestled its way

19
into my soul -- it burned itself in upon my shuddering reason. -- Oh! for a voice

to speak! -- oh! horror! -- oh! any horror but this! With a shriek, I rushed from

the margin, and buried my face in my hands -- weeping bitterly.

The heat rapidly increased, and once again I looked up, shuddering as with

a fit of the ague. There had been a second change in the cell -- and now the

change was obviously in the form. As before, it was in vain that I, at first,

endeavoured to appreciate or understand what was taking place. But not long

was I left in doubt. The Inquisitorial vengeance had been hurried by my two-fold

escape, and there was to be no more dallying with the King of Terrors. The room

had been square. I saw that two of its iron angles were now acute -- two,

consequently, obtuse. The fearful difference quickly increased with a low

rumbling or moaning sound. In an instant the apartment had shifted its form

into that of a lozenge. But the alteration stopped not here-I neither hoped nor

desired it to stop. I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of

eternal peace. "Death," I said, "any death but that of the pit!" Fool! might I

have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?

Could I resist its glow? or, if even that, could I withstand its pressure And now,

flatter and flatter grew the lozenge, with a rapidity that left me no time for

contemplation. Its centre, and of course, its greatest width, came just over the

yawning gulf. I shrank back -- but the closing walls pressed me resistlessly

onward. At length for my seared and writhing body there was no longer an inch

of foothold on the firm floor of the prison. I struggled no more, but the agony of

20
my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair. I felt that I

tottered upon the brink -- I averted my eyes --

There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as of

many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders! The fiery

walls rushed back! An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell, fainting, into

the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo.

The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.

21
The Tell-Tale Heart

TRUE! - nervous - very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but

why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses - not

destroyed - not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all

things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am

I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily - how calmly I can tell you the whole

story.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once

conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there

was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me

insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had

the eye of a vulture - a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me,

my blood ran cold; and so by degrees - very gradually - I made up my mind to

take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.

Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you

should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded - with what

caution - with what foresight - with what dissimulation I went to work! I was

never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And

every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it - oh so

gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a

dark lantern, all closed, closed, that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my

22
head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it

slowly - very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took

me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him

as he lay upon his bed. Ha! would a madman have been so wise as this, And then,

when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously-oh, so

cautiously - cautiously (for the hinges creaked) - I undid it just so much that a

single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights -

every night just at midnight - but I found the eye always closed; and so it was

impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil

Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber,

and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and

inquiring how he has passed the night. So you see he would have been a very

profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in

upon him while he slept.

Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door.

A watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that

night had I felt the extent of my own powers - of my sagacity. I could scarcely

contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the door, little

by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly

chuckled at the idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed

suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back - but no. His room

was as black as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close

23
fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I knew that he could not see the

opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.

I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb

slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out -

"Who's there?"

I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle,

and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the

bed listening; - just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death

watches in the wall.

Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal

terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief - oh, no! - it was the low stifled sound

that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the

sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled

up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that

distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him,

although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the

first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since

growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He

had been saying to himself - "It is nothing but the wind in the chimney - it is only

a mouse crossing the floor," or "It is merely a cricket which has made a single

chirp." Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but

he had found all in vain. All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had

24
stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was

the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel -

although he neither saw nor heard - to feel the presence of my head within the

room.

When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down,

I resolved to open a little - a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it

- you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily - until, at length a simple dim ray,

like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the

vulture eye.

It was open - wide, wide open - and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw

it with perfect distinctness - all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled

the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man's face

or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned

spot.

And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but

over-acuteness of the sense? - now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick

sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well,

too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating

of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.

But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern

motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eve. Meantime

the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder

25
and louder every instant. The old man's terror must have been extreme! It grew

louder, I say, louder every moment! - do you mark me well I have told you that I

am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful

silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable

terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating

grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety

seized me - the sound would be heard by a neighbour! The old man's hour had

come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He

shrieked once - once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the

heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But, for

many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not

vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man

was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone

dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There

was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eve would trouble me no more.

If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the

wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I

worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the

head and the arms and the legs.

I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited

all between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly,

that no human eye - not even his - could have detected any thing wrong. There

26
was nothing to wash out - no stain of any kind - no blood-spot whatever. I had

been too wary for that. A tub had caught all - ha! ha!

When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clock - still dark as

midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door.

I went down to open it with a light heart, - for what had I now to fear? There

entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of

the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbour during the night; suspicion of

foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and

they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises.

I smiled, - for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek,

I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the

country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search - search well. I

led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure,

undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room,

and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild

audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath

which reposed the corpse of the victim.

The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was

singularly at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of

familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone.

My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still

chatted. The ringing became more distinct: - It continued and became more

27
distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained

definiteness - until, at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears.

No doubt I now grew very pale; - but I talked more fluently, and with a

heightened voice. Yet the sound increased - and what could I do? It was a low,

dull, quick sound - much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in

cotton. I gasped for breath - and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more

quickly - more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued

about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily

increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy

strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men - but the noise steadily

increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed - I raved - I swore! I swung the

chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise

arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder - louder - louder! And

still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not?

Almighty God! - no, no! They heard! - they suspected! - they knew! - they were

making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything

was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I

could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die!

and now - again! - hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! - tear up the

planks! here, here! - It is the beating of his hideous heart!"

28
The Masque of the Red Death

THE "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever

been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal -- the redness and

the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then

profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body

and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out

from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure,

progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his

dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale

and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and

with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was

an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric

yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron.

The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded

the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden

impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned.

With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The

external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or

to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were

buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were

29
musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within.

Without was the "Red Death."

It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while

the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained

his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.

It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms

in which it was held. There were seven -- an imperial suite. In many palaces,

however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors slide

back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extent is

scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different; as might have been expected

from the duke's love of the bizarre. The apartments were so irregularly disposed

that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp

turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To the right

and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out

upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the suite. These windows

were of stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of

the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern

extremity was hung, for example, in blue -- and vividly blue were its windows.

The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the

panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the casements.

The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange -- the fifth with white -- the

sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet

30
tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds

upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color

of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were

scarlet -- a deep blood color. Now in no one of the seven apartments was there

any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay

scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind

emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the

corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy

tripod, bearing a brazier of fire that protected its rays through the tinted glass

and so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of

gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber the effect

of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted

panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the

countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold

enough to set foot within its precincts at all.

It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a

gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy,

monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and

the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a

sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so

peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the

orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to

31
hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and

there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of

the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged

and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or

meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once

pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at

their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other,

that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion;

and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six

hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of the

clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as

before.

But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. The tastes of

the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colors and effects. He disregarded

the decora of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions

glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have thought him mad.

His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him

to be sure that he was not.

He had directed, in great part, the moveable embellishments of the seven

chambers, upon occasion of this great fete; and it was his own guiding taste

which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque.

There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm -- much of what

32
has been since seen in "Hernani." There were arabesque figures with unsuited

limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman

fashions. There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the

bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have

excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a

multitude of dreams. And these -- the dreams -- writhed in and about, taking hue

from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo

of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of

the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of

the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime

die away -- they have endured but an instant -- and a light, half-subdued

laughter floats after them as they depart. And now again the music swells, and

the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from

the many-tinted windows through which stream the rays from the tripods. But to

the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the

maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier

light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of the sable drapery

appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet, there comes from the

near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which

reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote gaieties of the other

apartments.

But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat

33
feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there

commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And then the music ceased,

as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an

uneasy cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be

sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, that more of

thought crept, with more of time, into the meditations of the thoughtful among

those who revelled. And thus, too, it happened, perhaps, that before the last

echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many

individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence

of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual

before. And the rumor of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly

around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur,

expressive of disapprobation and surprise -- then, finally, of terror, of horror, and

of disgust.

In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be

supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In

truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure in

question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the

prince's indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless

which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom

life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.

The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and

34
bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and

gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask

which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a

stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the

cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad

revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the

Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood -- and his broad brow, with all the

features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.

When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image (which with

a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role, stalked to and

fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a

strong shudder either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his brow reddened

with rage.

"Who dares?" he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him --

"who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask

him -- that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise, from the

battlements!"

It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the Prince Prospero as

he uttered these words. They rang throughout the seven rooms loudly and clearly

-- for the prince was a bold and robust man, and the music had become hushed

at the waving of his hand.

It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale

35
courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of

this group in the direction of the intruder, who at the moment was also near at

hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the

speaker. But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the

mummer had inspired the whole party, there were found none who put forth

hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince's

person; and, while the vast assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from the

centres of the rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the

same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first,

through the blue chamber to the purple -- through the purple to the green --

through the green to the orange -- through this again to the white -- and even

thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was

then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of

his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers,

while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all.

He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to

within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained

the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his

pursuer. There was a sharp cry -- and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the

sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince

Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers

at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer,

36
whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock,

gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave-cerements and corpse-like

mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible

form.

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come

like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the

blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his

fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And

the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death

held illimitable dominion over all.

37
Ligeia

And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of

the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature

of its intentness. Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly,

save only through the weakness of his feeble will. --Joseph Glanvill.

I Cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first

became acquainted with the lady Ligeia. Long years have since elapsed, and my

memory is feeble through much suffering. Or, perhaps, I cannot now bring these

points to mind, because, in truth, the character of my beloved, her rare learning,

her singular yet placid cast of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence

of her low musical language, made their way into my heart by paces so steadily

and stealthily progressive that they have been unnoticed and unknown. Yet I

believe that I met her first and most frequently in some large, old, decaying city

near the Rhine. Of her family -- I have surely heard her speak. That it is of a

remotely ancient date cannot be doubted. Ligeia! Ligeia! in studies of a nature

more than all else adapted to deaden impressions of the outward world, it is by

that sweet word alone -- by Ligeia -- that I bring before mine eyes in fancy the

image of her who is no more. And now, while I write, a recollection flashes upon

me that I have never known the paternal name of her who was my friend and my

betrothed, and who became the partner of my studies, and finally the wife of my

bosom. Was it a playful charge on the part of my Ligeia? or was it a test of my

38
strength of affection, that I should institute no inquiries upon this point? or was

it rather a caprice of my own -- a wildly romantic offering on the shrine of the

most passionate devotion? I but indistinctly recall the fact itself -- what wonder

that I have utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended it?

And, indeed, if ever she, the wan and the misty-winged Ashtophet of idolatrous

Egypt, presided, as they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then most surely she

presided over mine.

There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory falls me not. It is the

person of Ligeia. In stature she was tall, somewhat slender, and, in her latter

days, even emaciated. I would in vain attempt to portray the majesty, the quiet

ease, of her demeanor, or the incomprehensible lightness and elasticity of her

footfall. She came and departed as a shadow. I was never made aware of her

entrance into my closed study save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as

she placed her marble hand upon my shoulder. In beauty of face no maiden ever

equalled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream -- an airy and spirit-lifting

vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered vision about the

slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of that

regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the classical

labors of the heathen. "There is no exquisite beauty," says Bacon, Lord Verulam,

speaking truly of all the forms and genera of beauty, without some strangeness in

the proportion." Yet, although I saw that the features of Ligeia were not of a

classic regularity -- although I perceived that her loveliness was indeed

39
"exquisite," and felt that there was much of "strangeness" pervading it, yet I

have tried in vain to detect the irregularity and to trace home my own perception

of "the strange." I examined the contour of the lofty and pale forehead -- it was

faultless -- how cold indeed that word when applied to a majesty so divine! -- the

skin rivalling the purest ivory, the commanding extent and repose, the gentle

prominence of the regions above the temples; and then the raven-black, the

glossy, the luxuriant and naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the full force of

the Homeric epithet, "hyacinthine!" I looked at the delicate outlines of the nose

-- and nowhere but in the graceful medallions of the Hebrews had I beheld a

similar perfection. There were the same luxurious smoothness of surface, the

same scarcely perceptible tendency to the aquiline, the same harmoniously

curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I regarded the sweet mouth. Here was

indeed the triumph of all things heavenly -- the magnificent turn of the short

upper lip -- the soft, voluptuous slumber of the under -- the dimples which

sported, and the color which spoke -- the teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy

almost startling, every ray of the holy light which fell upon them in her serene

and placid, yet most exultingly radiant of all smiles. I scrutinized the formation

of the chin -- and here, too, I found the gentleness of breadth, the softness and the

majesty, the fullness and the spirituality, of the Greek -- the contour which the

god Apollo revealed but in a dream, to Cleomenes, the son of the Athenian. And

then I peered into the large eves of Ligeia.

For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique. It might have been, too,

40
that in these eves of my beloved lay the secret to which Lord Verulam alludes.

They were, I must believe, far larger than the ordinary eyes of our own race.

They were even fuller than the fullest of the gazelle eyes of the tribe of the valley

of Nourjahad. Yet it was only at intervals -- in moments of intense excitement --

that this peculiarity became more than slightly noticeable in Ligeia. And at such

moments was her beauty -- in my heated fancy thus it appeared perhaps -- the

beauty of beings either above or apart from the earth -- the beauty of the

fabulous Houri of the Turk. The hue of the orbs was the most brilliant of black,

and, far over them, hung jetty lashes of great length. The brows, slightly

irregular in outline, had the same tint. The "strangeness," however, which I

found in the eyes, was of a nature distinct from the formation, or the color, or the

brilliancy of the features, and must, after all, be referred to the expression. Ah,

word of no meaning! behind whose vast latitude of mere sound we intrench our

ignorance of so much of the spiritual. The expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How

for long hours have I pondered upon it! How have I, through the whole of a

midsummer night, struggled to fathom it! What was it -- that something more

profound than the well of Democritus -- which lay far within the pupils of my

beloved? What was it? I was possessed with a passion to discover. Those eyes!

those large, those shining, those divine orbs! they became to me twin stars of

Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers.

There is no point, among the many incomprehensible anomalies of the

science of mind, more thrillingly exciting than the fact -- never, I believe, noticed

41
in the schools -- that, in our endeavors to recall to memory something long

forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without

being able, in the end, to remember. And thus how frequently, in my intense

scrutiny of Ligeia's eyes, have I felt approaching the full knowledge of their

expression -- felt it approaching -- yet not quite be mine -- and so at length

entirely depart! And (strange, oh strangest mystery of all!) I found, in the

commonest objects of the universe, a circle of analogies to theat expression. I

mean to say that, subsequently to the period when Ligeia's beauty passed into

my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived, from many existences in the

material world, a sentiment such as I felt always aroused within me by her large

and luminous orbs. Yet not the more could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or

even steadily view it. I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a

rapidly-growing vine -- in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a

stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean; in the falling of a meteor. I

have felt it in the glances of unusually aged people. And there are one or two

stars in heaven -- (one especially, a star of the sixth magnitude, double and

changeable, to be found near the large star in Lyra) in a telescopic scrutiny of

which I have been made aware of the feeling. I have been filled with it by certain

sounds from stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from books.

Among innumerable other instances, I well remember something in a volume of

Joseph Glanvill, which (perhaps merely from its quaintness -- who shall say?)

never failed to inspire me with the sentiment; -- "And the will therein lieth,

42
which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God

is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not

yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of

his feeble will."

Length of years, and subsequent reflection, have enabled me to trace, indeed,

some remote connection between this passage in the English moralist and a

portion of the character of Ligeia. An intensity in thought, action, or speech, was

possibly, in her, a result, or at least an index, of that gigantic volition which,

during our long intercourse, failed to give other and more immediate evidence of

its existence. Of all the women whom I have ever known, she, the outwardly calm,

the ever-placid Ligeia, was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures

of stern passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate, save by the

miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me --

by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness and placidity of her very

low voice -- and by the fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with

her manner of utterance) of the wild words which she habitually uttered.

I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia: it was immense -- such as I have

never known in woman. In the classical tongues was she deeply proficient, and as

far as my own acquaintance extended in regard to the modern dialects of Europe,

I have never known her at fault. Indeed upon any theme of the most admired,

because simply the most abstruse of the boasted erudition of the academy, have I

ever found Ligeia at fault? How singularly -- how thrillingly, this one point in the

43
nature of my wife has forced itself, at this late period only, upon my attention! I

said her knowledge was such as I have never known in woman -- but where

breathes the man who has traversed, and successfully, all the wide areas of moral,

physical, and mathematical science? I saw not then what I now clearly perceive,

that the acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic, were astounding; yet I was

sufficiently aware of her infinite supremacy to resign myself, with a child-like

confidence, to her guidance through the chaotic world of metaphysical

investigation at which I was most busily occupied during the earlier years of our

marriage. With how vast a triumph -- with how vivid a delight -- with how much

of all that is ethereal in hope -- did I feel, as she bent over me in studies but little

sought -- but less known -- that delicious vista by slow degrees expanding before

me, down whose long, gorgeous, and all untrodden path, I might at length pass

onward to the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious not to be forbidden!

How poignant, then, must have been the grief with which, after some years,

I beheld my well-grounded expectations take wings to themselves and fly away!

Without Ligeia I was but as a child groping benighted. Her presence, her

readings alone, rendered vividly luminous the many mysteries of the

transcendentalism in which we were immersed. Wanting the radiant lustre of her

eyes, letters, lambent and golden, grew duller than Saturnian lead. And now

those eyes shone less and less frequently upon the pages over which I pored.

Ligeia grew ill. The wild eyes blazed with a too -- too glorious effulgence; the pale

fingers became of the transparent waxen hue of the grave, and the blue veins

44
upon the lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the gentle

emotion. I saw that she must die -- and I struggled desperately in spirit with the

grim Azrael. And the struggles of the passionate wife were, to my astonishment,

even more energetic than my own. There had been much in her stern nature to

impress me with the belief that, to her, death would have come without its terrors;

-- but not so. Words are impotent to convey any just idea of the fierceness of

resistance with which she wrestled with the Shadow. I groaned in anguish at the

pitiable spectacle. would have soothed -- I would have reasoned; but, in the

intensity of her wild desire for life, -- for life -- but for life -- solace and reason

were the uttermost folly. Yet not until the last instance, amid the most convulsive

writhings of her fierce spirit, was shaken the external placidity of her demeanor.

Her voice grew more gentle -- grew more low -- yet I would not wish to dwell

upon the wild meaning of the quietly uttered words. My brain reeled as I

hearkened entranced, to a melody more than mortal -- to assumptions and

aspirations which mortality had never before known.

That she loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been easily

aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have reigned no ordinary

passion. But in death only, was I fully impressed with the strength of her

affection. For long hours, detaining my hand, would she pour out before me the

overflowing of a heart whose more than passionate devotion amounted to

idolatry. How had I deserved to be so blessed by such confessions? -- how had I

deserved to be so cursed with the removal of my beloved in the hour of her

45
making them, But upon this subject I cannot bear to dilate. Let me say only, that

in Ligeia's more than womanly abandonment to a love, alas! all unmerited, all

unworthily bestowed, I at length recognized the principle of her longing with so

wildly earnest a desire for the life which was now fleeing so rapidly away. It is

this wild longing -- it is this eager vehemence of desire for life -- but for life -- that

I have no power to portray -- no utterance capable of expressing.

At high noon of the night in which she departed, beckoning me,

peremptorily, to her side, she bade me repeat certain verses composed by herself

not many days before. I obeyed her. -- They were these:

Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,

Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly;
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Wo!

That motley drama! -- oh, be sure

It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased forever more,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness and more of Sin
And Horror the soul of the plot.

46
But see, amid the mimic rout,
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes! -- it writhes! -- with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out -- out are the lights -- out all!

And over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
"O God!" half shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending her arms

aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end of these lines -- "O God! O

Divine Father! -- shall these things be undeviatingly so? -- shall this Conqueror

be not once conquered? Are we not part and parcel in Thee? Who -- who

knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man doth not yield him to the

angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will."

And now, as if exhausted with emotion, she suffered her white arms to fall,

and returned solemnly to her bed of death. And as she breathed her last sighs,

there came mingled with them a low murmur from her lips. I bent to them my

ear and distinguished, again, the concluding words of the passage in Glanvill --

"Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through

the weakness of his feeble will."

She died; -- and I, crushed into the very dust with sorrow, could no longer

47
endure the lonely desolation of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city by the

Rhine. I had no lack of what the world calls wealth. Ligeia had brought me far

more, very far more than ordinarily falls to the lot of mortals. After a few

months, therefore, of weary and aimless wandering, I purchased, and put in

some repair, an abbey, which I shall not name, in one of the wildest and least

frequented portions of fair England. The gloomy and dreary grandeur of the

building, the almost savage aspect of the domain, the many melancholy and

time-honored memories connected with both, had much in unison with the

feelings of utter abandonment which had driven me into that remote and

unsocial region of the country. Yet although the external abbey, with its verdant

decay hanging about it, suffered but little alteration, I gave way, with a child-like

perversity, and perchance with a faint hope of alleviating my sorrows, to a

display of more than regal magnificence within. -- For such follies, even in

childhood, I had imbibed a taste and now they came back to me as if in the

dotage of grief. Alas, I feel how much even of incipient madness might have been

discovered in the gorgeous and fantastic draperies, in the solemn carvings of

Egypt, in the wild cornices and furniture, in the Bedlam patterns of the carpets

of tufted gold! I had become a bounden slave in the trammels of opium, and my

labors and my orders had taken a coloring from my dreams. But these

absurdities must not pause to detail. Let me speak only of that one chamber, ever

accursed, whither in a moment of mental alienation, I led from the altar as my

bride -- as the successor of the unforgotten Ligeia -- the fair-haired and

48
blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine.

There is no individual portion of the architecture and decoration of that

bridal chamber which is not now visibly before me. Where were the souls of the

haughty family of the bride, when, through thirst of gold, they permitted to pass

the threshold of an apartment so bedecked, a maiden and a daughter so beloved?

I have said that I minutely remember the details of the chamber -- yet I am sadly

forgetful on topics of deep moment -- and here there was no system, no keeping,

in the fantastic display, to take hold upon the memory. The room lay in a high

turret of the castellated abbey, was pentagonal in shape, and of capacious size.

Occupying the whole southern face of the pentagon was the sole window -- an

immense sheet of unbroken glass from Venice -- a single pane, and tinted of a

leaden hue, so that the rays of either the sun or moon, passing through it, fell

with a ghastly lustre on the objects within. Over the upper portion of this huge

window, extended the trellice-work of an aged vine, which clambered up the

massy walls of the turret. The ceiling, of gloomy-looking oak, was excessively

lofty, vaulted, and elaborately fretted with the wildest and most grotesque

specimens of a semi-Gothic, semi-Druidical device. From out the most central

recess of this melancholy vaulting, depended, by a single chain of gold with long

links, a huge censer of the same metal, Saracenic in pattern, and with many

perforations so contrived that there writhed in and out of them, as if endued with

a serpent vitality, a continual succession of parti-colored fires.

Some few ottomans and golden candelabra, of Eastern figure, were in

49
various stations about -- and there was the couch, too -- bridal couch -- of an

Indian model, and low, and sculptured of solid ebony, with a pall-like canopy

above. In each of the angles of the chamber stood on end a gigantic sarcophagus

of black granite, from the tombs of the kings over against Luxor, with their aged

lids full of immemorial sculpture. But in the draping of the apartment lay, alas!

the chief phantasy of all. The lofty walls, gigantic in height -- even

unproportionably so -- were hung from summit to foot, in vast folds, with a

heavy and massive-looking tapestry -- tapestry of a material which was found

alike as a carpet on the floor, as a covering for the ottomans and the ebony bed,

as a canopy for the bed, and as the gorgeous volutes of the curtains which

partially shaded the window. The material was the richest cloth of gold. It was

spotted all over, at irregular intervals, with arabesque figures, about a foot in

diameter, and wrought upon the cloth in patterns of the most jetty black. But

these figures partook of the true character of the arabesque only when regarded

from a single point of view. By a contrivance now common, and indeed traceable

to a very remote period of antiquity, they were made changeable in aspect. To

one entering the room, they bore the appearance of simple monstrosities; but

upon a farther advance, this appearance gradually departed; and step by step, as

the visitor moved his station in the chamber, he saw himself surrounded by an

endless succession of the ghastly forms which belong to the superstition of the

Norman, or arise in the guilty slumbers of the monk. The phantasmagoric effect

was vastly heightened by the artificial introduction of a strong continual current

50
of wind behind the draperies -- giving a hideous and uneasy animation to the

whole.

In halls such as these -- in a bridal chamber such as this -- I passed, with the

Lady of Tremaine, the unhallowed hours of the first month of our marriage --

passed them with but little disquietude. That my wife dreaded the fierce

moodiness of my temper -- that she shunned me and loved me but little -- I could

not help perceiving; but it gave me rather pleasure than otherwise. I loathed her

with a hatred belonging more to demon than to man. My memory flew back, (oh,

with what intensity of regret!) to Ligeia, the beloved, the august, the beautiful,

the entombed. I revelled in recollections of her purity, of her wisdom, of her lofty,

her ethereal nature, of her passionate, her idolatrous love. Now, then, did my

spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the fires of her own. In the

excitement of my opium dreams (for I was habitually fettered in the shackles of

the drug) I would call aloud upon her name, during the silence of the night, or

among the sheltered recesses of the glens by day, as if, through the wild eagerness,

the solemn passion, the consuming ardor of my longing for the departed, I could

restore her to the pathway she had abandoned -- ah, could it be forever? -- upon

the earth.

About the commencement of the second month of the marriage, the Lady

Rowena was attacked with sudden illness, from which her recovery was slow.

The fever which consumed her rendered her nights uneasy; and in her perturbed

state of half-slumber, she spoke of sounds, and of motions, in and about the

51
chamber of the turret, which I concluded had no origin save in the distemper of

her fancy, or perhaps in the phantasmagoric influences of the chamber itself. She

became at length convalescent -- finally well. Yet but a brief period elapsed, ere a

second more violent disorder again threw her upon a bed of suffering; and from

this attack her frame, at all times feeble, never altogether recovered. Her illnesses

were, after this epoch, of alarming character, and of more alarming recurrence,

defying alike the knowledge and the great exertions of her physicians. With the

increase of the chronic disease which had thus, apparently, taken too sure hold

upon her constitution to be eradicated by human means, I could not fall to

observe a similar increase in the nervous irritation of her temperament, and in

her excitability by trivial causes of fear. She spoke again, and now more

frequently and pertinaciously, of the sounds -- of the slight sounds -- and of the

unusual motions among the tapestries, to which she had formerly alluded.

One night, near the closing in of September, she pressed this distressing

subject with more than usual emphasis upon my attention. She had just

awakened from an unquiet slumber, and I had been watching, with feelings half

of anxiety, half of vague terror, the workings of her emaciated countenance. I sat

by the side of her ebony bed, upon one of the ottomans of India. She partly arose,

and spoke, in an earnest low whisper, of sounds which she then heard, but which

I could not hear -- of motions which she then saw, but which I could not perceive.

The wind was rushing hurriedly behind the tapestries, and I wished to show her

(what, let me confess it, I could not all believe) that those almost inarticulate

52
breathings, and those very gentle variations of the figures upon the wall, were

but the natural effects of that customary rushing of the wind. But a deadly pallor,

overspreading her face, had proved to me that my exertions to reassure her

would be fruitless. She appeared to be fainting, and no attendants were within

call. I remembered where was deposited a decanter of light wine which had been

ordered by her physicians, and hastened across the chamber to procure it. But,

as I stepped beneath the light of the censer, two circumstances of a startling

nature attracted my attention. I had felt that some palpable although invisible

object had passed lightly by my person; and I saw that there lay upon the golden

carpet, in the very middle of the rich lustre thrown from the censer, a shadow -- a

faint, indefinite shadow of angelic aspect -- such as might be fancied for the

shadow of a shade. But I was wild with the excitement of an immoderate dose of

opium, and heeded these things but little, nor spoke of them to Rowena. Having

found the wine, I recrossed the chamber, and poured out a gobletful, which I held

to the lips of the fainting lady. She had now partially recovered, however, and

took the vessel herself, while I sank upon an ottoman near me, with my eyes

fastened upon her person. It was then that I became distinctly aware of a gentle

footfall upon the carpet, and near the couch; and in a second thereafter, as

Rowena was in the act of raising the wine to her lips, I saw, or may have dreamed

that I saw, fall within the goblet, as if from some invisible spring in the

atmosphere of the room, three or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby colored

fluid. If this I saw -- not so Rowena. She swallowed the wine unhesitatingly, and I

53
forbore to speak to her of a circumstance which must, after all, I considered,

have been but the suggestion of a vivid imagination, rendered morbidly active by

the terror of the lady, by the opium, and by the hour.

Yet I cannot conceal it from my own perception that, immediately

subsequent to the fall of the ruby-drops, a rapid change for the worse took place

in the disorder of my wife; so that, on the third subsequent night, the hands of

her menials prepared her for the tomb, and on the fourth, I sat alone, with her

shrouded body, in that fantastic chamber which had received her as my bride. --

Wild visions, opium-engendered, flitted, shadow-like, before me. I gazed with

unquiet eye upon the sarcophagi in the angles of the room, upon the varying

figures of the drapery, and upon the writhing of the parti-colored fires in the

censer overhead. My eyes then fell, as I called to mind the circumstances of a

former night, to the spot beneath the glare of the censer where I had seen the

faint traces of the shadow. It was there, however, no longer; and breathing with

greater freedom, I turned my glances to the pallid and rigid figure upon the bed.

Then rushed upon me a thousand memories of Ligeia -- and then came back

upon my heart, with the turbulent violence of a flood, the whole of that

unutterable wo with which I had regarded her thus enshrouded. The night

waned; and still, with a bosom full of bitter thoughts of the one only and

supremely beloved, I remained gazing upon the body of Rowena.

It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier, or later, for I had taken no

note of time, when a sob, low, gentle, but very distinct, startled me from my

54
revery. -- I felt that it came from the bed of ebony -- the bed of death. I listened in

an agony of superstitious terror -- but there was no repetition of the sound. I

strained my vision to detect any motion in the corpse -- but there was not the

slightest perceptible. Yet I could not have been deceived. I had heard the noise,

however faint, and my soul was awakened within me. I resolutely and

perseveringly kept my attention riveted upon the body. Many minutes elapsed

before any circumstance occurred tending to throw light upon the mystery. At

length it became evident that a slight, a very feeble, and barely noticeable tinge

of color had flushed up within the cheeks, and along the sunken small veins of

the eyelids. Through a species of unutterable horror and awe, for which the

language of mortality has no sufficiently energetic expression, I felt my heart

cease to beat, my limbs grow rigid where I sat. Yet a sense of duty finally

operated to restore my self-possession. I could no longer doubt that we had been

precipitate in our preparations -- that Rowena still lived. It was necessary that

some immediate exertion be made; yet turret was altogether apart from the

portion of the abbey tenanted by the servants -- there were none within call -- I

had no means of summoning them to my aid without leaving the room for many

minutes -- and this I could not venture to do. I therefore struggled alone in my

endeavors to call back the spirit ill hovering. In a short period it was certain,

however, that a relapse had taken place; the color disappeared from both eyelid

and cheek, leaving a wanness even more than that of marble; the lips became

doubly shrivelled and pinched up in the ghastly expression of death; a repulsive

55
clamminess and coldness overspread rapidly the surface of the body; and all the

usual rigorous illness immediately supervened. I fell back with a shudder upon

the couch from which I had been so startlingly aroused, and again gave myself

up to passionate waking visions of Ligeia.

An hour thus elapsed when (could it be possible?) I was a second time aware

of some vague sound issuing from the region of the bed. I listened -- in extremity

of horror. The sound came again -- it was a sigh. Rushing to the corpse, I saw --

distinctly saw -- a tremor upon the lips. In a minute afterward they relaxed,

disclosing a bright line of the pearly teeth. Amazement now struggled in my

bosom with the profound awe which had hitherto reigned there alone. I felt that

my vision grew dim, that my reason wandered; and it was only by a violent effort

that I at length succeeded in nerving myself to the task which duty thus once

more had pointed out. There was now a partial glow upon the forehead and upon

the cheek and throat; a perceptible warmth pervaded the whole frame; there was

even a slight pulsation at the heart. The lady lived; and with redoubled ardor I

betook myself to the task of restoration. I chafed and bathed the temples and the

hands, and used every exertion which experience, and no little. medical reading,

could suggest. But in vain. Suddenly, the color fled, the pulsation ceased, the lips

resumed the expression of the dead, and, in an instant afterward, the whole body

took upon itself the icy chilliness, the livid hue, the intense rigidity, the sunken

outline, and all the loathsome peculiarities of that which has been, for many days,

a tenant of the tomb.

56
 And again I sunk into visions of Ligeia -- and again, (what marvel that I

shudder while I write,) again there reached my ears a low sob from the region of

the ebony bed. But why shall I minutely detail the unspeakable horrors of that

night? Why shall I pause to relate how, time after time, until near the period of

the gray dawn, this hideous drama of revivification was repeated; how each

terrific relapse was only into a sterner and apparently more irredeemable death;

how each agony wore the aspect of a struggle with some invisible foe; and how

each struggle was succeeded by I know not what of wild change in the personal

appearance of the corpse? Let me hurry to a conclusion.

The greater part of the fearful night had worn away, and she who had been

dead, once again stirred -- and now more vigorously than hitherto, although

arousing from a dissolution more appalling in its utter hopelessness than any. I

had long ceased to struggle or to move, and remained sitting rigidly upon the

ottoman, a helpless prey to a whirl of violent emotions, of which extreme awe was

perhaps the least terrible, the least consuming. The corpse, I repeat, stirred, and

now more vigorously than before. The hues of life flushed up with unwonted

energy into the countenance -- the limbs relaxed -- and, save that the eyelids were

yet pressed heavily together, and that the bandages and draperies of the grave

still imparted their charnel character to the figure, I might have dreamed that

Rowena had indeed shaken off, utterly, the fetters of Death. But if this idea was

not, even then, altogether adopted, I could at least doubt no longer, when, arising

from the bed, tottering, with feeble steps, with closed eyes, and with the manner

57
of one bewildered in a dream, the thing that was enshrouded advanced boldly

and palpably into the middle of the apartment.

I trembled not -- I stirred not -- for a crowd of unutterable fancies connected

with the air, the stature, the demeanor of the figure, rushing hurriedly through

my brain, had paralyzed -- had chilled me into stone. I stirred not -- but gazed

upon the apparition. There was a mad disorder in my thoughts -- a tumult

unappeasable. Could it, indeed, be the living Rowena who confronted me? Could

it indeed be Rowena at all -- the fair-haired, the blue-eyed Lady Rowena

Trevanion of Tremaine? Why, why should I doubt it? The bandage lay heavily

about the mouth -- but then might it not be the mouth of the breathing Lady of

Tremaine? And the cheeks-there were the roses as in her noon of life -- yes, these

might indeed be the fair cheeks of the living Lady of Tremaine. And the chin,

with its dimples, as in health, might it not be hers? -- but had she then grown

taller since her malady? What inexpressible madness seized me with that thought?

One bound, and I had reached her feet! Shrinking from my touch, she let fall

from her head, unloosened, the ghastly cerements which had confined it, and

there streamed forth, into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber, huge masses

of long and dishevelled hair; it was blacker than the raven wings of the midnight!

And now slowly opened the eyes of the figure which stood before me. "Here then,

at least," I shrieked aloud, "can I never -- can I never be mistaken -- these are

the full, and the black, and the wild eyes -- of my lost love -- of the lady -- of the

Lady Ligeia."

58
59
The Raven

ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,—

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"'T is some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;

Only this and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore,

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore:

Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

"'T is some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door,

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door:

This it is and nothing more."

60
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you"—here I opened wide the door:—

Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore:"

Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore;

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore:

'T is the wind and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

61
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore.

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door,

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,—

"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore:

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door,

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

With such name as "Nevermore."

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

62
Nothing further then he uttered, not a feather then he fluttered,

Till I scarcely more than muttered,—"Other friends have flown before;

On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before."

Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore:

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore

Of 'Never—nevermore.'

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore,

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore

Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;

This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining

63
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er,

But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er

She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer

Swung by seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.

"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee

Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!"

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore."

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or devil!

Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—

On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore:

Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil—prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us, by that God we both adore,

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore:

64
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting:

"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken! quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor:

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted—nevermore!

65
The Cask of Amontillado

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he

ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my

soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I

would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled--but the very definitiveness

with which it was resolved, precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish,

but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes

its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself

felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato

cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face,

and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his

immolation.

He had a weak point--this Fortunato--although in other regards he was a

man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship

in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their

enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity-- to practise imposture

upon the British and Austrian millionaires. In painting and gemmary,

Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack-- but in the matter of old wines he

was sincere. In this respect I did not differ from him materially: I was skillful

in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could.

66
 It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival

season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with excessive warmth,

for he had been drinking much. The man wore motley. He had on a

tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was surmounted by the conical cap

and bells. I was so pleased to see him, that I thought I should never have done

wringing his hand.

I said to him--"My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkably

well you are looking to-day! But I have received a pipe of what passes for

Amontillado, and I have my doubts."

"How?" said he. "Amontillado? A pipe? Impossible! And in the

middle of the carnival!"

"I have my doubts," I replied; "and I was silly enough to pay the full

Amontillado price without consulting you in the matter. You were not to be

found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain."

"Amontillado!"

"I have my doubts."

"Amontillado!"

"And I must satisfy them."

"Amontillado!"

"As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchesi. If any one has a critical

turn, it is he. He will tell me--"

"Luchesi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry."

67
 "And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for your own."

"Come, let us go."

"Whither?"

"To your vaults."

"My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I perceive you

have an engagement. Luchesi--"

"I have no engagement;--come."

"My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with which I

perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are insufferably damp. They are

encrusted with nitre."

"Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. Amontillado! You

have been imposed upon. And as for Luchesi, he cannot distinguish Sherry

from Amontillado."

Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm. Putting on a mask

of black silk, and drawing a roquelaire closely about my person, I suffered him

to hurry me to my palazzo.

There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry in

honour of the time. I had told them that I should not return until the morning,

and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the house. These orders

were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate disappearance, one and all,

as soon as my back was turned.

I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to Fortunato,

68
bowed him through several suites of rooms to the archway that led into the

vaults. I passed down a long and winding staircase, requesting him to be

cautious as he followed. We came at length to the foot of the descent, and stood

together on the damp ground of the catacombs of the Montresors.

The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap jingled as he

strode.

"The pipe," said he.

"It is farther on," said I; "but observe the white web-work which gleams

from these cavern walls."

He turned towards me, and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs that

distilled the rheum of intoxication.

"Nitre?" he asked, at length.

"Nitre," I replied. "How long have you had that cough?"

"Ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh!

ugh!"

My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes.

"It is nothing," he said, at last.

"Come," I said, with decision, "we will go back; your health is precious.

You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was. You

are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter. We will go back; you will be ill,

and I cannot be responsible. Besides, there is Luchesi--"

"Enough," he said; "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall

69
not die of a cough."

"True--true," I replied; "and, indeed, I had no intention of alarming you

unnecessarily--but you should use all proper caution. A draught of this Medoc

will defend us from the damps."

Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row of its

fellows that lay upon the mould.

"Drink," I said, presenting him the wine.

He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly,

while his bells jingled.

"I drink," he said, "to the buried that repose around us."

"And I to your long life."

He again took my arm, and we proceeded.

"These vaults," he said, "are extensive."

"The Montresors," I replied, "were a great and numerous family."

"I forget your arms."

"A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent

rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel."

"And the motto?"

" Nemo me impune lacessit."

"Good!" he said.

The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fancy grew

warm with the Medoc. We had passed through walls of piled bones, with casks

70
and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of catacombs. I paused

again, and this time I made bold to seize Fortunato by an arm above the elbow.

"The nitre!" I said; "see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the vaults.

We are below the river's bed. The drops of moisture trickle among the bones.

Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Your cough--"

"It is nothing," he said; "let us go on. But first, another draught of the

Medoc."

I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it at a breath.

His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the bottle upwards

with a gesticulation I did not understand.

I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement--a grotesque one.

"You do not comprehend?" he said.

"Not I," I replied.

"Then you are not of the brotherhood."

"How?"

"You are not of the masons."

"Yes, yes," I said; "yes, yes."

"You? Impossible! A mason?"

"A mason," I replied.

"A sign," he said, "a sign."

"It is this," I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the folds of my

roquelaire.

71
 "You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But let us proceed to the

Amontillado."

"Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak and again offering

him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We continued our route in search of

the Amontillado. We passed through a range of low arches, descended, passed

on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air

caused our flambeaux rather to glow than flame.

At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious.

Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the vault overhead, in the

fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three sides of this interior crypt were

still ornamented in this manner. From the fourth side the bones had been

thrown down, and lay promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a

mound of some size. Within the wall thus exposed by the displacing of the

bones, we perceived a still interior recess, in depth about four feet in width three,

in height six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no especial use

within itself, but formed merely the interval between two of the colossal supports

of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by one of their circumscribing

walls of solid granite.

It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavoured to pry

into the depth of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did not enable us to

see.

"Proceed," I said; "herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchesi--"

72
 "He is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily

forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had

reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock,

stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the

granite. In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two

feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain, from the other a

padlock. Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few

seconds to secure it. He was too much astounded to resist. Withdrawing the

key I stepped back from the recess.

"Pass your hand," I said, "over the wall; you cannot help feeling the nitre.

Indeed, it is very damp. Once more let me implore you to return. No?

Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render you all the little

attentions in my power."

"The Amontillado!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his

astonishment.

"True," I replied; "the Amontillado."

As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of which I

have before spoken. Throwing them aside, I soon un- covered a quantity of

building stone and mortar. With these materials and with the aid of my trowel,

I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche.

I had scarcely laid the first tier of the masonry when I discovered that the

intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure worn off. The earliest

73
indication I had of this was a low moaning cry from the depth of the recess. It

was not the cry of a drunken man. There was then a long and obstinate

silence. I laid the second tier, and the third, and the fourth; and then I heard

the furious vibrations of the chain. The noise lasted for several minutes, during

which, that I might hearken to it with the more satisfaction, I ceased my labours

and sat down upon the bones. When at last the clanking subsided, I resumed

the trowel, and finished without interruption the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh

tier. The wall was now nearly upon a level with my breast. I again paused,

and holding the flambeaux over the mason-work, threw a few feeble rays upon

the figure within.

A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat

of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I

hesitated-- I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope with it about

the recess; but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon

the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall; I

replied to the yells of him who clamoured. I re-echoed-- I aided-- I surpassed

them in volume and in strength. I did this, and the clamourer grew still.

It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had completed

the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth tier. I had finished a portion of the last and

the eleventh; there remained but a single stone to be fitted and plastered in. I

struggled with its weight; I placed it partially in its destined position. But now

there came from out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head.

74
It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognizing as that of

the noble Fortunato. The voice said--

"Ha! ha! ha!--he! he! he!--a very good joke indeed--an excellent jest. We

shall have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo--he! he! he!--over our

wine--he! he! he!"

"The Amontillado!" I said.

"He! he! he!--he! he! he!--yes, the Amontillado. But is it not getting late?

Will not they be awaiting us at the palazzo, the Lady Fortunato and the rest?

Let us be gone."

"Yes," I said, "let us be gone."

" For the love of God, Montresor!"

"Yes," I said, "for the love of God!"

But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I

called aloud--

"Fortunato!"

No answer. I called again--

"Fortunato--"

No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it

fall within. There came forth in reply only a jingling of the bells. My heart

grew sick on account of the dampness of the catacombs. I hastened to make an

end of my labour. I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up.

Against the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of bones. For the half of

75
a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!

76
The Fall of the House of Usher

Son coeur est un luth suspendu;

Sitot qu'on le touche il resonne.

DE BERANGER.

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the

year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing

alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length

found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the

melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse

of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say

insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasureable,

because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest

natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before

me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the

domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like windows--upon a few

rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees--with an utter

depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly

than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday

life--the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a

sickening of the heart--an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of

77
the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it--I paused

to think--what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of

Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy

fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the

unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of

very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the

analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was

possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the

scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to

annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I

reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in

unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down--but with a shudder even more

thrilling than before--upon the remodelled and inverted images of the grey sedge,

and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn

of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon

companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A

letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country--a letter

from him-- which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other

than a personal reply. The MS gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer

spoke of acute bodily illness--of a mental disorder which oppressed him--and of

an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with

78
a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his

malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said--it was

the apparent heart that went with his request--which allowed me no room for

hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very

singular summons.

Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew

little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was

aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind,

for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in

many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of

munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the

intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognisable

beauties of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that

the stem of the Usher race, all time-honoured as it was, had put forth, at no

period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the

direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary

variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in

thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited

character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which

the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other--it

was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating

transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had, at

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length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the

quaint and equivocal appellation of the "House of Usher"--an appellation which

seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and

the family mansion.

I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment--that of

looking down within the tarn--had been to deepen the first singular impression.

There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my

supersition--for why should I not so term it?--served mainly to accelerate the

increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments

having terror as a basis. And it might have been for this reason only, that, when

I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew

in my mind a strange fancy--a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it

to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked

upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and

domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate

vicinity-- an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which

had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the grey wall, and the silent tarn--a

pestilent and mystic vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.

Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more

narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that

of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute

fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from

80
the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No

portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency

between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the

individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious

totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault,

with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this

indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability.

Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely

perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made

its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen

waters of the tarn.

Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant

in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet,

of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through many dark and

intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I

encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague

sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me--while

the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness

of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode,

were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my

infancy--while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this--I still

wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were

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stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the physician of the family. His

countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity.

He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a

door and ushered me into the presence of his master.

The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows

were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a dis- tance from the black oaken

floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of

encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to

render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however,

struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of

the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The

general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books

and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the

scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep,

and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.

Upon my entrance, Usher rose from a sofa on which he had been lying at

full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at

first thought, of an overdone cordiality--of the constrained effort of the ennuye

man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me of his

perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I

gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never

before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was

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with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being

before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his

face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye

large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very

pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model,

but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely-moulded

chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a

more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate

expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not

easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing

character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay

so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of

the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and

even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded,

and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I

could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of

simple humanity.

In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence--an

inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile

struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy--an excessive nervous agitation.

For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter,

than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from

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his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action was

alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous

indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of

energetic concision--that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding

enunciation--that leaden, self- balanced and perfectly modulated guttural

utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable

eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.

It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see

me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He entered, at some length,

into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a

constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a

remedy--a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would

undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations.

Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although,

perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration had their weight.

He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food

was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odours

of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and

there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did

not inspire him with horror.

To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. "I shall

perish," said he, "I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not

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otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but

in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident,

which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no

abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect--in terror. In this

unnerved--in this pitiable condition--I feel that the period will sooner or later

arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the

grim phantasm, FEAR."

I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints,

another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain

superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and

whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth--in regard to an influence

whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be

re-stated--an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance

of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his

spirit--an effect which the physique of the grey walls and turrets, and of the dim

tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the

morale of his existence.

He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar

gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more

palpable origin--to the severe and long-continued illness--indeed to the evidently

approaching dis- solution--of a tenderly beloved sister--his sole companion for

long years--his last and only relative on earth. "Her decease," he said, with a

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bitterness which I can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the

frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke, the lady

Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the

apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded

her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread--and yet I found it

impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as

my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her,

my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother--but

he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more

than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which

trickled many passionate tears.

The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians.

A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although

transient affections of a partially cataleptical character, were the unusual

diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her

malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed; but, on the closing in of the

evening of my arrival at the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at

night with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer; and

I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus probably be

the last I should obtain--that the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me

no more.

For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or

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myself: and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavours to alleviate the

melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or I listened, as if in a

dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer

and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his

spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a

mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon

all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation of

gloom.

I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus spent

alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in any attempt to

convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the occupations, in

which he involved me, or led me the way. An excited and highly distempered

ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will

ring for ever in my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain

singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von

Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which

grew, touch by touch, into vagueness at which I shuddered the more thrillingly,

because I shuddered knowing not why;--from these paintings (vivid as their

images now are before me) I would in vain endeavour to educe more than a small

portion which should lie within the compass of merely written words. By the

utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed

attention. If ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher.

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For me at least--in the circumstances then surrounding me--there arose out of

the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his

canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the

contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli.

One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so

rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although feebly, in

words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and

rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without

interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to

convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface

of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no

torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense

rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate

splendour.

I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which

rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects

of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus

confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the

fantastic character of the performances. But the fervid facility of his

impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in

the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently

accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that

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intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously

alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial

excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I

was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the

under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the

first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty

reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled "The Haunted

Palace," ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:

I.

In the greenest of our valleys,

By good angels tenanted,

Once a fair and stately palace--

Radiant palace--reared its head.

In the monarch Thought's dominion--

It stood there!

Never seraph spread a pinion

Over fabric half so fair.

II.

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,

On its roof did float and flow;

(This--all this--was in the olden

Time long ago)

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 And every gentle air that dallied,

In that sweet day,

Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,

A winged odour went away.

III.

Wanderers in that happy valley

Through two luminous windows saw

Spirits moving musically

To a lute's well tuned law,

Round about a throne, where sitting

(Porphyrogene!)

In state his glory well befitting,

The ruler of the realm was seen.

IV.

Was the fair palace door,

Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing

And sparkling evermore,

A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty

Was but to sing,

In voices of surpassing beauty,

The wit and wisdom of their king.

V.

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 But evil things, in robes of sorrow,

Assailed the monarch's high estate;

(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow

Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)

And, round about his home, the glory

That blushed and bloomed

Is but a dim-remembered story,

Of the old time entombed.

VI.

And travellers now within that valley,

Through the red-litten windows, see

Vast forms that move fantastically

To a discordant melody;

While, like a rapid ghastly river,

Through the pale door,

A hideous throng rush out forever,

And laugh--but smile no more.

I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad, led us into a train

of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention

not so much on account of its novelty (for other men* have thought thus,) as on

account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its

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general form, was that of the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his

disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed,

under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words to

express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion. The belief,

however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the gray stones of the

home of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience had been here, he

imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones--in the order of

their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them,

and of the decayed trees which stood around-- above all, in the long undisturbed

endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the

tarn. Its evidence--the evidence of the sentience--was to be seen, he said, (and I

here started as he spoke,) in the gradual yet certain condensation of an

atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls. The result was

discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and terrible influence

which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family, and which made him

what I now saw him--what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will

make none.

Our books--the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the

mental existence of the invalid--were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping

with this character of phantasm. We pored together over such works as the

Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset; the Belphegor of Machiavelli; the Heaven and

Hell of Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg;

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the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D'Indagine, and of De la Chambre; the

Journey into the Blue Distance of Tieck; and the City of the Sun by Campanella.

One favourite volume was a small octavo edition of the Directorium

Inquisitorum, by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in

Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and OEgipans, over which Usher

would sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the

perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothic--the manual of

a forgotten church--the Vigiliae Mortuorum Secundum Chorum Ecclesiae

Maguntinae.

I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable

influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having informed me

abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his intention of

preserving her corpse for a fortnight, (previously to its final interment), in one of

the numerous vaults within the main walls of the building. The worldly reason,

however, assigned for this singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at

liberty to dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution (so he told me) by

consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain

obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote

and exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will not deny that

when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon

the staircase, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose

what I regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means an unnatural,

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precaution.

At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for the

temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two alone bore it

to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had been so long

unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us

little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without means

of admission for light; lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of

the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used,

apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and,

in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible

substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway

through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of

massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an

unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges.

Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of

horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked

upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between the brother and sister

now first arrested my attention; and Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts,

murmured out some few words from which I learned that the deceased and

himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had

always existed between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the

dead--for we could not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus

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entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a

strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and

the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in

death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having secured the door of

iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the

upper portion of the house.

And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change

came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary

manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten.

He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step.

The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue--but

the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness

of his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror,

habitually characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I

thought his unceasingly agitated mind was labouring with some oppressive secret,

to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was

obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I beheld

him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest

attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his

condition terrified--that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet

certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive

superstitions.

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 It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or

eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the donjon, that I

experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came not near my

couch--while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off the

nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavoured to believe that much,

if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy

furniture of the room--of the dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into

motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the

walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts

were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at

length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm.

Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows,

and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened-- I

know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me--to certain low and

indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals,

I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror,

unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I

should sleep no more during the night,) and endeavoured to arouse myself from

the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro

through the apartment.

I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an adjoining

staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognized it as that of Usher. In

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an instant afterwards he rapped, with a gentle touch, at my door, and entered,

bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan--but,

moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes--an evidently restrained

hysteria in his whole demeanour. His air appalled me--but anything was

preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his

presence as a relief.

"And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having stared about him

for some moments in silence--"you have not then seen it?--but, stay! you shall."

Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he hurried to one of the

casements, and threw it freely open to the storm.

The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet. It

was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in

its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently collected its force in our

vicinity; for there were frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the

wind; and the exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press

upon the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the lifelike velocity

with which they flew careering from all points against each other, without

passing away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density did not

prevent our perceiving this--yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars--nor was

there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge

masses of agitated vapor, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us,

were glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible

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gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.

"You must not--you shall not behold this!" said I, shudderingly, to Usher, as

I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a seat. "These

appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena not

uncommon--or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma

of the tarn. Let us close this casement;--the air is chilling and dangerous to

your frame. Here is one of your favourite romances. I will read, and you shall

listen;--and so we will pass away this terrible night together."

The antique volume which I had taken up was the "Mad Trist" of Sir

Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favourite of Usher's more in sad jest

than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative

prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my

friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a

vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might

find relief (for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in

the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed,

by the wild overstrained air of vivacity with which he hearkened, or apparently

hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have congratulated myself upon

the success of my design.

I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred, the

hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for peaceable admission into the dwelling

of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by force. Here, it will be

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remembered, the words of the narrative run thus:

"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now

mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken,

waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in sooth, was of an

obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the rain upon his shoulders, and

fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and, with blows,

made quickly room in the plankings of the door for his gauntleted hand; and

now pulling therewith sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder,

that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarmed and reverberated

throughout the forest."

At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment, paused; for

it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited fancy had

deceived me)--it appeared to me that, from some very remote portion of the

mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been, in its exact

similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very

cracking and ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described.

It was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for,

amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary commingled

noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which

should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the story:

"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore

enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in the

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stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanour, and of a fiery

tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and

upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten--

Who entereth herein, a conquerer hath bin;

Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;

and Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon,

which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and

harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to close his ears with his

hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never before heard."

Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild

amazement--for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance, I did

actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found it impossible to

say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual

screaming or grating sound--the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already

conjured up for the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.

Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of the second and most

extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations, in which

wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained sufficient presence

of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the sensitive nervousness of my

companion. I was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds in

question; although, assuredly, a strange alteration had, during the last few

minutes, taken place in his demeanour. From a position fronting my own, he

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had gradually brought round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the

chamber; and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw that

his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped

upon his breast--yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid

opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body,

too, was at variance with this idea--for he rocked from side to side with a gentle

yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I

resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded:

"And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the

dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up of the

enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of the way before

him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to where

the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming, but

fell down at his feet upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing

sound."

No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than--as if a shield of brass

had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of silver--I became aware

of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently muffled

reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured

rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he

sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole

countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his

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shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile

quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering

murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at

length drank in the hideous import of his words.

"Not hear it?--yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long- -long--long--many

minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it--yet I dared not--oh, pity me,

miserable wretch that I am!--I dared not--I dared not speak! We have put her

living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I

heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them--many,

many days ago--yet I dared not--I dared not speak! And

now--to-night--Ethelred--ha! ha!--the breaking of the hermit's door, and the

death-cry of the dragon, and the clangour of the shield!--say, rather, the rending

of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles

within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not

be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not

heard her footsteps on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible

beating of her heart? Madman!" here he sprang furiously to his feet, and

shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul--"Madman!

I tell you that she now stands without the door!"

As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the

potency of a spell--the huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed, threw

slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work

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of the rushing gust--but then without those doors there DID stand the lofty and

enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her

white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her

emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro

upon the threshold,-- then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the

person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him

to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.

From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was

still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway.

Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a

gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were

alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon

which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure of which I

have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag

direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened--there came a

fierce breath of the whirlwind--the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon

my sight--my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder--there was

a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters--and the

deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of

the "House of Usher".

* Watson, Dr Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop of Landaff.

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The Black Cat

FOR the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I

neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case

where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not - and very

surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my

soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and

without comment, a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these

events have terrified - have tortured - have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt

to expound them. To me, they have presented little but Horror - to many they

will seem less terrible than _barroques_. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may

be found which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place - some intellect

more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive,

in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession

of very natural causes and effects.

From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my

disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the

jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my

parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my time, and

never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them. This peculiarity of

character grew with my growth, and in my manhood, I derived from it one of my

principal sources of pleasure. To those who have cherished an affection for a

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faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the

nature or the intensity of the gratification thus derivable. There is something in

the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart

of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer

fidelity of mere _Man_.

I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not

uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no

opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We had birds,

gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and _a cat_.

This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and

sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who

at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the

ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not

that she was ever _serious_ upon this point - and I mention the matter at all for

no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be remembered.

Pluto - this was the cat's name - was my favorite pet and playmate. I alone

fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house. It was even with

difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through the streets.

Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which my

general temperament and character - through the instrumentality of the Fiend

Intemperance - had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the

worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the

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feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At

length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets, of course, were made to feel

the change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them. For Pluto,

however, I still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from maltreating him, as

I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog, when

by accident, or through affection, they came in my way. But my disease grew

upon me - for what disease is like Alcohol! - and at length even Pluto, who was

now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish - even Pluto began to

experience the effects of my ill temper.

One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about

town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright

at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury

of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul

seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body and a more than fiendish

malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. I took from my

waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat,

and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder,

while I pen the damnable atrocity.

When reason returned with the morning - when I had slept off the fumes of

the night's debauch - I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse,

for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it was, at best, a feeble and

equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I again plunged into excess,

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and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed.

In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket of the lost eye

presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer appeared to suffer

any pain. He went about the house as usual, but, as might be expected, fled in

extreme terror at my approach. I had so much of my old heart left, as to be at

first grieved by this evident dislike on the part of a creature which had once so

loved me. But this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then came, as if to

my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of this spirit

philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am

that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the

indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character

of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly

action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a

perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is

_Law_, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness,

I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul

_to vex itself_ - to offer violence to its own nature - to do wrong for the wrong's

sake only - that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had

inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a

noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; - hung it with the tears

streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; - hung it

_because_ I knew that it had loved me, and _because_ I felt it had given me no

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reason of offence; - hung it _because_ I knew that in so doing I was committing a

sin - a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it - if

such a thing wore possible - even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the

Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.

On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was aroused

from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames. The whole

house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that my wife, a servant, and

myself, made our escape from the conflagration. The destruction was complete.

My entire worldly wealth was swallowed up, and I resigned myself

thenceforward to despair.

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and

effect, between the disaster and the atrocity. But I am detailing a chain of facts -

and wish not to leave even a possible link imperfect. On the day succeeding the

fire, I visited the ruins. The walls, with one exception, had fallen in. This

exception was found in a compartment wall, not very thick, which stood about

the middle of the house, and against which had rested the head of my bed. The

plastering had here, in great measure, resisted the action of the fire - a fact which

I attributed to its having been recently spread. About this wall a dense crowd

were collected, and many persons seemed to be examining a particular portion of

it with very minute and eager attention. The words "strange!" "singular!" and

other similar expressions, excited my curiosity. I approached and saw, as if

graven in _bas relief_ upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic _cat_. The

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impression was given with an accuracy truly marvellous. There was a rope about

the animal's neck.

When I first beheld this apparition - for I could scarcely regard it as less -

my wonder and my terror were extreme. But at length reflection came to my aid.

The cat, I remembered, had been hung in a garden adjacent to the house. Upon

the alarm of fire, this garden had been immediately filled by the crowd - by some

one of whom the animal must have been cut from the tree and thrown, through

an open window, into my chamber. This had probably been done with the view of

arousing me from sleep. The falling of other walls had compressed the victim of

my cruelty into the substance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which,

with the flames, and the _ammonia_ from the carcass, had then accomplished the

portraiture as I saw it.

Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to my

conscience, for the startling fact just detailed, it did not the less fail to make a

deep impression upon my fancy. For months I could not rid myself of the

phantasm of the cat; and, during this period, there came back into my spirit a

half-sentiment that seemed, but was not, remorse. I went so far as to regret the

loss of the animal, and to look about me, among the vile haunts which I now

habitually frequented, for another pet of the same species, and of somewhat

similar appearance, with which to supply its place.

One night as I sat, half stupified, in a den of more than infamy, my attention

was suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon the head of one of the

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immense hogsheads of Gin, or of Rum, which constituted the chief furniture of

the apartment. I had been looking steadily at the top of this hogshead for some

minutes, and what now caused me surprise was the fact that I had not sooner

perceived the object thereupon. I approached it, and touched it with my hand. It

was a black cat - a very large one - fully as large as Pluto, and closely resembling

him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a white hair upon any portion of his

body; but this cat had a large, although indefinite splotch of white, covering

nearly the whole region of the breast. Upon my touching him, he immediately

arose, purred loudly, rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted with my

notice. This, then, was the very creature of which I was in search. I at once

offered to purchase it of the landlord; but this person made no claim to it - knew

nothing of it - had never seen it before.

I continued my caresses, and, when I prepared to go home, the animal

evinced a disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to do so; occasionally

stooping and patting it as I proceeded. When it reached the house it domesticated

itself at once, and became immediately a great favorite with my wife.

For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was just

the reverse of what I had anticipated; but - I know not how or why it was - its

evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed. By slow degrees, these

feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred. I avoided the

creature; a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of

cruelty, preventing me from physically abusing it. I did not, for some weeks,

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strike, or otherwise violently ill use it; but gradually - very gradually - I came to

look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its odious

presence, as from the breath of a pestilence. What added, no doubt, to my

hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on the morning after I brought it home,

that, like Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance,

however, only endeared it to my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed, in a

high degree, that humanity of feeling which had once been my distinguishing

trait, and the source of many of my simplest and purest pleasures. With my

aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase. It

followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which it would be difficult to make the

reader comprehend. Whenever I sat, it would crouch beneath my chair, or spring

upon my knees, covering me with its loathsome caresses. If I arose to walk it

would get between my feet and thus nearly throw me down, or, fastening its long

and sharp claws in my dress, clamber, in this manner, to my breast. At such times,

although I longed to destroy it with a blow, I was yet withheld from so doing,

partly by a memory of my former crime, but chiefly - let me confess it at once -

by absolute dread of the beast.

This dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil - and yet I should be at a

loss how otherwise to define it. I am almost ashamed to own - yes, even in this

felon's cell, I am almost ashamed to own - that the terror and horror with which

the animal inspired me, had been heightened by one of the merest chimaeras it

would be possible to conceive. My wife had called my attention, more than once,

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to the character of the mark of white hair, of which I have spoken, and which

constituted the sole visible difference between the strange beast and the one I had

destroyed. The reader will remember that this mark, although large, had been

originally very indefinite; but, by slow degrees - degrees nearly imperceptible,

and which for a long time my Reason struggled to reject as fanciful - it had, at

length, assumed a rigorous distinctness of outline. It was now the representation

of an object that I shudder to name - and for this, above all, I loathed, and

dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster _had I dared_ - it was now, I

say, the image of a hideous - of a ghastly thing - of the GALLOWS ! - oh,

mournful and terrible engine of Horror and of Crime - of Agony and of Death !

And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity.

And _a brute beast _- whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed - _a brute

beast_ to work out for _me_ - for me a man, fashioned in the image of the High

God - so much of insufferable wo! Alas! neither by day nor by night knew I the

blessing of Rest any more! During the former the creature left me no moment

alone; and, in the latter, I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to

find the hot breath of _the thing_ upon my face, and its vast weight - an

incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off - incumbent eternally

upon my _heart !_

Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the

good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates - the darkest

and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatred

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of all things and of all mankind; while, from the sudden, frequent, and

ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my

uncomplaining wife, alas! was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers.

One day she accompanied me, upon some household errand, into the cellar

of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit. The cat followed

me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong, exasperated me to

madness. Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my wrath, the childish dread which

had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a blow at the animal which, of course,

would have proved instantly fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blow

was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded, by the interference, into a rage

more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in

her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan.

This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and with entire

deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. I knew that I could not remove it

from the house, either by day or by night, without the risk of being observed by

the neighbors. Many projects entered my mind. At one period I thought of

cutting the corpse into minute fragments, and destroying them by fire. At

another, I resolved to dig a grave for it in the floor of the cellar. Again, I

deliberated about casting it in the well in the yard - about packing it in a box, as

if merchandize, with the usual arrangements, and so getting a porter to take it

from the house. Finally I hit upon what I considered a far better expedient than

either of these. I determined to wall it up in the cellar - as the monks of the

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middle ages are recorded to have walled up their victims.

For a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted. Its walls were loosely

constructed, and had lately been plastered throughout with a rough plaster,

which the dampness of the atmosphere had prevented from hardening. Moreover,

in one of the walls was a projection, caused by a false chimney, or fireplace, that

had been filled up, and made to resemble the red of the cellar. I made no doubt

that I could readily displace the bricks at this point, insert the corpse, and wall

the whole up as before, so that no eye could detect any thing suspicious. And in

this calculation I was not deceived. By means of a crow-bar I easily dislodged the

bricks, and, having carefully deposited the body against the inner wall, I propped

it in that position, while, with little trouble, I re-laid the whole structure as it

originally stood. Having procured mortar, sand, and hair, with every possible

precaution, I prepared a plaster which could not be distinguished from the old,

and with this I very carefully went over the new brickwork. When I had finished,

I felt satisfied that all was right. The wall did not present the slightest

appearance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was picked up

with the minutest care. I looked around triumphantly, and said to myself - "Here

at least, then, my labor has not been in vain."

My next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause of so much

wretchedness; for I had, at length, firmly resolved to put it to death. Had I been

able to meet with it, at the moment, there could have been no doubt of its fate;

but it appeared that the crafty animal had been alarmed at the violence of my

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previous anger, and forebore to present itself in my present mood. It is

impossible to describe, or to imagine, the deep, the blissful sense of relief which

the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom. It did not make its

appearance during the night - and thus for one night at least, since its

introduction into the house, I soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with

the burden of murder upon my soul!

The second and the third day passed, and still my tormentor came not. Once

again I breathed as a freeman. The monster, in terror, had fled the premises

forever! I should behold it no more! My happiness was supreme! The guilt of my

dark deed disturbed me but little. Some few inquiries had been made, but these

had been readily answered. Even a search had been instituted - but of course

nothing was to be discovered. I looked upon my future felicity as secured.

Upon the fourth day of the assassination, a party of the police came, very

unexpectedly, into the house, and proceeded again to make rigorous investigation

of the premises. Secure, however, in the inscrutability of my place of concealment,

I felt no embarrassment whatever. The officers bade me accompany them in

their search. They left no nook or corner unexplored. At length, for the third or

fourth time, they descended into the cellar. I quivered not in a muscle. My heart

beat calmly as that of one who slumbers in innocence. I walked the cellar from

end to end. I folded my arms upon my bosom, and roamed easily to and fro. The

police were thoroughly satisfied and prepared to depart. The glee at my heart

was too strong to be restrained. I burned to say if but one word, by way of

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triumph, and to render doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness.

"Gentlemen," I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, "I delight to

have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health, and a little more courtesy. By

the bye, gentlemen, this - this is a very well constructed house." [In the rabid

desire to say something easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered at all.] - "I may say

an _excellently_ well constructed house. These walls are you going, gentlemen? -

these walls are solidly put together;" and here, through the mere phrenzy of

bravado, I rapped heavily, with a cane which I held in my hand, upon that very

portion of the brick-work behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my

bosom.

But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the Arch-Fiend ! No

sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence, than I was answered

by a voice from within the tomb! - by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the

sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous

scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman - a howl - a wailing shriek, half of

horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly

from the throats of the dammed in their agony and of the demons that exult in

the damnation.

Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to the

opposite wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless,

through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a dozen stout arms were

toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted

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with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red

extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had

seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the

hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!

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The Premature Burial

THERE are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which

are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction. These the mere

romanticist must eschew, if he do not wish to offend or to disgust. They are with

propriety handled only when the severity and majesty of Truth sanctify and

sustain them. We thrill, for example, with the most intense of "pleasurable pain"

over the accounts of the Passage of the Beresina, of the Earthquake at Lisbon, of

the Plague at London, of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, or of the stifling of

the hundred and twenty-three prisoners in the Black Hole at Calcutta. But in

these accounts it is the fact - -- it is the reality - -- it is the history which excites.

As inventions, we should regard them with simple abhorrence.

I have mentioned some few of the more prominent and august calamities on

record; but in these it is the extent, not less than the character of the calamity,

which so vividly impresses the fancy. I need not remind the reader that, from the

long and weird catalogue of human miseries, I might have selected many

individual instances more replete with essential suffering than any of these vast

generalities of disaster. The true wretchedness, indeed -- the ultimate woe - -- is

particular, not diffuse. That the ghastly extremes of agony are endured by man

the unit, and never by man the mass - -- for this let us thank a merciful God!

To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these

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extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality. That it has frequently,

very frequently, so fallen will scarcely be denied by those who think. The

boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who

shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? We know that there

are diseases in which occur total cessations of all the apparent functions of

vitality, and yet in which these cessations are merely suspensions, properly so

called. They are only temporary pauses in the incomprehensible mechanism. A

certain period elapses, and some unseen mysterious principle again sets in

motion the magic pinions and the wizard wheels. The silver cord was not for ever

loosed, nor the golden bowl irreparably broken. But where, meantime, was the

soul?

Apart, however, from the inevitable conclusion, a priori that such causes

must produce such effects - -- that the well-known occurrence of such cases of

suspended animation must naturally give rise, now and then, to premature

interments -- apart from this consideration, we have the direct testimony of

medical and ordinary experience to prove that a vast number of such interments

have actually taken place. I might refer at once, if necessary to a hundred well

authenticated instances. One of very remarkable character, and of which the

circumstances may be fresh in the memory of some of my readers, occurred, not

very long ago, in the neighboring city of Baltimore, where it occasioned a painful,

intense, and widely-extended excitement. The wife of one of the most respectable

citizens-a lawyer of eminence and a member of Congress -- was seized with a

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sudden and unaccountable illness, which completely baffled the skill of her

physicians. After much suffering she died, or was supposed to die. No one

suspected, indeed, or had reason to suspect, that she was not actually dead. She

presented all the ordinary appearances of death. The face assumed the usual

pinched and sunken outline. The lips were of the usual marble pallor. The eyes

were lustreless. There was no warmth. Pulsation had ceased. For three days the

body was preserved unburied, during which it had acquired a stony rigidity. The

funeral, in short, was hastened, on account of the rapid advance of what was

supposed to be decomposition.

The lady was deposited in her family vault, which, for three subsequent

years, was undisturbed. At the expiration of this term it was opened for the

reception of a sarcophagus; - -- but, alas! how fearful a shock awaited the

husband, who, personally, threw open the door! As its portals swung outwardly

back, some white-apparelled object fell rattling within his arms. It was the

skeleton of his wife in her yet unmoulded shroud.

A careful investigation rendered it evident that she had revived within two

days after her entombment; that her struggles within the coffin had caused it to

fall from a ledge, or shelf to the floor, where it was so broken as to permit her

escape. A lamp which had been accidentally left, full of oil, within the tomb, was

found empty; it might have been exhausted, however, by evaporation. On the

uttermost of the steps which led down into the dread chamber was a large

fragment of the coffin, with which, it seemed, that she had endeavored to arrest

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attention by striking the iron door. While thus occupied, she probably swooned,

or possibly died, through sheer terror; and, in failing, her shroud became

entangled in some iron -- work which projected interiorly. Thus she remained,

and thus she rotted, erect.

In the year 1810, a case of living inhumation happened in France, attended

with circumstances which go far to warrant the assertion that truth is, indeed,

stranger than fiction. The heroine of the story was a Mademoiselle Victorine

Lafourcade, a young girl of illustrious family, of wealth, and of great personal

beauty. Among her numerous suitors was Julien Bossuet, a poor litterateur, or

journalist of Paris. His talents and general amiability had recommended him to

the notice of the heiress, by whom he seems to have been truly beloved; but her

pride of birth decided her, finally, to reject him, and to wed a Monsieur Renelle,

a banker and a diplomatist of some eminence. After marriage, however, this

gentleman neglected, and, perhaps, even more positively ill-treated her. Having

passed with him some wretched years, she died, - -- at least her condition so

closely resembled death as to deceive every one who saw her. She was buried - --

not in a vault, but in an ordinary grave in the village of her nativity. Filled with

despair, and still inflamed by the memory of a profound attachment, the lover

journeys from the capital to the remote province in which the village lies, with

the romantic purpose of disinterring the corpse, and possessing himself of its

luxuriant tresses. He reaches the grave. At midnight he unearths the coffin, opens

it, and is in the act of detaching the hair, when he is arrested by the unclosing of

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the beloved eyes. In fact, the lady had been buried alive. Vitality had not

altogether departed, and she was aroused by the caresses of her lover from the

lethargy which had been mistaken for death. He bore her frantically to his

lodgings in the village. He employed certain powerful restoratives suggested by

no little medical learning. In fine, she revived. She recognized her preserver. She

remained with him until, by slow degrees, she fully recovered her original health.

Her woman's heart was not adamant, and this last lesson of love sufficed to

soften it. She bestowed it upon Bossuet. She returned no more to her husband,

but, concealing from him her resurrection, fled with her lover to America.

Twenty years afterward, the two returned to France, in the persuasion that time

had so greatly altered the lady's appearance that her friends would be unable to

recognize her. They were mistaken, however, for, at the first meeting, Monsieur

Renelle did actually recognize and make claim to his wife. This claim she resisted,

and a judicial tribunal sustained her in her resistance, deciding that the peculiar

circumstances, with the long lapse of years, had extinguished, not only equitably,

but legally, the authority of the husband.

The "Chirurgical Journal" of Leipsic -- a periodical of high authority and

merit, which some American bookseller would do well to translate and republish,

records in a late number a very distressing event of the character in question.

An officer of artillery, a man of gigantic stature and of robust health, being

thrown from an unmanageable horse, received a very severe contusion upon the

head, which rendered him insensible at once; the skull was slightly fractured, but

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no immediate danger was apprehended. Trepanning was accomplished

successfully. He was bled, and many other of the ordinary means of relief were

adopted. Gradually, however, he fell into a more and more hopeless state of

stupor, and, finally, it was thought that he died.

The weather was warm, and he was buried with indecent haste in one of the

public cemeteries. His funeral took place on Thursday. On the Sunday following,

the grounds of the cemetery were, as usual, much thronged with visiters, and

about noon an intense excitement was created by the declaration of a peasant

that, while sitting upon the grave of the officer, he had distinctly felt a

commotion of the earth, as if occasioned by some one struggling beneath. At first

little attention was paid to the man's asseveration; but his evident terror, and the

dogged obstinacy with which he persisted in his story, had at length their natural

effect upon the crowd. Spades were hurriedly procured, and the grave, which

was shamefully shallow, was in a few minutes so far thrown open that the head of

its occupant appeared. He was then seemingly dead; but he sat nearly erect

within his coffin, the lid of which, in his furious struggles, he had partially

uplifted.

He was forthwith conveyed to the nearest hospital, and there pronounced to

be still living, although in an asphytic condition. After some hours he revived,

recognized individuals of his acquaintance, and, in broken sentences spoke of his

agonies in the grave.

From what he related, it was clear that he must have been conscious of life

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for more than an hour, while inhumed, before lapsing into insensibility. The

grave was carelessly and loosely filled with an exceedingly porous soil; and thus

some air was necessarily admitted. He heard the footsteps of the crowd overhead,

and endeavored to make himself heard in turn. It was the tumult within the

grounds of the cemetery, he said, which appeared to awaken him from a deep

sleep, but no sooner was he awake than he became fully aware of the awful

horrors of his position.

This patient, it is recorded, was doing well and seemed to be in a fair way of

ultimate recovery, but fell a victim to the quackeries of medical experiment. The

galvanic battery was applied, and he suddenly expired in one of those ecstatic

paroxysms which, occasionally, it superinduces.

The mention of the galvanic battery, nevertheless, recalls to my memory a

well known and very extraordinary case in point, where its action proved the

means of restoring to animation a young attorney of London, who had been

interred for two days. This occurred in 1831, and created, at the time, a very

profound sensation wherever it was made the subject of converse.

The patient, Mr. Edward Stapleton, had died, apparently of typhus fever,

accompanied with some anomalous symptoms which had excited the curiosity of

his medical attendants. Upon his seeming decease, his friends were requested to

sanction a post-mortem examination, but declined to permit it. As often happens,

when such refusals are made, the practitioners resolved to disinter the body and

dissect it at leisure, in private. Arrangements were easily effected with some of

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the numerous corps of body-snatchers, with which London abounds; and, upon

the third night after the funeral, the supposed corpse was unearthed from a

grave eight feet deep, and deposited in the opening chamber of one of the private

hospitals.

An incision of some extent had been actually made in the abdomen, when

the fresh and undecayed appearance of the subject suggested an application of

the battery. One experiment succeeded another, and the customary effects

supervened, with nothing to characterize them in any respect, except, upon one

or two occasions, a more than ordinary degree of life-likeness in the convulsive

action.

It grew late. The day was about to dawn; and it was thought expedient, at

length, to proceed at once to the dissection. A student, however, was especially

desirous of testing a theory of his own, and insisted upon applying the battery to

one of the pectoral muscles. A rough gash was made, and a wire hastily brought

in contact, when the patient, with a hurried but quite unconvulsive movement,

arose from the table, stepped into the middle of the floor, gazed about him

uneasily for a few seconds, and then -- spoke. What he said was unintelligible,

but words were uttered; the syllabification was distinct. Having spoken, he fell

heavily to the floor.

For some moments all were paralyzed with awe -- but the urgency of the

case soon restored them their presence of mind. It was seen that Mr. Stapleton

was alive, although in a swoon. Upon exhibition of ether he revived and was

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rapidly restored to health, and to the society of his friends -- from whom,

however, all knowledge of his resuscitation was withheld, until a relapse was no

longer to be apprehended. Their wonder -- their rapturous astonishment -- may

be conceived.

The most thrilling peculiarity of this incident, nevertheless, is involved in

what Mr. S. himself asserts. He declares that at no period was he altogether

insensible -- that, dully and confusedly, he was aware of everything which

happened to him, from the moment in which he was pronounced dead by his

physicians, to that in which he fell swooning to the floor of the hospital. "I am

alive," were the uncomprehended words which, upon recognizing the locality of

the dissecting-room, he had endeavored, in his extremity, to utter.

It were an easy matter to multiply such histories as these -- but I forbear --

for, indeed, we have no need of such to establish the fact that premature

interments occur. When we reflect how very rarely, from the nature of the case,

we have it in our power to detect them, we must admit that they may frequently

occur without our cognizance. Scarcely, in truth, is a graveyard ever encroached

upon, for any purpose, to any great extent, that skeletons are not found in

postures which suggest the most fearful of suspicions.

Fearful indeed the suspicion -- but more fearful the doom! It may be

asserted, without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well adapted to inspire

the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is burial before death. The

unendurable oppression of the lungs -- the stifling fumes from the damp earth --

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the clinging to the death garments -- the rigid embrace of the narrow house -- the

blackness of the absolute Night -- the silence like a sea that overwhelms -- the

unseen but palpable presence of the Conqueror Worm -- these things, with the

thoughts of the air and grass above, with memory of dear friends who would fly

to save us if but informed of our fate, and with consciousness that of this fate

they can never be informed -- that our hopeless portion is that of the really dead

-- these considerations, I say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates, a degree

of appalling and intolerable horror from which the most daring imagination

must recoil. We know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth -- we can dream of

nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell. And thus all

narratives upon this topic have an interest profound; an interest, nevertheless,

which, through the sacred awe of the topic itself, very properly and very

peculiarly depends upon our conviction of the truth of the matter narrated.

What I have now to tell is of my own actual knowledge -- of my own positive and

personal experience.

For several years I had been subject to attacks of the singular disorder

which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy, in default of a more definitive

title. Although both the immediate and the predisposing causes, and even the

actual diagnosis, of this disease are still mysterious, its obvious and apparent

character is sufficiently well understood. Its variations seem to be chiefly of

degree. Sometimes the patient lies, for a day only, or even for a shorter period, in

a species of exaggerated lethargy. He is senseless and externally motionless; but

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the pulsation of the heart is still faintly perceptible; some traces of warmth

remain; a slight color lingers within the centre of the cheek; and, upon

application of a mirror to the lips, we can detect a torpid, unequal, and

vacillating action of the lungs. Then again the duration of the trance is for weeks

-- even for months; while the closest scrutiny, and the most rigorous medical tests,

fail to establish any material distinction between the state of the sufferer and

what we conceive of absolute death. Very usually he is saved from premature

interment solely by the knowledge of his friends that he has been previously

subject to catalepsy, by the consequent suspicion excited, and, above all, by the

non-appearance of decay. The advances of the malady are, luckily, gradual. The

first manifestations, although marked, are unequivocal. The fits grow

successively more and more distinctive, and endure each for a longer term than

the preceding. In this lies the principal security from inhumation. The

unfortunate whose first attack should be of the extreme character which is

occasionally seen, would almost inevitably be consigned alive to the tomb.

My own case differed in no important particular from those mentioned in

medical books. Sometimes, without any apparent cause, I sank, little by little,

into a condition of hemi-syncope, or half swoon; and, in this condition, without

pain, without ability to stir, or, strictly speaking, to think, but with a dull

lethargic consciousness of life and of the presence of those who surrounded my

bed, I remained, until the crisis of the disease restored me, suddenly, to perfect

sensation. At other times I was quickly and impetuously smitten. I grew sick, and

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numb, and chilly, and dizzy, and so fell prostrate at once. Then, for weeks, all

was void, and black, and silent, and Nothing became the universe. Total

annihilation could be no more. From these latter attacks I awoke, however, with

a gradation slow in proportion to the suddenness of the seizure. Just as the day

dawns to the friendless and houseless beggar who roams the streets throughout

the long desolate winter night -- just so tardily -- just so wearily -- just so cheerily

came back the light of the Soul to me.

Apart from the tendency to trance, however, my general health appeared to

be good; nor could I perceive that it was at all affected by the one prevalent

malady -- unless, indeed, an idiosyncrasy in my ordinary sleep may be looked

upon as superinduced. Upon awaking from slumber, I could never gain, at once,

thorough possession of my senses, and always remained, for many minutes, in

much bewilderment and perplexity; -- the mental faculties in general, but the

memory in especial, being in a condition of absolute abeyance.

In all that I endured there was no physical suffering but of moral distress an

infinitude. My fancy grew charnel, I talked "of worms, of tombs, and epitaphs."

I was lost in reveries of death, and the idea of premature burial held continual

possession of my brain. The ghastly Danger to which I was subjected haunted me

day and night. In the former, the torture of meditation was excessive -- in the

latter, supreme. When the grim Darkness overspread the Earth, then, with every

horror of thought, I shook -- shook as the quivering plumes upon the hearse.

When Nature could endure wakefulness no longer, it was with a struggle that I

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consented to sleep -- for I shuddered to reflect that, upon awaking, I might find

myself the tenant of a grave. And when, finally, I sank into slumber, it was only

to rush at once into a world of phantasms, above which, with vast, sable,

overshadowing wing, hovered, predominant, the one sepulchral Idea.

From the innumerable images of gloom which thus oppressed me in dreams,

I select for record but a solitary vision. Methought I was immersed in a cataleptic

trance of more than usual duration and profundity. Suddenly there came an icy

hand upon my forehead, and an impatient, gibbering voice whispered the word

"Arise!" within my ear.

I sat erect. The darkness was total. I could not see the figure of him who had

aroused me. I could call to mind neither the period at which I had fallen into the

trance, nor the locality in which I then lay. While I remained motionless, and

busied in endeavors to collect my thought, the cold hand grasped me fiercely by

the wrist, shaking it petulantly, while the gibbering voice said again:

"Arise! did I not bid thee arise?"

"And who," I demanded, "art thou?"

"I have no name in the regions which I inhabit," replied the voice,

mournfully; "I was mortal, but am fiend. I was merciless, but am pitiful. Thou

dost feel that I shudder. -- My teeth chatter as I speak, yet it is not with the

chilliness of the night -- of the night without end. But this hideousness is

insufferable. How canst thou tranquilly sleep? I cannot rest for the cry of these

great agonies. These sights are more than I can bear. Get thee up! Come with me

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into the outer Night, and let me unfold to thee the graves. Is not this a spectacle

of woe? -- Behold!"

I looked; and the unseen figure, which still grasped me by the wrist, had

caused to be thrown open the graves of all mankind, and from each issued the

faint phosphoric radiance of decay, so that I could see into the innermost recesses,

and there view the shrouded bodies in their sad and solemn slumbers with the

worm. But alas! the real sleepers were fewer, by many millions, than those who

slumbered not at all; and there was a feeble struggling; and there was a general

sad unrest; and from out the depths of the countless pits there came a

melancholy rustling from the garments of the buried. And of those who seemed

tranquilly to repose, I saw that a vast number had changed, in a greater or less

degree, the rigid and uneasy position in which they had originally been entombed.

And the voice again said to me as I gazed:

"Is it not -- oh! is it not a pitiful sight?" -- but, before I could find words to

reply, the figure had ceased to grasp my wrist, the phosphoric lights expired, and

the graves were closed with a sudden violence, while from out them arose a

tumult of despairing cries, saying again: "Is it not -- O, God, is it not a very

pitiful sight?"

Phantasies such as these, presenting themselves at night, extended their

terrific influence far into my waking hours. My nerves became thoroughly

unstrung, and I fell a prey to perpetual horror. I hesitated to ride, or to walk, or

to indulge in any exercise that would carry me from home. In fact, I no longer

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dared trust myself out of the immediate presence of those who were aware of my

proneness to catalepsy, lest, falling into one of my usual fits, I should be buried

before my real condition could be ascertained. I doubted the care, the fidelity of

my dearest friends. I dreaded that, in some trance of more than customary

duration, they might be prevailed upon to regard me as irrecoverable. I even

went so far as to fear that, as I occasioned much trouble, they might be glad to

consider any very protracted attack as sufficient excuse for getting rid of me

altogether. It was in vain they endeavored to reassure me by the most solemn

promises. I exacted the most sacred oaths, that under no circumstances they

would bury me until decomposition had so materially advanced as to render

farther preservation impossible. And, even then, my mortal terrors would listen

to no reason -- would accept no consolation. I entered into a series of elaborate

precautions. Among other things, I had the family vault so remodelled as to

admit of being readily opened from within. The slightest pressure upon a long

lever that extended far into the tomb would cause the iron portal to fly back.

There were arrangements also for the free admission of air and light, and

convenient receptacles for food and water, within immediate reach of the coffin

intended for my reception. This coffin was warmly and softly padded, and was

provided with a lid, fashioned upon the principle of the vault-door, with the

addition of springs so contrived that the feeblest movement of the body would be

sufficient to set it at liberty. Besides all this, there was suspended from the roof of

the tomb, a large bell, the rope of which, it was designed, should extend through

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a hole in the coffin, and so be fastened to one of the hands of the corpse. But, alas?

what avails the vigilance against the Destiny of man? Not even these

well-contrived securities sufficed to save from the uttermost agonies of living

inhumation, a wretch to these agonies foredoomed!

There arrived an epoch -- as often before there had arrived -- in which I

found myself emerging from total unconsciousness into the first feeble and

indefinite sense of existence. Slowly -- with a tortoise gradation -- approached the

faint gray dawn of the psychal day. A torpid uneasiness. An apathetic endurance

of dull pain. No care -- no hope -- no effort. Then, after a long interval, a ringing

in the ears; then, after a lapse still longer, a prickling or tingling sensation in the

extremities; then a seemingly eternal period of pleasurable quiescence, during

which the awakening feelings are struggling into thought; then a brief re-sinking

into non-entity; then a sudden recovery. At length the slight quivering of an

eyelid, and immediately thereupon, an electric shock of a terror, deadly and

indefinite, which sends the blood in torrents from the temples to the heart. And

now the first positive effort to think. And now the first endeavor to remember.

And now a partial and evanescent success. And now the memory has so far

regained its dominion, that, in some measure, I am cognizant of my state. I feel

that I am not awaking from ordinary sleep. I recollect that I have been subject to

catalepsy. And now, at last, as if by the rush of an ocean, my shuddering spirit is

overwhelmed by the one grim Danger -- by the one spectral and ever-prevalent

idea.

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 For some minutes after this fancy possessed me, I remained without motion.

And why? I could not summon courage to move. I dared not make the effort

which was to satisfy me of my fate -- and yet there was something at my heart

which whispered me it was sure. Despair -- such as no other species of

wretchedness ever calls into being -- despair alone urged me, after long

irresolution, to uplift the heavy lids of my eyes. I uplifted them. It was dark -- all

dark. I knew that the fit was over. I knew that the crisis of my disorder had long

passed. I knew that I had now fully recovered the use of my visual faculties -- and

yet it was dark -- all dark -- the intense and utter raylessness of the Night that

endureth for evermore.

I endeavored to shriek-, and my lips and my parched tongue moved

convulsively together in the attempt -- but no voice issued from the cavernous

lungs, which oppressed as if by the weight of some incumbent mountain, gasped

and palpitated, with the heart, at every elaborate and struggling inspiration.

The movement of the jaws, in this effort to cry aloud, showed me that they

were bound up, as is usual with the dead. I felt, too, that I lay upon some hard

substance, and by something similar my sides were, also, closely compressed. So

far, I had not ventured to stir any of my limbs -- but now I violently threw up my

arms, which had been lying at length, with the wrists crossed. They struck a solid

wooden substance, which extended above my person at an elevation of not more

than six inches from my face. I could no longer doubt that I reposed within a

coffin at last.

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 And now, amid all my infinite miseries, came sweetly the cherub Hope -- for

I thought of my precautions. I writhed, and made spasmodic exertions to force

open the lid: it would not move. I felt my wrists for the bell-rope: it was not to be

found. And now the Comforter fled for ever, and a still sterner Despair reigned

triumphant; for I could not help perceiving the absence of the paddings which I

had so carefully prepared -- and then, too, there came suddenly to my nostrils the

strong peculiar odor of moist earth. The conclusion was irresistible. I was not

within the vault. I had fallen into a trance while absent from home-while among

strangers -- when, or how, I could not remember -- and it was they who had

buried me as a dog -- nailed up in some common coffin -- and thrust deep, deep,

and for ever, into some ordinary and nameless grave.

As this awful conviction forced itself, thus, into the innermost chambers of

my soul, I once again struggled to cry aloud. And in this second endeavor I

succeeded. A long, wild, and continuous shriek, or yell of agony, resounded

through the realms of the subterranean Night.

"Hillo! hillo, there!" said a gruff voice, in reply.

"What the devil's the matter now!" said a second.

"Get out o' that!" said a third.

"What do you mean by yowling in that ere kind of style, like a

cattymount?" said a fourth; and hereupon I was seized and shaken without

ceremony, for several minutes, by a junto of very rough-looking individuals.

They did not arouse me from my slumber -- for I was wide awake when I

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screamed -- but they restored me to the full possession of my memory.

This adventure occurred near Richmond, in Virginia. Accompanied by a

friend, I had proceeded, upon a gunning expedition, some miles down the banks

of the James River. Night approached, and we were overtaken by a storm. The

cabin of a small sloop lying at anchor in the stream, and laden with garden

mould, afforded us the only available shelter. We made the best of it, and passed

the night on board. I slept in one of the only two berths in the vessel -- and the

berths of a sloop of sixty or twenty tons need scarcely be described. That which I

occupied had no bedding of any kind. Its extreme width was eighteen inches. The

distance of its bottom from the deck overhead was precisely the same. I found it

a matter of exceeding difficulty to squeeze myself in. Nevertheless, I slept soundly,

and the whole of my vision -- for it was no dream, and no nightmare -- arose

naturally from the circumstances of my position -- from my ordinary bias of

thought -- and from the difficulty, to which I have alluded, of collecting my

senses, and especially of regaining my memory, for a long time after awaking

from slumber. The men who shook me were the crew of the sloop, and some

laborers engaged to unload it. From the load itself came the earthly smell. The

bandage about the jaws was a silk handkerchief in which I had bound up my

head, in default of my customary nightcap.

The tortures endured, however, were indubitably quite equal for the time, to

those of actual sepulture. They were fearfully -- they were inconceivably hideous;

but out of Evil proceeded Good; for their very excess wrought in my spirit an

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inevitable revulsion. My soul acquired tone -- acquired temper. I went abroad. I

took vigorous exercise. I breathed the free air of Heaven. I thought upon other

subjects than Death. I discarded my medical books. "Buchan" I burned. I read

no "Night Thoughts" -- no fustian about churchyards -- no bugaboo tales -- such

as this. In short, I became a new man, and lived a man's life. From that

memorable night, I dismissed forever my charnel apprehensions, and with them

vanished the cataleptic disorder, of which, perhaps, they had been less the

consequence than the cause.

There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our

sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell -- but the imagination of man

is no Carathis, to explore with impunity its every cavern. Alas! the grim legion of

sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful -- but, like the

Demons in whose company Afrasiab made his voyage down the Oxus, they must

sleep, or they will devour us -- they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish.

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The Facts in the Case of M Valdemar

OF course I shall not pretend to consider it any matter for wonder, that the

extraordinary case of M. Valdemar has excited discussion. It would have been a

miracle had it not-especially under the circumstances. Through the desire of all

parties concerned, to keep the affair from the public, at least for the present, or

until we had farther opportunities for investigation -- through our endeavors to

effect this -- a garbled or exaggerated account made its way into society, and

became the source of many unpleasant misrepresentations, and, very naturally,

of a great deal of disbelief.

It is now rendered necessary that I give the facts -- as far as I comprehend

them myself. They are, succinctly, these:

My attention, for the last three years, had been repeatedly drawn to the

subject of Mesmerism; and, about nine months ago it occurred to me, quite

suddenly, that in the series of experiments made hitherto, there had been a very

remarkable and most unaccountable omission: -- no person had as yet been

mesmerized in articulo mortis. It remained to be seen, first, whether, in such

condition, there existed in the patient any susceptibility to the magnetic influence;

secondly, whether, if any existed, it was impaired or increased by the condition;

thirdly, to what extent, or for how long a period, the encroachments of Death

might be arrested by the process. There were other points to be ascertained, but

these most excited my curiosity -- the last in especial, from the immensely

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important character of its consequences.

In looking around me for some subject by whose means I might test these

particulars, I was brought to think of my friend, M. Ernest Valdemar, the

well-known compiler of the "Bibliotheca Forensica," and author (under the nom

de plume of Issachar Marx) of the Polish versions of "Wallenstein" and

"Gargantua." M. Valdemar, who has resided principally at Harlaem, N.Y., since

the year 1839, is (or was) particularly noticeable for the extreme spareness of his

person -- his lower limbs much resembling those of John Randolph; and, also,

for the whiteness of his whiskers, in violent contrast to the blackness of his hair --

the latter, in consequence, being very generally mistaken for a wig. His

temperament was markedly nervous, and rendered him a good subject for

mesmeric experiment. On two or three occasions I had put him to sleep with

little difficulty, but was disappointed in other results which his peculiar

constitution had naturally led me to anticipate. His will was at no period

positively, or thoroughly, under my control, and in regard to clairvoyance, I

could accomplish with him nothing to be relied upon. I always attributed my

failure at these points to the disordered state of his health. For some months

previous to my becoming acquainted with him, his physicians had declared him

in a confirmed phthisis. It was his custom, indeed, to speak calmly of his

approaching dissolution, as of a matter neither to be avoided nor regretted.

When the ideas to which I have alluded first occurred to me, it was of course

very natural that I should think of M. Valdemar. I knew the steady philosophy of

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the man too well to apprehend any scruples from him; and he had no relatives in

America who would be likely to interfere. I spoke to him frankly upon the

subject; and, to my surprise, his interest seemed vividly excited. I say to my

surprise, for, although he had always yielded his person freely to my experiments,

he had never before given me any tokens of sympathy with what I did. His

disease was if that character which would admit of exact calculation in respect to

the epoch of its termination in death; and it was finally arranged between us that

he would send for me about twenty-four hours before the period announced by

his physicians as that of his decease.

It is now rather more than seven months since I received, from M.

Valdemar himself, the subjoined note:

My DEAR P -- ,

You may as well come now. D -- and F -- are agreed that I cannot hold out

beyond to-morrow midnight; and I think they have hit the time very nearly.

VALDEMAR

I received this note within half an hour after it was written, and in fifteen

minutes more I was in the dying man's chamber. I had not seen him for ten days,

and was appalled by the fearful alteration which the brief interval had wrought

in him. His face wore a leaden hue; the eyes were utterly lustreless; and the

emaciation was so extreme that the skin had been broken through by the

cheek-bones. His expectoration was excessive. The pulse was barely perceptible.

He retained, nevertheless, in a very remarkable manner, both his mental power

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and a certain degree of physical strength. He spoke with distinctness -- took some

palliative medicines without aid -- and, when I entered the room, was occupied in

penciling memoranda in a pocket-book. He was propped up in the bed by pillows.

Doctors D -- and F -- were in attendance.

After pressing Valdemar's hand, I took these gentlemen aside, and obtained

from them a minute account of the patient's condition. The left lung had been for

eighteen months in a semi-osseous or cartilaginous state, and was, of course,

entirely useless for all purposes of vitality. The right, in its upper portion, was

also partially, if not thoroughly, ossified, while the lower region was merely a

mass of purulent tubercles, running one into another. Several extensive

perforations existed; and, at one point, permanent adhesion to the ribs had taken

place. These appearances in the right lobe were of comparatively recent date.

The ossification had proceeded with very unusual rapidity; no sign of it had

discovered a month before, and the adhesion had only been observed during the

three previous days. Independently of the phthisis, the patient was suspected of

aneurism of the aorta; but on this point the osseous symptoms rendered an exact

diagnosis impossible. It was the opinion of both physicians that M. Valdemar

would die about midnight on the morrow (Sunday). It was then seven o'clock on

Saturday evening.

On quitting the invalid's bed-side to hold conversation with myself, Doctors

D -- and F -- had bidden him a final farewell. It had not been their intention to

return; but, at my request, they agreed to look in upon the patient about ten the

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next night.

When they had gone, I spoke freely with M. Valdemar on the subject of his

approaching dissolution, as well as, more particularly, of the experiment

proposed. He still professed himself quite willing and even anxious to have it

made, and urged me to commence it at once. A male and a female nurse were in

attendance; but I did not feel myself altogether at liberty to engage in a task of

this character with no more reliable witnesses than these people, in case of

sudden accident, might prove. I therefore postponed operations until about eight

the next night, when the arrival of a medical student with whom I had some

acquaintance, (Mr. Theodore L -- l,) relieved me from farther embarrassment. It

had been my design, originally, to wait for the physicians; but I was induced to

proceed, first, by the urgent entreaties of M. Valdemar, and secondly, by my

conviction that I had not a moment to lose, as he was evidently sinking fast.

Mr. L -- l was so kind as to accede to my desire that he would take notes of

all that occurred, and it is from his memoranda that what I now have to relate is,

for the most part, either condensed or copied verbatim.

It wanted about five minutes of eight when, taking the patient's hand, I

begged him to state, as distinctly as he could, to Mr. L -- l, whether he (M.

Valdemar) was entirely willing that I should make the experiment of

mesmerizing him in his then condition.

He replied feebly, yet quite audibly, "Yes, I wish to be "I fear you have

mesmerized" -- adding immediately afterwards, deferred it too long."

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 While he spoke thus, I commenced the passes which I had already found

most effectual in subduing him. He was evidently influenced with the first lateral

stroke of my hand across his forehead; but although I exerted all my powers, no

farther perceptible effect was induced until some minutes after ten o'clock, when

Doctors D -- and F -- called, according to appointment. I explained to them, in a

few words, what I designed, and as they opposed no objection, saying that the

patient was already in the death agony, I proceeded without hesitation --

exchanging, however, the lateral passes for downward ones, and directing my

gaze entirely into the right eye of the sufferer.

By this time his pulse was imperceptible and his breathing was stertorous,

and at intervals of half a minute.

This condition was nearly unaltered for a quarter of an hour. At the

expiration of this period, however, a natural although a very deep sigh escaped

the bosom of the dying man, and the stertorous breathing ceased -- that is to say,

its stertorousness was no longer apparent; the intervals were undiminished. The

patient's extremities were of an icy coldness.

At five minutes before eleven I perceived unequivocal signs of the mesmeric

influence. The glassy roll of the eye was changed for that expression of uneasy

inward examination which is never seen except in cases of sleep-waking, and

which it is quite impossible to mistake. With a few rapid lateral passes I made

the lids quiver, as in incipient sleep, and with a few more I closed them

altogether. I was not satisfied, however, with this, but continued the

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manipulations vigorously, and with the fullest exertion of the will, until I had

completely stiffened the limbs of the slumberer, after placing them in a

seemingly easy position. The legs were at full length; the arms were nearly so,

and reposed on the bed at a moderate distance from the loin. The head was very

slightly elevated.

When I had accomplished this, it was fully midnight, and I requested the

gentlemen present to examine M. Valdemar's condition. After a few experiments,

they admitted him to be an unusually perfect state of mesmeric trance. The

curiosity of both the physicians was greatly excited. Dr. D -- resolved at once to

remain with the patient all night, while Dr. F -- took leave with a promise to

return at daybreak. Mr. L -- l and the nurses remained.

We left M. Valdemar entirely undisturbed until about three o'clock in the

morning, when I approached him and found him in precisely the same condition

as when Dr. F -- went away -- that is to say, he lay in the same position; the pulse

was imperceptible; the breathing was gentle (scarcely noticeable, unless through

the application of a mirror to the lips); the eyes were closed naturally; and the

limbs were as rigid and as cold as marble. Still, the general appearance was

certainly not that of death.

As I approached M. Valdemar I made a kind of half effort to influence his

right arm into pursuit of my own, as I passed the latter gently to and fro above

his person. In such experiments with this patient had never perfectly succeeded

before, and assuredly I had little thought of succeeding now; but to my

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astonishment, his arm very readily, although feebly, followed every direction I

assigned it with mine. I determined to hazard a few words of conversation.

"M. Valdemar," I said, "are you asleep?" He made no answer, but I

perceived a tremor about the lips, and was thus induced to repeat the question,

again and again. At its third repetition, his whole frame was agitated by a very

slight shivering; the eyelids unclosed themselves so far as to display a white line

of the ball; the lips moved sluggishly, and from between them, in a barely

audible whisper, issued the words:

"Yes; -- asleep now. Do not wake me! -- let me die so!"

I here felt the limbs and found them as rigid as ever. The right arm, as

before, obeyed the direction of my hand. I questioned the sleep-waker again:

"Do you still feel pain in the breast, M. Valdemar?"

The answer now was immediate, but even less audible than before: "No pain

-- I am dying."

I did not think it advisable to disturb him farther just then, and nothing

more was said or done until the arrival of Dr. F -- , who came a little before

sunrise, and expressed unbounded astonishment at finding the patient still alive.

After feeling the pulse and applying a mirror to the lips, he requested me to

speak to the sleep-waker again. I did so, saying:

"M. Valdemar, do you still sleep?"

As before, some minutes elapsed ere a reply was made; and during the

interval the dying man seemed to be collecting his energies to speak. At my

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fourth repetition of the question, he said very faintly, almost inaudibly:

"Yes; still asleep -- dying."

It was now the opinion, or rather the wish, of the physicians, that M.

Valdemar should be suffered to remain undisturbed in his present apparently

tranquil condition, until death should supervene -- and this, it was generally

agreed, must now take place within a few minutes. I concluded, however, to

speak to him once more, and merely repeated my previous question.

While I spoke, there came a marked change over the countenance of the

sleep-waker. The eyes rolled themselves slowly open, the pupils disappearing

upwardly; the skin generally assumed a cadaverous hue, resembling not so much

parchment as white paper; and the circular hectic spots which, hitherto, had

been strongly defined in the centre of each cheek, went out at once. I use this

expression, because the suddenness of their departure put me in mind of nothing

so much as the extinguishment of a candle by a puff of the breath. The upper lip,

at the same time, writhed itself away from the teeth, which it had previously

covered completely; while the lower jaw fell with an audible jerk, leaving the

mouth widely extended, and disclosing in full view the swollen and blackened

tongue. I presume that no member of the party then present had been

unaccustomed to death-bed horrors; but so hideous beyond conception was the

appearance of M. Valdemar at this moment, that there was a general shrinking

back from the region of the bed.

I now feel that I have reached a point of this narrative at which every reader

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will be startled into positive disbelief. It is my business, however, simply to

proceed.

There was no longer the faintest sign of vitality in M. Valdemar; and

concluding him to be dead, we were consigning him to the charge of the nurses,

when a strong vibratory motion was observable in the tongue. This continued for

perhaps a minute. At the expiration of this period, there issued from the

distended and motionless jaws a voice -- such as it would be madness in me to

attempt describing. There are, indeed, two or three epithets which might be

considered as applicable to it in part; I might say, for example, that the sound

was harsh, and broken and hollow; but the hideous whole is indescribable, for

the simple reason that no similar sounds have ever jarred upon the ear of

humanity. There were two particulars, nevertheless, which I thought then, and

still think, might fairly be stated as characteristic of the intonation -- as well

adapted to convey some idea of its unearthly peculiarity. In the first place, the

voice seemed to reach our ears -- at least mine -- from a vast distance, or from

some deep cavern within the earth.

In the second place, it impressed me (I fear, indeed, that it will be impossible

to make myself comprehended) as gelatinous or glutinous matters impress the

sense of touch.

I have spoken both of "sound" and of "voice." I mean to say that the sound

was one of distinct -- of even wonderfully, thrillingly distinct -- syllabification. M.

Valdemar spoke -- obviously in reply to the question I had propounded to him a

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few minutes before. I had asked him, it will be remembered, if he still slept. He

now said:

"Yes; -- no; -- I have been sleeping -- and now -- now -- I am dead.

No person present even affected to deny, or attempted to repress, the

unutterable, shuddering horror which these few words, thus uttered, were so

well calculated to convey. Mr. L -- l (the student) swooned. The nurses

immediately left the chamber, and could not be induced to return. My own

impressions I would not pretend to render intelligible to the reader. For nearly

an hour, we busied ourselves, silently -- without the utterance of a word -- in

endeavors to revive Mr. L -- l. When he came to himself, we addressed ourselves

again to an investigation of M. Valdemar's condition.

It remained in all respects as I have last described it, with the exception that

the mirror no longer afforded evidence of respiration. An attempt to draw blood

from the arm failed. I should mention, too, that this limb was no farther subject

to my will. I endeavored in vain to make it follow the direction of my hand. The

only real indication, indeed, of the mesmeric influence, was now found in the

vibratory movement of the tongue, whenever I addressed M. Valdemar a

question. He seemed to be making an effort to reply, but had no longer sufficient

volition. To queries put to him by any other person than myself he seemed

utterly insensible -- although I endeavored to place each member of the company

in mesmeric rapport with him. I believe that I have now related all that is

necessary to an understanding of the sleep-waker's state at this epoch. Other

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nurses were procured; and at ten o'clock I left the house in company with the

two physicians and Mr. L -- l.

In the afternoon we all called again to see the patient. His condition

remained precisely the same. We had now some discussion as to the propriety

and feasibility of awakening him; but we had little difficulty in agreeing that no

good purpose would be served by so doing. It was evident that, so far, death (or

what is usually termed death) had been arrested by the mesmeric process. It

seemed clear to us all that to awaken M. Valdemar would be merely to insure his

instant, or at least his speedy dissolution.

From this period until the close of last week -- an interval of nearly seven

months -- we continued to make daily calls at M. Valdemar's house,

accompanied, now and then, by medical and other friends. All this time the

sleeper-waker remained exactly as I have last described him. The nurses'

attentions were continual.

It was on Friday last that we finally resolved to make the experiment of

awakening or attempting to awaken him; and it is the (perhaps) unfortunate

result of this latter experiment which has given rise to so much discussion in

private circles -- to so much of what I cannot help thinking unwarranted popular

feeling.

For the purpose of relieving M. Valdemar from the mesmeric trance, I

made use of the customary passes. These, for a time, were unsuccessful. The first

indication of revival was afforded by a partial descent of the iris. It was observed,

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as especially remarkable, that this lowering of the pupil was accompanied by the

profuse out-flowing of a yellowish ichor (from beneath the lids) of a pungent and

highly offensive odor.

It was now suggested that I should attempt to influence the patient's arm, as

heretofore. I made the attempt and failed. Dr. F -- then intimated a desire to

have me put a question. I did so, as follows:

"M. Valdemar, can you explain to us what are your feelings or wishes

now?"

There was an instant return of the hectic circles on the cheeks; the tongue

quivered, or rather rolled violently in the mouth (although the jaws and lips

remained rigid as before;) and at length the same hideous voice which I have

already described, broke forth:

"For God's sake! -- quick! -- quick! -- put me to sleep -- or, quick! -- waken

me! -- quick! -- I say to you that I am dead!"

I was thoroughly unnerved, and for an instant remained undecided what to

do. At first I made an endeavor to re-compose the patient; but, failing in this

through total abeyance of the will, I retraced my steps and as earnestly struggled

to awaken him. In this attempt I soon saw that I should be successful -- or at

least I soon fancied that my success would be complete -- and I am sure that all

in the room were prepared to see the patient awaken.

For what really occurred, however, it is quite impossible that any human

being could have been prepared.

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 As I rapidly made the mesmeric passes, amid ejaculations of "dead! dead!"

absolutely bursting from the tongue and not from the lips of the sufferer, his

whole frame at once -- within the space of a single minute, or even less, shrunk --

crumbled -- absolutely rotted away beneath my hands. Upon the bed, before that

whole company, there lay a nearly liquid mass of loathsome -- of detestable

putridity.

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