EDGAR ALLAN POE HOLLAND PAPER, LIBRARY EDITION LIMITED TO FIVE HUNDRED COPIES THIS COPY IS NO. Herpin mv THE GOLD BUG THE TALES AND POEMS EDGAR ALLAN POE WITH BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY JOHN H. INGRAM (Original (Etdjinga, Jrioe Jtyotogratmres an& a 3te (Etcljci} portrait IN Six VOLUMES VOL. I TALES OF IMAGINATION PHILADELPHIA GEORGE BARRIE & SON, PUBLISHERS PREFACE. Several new features in this collection of Edgar Allan Poe's Tales and Poems claim attention. This is the first occasion on which the Tales can be said to have been illustrated, as it is, also, the first time in which any real attempt has been made to classify them : the Tales of Imagination have now been separated to their manifest advantage from the other stories, the Tales of Humor, the Miscellaneous Stories and the Poems. A very important feature in this edition is the lengthy fragment, " The Journal of Julius Rodman : " this romance will be quite new to Poe's admirers, as it has not appeared in any previous collection. Among the Poems, which have now been chrono- logically arranged, some new pieces will, also, be found. All the writings included in this edition have been thoroughly corrected and revised, and, (v) vi PREFACE. generally, from their author's amended copies. Attention may, likewise, be called to the circum- stance that the Introductory Essay deals only with the facts, and quite ignores the numerous fictions of Poe's career. CONTENTS OF VOL I. TALES OF IMAGINATION. FAGS. THE GOLD-BUG 1 BERENICE 49 ELEONORA 61 LIQEIA 69 MORELLA 91 METZENGERSTEIN 99 THE IMP OP THE PERVERSE Ill THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER 121 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM 147 THE MASK OF THE RED DEATH 167 THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO 177 MESMERIC REVELATION 187 THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR . 201 Ms. FOUND IN A BOTTLE 215 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM 229 THE BLACK CAT 251 THE ASSIGNATION 265 THE TELL-TALE HEART . 281 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. VOL. I. PAGE. THE GOLD-BUG, Photogravure after Herpin Frontispiece THE GOLD-BUG, Photogravure after Ferat 24 BERENICE, Drawn, and etched by Wogel 49 LIGEIA, Drawn and etched by Wogel 69 METZENGERSTEIN, Drawn and etched by Wogel 99 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER, Etched by E. Abot after Wogel 121 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, Photogravure after Ferat 147 THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR, Drawn and etched by Wogel 201 Ms. FOUND IN A BOTTLE, Drawn and etched by Wogel 215 THE BLACK CAT, Photogravure after Meyer 251 TALES OF IMAGINATION TALES OF IMAGINATION. THE GOLD-BUG. What ho ! what ho f this fellow is dancing mad ! He hath been bitten by the Tarantula. AU in the Wrong. Many years ago I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenot family and had once been wealthy ; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want. To avoid the mortification consequent upon his disasters, he left New Orleans, the city of his forefathers, and took up his residence at Sullivan's Island, near Charleston, South Carolina. This Island is a very singular one. It consists of little else than sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its breadth at no point exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the mainland by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh-hen. The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands, and where are some miserable frame build- ings, tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the Vol. I. L 2 THE GOLD-BUG. bristly palmetto ; but the whole island, with the excep- tion of this western point, and a line of hard, white beach on the sea-coast, is covered with a dense under- growth of the sweet myrtle, so much prized by the horticulturists of England. The shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with its fragrance. In the inmost recesses of this coppice, not far from the eastern or more remote end of the island, Legrand had built himself a small hut, which he occupied when I first, by mere accident, made his acquaintance. This soon ripened into friendship, for there was much in the recluse to excite interest and esteem. I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but in- fected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy. He had with him many books, but rarely employed them. His chief amusements were gunning and fishing, or sauntering along the beach and through the myrtles, in quest of shells or entomological specimens; his collection of the latter might have been envied by a Swammerdamm. In these excursions he was usually accompanied by an old negro called Jupiter, who had been manumitted before the reverses of the family, but who could be in- duced, neither by threats nor by promises, to abandon what he considered his right of attendance upon the footsteps of his young " Massa Will." It is not im- probable that the relatives of Legrand, conceiving him to be somewhat unsettled in intellect, had contrived to instill this obstinacy into Jupiter, with a view to the supervision and guardianship of the wanderer. The winters in the latitude of Sullivan's Island are seldom very severe, and in the fall of the year it is a THE GOLD-BUG. 3 rare event indeed when a fire is considered necessary. About the middle of October, 18 , there occurred, however, a day of remarkable chilliness. Just before sunset I scrambled my way through the evergreens to the hut of my friend, whom I had not visited for several weeks my residence being at that time in Charleston, a distance of nine miles from the island, while the facilities of passage and re-passage were very far behind those of the present day. Upon reaching the hut I rapped, as was my custom, and getting no reply, sought for the key where I knew it was secreted, unlocked the door and went in. A fine fire was blazing upon the hearth. It was a novelty and by no means an un- grateful one. I threw off an overcoat and took an arm- chair by the crackling logs and awaited patiently the arrival of my hosts. Soon after dark they arrived and gave me a most cordial welcome. Jupiter, grinning from ear to ear, bustled about to prepare some marsh-hens for supper. Legrand was in one of his fits how else shall I term them? of enthusiasm. He had found an unknown bivalve, forming a new genus, and, more than this, he had hunted down and secured, with Jupiter's assist- ance, a scarabtziLS which he believed to be totally new, but in respect to which he wished to have my opinion on the morrow. "And why not to-night?" I asked, rubbing my hands over the blaze, and wishing the whole tribe of scarabcei at the devil. "Ah, if I had only known you were here!" said Legrand, " but it's so long since I saw you ; and how could I foresee that you would pay me a visit this very night of all others? As I was coming home I met Lieutenant G , from the fort and very foolishly 4 THE GOLD-BUG. I lent him the bug ; so it will be impossible for you to see it until the morning. Stay here to-night, and I will send Jup down for it at sunrise. It is the loveliest thing in creation I " " What ! sunrise ! " " Nonsense ! no ! the bug. It is of a brilliant gold color about the size of a large hickory-nut with two jet black spots near one extremity of the back, and another, somewhat, longer, at the other. The antennce are " "Dey ain't no tin in him, Massa Will, I keep a tellin on you," here interrupted Jupiter; "de bug is a goole bug, solid, ebery bit of him, inside and all, sep him wing neber feel half so hebby a bug in my life." "Well, suppose it is, Jup," replied Legrand, some- what more earnestly, it seemed to me, than the case demanded, "is that any reason for your letting the birds burn? The color" here he turned to me " is really almost enough to warrant Jupiter's idea. You never saw a more brilliant metallic lustre than the scales emit but of this you cannot judge till to- morrow. In the meantime I can give you some idea of the shape." Saying this, he seated himself at a small table, on which were a pen and ink, but no paper. He looked for some in a drawer, but found none. "Never mind," said he at length, "this will answer ; " and he drew from his waistcoat pocket a scrap of what I took to be very dirty foolscap, and made upon it a rough drawing with the pen. While he did this I retained my seat by the fire, for I was still chilly. When the design was complete, he handed it to me without rising. As I received it, a loud growl was heard, succeeded by a scratching at the door. THE GOLD-BUG. 5 Jupiter opened it, and a large Newfoundland, belong- ing to Legrand, rushed in, leaped upon my shoulders, and loaded me with caresses ; for I had shown him much attention during previous visits. When his gambols were over, I looked at the paper, and, to speak the truth, found myself not a little puzzled at what my friend had depicted. " Well ! " I said, after contemplating it for some min- utes, " this is a strange scarabceus, I must confess : new to me : never saw anything like it before unless it was a skull, or a death's-head which it more nearly resembles than anything else that has come under my observation." " A death's-head ! " echoed Legrand " Oh yes well, it has something of that appearance upon paper, no doubt. The two upper black spots look like eyes, eh ? and the longer one at the bottom like a mouth and then the shape of the whole is oval." " Perhaps so," said I ; " but, Legrand, I fear you are no artist. I must wait until I see the beetle itself, if I am to form any idea of its personal appearance." "Well, I don't know," said he, a little nettled, "I draw tolerably should do it, at least have had good masters, and flatter myself that I am not quite a block- head." " But, my dear fellow, you are joking then," said I ; " this is a very passable skull indeed, I may say that it is a very excellent skull, according to the vulgar notions about such specimens of physiology and your scara- bceus must be the queerest scarabceus in the world if it resemble it. Why, we may get up a very thrilling bit of superstition upon this hint. I presume you will call the bug scarabceus caput hominis, or something of that kind there are many similar titles in the Natural His- tories. But where are the antennce you spoke of? " 6 THE GOLD-BUG. "The antenna!" said Legrand, who seemed to be getting unaccountably warm upon the subject ; " I am sure you must see the antennas. I made them as distinct as they are in the original insect, and I presume that is sufficient." " Well, well," I said, " perhaps you have still I don't see them ; " and I handed him the paper without additional remark, not wishing to ruffle his temper ; but I was much surprised at the turn affairs had taken ; his ill-humor puzzled me and, as for the drawing of the beetle, there were positively no antennce visible, and the whole did bear a very close resemblance to the ordinary cuts of a death's-head. He received the paper very peevishly, and was about to crumple it, apparently to throw it in the fire, when a casual glance at the design seemed suddenly to rivet his attention. In an instant his face grew violently red in another as excessively pale. For some minutes he continued to scrutinize the drawing minutely where he sat. At length he arose, took a candle from the table, and proceeded to seat himself upon a sea-chest in the farthest corner of the room. Here again he made an anxious examination of the paper; turning it in all directions. He said nothing, however, and his conduct greatly astonished me ; yet I thought it prudent not to exacerbate the growing moodiness of his temper by any comment. Presently he took from his coat pocket a wallet, placed the paper carefully in it, and deposited both in a writing-desk, which he locked. He now grew more composed in his de- meanor ; but his original air of enthusiasm had quite disappeared. Yet he seemed not so much sulky as abstracted. As the evening wore away he became more and more absorbed in reverie, from which no THE GOLD-BUG. 7 sallies of mine could arouse him. It had been my intention to pass the night at the hut, as I had fre- quently done before, but seeing my host in this mood, I deemed it proper to take leave. He did not press me to remain, but, as I departed, he shook my hand with even more than his usual cordiality. It was about a month after this (and during the interval I had seen nothing of Legrand) when I re- ceived a visit, at Charleston, from his man, Jupiter. I had never seen the good old negro look so dispirited, and I feared that some serious disaster had befallen my friend. " Well, Jup," said I, " what is the matter now ? how is your master ? " " Why, to speak de troof, massa, him not so berry well as mought be." " Not well ! I am truly sorry to hear it. What does he complain of? " "Dar! dat's it! him nebber plain of notin but him berry sick for all dat." " Very sick, Jupiter! why didn't you say so at once ? Is he confined to bed ? " " No, dat he aint ! he aint find nowhar dat's just whar de shoe pinch my mind is got to be berry hebby bout poor Massa Will." " Jupiter, I should like to understand what it is you are talking about. You say your master is sick. Hasn't he told you what ails him ? " " Why, massa, taint worf while for to git mad about de matter Massa Will say noffin at all aint de matter wid him but den what make him go about looking dis here way, wid he head down and he soldiers up, and as white as a gose ? And den he keep a syphon all de time " 8 THE GOLD-BUG. " Keeps a what, Jupiter ? " "Keeps a syphon wid de figgurs on de slate de queerest figgurs I ebber did see. Ise gittin to be steered, I tell you. Hab for to keep mighty tight eye pon him noovers. Todder day he gib me slip fore de sun up, and was gone de whole ob de blessed day. I had a big stick ready cut for to gib him deuced good beating when he did come But Ise sich a fool dat I hadn't de heart arter all he look so berry poorly." " Eh ? what ? ah yes ! upon the whole I think you had better not be too severe with the poor fellow don't flog him, Jupiter he can't very well stand it but can you form no idea of what has occasioned this illness, or rather this change of conduct ? Has anything unpleasant happened since I saw you ? " " No, massa, dey aint bin nuffin unpleasant since den 'twas fore den, I'm feared 'twas de berry day you was dare." " How ? what do you mean ? " " Why, massa, I mean de bug dare now." " The what ? " " De bug I'm berry sartain dat Massa Will bin bit somewhere bout de head by dat goole-bug." " And what cause have you, Jupiter, for such a sup- position ? " " Claws enuff, massa, and moufF too. I nebber did see sich a deuced bug he kick and he bite ebery ting what cum near him. Massa Will cotch him fuss, but had for to let him go gin mighty quick, I tell you den was de time he must ha got de bite. I didn't like de look ob de bug mouff, myself, no how, so I wouldn't take hold ob him wid my finger, but I cotch him wid a piece ob paper dat I found. I rap him up in de paper and stuff piece ob it in he mouff dat was de way." THE GOLD-BUG. 9 "And you think, then, that your master was really bitten by the beetle, and that the bite made him sick ? " " I don't tink noffin about it I nose it. What make him dream bout de goole so much, if taint cause he bit by de goole-bug ? Ise heerd bout dem goole-bugs fore dis." " But how do you know he dreams about gold ? " "How I know? why, cause he talk about it in he sleep dat's how I nose." " Well, Jup, perhaps you are right ; but to what for- tunate circumstance am I to attribute the honor of a visit from you to-day ? " " What de matter, massa ? " " Did you bring any message from Mr. Legrand ? " " No, massa, I bring dis here pissel ; " and here Jupiter handed me a note which ran thus : " MY DEAR , Why have I not seen you for so long a time ? I hope you have not been so foolish as to take offence at any little brusquerie of mine ; but no, that is improbable. " Since I saw you I have had great cause for anxiety. I have something to tell you, yet scarcely know how to tell it, or whether I should tell it at all. "I have not been quite well for some days past, and poor old Jup annoys me, almost beyond endurance, by his well-meant attentions. Would you believe it? he had prepared a huge stick, the other day, with which to chastise me for giving him the slip, and spending the day, solus, among the hills on the main- land. I verily believe that my ill looks alone saved me a flogging. " I have made no addition to my cabinet since we met. 10 THE GOLD-BUQ. " If you can, in any way, make it convenient, come over with Jupiter. Do come. I wish to see you to-night, upon business of importance. I assure you that it is of the highest importance. Ever yours, "WILLIAM LEGRAND." There was something in the tone of this note which gave me great uneasiness. Its whole style differed materially from that of Legrand. What could he be dreaming of? What new crotchet possessed his excit- able brain? What "business of the highest impor- tance" could he possibly have to transact? Jupiter's account of him boded no good. I dreaded lest the continued pressure of misfortune had, at length, fairly unsettled the reason of my friend. Without a moment's hesitation, therefore, I prepared to accompany the negro. Upon reaching the wharf, I noticed a scythe and three spades, all apparently new, lying in the bottom of the boat in which we were to embark. " What is the meaning of all this, Jup ? " I inquired. " Him syfe, massa, and spade." " Very true ; but what are they doing here ? " " Him de syfe and de spade what Massa Will sis pon my buying for him in de town, and de debbil's own lot of money I had to gib for em." " But what, in the name of all that is mysterious, is your 'Massa Will' going to do with scythes and spades ? " " Dat's more dan J know, and debbil take me if I don't blieve 'tis more dan he know too. But it's all cum ob de bug." Finding that no satisfaction was to be obtained of Jupiter, whose whole intellect seemed to be absorbed THE GOLD-BUG. 11 by " de bug," I now stepped into the boat and made sail. With a fair and strong breeze we soon ran into the little cove to the northward of Fort Moultrie, and a walk of some two miles brought us to the hut. It was about three in the afternoon when we arrived. Legrand had been awaiting us in eager expectation. He grasped my hand with a nervous empressement which alarmed me and strengthened the suspicions already entertained. His countenance was pale even to ghastliness, and his deep-set eyes glared with un- natural lustre. After some inquiries respecting his health, I asked him, not knowing what better to say, if he had yet obtained the scarabceus from Lieutenant G . " Oh, yes," he replied, coloring violently, " I got it from him the next morning. Nothing should tempt me to part with that scarabceus. Do you know that Jupiter is quite right about it ? " " In what way ? " I asked, with a sad foreboding at heart. " In supposing it to be a bug of real gold." He said this with an air of profound seriousness, and I felt in- expressibly shocked. "This bug is to make my fortune," he continued, with a triumphant smile, " to reinstate me in my family possessions. Is it any wonder, then, that I prize it? Since Fortune has thought fit to bestow it upon me, I have only to use it properly and I shall arrive at the gold of which it is the index. Jupiter, bring me that scarabceus ! " "What! de bug, massa? I'd rudder not go fer trubble dat bug you mus git him for you own self." Hereupon Legrand arose, with a grave and stately air, and brought me the beetle from a glass case in which 12 THE GOLD-BUG. it was enclosed. It was a beautiful scarabceus, and, at that time, unknown to naturalists of course a great prize in a scientific point of view. There were two round black spots near one extremity of the back, and a long one near the other. The scales were exceedingly hard and glossy, with all the appearance of burnished gold. The weight of the insect was very remarkable, and, taking all things into consideration, I could hardly blame Jupiter for his opinion respecting it; but what to make of Legrand's concordance with that opinio-n, I could not, for the life of me, tell. "I sent for you," said he in a grandiloquent tone, when I had completed my examination of the beetle, " I sent for you, that I might have your counsel and assistance in furthering the views of Fate and of the bug" " My dear Legrand," I cried, interrupting him, " you are certainly unwell, and had better use some little pre- cautions. You shall go to bed, and I will remain with you a few days, until you get over this. You are feverish and " " Feel my pulse," said he. I felt it, and, to say the truth, found not the slightest indication of fever. " But you may be ill and yet have no fever. Allow me this once to prescribe for you. In the first place, go to bed. In the next " " You are mistaken," he interposed ; " I am as well as I can expect to be under the excitement which I suffer. If you really wish me well, you will relieve this excitement." "And how is this to be done ? " " Very easily. Jupiter and myself are going upon an expedition into the hills, upon the mainland, and, THE GOLD-BUG. 13 in this expedition, we shall need the aid of some person in whom we can confide. You are the only one we can trust. Whether we succeed or fail, the excitement which you now perceive in me will be equally allayed." " I am anxious to oblige you in any way," I replied ; " but do you mean to say that this infernal beetle has any connection with your expedition into the hills ? " " It has." "Then, Legrand, I can become a party to no such absurd proceeding." " I am sorry very sorry for we shall have to try it by ourselves." " Try it by yourselves ! The man is surely mad ! but stay ! how long do you propose to be absent ? " " Probably all night. We shall start immediately, and be back, at all events, by sunrise." "And will you promise me, upon your honor, that when this freak of yours is over, and the bug business (good God !) settled to your satisfaction, you will then return home and follow my advice implicitly, as that of your physician?" " Yes, I promise ; and now let us be off, for we have no time to lose." With a heavy heart I accompanied my friend. We started about four o'clock Legrand, Jupiter, the dog, and myself. Jupiter had with him the scythe and spades the whole of which he insisted upon carrying more through fear, it seemed to me, of trusting either of the implements within reach of his master, than from any excess of industry or complaisance. His demeanor was dogged in the extreme, and "dat deuced bug" were the sole words which escaped his lips during the journey. For my own part, I had charge of a couple of dark lanterns, while Legrand 14 THE GOLD-BUG. contented himself with the scarabceus, which he carried attached to the end of a bit of whip-cord ; twirling it to and fro, with the air of a conjurer, as he went. When I observed this last plain evidence of my friend's aberration of mind, I could scarcely refrain from tears. I thought it best, however, to humor his fancy, at least for the present, or until I could adopt some more energetic measures with a chance of success. In the meantime I endeavored, but all in vain, to sound him in regard to the object of the expedition. Having suc- ceeded in inducing me to accompany him, he seemed unwilling to hold conversation upon any topic of minor importance, and to all my questions vouchsafed no other reply than " We shall see ! " We crossed the creek at the head of the island by means of a skiff, and, ascending the high grounds on the shore of the mainland, proceeded in a north- westerly direction, through a tract of country exces- sively wild and desolate, where no trace of a human footstep was to be seen. Legrand led the way with decision; pausing only for an instant, here and there, to consult what appeared to be certain landmarks of his own contrivance upon a former occasion. In this manner we journeyed for about two hours, and the sun was just setting when we entered a region infinitely more dreary than any yet seen. It was a species of tableland, near the summit of an almost inaccessible hill, densely wooded from base to pinnacle, and interspersed with huge crags that appeared to lie loosely upon the soil, and in many cases were prevented from precipitating themselves into the valleys below, merely by the support of the trees against which they reclined. Deep ravines, in various directions, gave an air of still sterner solemnity to the scene. THE GOLD-BUG. 15 The natural platform to which we had clambered was thickly overgrown with brambles, through which we soon discovered that it would have been impossible to force our way but for the scythe ; and Jupiter, by direction of his master, proceeded to clear for us a path to the foot of an enormously tall tulip-tree, which stood, with some eight or ten oaks, upon the level, and far surpassed them all, and all other trees which I had then ever seen, in the beauty of its foliage and form, in the wide spread of its branches, and in the general majesty of its appearance. When we reached this tree, Legrand turned to Jupiter, and asked him if he thought he could climb it. The old man seemed a little staggered by the question, and for some moments made no reply. At length he approached the huge trunk, walked slowly around it, and examined it with minute attention. When he had completed his scrutiny, he merely said " Yes, massa, 0up climb any tree he ebber see in he life." " Then up with you as soon as possible, for it will soon be too dark to see what we are about." " How far mus go up, massa ? " inquired Jupiter. " Get up the main trunk first, and then I will tell you which way to go and here stop ! take this beetle with you." "De bug, Massa Will! de goole-bug!" cried the negro, drawing back in dismay " what for mus tote de bug way up de tree ? d n if I do ! " " If you are afraid, Jup, a great big negro like you, to take hold of a harmless little dead beetle, why you can carry it up by this string but if you do not take it up with you in some way, I shall be under the necessity of breaking your head with this shovel." 16 THE GOLD-BUG. " What de matter now, massa ? " said Jup, evidently shamed into compliance; "always want for to raise fus wid old nigger. Was only funnin anyhow. Me feered de bug! what I keer for de bug?" Here he took cautiously hold of the extreme end of the string, and, maintaining the insect as far from his person as circumstances would permit, prepared to ascend the tree. In youth, the tulip-tree, or Liriodendron tulipiferum, the most magnificent of American foresters, has a trunk peculiarly smooth, and often rises to a great height without lateral branches; but in its riper age, the bark becomes gnarled and uneven, while many short limbs make their appearance on the stem. Thus the difficulty of ascension, in the present case, lay more in semblance than in reality. Embracing the huge cylinder, as closely as possible, with his arms and knees, seizing with his hands some projections, and resting his naked toes upon others, Jupiter, after one or two narrow escapes from falling, at length wriggled himself into the first great fork, and seemed to consider the whole business as virtually accomplished. The risk of the achievement was, in fact, now over, although the climber was some sixty or seventy feet from the ground. " Which way mus go now, Massa Will ? " he asked. " Keep up the largest branch the one on this side," said Legrand. The negro obeyed him promptly, and apparently with but little trouble ; ascending higher and higher, until no glimpse of his squat figure could be obtained through the dense foliage which enveloped it. Presently his voice was heard in a sort of halloo. " How much fudder is got for go ? " " How high up are you ? " asked Legrand. THE GOLD-BUG. 17 " Ebber so fur," replied the negro ; " can see de sky fru do top ob de tree." "Never mind the sky, but attend to what I say. Look down the trunk and count the limbs below you on this side. How many limbs have you passed ? " "One, two, tree, four, fibe I done pass fibe big limb, massa, pon dis side." " Then go one limb higher." In a few minutes the voice was heard again, announc- ing that the seventh limb was attained. " Now, Jup," cried Legrand, evidently much excited, " I want you to work your way out upon that limb as far as you can. If you see anything strange, let me know." By this time what little doubt I might have enter- tained of my poor friend's insanity was put finally at rest. I had no alternative but to conclude him stricken with lunacy, and I became seriously anxious about getting him home. While I was pondering upon what was best to be done, Jupiter's voice was again heard. " Mos feerd for to ventur pon dis limb berry far tis dead limb putty much all de way." " Did you say it was a dead limb, Jupiter ? " cried Legrand in a quavering voice. " Yes, massa, him dead as de door-nail done up for sartain done departed dis here life." " What in the name of heaven shall I do ? " asked Legrand, seemingly in the greatest distress. " Do ! " said I, glad of an opportunity to interpose a word, " why come home and go to bed. Come now ! that's a fine fellow. It's getting late, and, besides, you remember your promise." " Jupiter," cried he, without heeding me in the least, " do you hear me ? " Vol. I.-2. 18 THE GOLD-BUG. "Yes, Massa Will, hear you ebber so plain." " Try the wood well, then, with your knife, and see if you think it very rotten." " Him rotten, massa, sure nuff," replied the negro in a few moments, " but not so berry rotten as mought be. Mought ventur out leetle way pon de limb by myself, dat's true." " By yourself! What do you mean ? " " Why, I mean de bug. 'Tis berry hebby bug. Spose I drop him down fuss, and den de limb won't break wid just de weight ob one nigger." " You infernal scoundrel ! " cried Legrand, appar- ently much relieved, " what do you mean by telling me such nonsense as that? As sure as you drop that beetle I'll break your neck. Look here, Jupiter, do you hear me ? " " Yes, massa, needn't hollo at poor nigger dat style." " Well ! now listen ! If you will venture out on the limb as far as you think safe, and not let go the beetle, I'll make you a present of a silver dollar as soon as you get down." "I'm gwine, Massa Will deed I is," replied the negro very promptly " mos out to the eend now." " Out to the end ! " here fairly screamed Legrand, " do you say you are out to the end of that limb ? " "Soon be to de eend, massa, o-o-o-o-oh! Lor-gol-a marcy ! what is dis here pon de tree ? " " Well," cried Legrand, highly delighted, " what is it?" " Why, taint noffin but a skull somebody bin lef him head up de tree, and de crows done gobble ebery bit ob de meat off." "A skull, you say ! very well ! how is it fastened to the limb? what holds it on?" THE GOLD-BUG. 19 " Sure nuff, massa ; mus look. Why dis berry curous sarcumstance, pon my word dare's a great big nail in de skull, what fastens ob it on to de tree." "Well now, Jupiter, do exactly as I tell you do you hear ? " "Yes, massa." "Pay attention, then! find the left eye of the skull." " Hum ! hoo ! dat's good ! why dare aint no eye lef at all." " Curse your stupidity ! do you know your right hand from your left ? " " Yes, I nose dat nose all bout dat tis my lef hand what I chops de wood wid." " To be sure ! you are left-handed ; and your left eye is on the same side as your left hand. Now, I suppose, you can find the left eye of the skull, or the place where the left eye has been. Have you found it?" Here was a long pause. At length the negro asked, " Is de lef eye of de skull pon de same side as de lef hand of de skull, too ? cause de skull aint got not a bit ob a hand at all nebber mind ! I got de lef eye now here de lef eye ! what mus do wid it ? " " Let the beetle drop through it, as far as the string will reach but be careful and not let go your hold of the string." "All dat done, Massa Will; mighty easy ting for to put de bug fru de hole look out for him dare below ! " During this colloquy no portion of Jupiter's person could be seen ; but the beetle, which he had suffered to descend, was now visible at the end of the string, and glistened, like a globe of burnished gold, in the last 20 THE GOLD-BUG. rays of the setting sun, some of which still faintly illumined the eminence upon which we stood. The scarabceus hung quite clear of any branches, and, if allowed to fall, would have fallen at our feet. Legrand immediately took the scythe, and cleared with it a cir- cular space, three or four yards in diameter, just be- neath the insect, and, having accomplished this, ordered Jupiter to let go the string and come down from the tree. Driving a peg, with great nicety into the ground, at the precise spot where the beetle fell, my friend now produced from his pocket a tape-measure. Fastening one end of this at that point of the trunk of the tree which was nearest the peg, he unrolled it till it reached the peg, and thence farther unrolled it, in the direction already established by the two points of the tree and the peg, for the distance of fifty feet Jupiter clearing away the brambles with the scythe. At the spot thus attained a second peg was driven, and about this, as a centre, a rude circle, about four feet in diameter, de- scribed. Taking now a spade himself, and giving one to Jupiter and one to me, Legrand begged us to set about digging as quickly as possible. To speak the truth, I had no especial relish for such amusement at any time, and, at that particular moment, would most willingly have declined it; for the night was coming on, and I felt much fatigued with the exercise already taken ; but I saw no mode of escape, and was fearful of disturbing my poor friend's equanimity by a refusal. Could I have depended, indeed, upon Jupiter's aid, I would have had no hesitation in attempting to get the lunatic home by force; but I was too well assured of the old negro's disposition, to hope that he would assist me, under any THE GOLD-BUG. 21 circumstances, in a personal contest with his master. I made no doubt that the latter had been infected with some of the innumerable Southern superstitions about money buried, and that his fantasy had received con- firmation by the finding of the scarabceus, or, perhaps by Jupiter's obstinacy in maintaining it to be " a bug of real gold." A mind disposed to lunacy would readily be led away by such suggestions especially if chiming in with favorite preconceived ideas and then I called to mind the poor fellow's speech about the beetle's being " the index of his fortune." Upon the whole, I was sadly vexed and puzzled, but, at length, I concluded to make a virtue of necessity to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner to convince the visionary, by ocular demonstration, of the fallacy of the opinions he entertained. The lanterns having been lit, we all fell to work with a zeal worthy a more rational cause ; and, as the glare fell upon our persons and implements, I could not help thinking how picturesque a group we composed, and how strange and suspicious our labors must have appeared to any interloper who, by chance, might have stumbled upon our whereabouts. We dug very steadily for two hours. Little was said ; and our chief embarrassment lay in the yelpings of the dog, who took exceeding interest in our proceedings. He at length became so obstreperous, that we grew fearful of his giving the alarm to some stragglers in the vicinity ; or, rather, this was the apprehension of Legrand ; for myself, I should have rejoiced at any interruption which might have enabled me to get the wanderer home. The noise was, at length, very effec- tually silenced by Jupiter, who, getting out of the hole with a dogged air of deliberation, tied the brute's mouth 22 THE GOLD-BUG. up with one of his suspenders, and then returned, with a grave chuckle, to his task. When the time mentioned had expired, we had reached a depth of five feet, and yet no signs of any treasure became manifest. A general pause ensued, and I began to hope that the farce was at an end. Legrand, however, although evidently much discon- certed, wiped his brow thoughtfully and recommenced. We had excavated the entire circle of four feet diameter, and now we slightly enlarged the limit, and went to the farther depth of two feet. Still nothing appeared. The gold-seeker, whom I sincerely pitied, at length clambered from the pit, with the bitterest disappointment imprinted upon every feature, and pro- ceeded, slowly and reluctantly, to put on his coat, which he had thrown off at the beginning of his labor. In the meantime I made no remark. Jupiter, at a signal from his master, began to gather up his tools. This done, and the dog having been unmuzzled, we turned in pro- found silence towards home. We had taken, perhaps, a dozen steps in this direction, when, with a loud oath, Legrand strode up to Jupiter, and seized him by the collar. The astonished negro opened his eyes and mouth to the fullest extent, let fall the spades, and fell upon his knees. "You scoundrel," said Legrand, hissing out the syllables from between his clenched teeth "you infernal black villain ! speak, I tell you ! answer me this instant, without prevarication! which which is your left eye?" " Oh, my golly, Massa Will ! aint dis here my lef eye for sartain?" roared the terrified Jupiter, placing his hand upon his right organ of vision, and holding it there THE GOLD-BUG. 23 with a desperate pertinacity, as if in immediate dread of his master's attempt at a gouge. "I thought so! I knew it! hurrah!" vociferated Legrand, letting the negro go, and executing a series of curvets and caracols, much to the astonishment of his valet, who, arising from his knees, looked, mutely, from his master to myself, and then from myself to his master. "Come! we must go back," said the latter; "the game's not up yet ;" and he again led the way to the tulip-tree. " Jupiter," said he, when he reached its foot, " come here ! was the skull nailed to the limb with the face outwards, or with the face to the limb ? " " De face was out, massa, so dat de crows could get at de eyes good, widout any trouble." " Well, then, was it this eye or that through which you dropped the beetle ? " here Legrand touched each of Jupiter's eyes. "Twas dis eye, massa de lef eye jis as you tell me," and here it was his right eye that the negro indicated. " That will do we must try it again." Here my friend, about whose madness I now saw, or fancied that I saw, certain* indications of method, removed the peg which marked the spot where the beetle fell, to a spot about three inches to the westward of its former position. Taking, now, the tape-measure from the nearest point of the trunk to the peg, as before, and continuing the extension in a straight line to the distance of fifty feet, a spot was indicated, removed by several yards from the point at which we had been digging. Around the new position a circle, somewhat larger 24 THE GOLD-BUG. than in the former instance, was now described, and we again set to work with the spades. I was dreadfully weary, but scarcely understanding what had occasioned the change in my thoughts, I felt no longer any great aversion from the labor imposed. I had become most unaccountably interested nay, even excited. Perhaps there was something, amid all the extravagant demeanor of Legrand some air of forethought, or of deliber- ation, which impressed me. I dug eagerly, and now and then caught myself actually looking, with some- thing that very much resembled expectation, for the fancied treasure, the vision of which had demented my unfortunate companion. At a period when such vaga- ries of thought most fully possessed me, and when we had been at work perhaps an hour and a half, we were again interrupted by the violent howlings of the dog. His uneasiness, in the first instance, had been, evidently, but the result of playfulness or caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and serious tone. Upon Jupiter's again attempting to muzzle him, he made furious resistance, and, leaping into the hole, tore up the mould frantically with his claws. In a few seconds he had uncovered a mass of human bones, forming two complete skeletons, intermingled with several but- tons of metal, and what appeared to be the dust of decayed woolen. One or two strokes of a spade up- turned the blade of a large Spanish knife, and, as we dug farther, three or four loose pieces of gold and silver coin came to light. At the sight of these the joy of Jupiter could scarcely be restrained, but the countenance of his master wore an air of extreme disappointment. He urged us, however, to continue our exertions, and the words were hardly uttered when I stumbled and fell forward, having caught THli GOLD BUG THE c;OLD RUG THE GOLD-BUG. 25 the toe of my boot in a large ring of iron that lay half- buried in the loose earth. We now worked in earnest, and never did I pass ten minutes of more intense excitement. During this interval we had fairly unearthed an oblong chest of wood, which from its perfect preservation and wonderful hardness, had plainly been subjected to some miner- alizing process perhaps that of the bichloride of mercury. This box was three feet and a half long, three feet broad, and two and a half feet deep. It was firmly secured by bands of wrought iron, riveted, and forming a kind of open trellis-work over the whole. On each side of the chest, near the top, were three rings of iron six in all by means of which a firm hold could be obtained by six persons. Our utmost united endeavors served only to disturb the coffer very slightly in its bed. We at once saw the impos- sibility of removing so great a weight. Luckily, the sole fastenings of the lid consisted of two sliding bolts. These we drew back trembling and panting with anx- iety. In an instant, a treasure of incalculable value lay gleaming before us. As the rays of the lanterns fell within the pit, there flashed upwards a glow and a glare, from a confused heap of gold and of jewels, that abso- lutely dazzled our eyes. I shall not pretend to describe the feelings with which I gazed. Amazement was, of course, predomi- nant. Legrand appeared exhausted with excitement, and spoke very few words. Jupiter's countenance wore, for some minutes, as deadly a pallor as it is possible, in the nature of things, for any negro's visage to assume. He seemed stupefied thunder-stricken. Pres- ently he fell upon his knees in the pit, and, burying his naked arms up to the elbows in gold, let them there 26 THE GOLD-BUG. remain, as if enjoying the luxury of a bath. At length with a deep sigh, he exclaimed, as if in a soliloquy "And dis all cum ob de goole-bug ! de putty goole- bug ! de poor little goole-bug, what I boosed in dat sabage kind ob style ! Aint you shamed ob yourself, nigger ? answer me dat ! " It became necessary, at last, that I should arouse both master and valet to the expediency of removing the treasure. It was growing late, and it behooved us to make exertion, that we might get everything housed before daylight. It was difficult to say what should be done, and much time was spent in deliberation so confused were the ideas of all. We, finally, lightened the box by removing two-thirds of its contents, when we were enabled, with some trouble, to raise it from the hole. The articles taken out were deposited among the brambles, and the dog left to guard them, with strict orders from Jupiter neither, upon any pretence, to stir from the spot, nor to open his mouth until our return. We then hurriedly made for home with the chest ; reaching the hut in safety, but after exces- sive toil, at one o'clock in the morning. Worn out as we were, it was not in human nature to do more immediately. We rested until two, and had supper; starting for the hills immediately afterwards, armed with three stout sacks, which, by good luck, were upon the premises. A little before four we arrived at the pit, divided the remainder of the booty, as equally as might be, among us, and, leaving the holes unfilled, again set out for the hut, at which, for the second time, we deposited our golden burthens, just as the first faint streaks of the dawn gleamed from over the tree-tops in the East. We were now thoroughly broken down ; but the THE GOLD-BUG. 27 intense excitement of the time denied us repose. After an unquiet slumber of some three or four hours' dura- tion, we arose, as if by preconcert, to make examination of our treasure. The chest had been full to the brim, and we spent the whole day, and the greater part of the next night, in a scrutiny of its contents. There had been nothing like order or arrangement. Everything had been heaped in promiscuously. Having assorted all with care, we found ourselves possessed of even vaster wealth than we had at first supposed. In coin there was rather more than four hundred and fifty thousand dollars estimating the value of the pieces, as accu- rately as we could, by the tables of the period. There was not a particle of silver. All was gold of antique date and of great variety French, Spanish, and Ger- man money, with a few English guineas, and some counters, of which we had never seen specimens before. There were several very large and heavy coins, so worn that we could make nothing of their inscriptions. There was no American money. The value of the jewels we found more difficulty in estimating. There were diamonds some of them exceedingly large and fine a hundred and ten in all, and not one of them small ; eighteen rubies of remarkable brilliancy ; three hundred and ten emeralds, all very beautiful ; and twenty-one sapphires, with an opal. These stones had all been broken from their settings and thrown loose in the chest. The settings themselves, which we picked out from among the other gold, appeared to have been beaten up with hammers, as if to prevent identification. Besides all this, there was a vast quantity of solid gold ornaments ; nearly two hundred massive finger and ear-rings ; rich chains thirty of 28 THE GOLD-BUG. these, if I remember; eighty-three very large and heavy crucifixes ; five gold censers of great value ; a prodigious golden punch-bowl, ornamented with richly chased vine-leaves and Bacchanalian figures; with two sword-handles exquisitely embossed, and many other smaller articles which I cannot recollect. The weight of these valuables exceeded three hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois ; and in this estimate I have not included one hundred and ninety-seven superb gold watches ; three of the number being worth each five hundred dollars, if one. Many of them were very old and as time-keepers valueless ; the works having suffered more or less from corrosion but all were richly jeweled and in cases of great worth. We estimated the entire contents of the chest, that night, at a million and a half of dollars ; and, upon the subsequent disposal of the trinkets and jewels (a few being retained for our own use), it was found that we had greatly undervalued the treasure. When at length, we had concluded our examination, and the intense excitement of the time had in some measure subsided, Legrand, who saw that I was dying with impatience for a solution of this most extraordinary riddle, entered into a full detail of all the circumstances connected with it. " You remember," said he, " the night when I handed you the rough sketch I had made of the scarabceiis. You recollect also, that I became quite vexed at you for insisting that my drawing resembled a death's-head. When you first made this assertion I thought you were jesting; but afterwards I called to mind the peculiar spots on the back of the insect, and admitted to my- self that your remark had some little foundation in fact. Still, the sneer at my graphic powers irritated THE GOLD-BUG. 29 me for I am considered a good artist and, therefore, when you handed me the scrap of parchment, I was about to crumple it up and throw it angrily into the fire." "The scrap of paper, you mean," said I. " No ; it had much of the appearance of paper, and at first I supposed it to be such, but when I came to draw upon it, I discovered it, at once, to be a piece of very thin parchment. It was quite dirty, you remember. Well, as I was in the very act of crumpling it up, my glance fell upon the sketch at which you had been look- ing, and you may imagine my astonishment when I perceived, in fact, the figure of a death's-head just where, it seemed to me, I had made the drawing of the beetle. For a moment I was too much amazed to think with accuracy. I knew that my design was very different in detail from this although there was a certain similarity in general outline. Presently I took a candle, and seating myself at the other end of the room, proceeded to scrutinize the parchment more closely. Upon turning it over, I saw my own sketch upon the reverse, just as I had made it. My first idea, now, was mere surprise at the really remarkable simi- larity of outline at the singular coincidence involved in the fact, that unknown to me, there should have been a skull upon the other side of the parchment; immediately beneath my figure of the searabceus, and that this skull, not only in outline, but in size, should so closely resemble my drawing. I say the singularity of this coincidence absolutely stupefied me for a time. This is the usual effect of such coincidences. The mind struggles to establish a connection a sequence of cause and effect and, being unable to do so, suffers a species of temporary paralysis. But when I recovered from this stupor, there dawned upon me gradually a 30 THE GOLD-BUG. conviction which startled me even far more than the coincidence. I began distinctly, positively, to remem- ber that there had been no drawing upon the parch- ment when I made my sketch of the scarabceus. I became perfectly certain of this: for I recollected turning up first one side and then the other, in search of the cleanest spot. Had the skull been then there, of course I could not have failed to notice it. Here was indeed a mystery which I felt it impossible to explain ; but, even at that early moment, there seemed to glimmer, faintly, within the most remote and secret chambers of my intellect, a glowworm-like conception of that truth which last night's adventure brought to so magnificent a demonstration. I arose at once, and putting the parchment securely away, dismissed all farther reflection until I should be alone. "When you had gone, and when Jupiter was fast asleep, I betook myself to a more methodical investiga- tion of the affair. In the first place I considered the manner in which the parchment had come into my possession. The spot where we discovered the scara- bceus was on the coast of the mainland, about a mile eastward of the island, and but a short distance above high-water mark. Upon my taking hold of it, it gave me a sharp bite, which caused me to let it drop. Jupi- ter, with his accustomed caution, before seizing the insect, which had flown towards him, looked about him for a leaf, or something of that nature, by which to take hold of it. It was at this moment that his eyes, and mine also, fell upon the scrap of parchment, which I then supposed to be paper. It was lying half buried in the sand, a corner sticking up. Near the spot where we found it, I observed the remnants of the hull of what appeared to have been a ship's long boat. The THE GOLD-BUG. 31 wreck seemed to have been there for a very great while ; for the resemblance to boat timbers could scarcely be traced. "Well, Jupiter picked up the parchment, wrapped the beetle in it, and gave it to me. Soon afterwards we turned to go home, and on the way met Lieutenant G . I showed him the insect, and he begged me to let him take it to the fort. Upon my consenting, he thrust it forthwith into his waistcoat pocket, without the parchment in which it had been wrapped, and which I had continued to hold in my hand during his inspec- tion. Perhaps he dreaded my changing my mind, and thought it best to make sure of the prize at once you know how enthusiastic he is on all subjects connected with Natural History. At the same time, without being conscious of it, I must have deposited the parchment in my own pocket. " You remember that when I went to the table, for the purpose of making a sketch of the beetle, I found no paper where it was usually kept. I looked in the drawer, and found none there. I searched my pockets, hoping to find an old letter, when my hand fell upon the parchment. I thus detail the precise mode in which it came into my possession ; for the circumstances im- pressed me with peculiar force. "No doubt you will think me fanciful but I had already established a kind of connection. I had put together two links of a great chain. There was a boat lying upon the sea-coast, and not far from the boat was a parchment not a paper with a skull depicted upon it. You will, of course, ask ' Where is the con- nection?' I reply that the skull, or death's-head, is the well-known emblem of the pirate. The flag of the death's-head is hoisted in all engagements. 32 THE GOLD-BUG. " I have said that the scrap was parchment, and not paper. Parchment is durable almost imperishable. Matters of little moment are rarely consigned to parch- ment ; since, for the mere ordinary purposes of drawing or writing, it is not nearly so well adapted as paper. This reflection suggested some meaning some rele- vancy in the death's-head. I did not fail to observe, also, the form of the parchment. Although one of its corners had been by some accident destroyed, it could be seen that the original form was oblong. It was just such a slip, indeed, as might have been chosen for a memorandum for a record of something to be long remembered and carefully preserved." " But," I interposed, " you say that the skull was not upon the parchment when you made the drawing of the beetle. How then do you trace any connection between the boat and the skull since this latter, accord- ing to your own admission, must have been designed (God only knows how or by whom) at some period subsequent to your sketching the scarabcew f " "Ah, hereupon turns the whole mystery; although, the secret, at this point, I had comparatively little difficulty in solving. My steps were sure, and could afford but a single result. I reasoned, for example, thus : When I drew the scaraboeus, there was no skull apparent upon the parchment. "When I had completed the drawing I gave it to you, and observed you nar- rowly until you returned it. You, therefore, did not design the skull, and no one else was present to do it. Then it was not done by human agency. And never- theless it was done. " At this stage of my reflections I endeavored to remember and did remember, with entire distinctness, every incident which occurred about the period in THE GOLD-BUG. 33 question. The weather was chilly (oh rare and happy accident !) and a fire was blazing upon the hearth. I was heated with exercise and sat near the table. You, however, had drawn a chair close to the chimney. 'Just as I placed the parchment in your hand, and as you were in the act of inspecting it, Wolf, the Newfound- land, entered, and leaped upon your shoulders. With your left hand you caressed him and kept him off, while your right, holding the parchment, was permitted to fall listlessly between your knees, and in close prox- imity to the fire. At one moment I thought the blaze had caught it, and was about to caution you, but, before I could speak, you had withdrawn it, and were engaged in its examination. When I considered all these particulars, I doubted not for a moment that heat had been the agent in bringing to light, upon the parchment, the skull which I saw designed upon it. You are well aware that chemical preparations exist, and have existed time out of mind, by means of which it is possible to write upon either paper or vellum, so that the characters shall become visible only when subjected to the action of fire. Zaffre, digested in aqua regia, and diluted with four times its weight of water, is sometimes employed ; a green tint results. The regulus of cobalt, dissolved in spirit of nitre, gives a red. These colors disappear at longer or shorter intervals after the material written upon cools, but again become apparent upon the re-application of heat. "I now scrutinized the death's-head with care. Its outer edges the edges of the drawing nearest the edge of the vellum were far more distinct than the others. It was clear that the action of the caloric had been imperfect or unequal, I immediately kindled a fire, and subjected every portion of the parchment to a Vol. I.-3. 34 THE GOLD-BUG. glowing heat. At first, the only efiect was the strength- ening of the faint lines in the skull ; but, upon persevering in the experiment, there became visible, at the corner of the slip, diagonally opposite to the spot in which the death's-head was delineated, the figure of what I at first supposed to be a goat. A closer scrutiny, however, satisfied me that it was intended for a kid." " Ha ! ha ! " said I, " to be sure I have no right to laugh at you a million and a half of money is too serious a matter for mirth but you are not about to establish a third link in your chain you will not find any especial connection between your pirates and a goat pirates, you know, have nothing to do with goats ; they appertain to the farming interest." " But I have said that the figure was not that of a " Well, a kid then pretty much the same thing." " Pretty much, but not altogether," said Legrand. " You may have heard of one Captain Kidd. I at once looked upon the figure of the animal as a kind of punning or hieroglyphical signature. I say signature ; because its position upon the vellum suggested this idea. The death's-head at the corner diagonally op- posite, had, in the same manner, the air of a stamp, or seal. But I was surely put out by the absence of all else of the body to my imagined instrument of the text for my context." " I presume you expected to find a letter between the stamp and the signature." "Something of that kind. The fact is, I felt irre- sistibly impressed with a presentiment of some vast good fortune impending. I can scarcely say why. Perhaps, after all, it was rather a desire than an actual THE GOLD-BUG. 35 belief; but do you know that Jupiter's silly words, about the bug being of solid gold, had a remarkable effect upon my fancy? And then the series of acci- dents and coincidences these were so very extraor- dinary. Do you observe how mere an accident it was that these events should have occurred upon the sole day of all the year in which it has been, or may be, sufficiently cool for fire, and that without the fire, or without the intervention of the dog at the precise mo- ment in which he appeared, I should never have become aware of the death's-head, and so never the possessor of the treasure ? " " But proceed I am all impatience." " Well ; you have heard, of course, the many stories current the thousand vague rumors afloat about money buried, somewhere upon the Atlantic coast, by Kidd and his associates. These rumors must have had some foundation in fact. And that the rumors have existed so long and continuous, could have resulted, it appeared to me, only from the circumstance of the buried treasure still remaining entombed. Had Kidd concealed his plunder for a time, and afterwards reclaimed it, the rumors would scarcely have reached us in their present unvarying form. You will ob- serve that the stories told are all about money- seekers, not about money-finders. Had the pirate recovered his money, there the affair would have dropped. It seemed to me that some accident say the loss of a memorandum indicating its locality had deprived him of the means of recovering it, and that this accident had become known to his followers, who otherwise might never have heard that treasure had been concealed at all, and who, busying themselves in vain, because unguided attempts to regain it, had 36 THE GOLD-BUG. given first birth, and then universal currency to the reports which are now so common. Have you ever heard of any important treasure being unearthed along the coast ? " " Never." " But that Kidd's accumulations were immense is well known. I took it for granted, therefore, that the earth still held them ; and you will scarcely be sur- prised when I tell you that I felt a hope, nearly amount- ing to certainty, that the parchment so strangely found, involved a lost record of the place of deposit." " But how did you proceed ? " " I held the vellum again to the fire, after increasing the heat ; but nothing appeared. I now thought it possible that the coating of dirt might have something to do with the failure ; so I carefully rinsed the parch- ment by pouring warm water over it, and, having done this, I placed it in a tin pan, with the skull downwards, and put the pan upon a furnace of lighted charcoal. In a few minutes, the pan having become thoroughly heated, I removed the slip, and, to my inexpressible joy, found it spotted, in several places, with what appeared to be figures arranged in lines. Again I placed it in the pan, and suffered it to remain another minute. Upon taking it off, the whole was just as you see it now." Here Legrand, having re-heated the parchment, submitted it to my inspection. The following char- acters were rudely traced, in a red tint, between the death's-head and the goat : 53tIt305))6*;4826)4J.)4t);806*;48t81[60))85;lt(;:t* 8t83(88)5*t;46(;88*96*?;8)*t(;485);5*t2:*i(;4J6^2(5 * 4)8^8*;4069285);)6t8)4tt;l(:j;9;48()81;8:8tl;48t85; 4)485t528806*81(J9;48;(88;4(t?34;48)4J;161;:188;t?; THE GOLD-BUG. 37 " But," said I, returning him the slip, " I am as much in the dark as ever. Were all the jewels of Golconda awaiting me upon my solution of this enigma, I am quite sure that I should be unable to earn them." " And yet," said Legrand, " the solution is by no means so difficult as you might be led to imagine from the first hasty inspection of the characters. These characters, as any one might readily guess, form a cipher that is to say, they convey a meaning ; but then, from what is known of Kidd, I could not suppose him capable of constructing any of the more abstruse cryp- tographs. I made up my mind, at once, that this was of a simple species such, however, as would appear, to the crude intellect of the sailor absolutely insoluble without the key." " And you really solved it ? " " Readily ; I have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand times greater. Circumstances, and a cer- tain bias of mind, have led me to take interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve. In fact, having once established connected and legible characters, I scarcely gave a thought to the mere diffi- culty of developing their import. " In the present case indeed in all cases of secret writing the first question regards the language of the cipher ; for the principles of solution, so far, especially, as the more simple ciphers are concerned, depend upon, and are varied by, the genius of the particular idiom. In general, there is no alternative but experi- ment (directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts the solution, until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us, all 38 THE GOLD-BUG. difficulty was removed by the signature. The pun upon the word ' Kidd ' is appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind would most nat- urally have been written by a pirate of the Spanish main. As it was I assumed the cryptograph to be English. " You observe there are no divisions between the words. Had there been divisions, the task would have been comparatively easy. In such case I should have commenced with a collation and analysis of the shorter words, and had a word of a single letter occurred, as is most likely (a or /, for example), I should have con- sidered the solution as assured. But, there being no division, my first step was to ascertain the predominant letters, as well as the least frequent. Counting all, I constructed a table thus : Of the character 8 there are 33. ; " 26. 4 " 19. J) " 16. * " 13. 5 " 12. 6 92 :3 1L 8. 6. 6. 4. 3. 2. L " Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is e. Afterwards the succession runs thus : a o idhnrstuycfglmwbkpqxz. E pre- dominates so remarkably that an individual sentence of any length is rarely seen, in which it is not the prevail- ing character. "Here, then, we have in the very beginning, the THE GOLD-BUG. 39 groundwork for something more than a mere guess. The general use which may be made of the table is obvious but in this particular cipher we shall only very partially require its aid. As our predominant character is 8, we will commence by assuming it as the e of the natural alphabet. To verify the supposition, let us observe if the 8 be seen often in couples for e is doubled with great frequency in English in such words, for example, as 'meet/ 'fleet,' 'speed/ 'seen/ 'been/ ' agree/ &c. In the present instance we see it doubled no less than five times, although the cryptograph is brief. " Let us assume 8, then as e. Now of all words in the language, ' the ' is most usual ; let us see, therefore, whether there are not repetitions of any three charac- ters, in the same order of collocation, the last of them being 8. If we discover repetitions of such letters, so arranged, they will most probably represent the word * the.' Upon inspection, we find no less than seven such arrangements, the characters being ;48. We may, there- fore, assume that ; represents t, 4 represents h, and 8 represents e the last being now well confirmed. Thus a great step has been taken. " But, having established a single word, we are en- abled to establish a vastly important point ; that is to say, several commencements and terminations of other words. Let us refer, for example, to the last instance but one, in which the combination ;48 occurs not far from the end of the cipher. We know that the ; im- mediately ensuing is the commencement of a word, and, of the six characters succeeding this ' the/ we are cognizant of no less than five. Let us set these charac- ters down, thus by the letters we know them to represent, leaving a space for the unknown t eeth. 40 THE GOLD-BUG. " Here we are enabled, at once, to discard the ' I h,' as forming no portion of the word commencing with the first t ; since, by the experiment of the entire alphabet for a letter adapted to the vacancy, we perceive that no word can be formed of which this th can be a part. We are thus narrowed into t ee, and, going through the alphabet, if necessary, as before, we arrive at the word ' tree,' as the sole possible reading. We thus gain another letter, r, represented by (, with the words ' the tree ' in juxtaposition. " Looking beyond these words, for a short distance, we again see the combination ;48, and employ it by way of termination to what immediately precedes. We have thus this arrangement : the tree ;4(J?34 the, or, substituting the natural letters, where known, it reads thus : the tree thrj?3h the. "Now, if, in place of the unknown characters, we leave blank spaces, or substitute dots, we read thus : the tree thr . . . h the, when the word ' through ' makes itself evident at once. But this discovery gives us three new letters, o, u and g, represented by f ? and 3. "Looking now, narrowly, through the cipher for combinations of known characters, we find, not very far from the beginning, this arrangement, 83(88, or egree, which, plainly, is the conclusion of the word ' degree,' and gives us another letter, d, represented by f. " Four letters beyond the word * degree,' we perceive the combination, ;46(;88. THE GOLD-BUG. 41 " Translating the known characters, and representing the unknown by dots, as before, we read thus : th . rtee . an arrangement immediately suggestive of the word ' thirteen,' and again furnishing us with two new char- acters i and n, represented by 6 and *. " Referring, now, to the beginning of the cryptograph, we find the combination, " Translating, as before, we obtain good, which assures us that the first letter is A, and that the first two words are 'A good.' " It is now time that we arrange our key, as far as discovered, in a tabular form, to avoid confusion. It will stand thus : 5 represents a t " We have, therefore, no less than ten of the most important letters represented, and it will be unnecessary to proceed with the details of the solution. I have said enough to convince you that ciphers of this nature are readily soluble, and to give you some insight into the rationale of their development. But be assured that the specimen before us appertains to the very simplest species of cryptograph. It now only remains to give you the full translation of the characters upon the parchment, as unriddled. Here it is : " 'A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat 42 THE Q OLD-BUG. forty-one degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by north main branch seventh limb east side shoot from the left eye of the death's-head a bee line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out.' " " But," said I, " the enigma seems still in as bad a condition as ever. How is it possible to extort a mean- ing from all this jargon about ' devil's seats,' ' death's- heads,' and ' bishop's hotels ? ' " " I confess," replied Legrand, " that the matter still wears a serious aspect, when regarded with a casual glance. My first endeavor was to divide the sentence into the natural division intended by the cryptographist." " You mean to punctuate it ? " " Something of that kind." " But how was it possible to effect this ? " " I reflected that it had been a point with the writer to run his words together without division, so as to increase the difficulty of solution. Now, a not over- acute man, in pursuing such an object, would be nearly certain to overdo the matter. When, in the course of his composition, he arrived at a break in his subject which would naturally require a pause, or a point, he would be exceedingly apt to run his characters, at this place, more than usually close together. If you will observe the MS. in the present instance you will easily detect five such cases of unusual crowding. Acting upon this hint, I made the division thus : " 'A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat -forty-one degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by north main branch seventh limb east side shoot from the left eye of the death's-head a bee line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out' " " Even this division," said I, " leaves me still in the dark." THE GOLD-BUG. 43 " It left me also in the dark," replied Legrand, " for a few days; during which I made diligent inquiry, in the neighborhood of Sullivan's Island, for any build- ing which went by the name of the ' Bishop's Hotel ; ' for, of course, I dropped the obsolete word ' hostel.' Gaining no information on the subject, I was on the point of extending my sphere of search, and proceeding in a more systematic manner, when, one morning it entered into my head, quite suddenly, that this ' Bishop's Hostel ' might have some reference to an old family, of the name of Bessop, which, time out of mind, had held possession of an ancient manor-house, about four miles to the northward of the Island. I accordingly went over to the plantation, and reinstituted my inquiries among the older negroes of the place. At length one of the most aged of the women said that she had heard of such a place as Bessop' s Castle, and thought that she could guide me to it, but that it was not a castle, nor a tavern, but a high rock. " I offered to pay her well for her trouble, and, after some demur, she consented to accompany me to the spot. We found it without much difficulty, when, dismissing her, I proceeded to examine the place. The 'castle' consisted of an irregular assemblage of cliffs and rocks one of the latter being quite remarkable for its height as well as for its insulated and artificial appearance. I clambered to its apex, and then felt much at a loss as to what should be next done. " While I was busied in reflection, my eyes fell upon a narrow ledge in the eastern face of the rock, perhaps a yard below the summit upon which I stood. This ledge projected about eighteen inches, and was not more than a foot wide, while a niche in the cliff just above it, gave it a rude resemblance to one of the 44 THE GOLD-BUG. hollow-backed chairs used by our ancestors. I made no doubt that here was the ' devil's seat ' alluded to in the MS., and now I seemed to grasp the full secret of the riddle. " The ' good glass,' I knew, could have reference to nothing but a telescope ; for the word ' glass ' is rarely employed in any other sense by seamen. Now here, I at once saw, was a telescope to be used, and a definite point of view, admitting no variation, from which to use it. Nor did I hesitate to believe that the phrases, ' forty- one degrees and thirteen minutes, ' and ' northeast and by north, ' were intended as directions for the leveling of the glass. Greatly excited by these discoveries, I hurried home, procured a telescope, and returned to the rock. " I let myself down to the ledge, and found that it was impossible to retain a seat upon it except in one particular position. This fact confirmed my precon- ceived idea. I proceeded to use the glass. Of course, the 'forty-one degrees and thirteen minutes' could allude to nothing but elevation above the visible horizon, since the horizontal direction was clearly indicated by the words, ' northeast and by north. ' This latter direction I at once established by means of a pocket-compass; then, pointing the glass as nearly at an angle of forty-one degrees of elevation as I could do it by guess, I moved it cautiously up or down, until my attention was arrested by a circular rift or opening in the foliage of a large tree that overtopped its fellows in the distance. In the centre of this rift I perceived a white spot, but could not, at first, distinguish what it was. Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I again looked, and now made it out to be a human skull. THE GOLD-BUG. 45 "Upon this discovery I was so sanguine as to con- sider the enigma solved ; for the phrase ' main branch, seventh limb, east side,' could refer only to the position of the skull upon the tree, while 'shoot from the left eye of the death's-head,' admitted also of but one inter- pretation, in regard to a search for buried treasure. I perceived that the design was to drop a bullet from the left eye of the skull, and that a bee-line, or, in other words, a straight line, drawn from the nearest point of the trunk through 'the shot' (or the spot where the bullet fell), and thence extended to a distance of fifty feet, would indicate a definite point and beneath this point I thought it at least possible that a deposit of value lay concealed." "All this," I said, "is exceedingly clear, and, al- though ingenious, still simple and explicit. When you left the Bishop's Hotel, what then? " "Why, having carefully taken the bearings of the tree, I turned homewards. The instant that I left the ' devil's seat,' however, the circular rift vanished ; nor could I get a glimpse of it afterwards, turn as I would. What seems to me the chief ingenuity in this whole business is the fact (for repeated experiment has con- vinced me it is a fact) that the circular opening in question is visible from no other attainable point of view than that afforded by the narrow ledge upon the face of the rock. " In this expedition to the ' Bishop's Hotel ' I had been attended by Jupiter, who had no doubt observed for some weeks past the abstraction of my demeanor, and took especial care not to leave me alone. But, on the next day, getting up very early, I contrived to give him the slip, and went into the hills in search of the tree. After much toil I found it. When I came home 46 THE GOLD-BUG. at night my valet proposed to give me a flogging. With the rest of the adventure I believe you are as well acquainted as myself." " I suppose," said I, " you missed the spot, in the first attempt at digging, through Jupiter's stupidity in letting the bug fall through the right instead of through the left eye of the skull." " Precisely. This mistake made a difference of about two inches and a half in the ' shot ' that is to say, in the position of the peg nearest the tree ; and had the treasure been beneath the ' shot,' the error would have been of little moment; but the 'shot,' together with the nearest point of the tree, were merely two points for the establishment of a line of direction ; of course the error, however trivial in the beginning, increased as we proceeded with the line; and by the time we had gone fifty feet, threw us quite off the scent. But for my deep-seated impressions that treasure was here some- where actually buried, we might have had all our labor in vain." " But your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swing- ing the beetle how excessively odd ! I was sure you were mad. And why did you insist upon letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the skull ? " " Why to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own way, by a little bit of sober mystification. For this reason I swung the beetle, and for this reason I let it fall from the tree. An observation of yours about its great weight suggested the latter idea." "Yes, I perceive; and now there is only one point which puzzles me. What are we to make of the skele- tons found in the hole ? " THE GOLD-BUG. 47 "That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself, There seems, however, only one plaus- ible way of accounting for them and yet it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would im- ply. It is clear that Kidd if Kidd indeed secreted this treasure, which I doubt not it is clear that he must have had assistance in the labor. But this labor concluded, he may have thought it expedient to remove all participants in his secret. Perhaps a couple of blows with a mattock were sufficient, while his coadju- tors were busy in the pit ; perhaps it required a dozen who shall tell?" BERENICE. Dicebant mihl sodales, si sepulehrum amicse vlsltarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas. EBN ZAIAT. Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rain- bow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch, as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow ! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness ? from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow ? But as in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been. My baptismal name is Egseus, that of my family I will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the land more time-honored than my gloomy, gray, hereditary- halls. Our line has been called a race of visionaries ; and in many striking particulars in the character of the family mansion, in the frescoes of the chief saloon, in the tapestries of the dormitories, in the chiseling of some buttresses in the armory, but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings, in the fashion of the library chamber, and lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library's contents there is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief. The recollections of my earliest years are connected Vol. I.-4. (49) 50 BERENICE. with that chamber and with its volumes, of which latter I will say no more. Here died my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness to say that I had not lived before, that the soul has no previous existence. You deny it ? let us not argue the matter. Convinced myself, I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance of aerial forms, of spiritual and meaning eyes, of sounds, musical yet sad ; a remembrance which will not be excluded, a memory like a shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady, and like a shadow, too, in the impossibility of my getting rid of it while the sunlight of my reason shall exist. In that chamber was I born. Thus awaking from the long night of what seemed, but was not nonentity, at once into the very regions of fairyland, into a palace of imagination, into the wild dominions of monastic thought and erudition, it is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye, that I loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie ; but it is singular, that, as years rolled away and the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of my fathers, it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life, wonderful how total an inversion took place in the character of my commonest thought. The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became in turn, not the material of my every-day exist- ence, but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself. ****** Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up to- gether in my paternal halls. Yet differently we grew I, ill of health and buried in gloom, she, agile, grace- ful, and overflowing with energy ; hers the ramble on BERENICE. 51 the hillside, mine the studies of the cloister ; I, living within my own heart, and addicted, body and soul, to the most intense and painful meditation, she, roaming carelessly through life with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours. Berenice ! I call upon her name, Berenice ! and from the gray ruins of memory a thousand tumul- tuous recollections are startled at the sound ! Ah, vividly is her image before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy! O, gorgeous yet fantastic beauty ! O, sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim ! O, Naiad among its fountains ! And then, then all is mystery and terror, and a tale which should not be told. Disease, a fatal disease, fell like the simoon upon her frame; and even Avhile I gazed upon her, the spirit of change swept over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and her character, and in a manner the most subtle and terrible, disturbing even the identity of her person ! Alas ! the destroyer came and went ! and the victim, where was she ? I knew her not, or knew her no longer as Berenice ! Among the numerous train of maladies superinduced by that fatal and primary one which effected a revolu- tion of so horrible a kind in the moral and physical being of my cousin, may be mentioned as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating in trance itself trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner of recovery was, in most instances, startlingly abrupt. In the meantime, my own disease for I have been told that I should call it by no other appellation my own disease, then, grew rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel and extraordinary form hourly 52 BERENICE. and momently gaining vigor and at length obtain- ing over me the most incomprehensible ascendency. This monomania, if I must so term it, consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties of the mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the con- templation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe. To muse for long unwearied hours, with my atten- tion riveted to some frivolous device on the margin or in the typography of a book ; to become absorbed, for the better part of a summer's day, in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry or upon the floor ; to lose myself, for an entire night, in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire ; to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower ; to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to con- vey any idea whatever to the mind ; to lose all sense of motion or physical existence, by means of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in: such were a few of the most common and least per- nicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but cer- tainly bidding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation. Yet let me not be misapprehended. The undue, earnest, and morbid attention thus excited by objects in their own nature frivolous, must not be confounded BERENICE. 53 in character with that ruminating propensity common to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination. It was not even, as might be at first supposed, an extreme condition, or exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different. In the one instance, the dreamer or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and sugges- tions issuing therefrom, until at the conclusion of a day-dream often replete with luxury, he finds the incila- mentum, or first cause of his musings, entirely vanished and forgotten. In my case, the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming, through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal importance. Few deductions, if any, were made ; and those few pertinaciously returning in upon the original object as a centre. The meditations were never pleasurable ; and, at the determination of the reverie, the first cause, so far from being out of sight, had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of mind more particularly exercised were, with me, as I have said before, the attentive, and are with the day-dreamer, the speculative. My books, at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to irritate the disorder, partook, it will be per- ceived, largely, in their imaginative and inconsequen- tial nature, of the characteristic qualities of the disorder itself. I well remember, among others, the treatise of the noble Italian, Ccelius Secundus Curio, " De Amplitudine Beati Regni Dei;" St. Austin's great work, "The City of God;" and Tertullian's " De Came Christi," in which the paradoxical sentence, 64 BERENICE. " Moriuus est Dei fillus ; credibile est quia ineptum est et sepultus resurrexit; cerium est quia impossibile esi," occupied my undivided time, for many weeks of labori- ous and fruitless investigation. Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only by trivial things, ray reason bore resemblance to that ocean-crag spoken of by Ptolemy Hephsestion, which steadily resisting the attacks of human violence, and the fiercer fury of the waters and the winds, trembled only to the touch of the flower called Aspho- del. And although, to a careless thinker, it might appear a matter beyond doubt, that the alteration pro- duced by her unhappy malady, in the moral condition of Berenice, would afford me many objects for the exercise of that intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been at some trouble in explaining, yet such was not in any degree the case. In the lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity, indeed, gave me pain, and, taking deeply to heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life, I did not fail to ponder frequently and bitterly upon the wonder-working means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such as would have occurred under similar circumstances to the ordinary mass of mankind. True to its own character, my disorder reveled in the less important but more startling changes wrought in the physical frame of Berenice in the singular and most appalling distortion of her personal identity. During the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surely I had never loved her. In the strange anomaly oi my existence, feelings with me had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the BERENICE. 55 mind. Through the gray of the early morning among the trellised shadows of the forest at noon-day and in the silence of my library at night she had flitted by my eyes, and I had seen her not as the liv- ing and breathing Berenice, but as the Berenice of a dream ; not as a being of the earth, earthy, but as the abstraction of such a being ; not as a thing to admire, but to analyze ; not as an object of love, but as the theme of the most abstruse although desultory specu- lation. And now now I shuddered in her presence, and grew pale at her approach ; yet, bitterly lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, I called to mind that she had loved me long, and, in an evil moment, I spoke to her of marriage. And at length the period of our nuptials was ap- proaching, when, upon an afternoon in the winter of the year one of these unseasonably warm, calm, and misty days which are the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon* I sat (and sat, as I thought alone), in the inner apart- ment of the library. But, uplifting my eyes, I saw that Berenice stood before me. Was it my own excited imagination or the misty influence of the atmosphere or the uncertain twilight of the chamber or the gray draperies which fell around her figure that caused in it so vacillating and indistinct an outline ? I could not tell. She spoke no word ; and I not for worlds could I have uttered a syllable. An icy chill ran through my frame; a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me ; a consum- ing curiosity pervaded my soul; and, sinking back upon the chair, I remained for some time breathless * For as Jove, during the winter season, gives twice seven days of warmth, men have called this clement and temperate time the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon. Simonides. 56 BERENICE. and motionless, Avith my eyes riveted upon her person. Alas ! its emaciation was excessive, and not one vestige of the former being lurked in any single line of the contour. My burning glances at length fell upon the face. The forehead was high, and very pale, and singu- larly placid ; and the once jetty hair fell partially over it, and overshadowed the hollow temples with innumerable ringlets, now of a vivid yellow, and jarring discordantly, in their fantastic character, with the reigning melancholy of the countenance. The eyes were lifeless, and lustreless, and seemingly pupil- less, and I shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted ; and in a smile of peculiar mean- ing, the teeth of the changed Berenice disclosed them- selves slowly to my view. Would to God that I had never beheld them, or that, having done so, I had died ! The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, I found that my cousin had departed from the chamber. But from the disordered chamber of my brain had not, alas ! departed, and would not be driven away, the white and ghastly spectrum of the teeth. Not a speck on their surface not a shade on their enamel not an indenture in their edges but what that brief period of her smile had sufficed to brand it upon my memory. I saw them now even more unequi- vocally than I beheld them then. The teeth ! the teeth ! they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me ; long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible BERENICE. 67 development. Then came the full fury of my monomania and I struggled in vain against its strange and irre- sistible influence. In the multiplied objects of the external world I had no thoughts but for the teeth. For these I longed with a frenzied desire. All other matters and all different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They they alone were present to the mental eye, and they, in their sole indi- viduality, became the essence of my mental life. I held them in every light. I turned them in every attitude. I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon their peculiarities. I pondered upon their con- formation. I mused upon the alteration in their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them, in imagi- nation, a sensitive and sentient power, and even when unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression. Of Mademoiselle Salle it has been well said, " Que tons ses pas etaient des sentiments," and of Berenice I more seriously believed que tons ses dents etaient des idees. Des idees! ah, here was the idiotic thought that destroyed me! Des idees ah, therefore it was that I coveted them so madly ! I felt that their pos- session could alone ever restore me to peace, in giving me back to reason. And the evening closed in upon me thus and then the darkness came, and tarried and went and the day again dawned and the mists of a second night were now gathering around and still I sat motionless in that solitary room and still I sat buried in meditation, and still the phantasma of the teeth maintained its terrible ascendency, as, with the most vivid and hideous distinctness, it floated about amid the changing lights and shadows of the chamber. At length there broke in upon my dreams a cry as of horror and dismay; 58 BERENICE. and thereunto, after a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled voices, intermingled with many low moanings of sorrow or of pain. I arose from my seat, and throw- ing open one of the doors of the library, saw standing out in the ante-chamber a servant maiden, all in tears, who told me that Berenice was no more ! She had been seized with epilepsy in the early morning, and now, at the closing in of the night, the grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations for the burial were completed. # * * * # # I found myself sitting in the library, and again sitting there alone. It seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well aware that since the setting of the sun Berenice had been interred. But of that dreary period which intervened I had no posi- tive, at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was replete with horror horror more horri- ble from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record of my existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decipher them but in vain ; while ever and anon, like the spirit of a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I had done a deed what was it ? I asked myself the question aloud, and the whispering echoes of the chamber answered me " What was it f " On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a little box. It was of no remarkable character, and I had seen it frequently before, for it was the prop- erty of the family physician ; but how came it there upon my table, and why did I shudder in regarding it ? BERENICE. 59 These things were in no manner to be accounted for, and my eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a book, and to a sentence underscored therein. The words were the singular but simple ones of the poet Ebn Zaiat: " Hicebant mihi sodales, si sepulchrum arnicas visitarem, euros meas aliquantulwn fore levatas" Why, then, as I perused them, did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end, and the blood of my body become congealed within my veins ? There came a light tap at the library door and, pale as the tenant of a tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and very low. What said he ? some broken sentences I heard. He told of a wild cry disturbing the silence of the night of the gathering together of the household of a search in the direction of the sound ; and then his tones grew thrillingly dis- tinct as he whispered me of a violated grave of a disfigured body enshrouded, yet still breathing still palpitating still alive ! He pointed to my garments ; they were muddy and clotted with gore. I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand ; it was indented with the impress of human nails, he directed my attention to some object against the wall. I looked at it for some minutes : it was a spade. With a shriek I bounded to the table, and grasped the box that lay upon it. But I could not force it open ; and, in my tremor, it slipped from my hands, and fell heavily, and burst into pieces ; and from it, with a ratt- ling sound, there rolled out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white, and ivory-looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor. ELEONORA. Sub conservatione fonnae specificae salva amma. RAYMOND LULLY. I am come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence, whether much that is glorious, whether all that is profound, does not spring from disease of thought, from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless, into the vast ocean of the " light inef- fable," and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi suntmare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi" We will say, then, that I am mad. I grant, at least that there are two distinct conditions of my mental existence, the condition of a lucid reason not to be dis- puted, and belonging to the memory of events forming the first epoch of my life, and a condition of shadow and doubt, appertaining to the present, and to the recollection of what constitutes the second great era of (61) 62 ELEONORA. my being. Therefore, what I shall tell of the earlier period, believe ; and to what I may relate of the later time, give only such credit as may seem due ; or doubt it altogether ; or, if doubt it ye cannot, then play unto its riddle the (Edipus. She \vhom I loved in youth, and of whom I now pen calmly and distinctly these remembrances, was the sole daughter of the only sister of my mother long departed. Eleoncra was the np.me of my cousin. We had always dwelt together, beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. No unguided footstep ever came upon that vale, for it lay far away up among a range of giant hills that hung beetling around about it, shutting out the sunlight from its sweetest recesses. No path was trodden in its vicinity ; and to reach our happy home there was need of putting back with force the foliage of many thousands of forest trees, and of crushing to death the glories of many millions of fragrant flowers. Thus it was that we lived all alone, knowing nothing of the world without the valley, I, and my cousin, and her mother. From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of Eleonora; and winding stealthily about in mazy courses, it passed away at length through a shadowy gorge, among hills still dimmer than those whence it had issued. We called it the " River of Silence," for there seemed to be a hushing influence in its flow. No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom, stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own old station, shining on gloriously forever. ELEONORA. 63 The margin of the river, and of the many dazzling rivulets that glided through devious ways into its chan- nel, as well as the spaces that extended from the margins away down into the depths of the streams until they reached the bed of pebbles at the bottom, these spots, not less than the whole surface of the valley, from the river to the mountains that girdled it in, were carpeted all by a soft green grass, thick, short, perfectly even, and vanilla-perfumed, but so besprinkled throughout with the yellow buttercup, the white daisy, the purple violet, and the ruby-red asphodel, that its exceeding beauty spoke to our hearts in loud tones of the love and of the glory of God. And here and there, in groves about this grass, like wildernesses of dreams, sprang up fantastic trees, whose tall slender stems stood not upright, but slanted grace- fully towards the light that peered at noon-day into the centre of the valley. Their bark was speckled with the vivid alternate splendor of ebony and silver, and was smoother than all save the cheeks of Eleonora ; so that but for the brilliant green of the huge leaves that spread from their summits in long tremulous lines, dallying with the zephyrs, one might have fancied them giant serpents of Syria doing homage to their sovereign the sun. Hand in hand about this valley, for fifteen years, roamed I with Eleonora before love entered within our hearts. It was one evening at the close of the third lustrum of her life, and of the fourth of my own, that we sat^ locked in each other's embrace, beneath the serpent-like trees, and looked down within the waters of the River of Silence at our images therein. We spoke no words during the rest of that sweet day, and our words even upon the morrow were tremulous and few. We had drawn the god Eros from that wave, 64 ELEONORA. and now we felt that he had enkindled within us the fiery souls of our forefathers. The passions which had for centuries distinguished our race came thronging with the fancies for which they had been equally noted, and together breathed a delirious bliss over the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. A change fell upon all things. Strange, brilliant flowers, star-shaped, burst out upon the trees where no flowers had been known before. The tints of the green carpet deepened, and when, one by one, the white daisies shrank away, there sprang up in place of them, ten by ten of the ruby-red asphodel. And life arose in our paths, for the tall flamingo, hitherto unseen, with all gay glowing birds, flaunted his scarlet plumage before us. The golden and silver fish haunted the river, out of the bosom of which issued, little by little, a murmur that swelled at length into a lulling melody more divine than that of the harp of JEolus, sweeter than all save the voice of Eleonora. And now, too, a voluminous cloud, which we had long watched in the regions of Hesper, floated out thence, all gorgeous in crimson and gold, and settling in peace above us, sank day by day lower and lower until its edges rested upon the tops of the moun- tains, turning all their dimness into magnificence, and shutting us up as if for ever, within a magic prison- house of grandeur and of glory. The loveliness of Eleonora was that of the Seraphim ; but she was a maiden artless and innocent as the brief life she had led among the flowers. No guile disguised the fervor of love which animated her heart, and she examined with me its inmost recesses as we walked together in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass, and discoursed of the mighty changes which had lately taken place therein. ELEONORA. 65 At length, having spoken one day, in tears, of the last sad change which must befall humanity, she thence- forward dwelt only upon this one sorrowful theme interweaving it into all our converse, as, in the songs of the bard of Schiraz, the same images are found occurring again and again in every impressive variation of phrase. She had seen that the finger of Death was upon her bosom that, like the ephemeron, she had been made perfect in loveliness only to die ; but the terrors of the grave to her lay solely in a consideration which she revealed to me one evening at twilight by the banks of the River of Silence. She grieved to think that, having entombed her in the Valley of the Many- Colored Grass, I would quit for ever its happy re- cesses, transferring the love which now was so pas- sionately her own to some maiden of the outer and every-day world. And then and there I threw myself hurriedly at the feet of Eleonora, and offered up a vow to herself and to heaven, that I would never bind myself in marriage to any daughter of Earth that I would in no manner prove recreant to her dear memory, or to the memory of the devout affection with which she had blessed me. And I called the Mighty Ruler of the Universe to witness the pious solemnity of my vow. And the curse which I invoked of Him and of her, a saint in Elusion, should I prove traitorous to that promise, involved a penalty the exceeding great horror of which will not permit me to make record of it here. And the bright eyes of Eleonora grew brighter at my words; and she sighed as if a deadly burthen had been taken from her breast ; and she trembled and very bitterly wept; but she made acceptance of the vow (for what was she but a child ?) and it made easy VoL I.-5. 66 ELEONOEA. to her the bed of her death. And she said to me, not many days afterwards, tranquilly dying, that, because of what I had done for the comfort of her spirit, she would watch over me in that spirit when departed, and, if so it were permitted her, return to me visibly in the watches of the night ; but, if this thing were indeed beyond the power of the souls in Paradise, that she would at least give me frequent indications of her presence ; sighing upon me in the evening winds, or filling the air which I breathed with perfume from the censers of the angels. And, with these words upon her lips, she yielded up her innocent life, putting an end to the first epoch of my own. Thus far I have faithfully said. But as I pass the barrier in Time's path, formed by the death of my beloved, and proceed with the second era of my exist- ence, I feel that a shadow gathers over my brain, and I mistrust the perfect sanity of the record. But let me on. Years dragged themselves along heavily, and still I dwelled within the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass ; but a second change had come upon all things. The star-shaped flowers shrank into the stems of the trees, and appeared no more. The tints of the green carpet faded ; and, one by one, the ruby-red asphodels withered away ; and there sprang up, in place of them, ten by ten, dark, eye-like violets, that writhed uneasily and were ever encumbered with dew. And Life de- parted from our paths; for the tall flamingo flaunted no longer his scarlet plumage before us, but flew sadly from the vale into the hills, with all the gay glowing birds that had arrived in his company. And the golden and silver fish swam down through the gorge at the lower end of our domain and bedecked the sweet river never again. And the lulling melody that had ELEONORA. 67 been softer than the wind-harp of ^Eolus, and more divine than all save the voice of Eleonora, it died little by little away, in murmurs growing lower and lower, until the stream returned, at length, utterly, into the solemnity of its original silence ; and then, lastly, the voluminous cloud uprose, and, abandoning the tops of the mountains to the dimness of old, fell back into the regions of Hesper, and took away all its manifold golden and gorgeous glories from the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. Yet the promises of Eleonora were not forgotten; for I heard the sounds of the swinging of the censers of the angels ; and streams of a holy perfume floated ever and ever about the valley ; and at lone hours, when my heart beat heavily, the winds that bathed my brow came unto me laden with soft sighs ; and indistinct murmurs filled often the night air ; and once oh, but once only ! I was awakened from a slumber, like the slumber of death, by the pressing of spiritual lips upon my own. But the void within my heart refused, even thus, to be filled. I longed for the love which had before filled it to overflowing. At length the valley pained me through its memories of Eleonora, and I left it for ever for the vanities and the turbulent triumphs of the world. I found myself within a strange city, where all things might have served to blot from recollection the sweet dreams I had dreamed so long in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. The pomps and pagean- tries of a stately court, and the mad clangor of arms, and the radiant loveliness of woman, bewildered and intoxicated my brain. But as yet my soul had proved 68 ELEONORA. true to its vows, and the indications of the presence of Eleonora were still given me in the silent hours of the night. Suddenly, these manifestations ceased ; and the world grew dark before mine eyes; and I stood aghast at the burning thoughts which possessed at the terrible temptations which beset me ; for there came from some far, far distant and unknown land, into the gay court of the king I served, a maiden to whose beauty my whole recreant heart yielded at once at whose footstool I bowed down without a struggle, in the most ardent, in the most abject worship of love. What indeed was my passion for the young girl of the valley in comparison with the fervor and the delirium, and the spirit-lifting ecstasy of adoration with which I poured out my whole soul in tears at the feet of the ethereal Ermengarde ? Oh, bright was the seraph Ermengarde ! and in that knowledge I had room for none other. Oh, divine was the angel Ermengarde ! and as I looked down into the depths of her memorial eyes, I thought only of them and of her. I wedded ; nor dreaded the curse I had invoked ; and its bitterness was not visited upon me. And once but once again in the silence of the night, there came through my lattice the soft sighs which had forsaken me ; and they modeled themselves into a familiar and sweet voice, saying : " Sleep in peace ! for the Spirit of Love reigneth and ruleth, and, in taking to thy passionate heart her who is Ermengarde, thou art absolved, for reasons which shall be made known to thee in heaven, of thy vows unto Eleonora." 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 per- vading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield him- self 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 learn- ing, her singular yet placid caste 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 ! Buried 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 (69) 70 LIGE1A. 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 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 indis- tinctly recall the fact itself, what wonder that I have utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended it ! And indeed if ever that spirit which is entitled Romance, 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 fails 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 equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium dream, an airy and spirit- lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered 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 wor- ship in the classical labors of the heathen. " There is no exquisite beauty," says Bacon, Lord Verulam, speak- ing 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 LIGEIA. 71 regularity, although I perceived that her loveliness was indeed " 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 per- ception 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 rivaling the purest ivory, the com- manding 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 medall- ions 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 magnifi- cent 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 for- mation 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 eyes of Ligeia. For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique. It might have been, too, that in these eyes of my 72 LIOEIA. 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 out- line, 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 strug- gled 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 be- came 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 ex- citing than the fact never, I believe, noticed in the schools that in our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon UGEIA. 73 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 that 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 around, 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-grow- ing 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, 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 74 LIGEIA. 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 esti- mate, 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 erudi- tion of the academy, have I ever found Ligeia at fault ! How singularly, how thrillingly, this one point in the 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, LIGEIA. 75 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 aston- ishing ; yet I was sufficiently aware of her infinite su- premacy 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 tri- umph 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 upon the lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the most 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 astonish- ment, even more energetic than my own. There had 76 LIGEIA. 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. I 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 alike the uttermost of 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 mor- tality 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 overflow- ing 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 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 recog- nized 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 LIGEIA. 77 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 Withiu the lonesome latter years ! An angel throng, bewingerl, bedight In veils, and drowned iu 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 Woe ! That motley drama ! Oh, be sure It shall not be forgot I With its Phantom chased for evermore, 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 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. 78 LIGEIA. " O God ! " half shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending her arms aloft with a spasmodic move- ment, 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 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 fre- quented 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 LIGEIA. 79 abbey, with its verdant decay hanging about it, suf- fered 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 child- hood, 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 dis- covered 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 I must not pause to detail. Let me speak only of that one chamber, ever accursed, whither in a moment of mental alienation I fled from the altar as my bride as the successor of the unforgotten Ligeia the fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady Bowena Tre- vanion 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 apart- ment 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 keep- ing, in the fantastic display, to take hold upon the memory. The room lay in a high turret of the castel- lated abbey, was pentagonal in shape, and of capacious size. Occupying the whole southern face of the pen- tagon was the sole window, an immense sheet of 80 LIOEIA. 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 trellis-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 perfora- tions so contrived that there writhed in and out, as if endued with a serpent vitality, a continual succession of parti-colored fires. Some few ottomans and golden candelabra, of East- ern figure, were in various stations about, and there was the couch, too, the 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 sculp- ture. 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 LIGEIA. 81 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 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 unhal- lowed 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 other- wise. 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 reveled 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 excite- ment of my opium dreams (for I was habitually fettered Vol. I.-6. 82 LIGEIA. 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 for ever ? 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 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 fail 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 pertina- ciously, 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 LIGEIA. 83 pressed this distressing subject with more tnan 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 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 felt that some pal- pable 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 goblet-full, which I held to the lips of the 84 LIGEIA. fainting lady. She had now partially recovered, how- ever, and took the vessel herself, while I sank upon an ottoman near me, with my eyes fastened upon her per- son. It was then that I became distinctly aware of a gentle foot-fall 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 forebore 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 writh- ing 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 LIGEIA. 85 thousand memories of Ligeia, and then came back upon my heart, with the turbulent violence of a flood, the whole of that unutterable woe 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 reverie. I felt that it came from the bed of ebony the bed of death. I listened in an agony of supersti- tious 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 un- utterable horror and awe, for which the language of mortality has no suificiently 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 the turret was altogether apart from the portion of the abbey tenanted by the servants there were none within call I had no means of 86 LIQEIA. 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 still 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 shriveled and pinched up in the ghastly expression of death ; a repulsive clammi- ness and coldness overspread rapidly the surface of the body ; and all the usual rigorous stiffness 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 afterwards 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 LIGEIA. 87 exertion which experience, and no little medical read- ing, could suggest. But in vain. Suddenly, the color fled, the pulsation ceased, the lips resumed the expression of the dead, and, in an instant afterwards, 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. And again I sank 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 revivi- fication 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 coun- tenance the limbs relaxed and, save that the eyelids 88 LIGEIA. were yet pressed neavily together, and that the ban- dages 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 of one bewildered in a dream, the thing that was enshrouded advanced bodily and palpably into the middle of the apartment. I trembled not I stirred not for a crowd of un- utterable 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 unap- peasable. 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 Tre- vanion 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 the ghastly cerements which had confined it, and there streamed forth, into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber, huge masses of long and disheveled hair ; it was blacker than the wings of midnight! And now slowly opened the LIGEIA. 89 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." MORELLA. Avro Kaff avro (Jieff avrov, fiovoEiSeg aiei ov. Itself, by itself solely, ONE everlastingly, and single. PLATO. Sympos. With a feeling of deep yet most singular affection, I regarded my friend Morella. Thrown by accident into her society many years ago, my soul, from our first meeting burned with fires it had never before known ; but the fires were not of Eros, and bitter and tormenting to my spirit was the gradual conviction that I could in no manner define their unusual mean- ing or regulate their vague intensity. Yet we met ; and fate bound us together at the altar ; and I never spoke of passion nor thought of love. She, however, shunned society, and, attaching herself to me alone, rendered me happy. It is a happiness to wonder ; it is a happi- ness to dream. Morella's erudition was profound. As I hope to live, her talents were of no common order her powers of mind were gigantic. I felt this, and, in many matters became her pupil. I soon, however, found that perhaps on account of her Presburg education, she placed before me a number of those mystical writ- ings which are usually considered the mere dross of the early German literature. These, for what reason I could not imagine, were her favorite and constant (91) 92 MORELLA. study and that in process of time they became my own, should be attributed to the simple but effectual influence of habit and example. In all this, if I err not, my reason had little to do. My convictions, or I forget myself, were in no manner acted upon by the ideal, nor was any tincture of the mysticism which I read to be discovered, unless I am greatly mistaken, either in my deeds or in my thoughts. Persuaded of this, I abandoned myself implicitly to the guidance of my wife, and entered with an unflinch- ing heart into the intricacies of her studies. And then then, when poring over forbidden pages, I felt a forbidden spirit enkindling within me would Morella place her cold hand upon my own, and rake up from the ashes of a dead philosophy some low, singular words whose strange meaning burned themselves in upon my memory. And then, hour after hour, would I linger by her side, and dwell upon the music of her voice, until at length its melody was tainted with terror, and there fell a shadow upon my soul, and I grew pale, and shuddered inwardly at those too unearthly tones. And thus, joy suddenly faded into horror, and the most beautiful became the most hideous, as Hinnom became Ge-Henna. It is unnecessary to state the exact character of those disquisitions which, growing out of the volumes I have mentioned, formed for so long a time, almost the sole conversation of Morella and myself. By the learned in what might be termed theological morality they will be readily conceived, and by the unlearned they would, at all events, be little understood. The wild Panthe- ism of Fichte ; the modified Tlafayyevema of Pythago- reans ; and, above all, the doctrines of Identity as urged by Schelling, were generally the points of discussion MORELLA. 93 presenting the most of beauty to the imaginative Morella. That identity which is termed personal, Locke, I think, truly defines to consist in the sameness of a rational being. And since by person we understand an intelli- gent essence having reason, and since there is a con- sciousness which always accompanies thinking, it is this which makes us all to be that which we call our- selves, thereby distinguishing us from other beings that think, and giving us our personal identity. But the principium individuation is, the notion of that identity which at death is or is not lost for ever, was to me, at all times, a consideration of intense interest ; not more from the perplexing and exciting nature of its conse- quences, than from the marked and agitated manner in which Morella mentioned them. But, indeed, the time had now arrived when the mystery of my wife's manner oppressed me as a spell. I could no longer bear the touch of her wan fingers, nor the low tone of her musical language, nor the lustre of her melancholy eyes. And she knew all this, but did not upbraid ; she seemed conscious of my weakness or my folly, and, smiling, called it fate. She seemed also conscious of a cause, to me unknown, for the gradual alienation of my regard ; but she gave me no hint or token of its nature. Yet was she woman, and pined away daily. In time the crimson spot settled steadily upon the cheek, and the blue veins upon the pale forehead became prominent ; and one instant my nature melted into pity, but in the next I met the glance of her meaning eyes, and then my soul sickened and became giddy with the giddiness of one who gazes downward into some dreary and unfathomable abyss. Shall I then say that I longed with an earnest and consuming desire for the moment of Morella's decease ? 94 MORELLA. I did ; but the fragile spirit clung to its tenement of clay for many days, for many weeks and irksome months, until my tortured nerves obtained the mastery over my mind, and I grew furious through delay, and, with the heart of a fiend, cursed the days and the hours and the bitter moments, which seemed to lengthen and lengthen as her gentle life declined, like shadows in the dying of the day. But one autumnal evening, when the winds lay still in heaven, Morella called me to her bedside. There was a dim mist over all the earth, and a warm glow upon the waters, and, amid the rich October leaves of the forest, a rainbow from the firmament had surely fallen. " It is a day of days," she said, as I approached ; " a day of all days either to live or die. It is a fair day for the sons of earth and life ah, more fair for the daugh- ters of heaven and death ! " I kissed her forehead and she continued : " I am dying, yet shall I live." " Morella ! " " The days have never been when thou couldst love me but her whom in life thou didst abhor, in death thou shalt adore." " Morella ! " " I repeat that I am dying. But within me is a pledge of that affection ah, how little ! which thou didst feel for me, Morella. And when my spirit departs shall the child live thy child and mine, Morella's. But thy days shall be days of sorrow that sorrow which is the most lasting of impressions, as the cypress is the most enduring of trees. For the hours of thy happiness are over ; and joy is not gathered twice in a life, as the roses of Paestum twice in a year. MORELLA. 95 Thou shalt no longer, then, play the Teian with time, but, being ignorant of the myrtle and the vine, thou shalt bear about with thee thy shroud on earth, as do the Moslemin at Mecca." "Morella!" I cried, "Morella! how knowest thou this ? " But she turned away her face upon the pillow, and a slight tremor coming over her limbs, she thus died, and I heard her voice no more. Yet, as she had foretold, her child, to which in dying she had given birth, and which breathed not until the mother breathed no more, her child, a daughter, lived. And she grew strangely in stature and intellect, and was the perfect resemblance of her who had departed, and I loved her with a love more fervent than I had believed it possible to feel for any denizen of earth. But ere long the heaven of this pure affection became darkened, and gloom, and horror, and grief, swept over it in clouds. I said the child grew strangely in stature and intelligence. Strange, indeed, was her rapid increase in bodily size, but terrible, oh ! terrible were the tumultuous thoughts which crowded upon me while watching the development of her mental being. Could it be otherwise, when I daily discovered in the conceptions of the child the adult powers and faculties of the woman ? when the lessons of experience fell from the lips of infancy ? and when the wisdom or the pas- sions of maturity I found hourly gleaming from its full and speculative eye? When, I say, all this became evident to my appalled senses, when I could no longer hide it from my soul, nor throw it off from those percep- tions which trembled to receive it, is it to be wondered at that suspicions, of a nature fearful and exciting, crept in upon my spirit, or that my thoughts fell back aghast upon the wild tales and thrilling theories of the 96 MORELLA. entombed Morella? I snatched from the scrutiny of the world a being whom destiny compelled me to adore, and in the rigorous seclusion of my home, watched with an agonizing anxiety over all which concerned the beloved. And as years rolled away, and I gazed day after day upon her holy, and mild, and eloquent face, and pored over her maturing form, day after day did I discover new points of resemblance in the child to her mother, the melancholy and the dead. And hourly grew darker these shadows of similitude, and more full, and more definite, and more perplexing, and more hideously terrible in their aspect. For that her smile was like her mother's I could bear ; but then I shuddered at its too perfect identity ; that her eyes were like Morella's I could endure ; but then they, too, often looked down into the depths of my soul with Morella's own intense and bewildering meaning. And in the contour of the high forehead, and in the ringlets of the silken hair, and in the wan fingers which buried themselves therein, and in the sad musical tones of her speech, and above all oh, above all, in the phrases and expressions of the dead on the lips of the loved and the living, I found food for consuming thought and horror, for a worm that would not die. Thus passed away two lustra of her life, and as yet my daughter remained nameless upon the earth. "My child," and "my love," were the designations usually prompted by a father's affection, and the rigid seclusion of her days precluded all other intercourse. Morella's name died with her at her death. Of the mother I had never spoken to the daughter; it was impossible to speak. Indeed, during the brief period of her existence, the latter had received no impressions MORELLA. 97 from the outward world, save such as might have been afforded by the narrow limits of her privacy. But at length the ceremony of baptism presented to my mind, in its unnerved and agitated condition, a present deliverance from the terrors of my destiny. And at the baptismal font I hesitated for a name. And many titles of the wise and beautiful, of old and modern times, of my own and foreign lands, came thronging to my lips, with many, many fair titles of the gentle, and the happy, and the good. What prompted me then to disturb the memory of the buried dead? What demon urged me to breathe that sound, which in its very recollection was wont to make ebb the purple blood in torrents from the temples to the heart ? What fiend spoke from the recesses of my soul, when amid those dim aisles, and in the silence of the night, I whispered within the ears of the holy man the syllables Morella? Wha^more than fiend convulsed the features of my child and overspread them with hues of death, as starting at that scarcely audible sound, she turned her glassy eyes from the earth to heaven, and falling prostrate on the black slabs of our ancestral vault, responded " I am here ! " Distinct, coldly, calmly distinct, fell those few simple sounds within my ear, and thence like molten lead rolled hissingly into my brain. Years years may pass away, but the memory of that epoch never ! Nor was I indeed ignorant of the flowers and the vine but the hemlock and the cypress overshadowed me night and day. And I kept no reckoning of time or place, and the stars of my fate faded from heaven, and therefore the earth grew dark, and its figures passed by me like flitting shadows, and among them all I beheld only Morella. The winds of the firmament Vol. I.-7. 98 MOEELLA. breathed but one sound within my ears, and the ripples upon the sea murmured evermore Morella. But she died ; and with my own hands I bore her to the tomb, and I laughed with a long and bitter laugh as I found no traces of the first in the charnel where I laid the second Morella. A'.ET.TENGERSTEIN - METZENGERSTEIN. Pestis eram vlvus moriens tua more ero. MAETIN LUTHER. Horror and fatality have been stalking abroad in all ages. Why then give a date to the story I have to tell ? Let it suffice to say, that at the period of which I speak, there existed in the interior of Hungary a settled although hidden belief in the doctrines of the Metempsychosis. Of the doctrines themselves that is, of their falsity or of their probability I say nothing. I assert, however, that much of our incredulity (as La Bruyere says of all our unhappiness) "went de ne pouvoir etre seuls."* But there were some points in the Hungarian super- stition which were fast verging to absurdity. They, the Hungarians, differed very essentially from their Eastern authorities. For example " The soul," said the former I give the words of an acute and intelligent Parisian " ne demeure qu'une seule fois dans un corps sensible. Ainsi un cheval, un chien, un homme ineme, ne que la ressemblance illusoire des ces etres" The families of Berlifitzing and Metzengerstein had been at variance for centuries. Never before were * Mercier, in " L'an deux mitte quatre cent quaranle," seriously main- tains the doctrines of the Metempsychosis, and I. D'Israeli says that " no system is so simple and so little repugnant to the understanding.'' Colonel Ethan Allan, the " Green Mountain Boy," is also said to have been a serious metempsychosist. (99) 100 METZENGERSTEIN. two houses so illustrious, mutually embittered by hostil- ity so deadly. The origin of this enmity seems to be found in the words of an ancient prophecy " A lofty name shall have a fearful fall when, as the rider over his horse, the mortality of Metzengerstein shall triumph over the immortality of Berlifitzing." To be sure the words themselves had little or no meaning. But more trivial causes have given rise and that no long while ago to consequences equally eventful. Besides, the estates, which were contiguous, had long exercised a rival influence in the affairs of a busy government. Moreover, near neighbors are seldom friends ; and the inhabitants of the Castle Berlifitzing might look from their lofty buttresses, into the very windows of the Palace Metzengerstein. Least of all had the more than feudal magnificence thus discovered a tendency to allay the irritable feelings of the less ancient and less wealthy Berlifitzings. What wonder then, that the words, however silly, of that prediction, should have succeeded in setting and keeping at variance two families already predisposed to quarrel by every instigation of hereditary jealousy? The prophecy seemed to imply, if it implied anything, a final triumph on the part of the already more powerful house ; and was of course remembered with the more bitter animosity by the weaker and less influential. Wilhelm, Count Berlifitzing, although loftily de- scended, was, at the epoch of this narrative, an infirm and doting old man, remarkable for nothing but an inordinate and inveterate personal antipathy to the family of his rival, and so passionate a love of horses, and of hunting, that neither bodily infirmity, great age nor mental incapacity, prevented his daily participation in the dangers of the chase. METZENGERSTEIN. 101 Frederick, Baron Metzengerstein, was, on the other hand, not yet of age. His father, the Minister G , died young. His mother, the Lady Mary, followed him quickly. Frederick was at that time in his eighteenth year. In a city eighteen years are no long period : but in a wilderness in so magnificent a wilder- ness as that old principality, the pendulum vibrates with a deeper meaning. From some peculiar circumstances attending the administration of his father, the young Baron, at the decease of the former, entered immediately upon his vast possessions. Such estates were seldom held before by a nobleman of Hungary. His castles were without number. The chief in point of splendor and extent was the " Palace Metzengerstein." The boundary line of his dominions was never clearly defined, but his princi- pal park embraced a circuit of fifty miles. Upon the succession of a proprietor so young, with a character so well known, to a fortune so unparalleled, little speculation was afloat in regard to his probable course of conduct. And indeed for the space of three days, the behavior of the heir out-Heroded Herod, and fairly surpassed the expectations of his most enthusiastic admirers. Shameful debaucheries flagrant treacheries unheard-of atrocities gave his trembling vassals quickly to understand that no servile submission on their part no punctilios of conscience on his own were thenceforward to prove any security against the remorseless fangs of a petty Caligula. On the night of the fourth day, the stables of the Castle Berlifitzing were discovered to be on fire ; and the unanimous opinion of the neighborhood added the crime of the incendiary to the already hideous list of the Baron's misdemeanors and enormities. 102 METZENOEESTEIN. But during the tumult occasioned by this occur- rence, the young nobleman himself, sat, apparently buried in meditation, in a vast and desolate upper apartment of the family palace of Metzengerstein. The rich although faded tapestry hangings which swung gloomily upon the walls, represented the shadowy and majestic forms of a thousand illustrious ancestors. Here, rich-ermined priests and pontifical dignitaries, familiarily seated with the autocrat and the sovereign, put a veto on the wishes of a temporal king, or re- strained with the fiat of papal supremacy the rebellious sceptre of the Arch-enemy. There, the dark tall statures of the Princes Metzengerstein their muscular war-coursers plunging over the carcases of fallen foes startled the steadiest nerves with their vigorous ex- pression ; and here again, the voluptuous and swan-like figures of the dames of days gone by, floated away in the mazes of an unreal dance to the strains of imagi- nary melody. But as the Baron listened or affected to listen to the gradually increasing uproar in the stables of Berlifitz- ing or perhaps pondered upon some more novel, some more decided act of audacity his eyes were turned unwittingly to the figure of an enormous and unnatu- rally colored horse, represented in the tapestry as belonging to a Saracen ancestor of the family of his rival. The horse itself, in the foreground of the design, stood motionless and statue-like while further back, its discomfited rider perished by the dagger of a Metzengerstein. On Frederick's lip arose a fiendish expression as he became aware of the direction which his glance had, without his consciousness, assumed. Yet he did not remove it. On the contrary, he could by no means METZENGERSTEIN. 103 account for the overwhelming anxiety which appeared falling like a pall upon his senses. It was with diffi- culty that he reconciled his dreamy and incoherent feel- ings with the certainty of being awake. The longer he gazed the more absorbing became the spell the more impossible did it appear that he could ever withdraw his glance from the fascination of that tapestry. But the tumult without becoming suddenly more violent, with a compulsory exertion he diverted his attention to the glare of ruddy light thrown full by the flaming stables upon the windows of the apartment. The action, however, was but momentary ; his gaze returned mechanically to the wall. To his extreme horror and astonishment the head of the gigantic steed had in the meantime altered its position. The neck of the animal, before arched, as if in compassion, over the prostrate body of his lord, was now extended at full length in the direction of the Baron. The eyes, before invisible, now wore an energetic and human expression, while they gleamed with a fiery and unusual red ; and the distended lips of the apparently enraged horse left in full view his sepulchral and disgusting teeth. Stupefied with terror the young nobleman tottered to the door. As he threw it open a flash of red light, streaming far into the chamber, flung his shadow with a clear outline against the quivering tapestry ; and he shuddered to perceive that shadow as he staggered awhile upon the threshold assuming the exact position, and precisely filling up the contour of the relentless and triumphant murderer of the Saracen Berlifitzing. To lighten the depression of his spirits the Baron hurried into the open air. At the principal gate of the palace he encountered three equerries. With much difficulty, and at the imminent peril of their lives, they 104 METZENGERSTEIN. were restraining the convulsive plunges of a gigantic and fiery colored horse. " Whose horse ? Where did you get him ? " demanded the youth in a querulous and husky tone, as he became instantly aware that the mysterious steed in the tapes- tried chamber was the very counterpart of the furious animal before his eyes. " He is your own property, sire," replied one of the equerries ; " at least he is claimed by no other owner. We caught him flying, all smoking and foaming with rage, from the burning stables of the Castle Berlifitzing. Supposing him to have belonged to the old Count's stud of foreign horses we led him back as an estray. But the grooms there disclaim any title to the creature, which is strange, since he bears evident marks of having made a narrow escape from the flames." "The letters W. V. B. are also branded very dis- tinctly on his forehead," interrupted a second equerry ; " I supposed them of course to be the initials of Wilhelm Von Berlifitzing but all at the castle are positive in denying any knowledge of the horse." " Extremely singular ! " said the young Baron with a musing air, and apparently unconscious of the meaning of his words. " He is as you say a remarkable horse a prodigious horse ! although, as you very justly observe, of a suspicious and untractable character; let him be mine, however," he added, after a pause, "perhaps a rider like Frederick of Metzengerstein may tame even the devil from the stables of Berlifitzing." " You are mistaken, my lord ; the horse, as I think we mentioned, is not from the stables of the Count. If such had been the case, we know our duty better than to bring him into the presence of a noble of your family." METZENGERSTEIN. 106 " True ! " observed the Baron dryly ; and at that instant a page of the bed-chamber came from the palace with a heightened color and a precipitate step. He whispered into his master's ear an account of the sudden disappearance of a small portion of the tapestry in an apartment which he designated, entering at the same time into particulars of a minute and circumstan- tial character ; but from the low tone of voice in which these latter were communicated, nothing escaped to gratify the excited curiosity of the equerries. The young Frederick during the conference seemed agitated by a variety of emotions. He soon, however, recovered his composure, and an expression of deter- mined malignancy settled upon his countenance as he gave peremptory orders that the apartment in question should be immediately locked up, and the key placed in his own possession. " Have you heard of the unhappy death of the old hunter Berlifitzing ? " said one of his vassals to the Baron, as, after the departure of the page, the huge steed which that nobleman had adopted as his own plunged and curvetted with redoubled fury down the long avenue which extended from the palace to the stables of Metzengerstein. " No ! " said the Baron, turning abruptly towards the speaker ; " dead ! say you ? " " It is indeed true, my lord ; and, to the noble of your name, will be, I imagine, no unwelcome intelli- gence." A rapid smile shot over the countenance of the listener. " How died he ? " " In his rash exertions to rescue a favorite portion of his hunting stud, he has himself perished miserably in the flames." 106 METZENGERSTEIN. " I n d e e d ! " ejaculated the Baron, as if slowly and deliberately impressed with the truth of some exciting idea. " Indeed," repeated the vassal. " Shocking ! " said the youth calmly, and turned quietly into the palace. From this date a marked alteration took place in the outward demeanor of the dissolute young Baron Fred- erick Von Metzengerstein. Indeed, his behavior dis- appointed every expectation, and proved little in accordance with the views of many a manoeuvring mamma; while his habits and manners, still less than formerly, offered anything congenial with those of the neighboring aristocracy. He was never to be seen beyond the limits of his own domain, and in this wide and social world was utterly companionless unless indeed that unnatural, impetuous, and fiery colored horse, which he henceforward continually bestrode, had any mysterious right to the title of his friend. Numerous invitations on the part of the neighbor- hood for a long time, however, periodically came in. " "\Yill the Baron honor our festivals with his presence ? " "Will the Baron join us in a hunting of the boar?" "Metzengerstein does not hunt;" "Metzengerstein will not attend," were the haughty and laconic answers. These repeated insults were not to be endured by an imperious nobility. Such invitations became less cordial, less frequent; in time they ceased altogether. The widow of the unfortunate Count Berlifitzing was* even heard to express a hope "that the Baron might be at home when he did not wish to be at home, since he disdained the company of his equals; and ride when he did not wish to ride, since he preferred the METZENGERSTEIK 107 society of a horse." This to be sure was a very silly explosion of hereditary pique, and merely proved how singularly unmeaning our sayings are apt to become when we desire to be unusually energetic. The charitable, nevertheless, attributed the altera- tion in the conduct of the young nobleman to the natural sorrow of a son for the untimely loss of his parents; forgetting, however, his atrocious and reck- less behavior during the short period immediately succeeding that bereavement. Some there were, indeed, who suggested a too haughty idea of self-consequence and dignity. Others again (among whom may be mentioned the family physician) did not hesitate in speaking of morbid melancholy and hereditary ill-health, while dark hints of a more equivocal nature were current among the multitude. Indeed, the Baron's perverse attachment to his lately acquired charger an attachment which seemed to attain new strength from every fresh example of the animal's ferocious and demon-like propensities at length became, in the eyes of all reasonable men, a hideous and unnatural fervor. In the glare of noon at the dead hour of night in sickness or in health in calm or in tempest the young Metzengerstein seemed riveted to the saddle of that colossal horse, < whose intractable audacities so well accorded with his own spirit. There were circumstances, moreover, which, coupled with late events, gave an unearthly and portentous character to the mania of the rider, and to the capa- bilities of the steed. The space passed over in a single leap had been accurately measured, and was found to exceed, by an astounding difference, the wildest expecta- tions of the most imaginative. The Baron, besides, 108 METZENGERSTEIN. had no particular name for the animal, although all the rest of his collection were distinguished by charac- teristic appellations. His stable, too, was appointed at a distance from the rest; and with regard to groom- ing and other necessary offices, none but the owner in person had ventured to officiate, or even to enter the enclosure of that horse's particular stall. It was also to be observed, that although the three grooms, who had caught the steed as he fled from the conflagration at Berlifitzing, had succeeded in arresting his course by means of a chain-bridle and noose yet no one of the three could with any certainty affirm that he had, during that dangerous struggle, or at any period there- after, actually placed his hand upon the body of the beast. Instances of peculiar intelligence in the de- meanor of a noble and high-spirited horse are not to be supposed capable of exciting unreasonable attention, but there were certain circumstances which intruded themselves per force upon the most skeptical and phleg- matic ; and it is said there were times when the animal caused the gaping crowd who stood around to recoil in horror from the deep and impressive meaning of his terrible stamp times when the young Metzenger- stein turned pale and shrunk away from the rapid and searching expression of his earnest and human-looking eye. Among all the retinue of the Baron, however, none were found to doubt the ardor of that extraordinary affection which existed on the part of the young noble- man for the fiery qualities of his horse ; at least none but an insignificant and misshapen little page, whose deformities were in everybody's way, and whose opinions were of the least possible importance. He (if his ideas are worth mentioning at all) had the effrontery to METZENGERSTEIN. 109 assert that his master never vaulted into the saddle without an unaccountable and almost imperceptible shudder; and that, upon his return from every long- continued and habitual ride, an expression of trium- phant malignity distorted every muscle in his coun- tenance. One tempestuous night Metzengerstein, awaking from heavy slumber, descended like a maniac from his cham- ber, and mounting in hot haste, bounded away into the mazes of the forest. An occurrence so common at- tracted no particular attention, but his return was looked for with intense anxiety on the part of his do- mestics, when, after some hours' absence, the stupend- ous and magnificent battlements of the Palace Metzen- gerstein were discovered crackling and rocking to their very foundation under the influence of a dense and livid mass of ungovernable fire. As the flames, when first seen, had already made so terrible a progress that all efforts to save any portion of the building were evidently futile, the astonished neigh- borhood stood idly round in silent, if not apathetic wonder. But a new and fearful object soon riveted the attention of the multitude, and proved how much more intense is the excitement wrought in the feelings of a crowd by the contemplation of human agony than that brought about by the most appalling spectacles of inani- mate matter. Up the long avenue of aged oaks which led from the forest to the main entrance of the Palace Metzengerstein, a steed, bearing an unbonneted and disordered rider, was seen leaping with an impetuosity which outstripped the very Demon of the Tempest. The career of the horseman was indisputably, on his own part, uncontrollable. The agony of his countenance, 110 METZENGERSTEIN. the convulsive struggle of his frame, gave evidence of superhuman exertion; but no sound, save a solitary shriek, escaped from his lacerated lips, which were bitten through and through in the intensity of terror. One instant, and the clattering of hoofs resounded sharply and shrilly above the roaring of the flames and the shrieking of the winds another, and clearing at a single plunge the gateway and the moat, the steed bounded far up the tottering staircases of the palace, and, with its rider, disappeared amid the whirlwind of chaotic fire. The fury of the tempest immediately died away, and a dead calm suddenly succeeded. A white flame still enveloped the building like a shroud, and, streaming far away into the quiet atmosphere, shot forth a glare of preternatural light ; while a cloud of smoke settled heavily over the battlements in the distinct colossal figure of a horse. THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE. In the consideration of the faculties and impulses of the prima mobilia of the human soul, the phrenol- ogists have failed to make room for a propensity which, although obviously existing as a radical, primi- tive, irreducible sentiment, has been equally overlooked by all the moralists who have preceded them. In the pure arrogance of the reason, we have all overlooked it. We have suffered existence to escape our senses solely through want of belief of faith ; whether it be faith in revelation, or faith in the Kabbala. The idea of it has never occurred to us, simply because of its supererogation. We saw no need of the impulse for the propensity. We could, not perceive its necessity. We could not understand, that is to say, we could not have understood had the notion of this primum mobile ever obtruded itself; we could not have understood in what manner it might be made to further the objects of humanity, either temporal or eternal. It cannot be denied that phrenology, and in a great measure, all metaphysicianism, have been concocted a priori. The intellectual or logical man, rather than the understand- ing or observant man, set himself to imagine designs to dictate purposes to God. Having thus fathomed to his satisfaction the intentions of Jehovah, out of these intentions he built his innumerable systems of mind. In the matter of phrenology, for example, we first determined, naturally enough, that it was the (111) 112 THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE. design of the Deity that man should eat. We then assigned to man an organ of alimentiveness, and this organ is the scourge with which the Deity compels man, will I nill I, into eating. Secondly, having settled it to be God's will that man should continue his species, we discovered an organ of amativeness, forthwith ; and so with combativeness, with ideality, with causality, with constructiveness, so, in short with every organ, whether representing a propensity, a moral sentiment, or a faculty of the pure intellect. And in these arrangements of the principia of human action, the Spurzheimites, whether right or wrong, in part or upon the whole, have but followed in princi- ple the footsteps of their predecessors, deducing and establishing everything from the preconceived destiny of man, and upon the ground of the objects of his Creator. It would have been wiser, it would have been safer to classify (if classify we must) upon the basis of what man usually or occasionally did, and was always occasionally doing, rather than upon the basis of what we took it for granted the Deity intended him to do. If we cannot comprehend God in His visible works, how then in His inconceivable thoughts that call the works into being? If we cannot understand Him in His objective creatures, how then in His substantive moods and phases of creation ? Induction, d posteriori, would have brought phrenol- ogy to admit, as an innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical something which we may call perverseness, for want of a more characteristic term. In the sense I intend it is, in fact a mobile without motive, a motive not motivirt. Through its promptings we act without comprehensible object; or, THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE. 113 if this shall be understood as a contradiction in terms, we may so far modify the proposition as to say that through its promptings we act for the reason that we should not. In theory, no reason can be more un- reasonable; but, in fact, there is none more strong. With certain minds, under certain conditions, it be- comes absolutely irresistible. I am not more certain that I breathe than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often the one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone impels us to its pros- ecution. Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong's sake admit of analysis or resolution into ulterior elements. It is a radical, a primitive impulse elementary. It will be said, I am aware, that when we persist in acts because we feel we should not persist in them, our conduct is but a modi- fication of that which ordinarily springs from the com- bativeness of phrenology. But a glance will show the fallacy of this idea. The phrenological combativeness has for its essence the necessity of self-defence. It is our safeguard against injury. Its principle regards our well-being; and thus the desire to be well is excited simultaneously with its development. It fol- lows that the desire to be well must be excited simulta- neously with any principle which shall be merely a modification of combativeness, but in the case of that something which I term perverseness, the desire to be well is not only not aroused, but a strongly antagonisti- cal sentiment exists. An appeal to one's own heart is after all the best reply to the sophistry just noticed. No one who trustingly consults and thoroughly questions his own soul, will be disposed to deny the entire radicalness of the pro- pensity in question. It is not more incomprehensible Vol. i. 8. 114 THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE. than distinctive. There lives no man who at some period has not been tormented, for example, by an earnest desire to tantalize a listener by circumlocution. The speaker is aware that he displeases ; he has every intention to please; he is usually curt, precise, and clear; the most laconic and luminous language is struggling for utterance upon his tongue ; it is only with difficulty that he restrains himself from giving it flow ; he dreads and deprecates the anger of him whom he addresses ; yet the thought strikes him that, by cer- tain involutions and parentheses, this anger may be engendered. That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences) is indulged. We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious re- sult our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow ; and why ? There is no answer except that we feel perverse, using the word with no compre- hension of the principle. To-morrow arrives, and with it a more impatient anxiety to do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable, craving for delay. This craving gathers strength as the moments fly. The last hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of the conflict within us of the definite with the indefinite of the substance with the THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE. 115 shadow. But, if the contest have proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which prevails we struggle in vain. The clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is the chanticleer-note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It flies it disappears we are free. The old energy returns. We will labor now. Alas, it is too late ! We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness, and dizzi- ness, and horror, become merged in a cloud of unnam- able feeling. By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor from the bottle out of which arose the genius in the Arabian Nights. But out of this our cloud upon the precipice's edge there grows into palpability a shape, far more terrible than any genius, or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height; and this fall this rushing annihilation for the very reason that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever pre- sented themselves to our imagination for this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it ; and be- cause our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore do we the more impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient as that of him, who shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge. To indulge for a 116 THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE. moment in any attempt at thought is to be inevitably lost ; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is I say that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge and are destroyed. Examine these and similar actions as we will, we shall find them resulting solely from the spirit of the perverse. We perpetrate them merely because we feel that we should not. Beyond or behind this there is no intelligible principle ; and we might indeed deem this perverseness a direct instigation of the arch-fiend, were it not occasionally known to operate in furtherance of good. I have said thus much, that in some measure I may answer your question that I may explain to you why I am here that I may assign to you something that shall have at least the faint aspect of a cause for my wearing these fetters, and for my tenanting this cell of the con- demned Had I not been thus prolix, you might either have misunderstood me altogether, or with the rabble have fancied me mad. As it is, you will easily perceive that I am one of the many uncounted victims of the Imp of the Perverse. It is impossible that any deed could have been wrought with a more thorough deliberation. For weeks, for months, I pondered upon the means of the murder. I rejected a thousand schemes because their accomplishment involved a chance of detection. At length, in reading some French memoirs, I found an account of a nearly ' fatal illness that occurred to Madame Pilau, through the agency of a candle acci- dentally poisoned. The idea struck my fancy at once. I knew my victim's habit of reading in bed. I knew, THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE. 117 too, that his apartment was narrow and ill-ventilated. But I need not vex you with impertinent details. I need not describe the easy artifices by which I substi- tuted, in his bedroom candlestand, a wax light of my own making for the one which I there found. The next morning he was discovered dead in his bed and the coroner's verdict was " Death by the visitation of God." Having inherited his estate all went well with me for years. The idea of detection never once entered my brain. Of the remains of the fatal taper, I had myself carefully disposed. I had left no shadow of a clue by which it would be possible to convict, or even to suspect me of the crime. It is inconceivable how rich a sentiment of satisfaction arose in my bosom as I reflected upon my absolute security. For a very long period of time I was accustomed to revel in this sentiment. It afforded me more real delight than all the mere worldly advantages accruing from my sin. But there arrived at length an epoch from which the pleasurable feeling grew, by scarcely perceptible gradations, into a haunting and harassing thought. It harassed because it haunted. I- could scarcely get rid of it for an instant. It is quite a common thing to be thus annoyed with the ringing in our ears, or rather in our memories, of the burthen of some ordinary song or some unimpressive snatches from an opera. Nor will we be the less tormented if the song in itself be good, or the opera air meritorious. In this manner, at last, I would perpetually catch myself pondering upon my security, and repeating in a low under-tone the phrase, " I am safe." One day whilst sauntering along the streets, I arrested myself in the act of murmuring half-aloud 118 THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE. these customary syllables. In a fit of petulance I re- modeled them thus : " I am safe I am safe yes, if I be not fool enough to make open confession 1 " No sooner had I spoken these words than I felt an icy chill creep to my heart. I had had some experi- ence in these fits of perversity (whose nature I have been at some trouble to explain), and I remembered well that in no instance I had successfully resisted their attacks ; and now my own casual self-suggestion, that I might possibly be fool enough to confess the murder of which I had been guilty confronted me, as if the very ghost of him whom I had murdered and beckoned me on to death. At first I made an effort to shake off this nightmare of the soul. I walked vigorously, faster, still faster, at length I ran. I felt a maddening desire to shriek aloud. Every succeeding wave of thought overwhelmed me with new terror, for alas ! I well, too well, under- stood that to think in my situation was to be lost. I still quickened my pace. I bounded like a madman through the crowded thoroughfares. At length the populace took the alarm and pursued me. I felt then the consummation of my fate. Could I have torn out my tongue I would have done it but a rough voice resounded in my ears a rougher grasp seized me by the shoulder. I turned I gasped for breath. For a moment I experienced all the pangs of suffocation; I became blind and deaf and giddy ; and then some in- visible fiend, I thought, struck me with his broad palm upon the back. The long-imprisoned secret burst forth from my soul. They say that I spoke with a distinct enunciation, but with marked emphasis and passionate hurry, as if in dread of interruption before concluding the brief THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE. 119 but pregnant sentences that consigned me to the hang- man and to hell. Having related all that was necessary for the fullest judicial conviction, I fell prostrate in a swoon. But why shall I say more? To-day I wear these chains and am here ! To-morrow I shall be fetterless ! but where f Wo6el.pinx - OF USHER THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. Son cceur est un luth suspendu ; Sitdt qu'on le touche il rSsonne. DE BERANGEE. 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 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-pleasurable, 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 reveler upon opium the bitter lapse into every-day life the hideous dropping of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart an un- redeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sub- lime. What was it I paused to think what it was (121) 122 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 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 dif- ferent 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 im- pression ; 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 more thrilling than before upon the remodeled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows. Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now pro- posed 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 op- pressed him and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with 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 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 123 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 asso- ciates, yet I really knew little of my friend. His re- serve 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 recognizable beauties of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored 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 run- ning 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 influ- ence 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 undevi- ating transmission from sire to son of the patrimony with the name, which had at 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 124 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 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 superstition 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 up- lifted 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 imme- diate vicinity an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn a pestilent and mystic vapor, 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 ex- terior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from 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 spacious totality of old woodwork which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault with no disturbance from the breath THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 125 of the external air. Beyond this indication of exten- sive 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 my 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 stirring up. On one of the staircases I met the physi- cian 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 distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through 126 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 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 arose 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 con- strained 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 with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boy- hood. 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 surpass- ingly 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 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 127 regions of the temple, made up altogether a counte- nance 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 con- vey, 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 ex- cessive 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 con- clusions deduced from his peculiar physical conforma- tion 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 con- cision 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. 128 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 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 acute- ness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture ; the odors 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 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 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 129 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 gray 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 palp- able origin to the severe and long-continued illness indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution of a tenderly beloved sister his sole companion for long years his last and only relative on earth. " Her de- cease," he said, with a bitterness which I can never for- get, " 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 instinc- tively 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 Vol. I. 9. 130 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 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 myself; and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavors to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read to- gether, or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild im- provisations 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 attempts 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 impro- vised dirges will ring for ever in my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singu- lar perversion and amplification of the wild air of the THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 131 last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses 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 endeavor 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 Koderick Usher. For me at least in the circumstances then surrounding me there arose out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw u^pon 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 exceed- ing 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 splendor. 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 132 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 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 his 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 accom- panied himself with rhymed-verbal improvisations) the result of that intense mental collectedness and concen- tration 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 forci- bly 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) And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 133 m. 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 (Porphyrogeue !) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. IV. And all with pearl and ruby glowing 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. 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 travelers 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 for ever, 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, which I mention not so much on account of its novelty (for other men* have thought thus), as on account of the pertinacity * Watson, Dr. Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop of Llan- daff. See " Chemical Essays," vol. v. 134 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its 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 inorganiza- tion. I lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion. The belief, how- ever, 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 importu- nate 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 ; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D'lndagine", and of De la Chambre; the THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 135 Journey into the Blue Distance of Tieck ; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favorite volume was a small octavo edition of the Directorium Inquisi- torium, by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and (Egipans, 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 for- gotten church the Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum Cho- rum Ecclesiae Maguntinae. I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochon- driac, 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 (pre- viously 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 pro- ceeding was one which I did not feel at liberty to dis- pute. 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 man, 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 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 136 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 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 trestles 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 sym- pathies 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 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 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 137 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 laboring 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 mad- ness, 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 super- stitions. It was especially upon retiring to bed late at 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 endeavored to believe that much if not all of what I felt was due to the bewildering 138 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 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 fit- fully 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 cer- tain 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 hor- ror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavored 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 atten- tion. I presently recognized it as that of Usher. In an instant afterward 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 demeanor. His air appalled me but anything was preferable to the soji- tude 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 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 139 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 fre- quent 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 life-like 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 pre- vent 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 gaseous exhalation which hung about and en- shrouded the mansion. " You must not you shall not behold this ! " said I, shudderingly, to Usher, as I led him with a gentle vio- lence 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 favorite romances. I will read, and you shall listen ; and so we will pass away this terrible night together." 140 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. The antique volume which I had taken up was the "Mad Trist" of Sir Launcelot Canning, but I had called it a favorite 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 anoma- lies) 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 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." THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 141 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) 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 dis- turbed me. I continued the story : " But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was soon enraged and amazed to per- ceive no signal of the maliceful hermit ; but in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanor, 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 conqueror 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 feel- ing 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 142 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grat- ing 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 this second and most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were predominate, I still retained suffi- cient presence of mind to avoid exciting by any obser- vation 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 demeanor. From a position fronting my own, he 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 enchant- ment 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 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 143 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 the floor of silver I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently muffled, reverberation. Completely un- nerved, 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 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 clangor 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 ? 144 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. Have I not heard her footstep 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 ivithout 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 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 trem- bling 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 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 146 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 dark tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the " House of Usher." vol. L MX THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. Impia tortorum, longas hie turba furores Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit. Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro, More ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent. [Quatrain composed for the gales of a market to be erected upon the site of the Jacobin dub House at Paris.] I was sick, sick unto death, with that long agony, and when they at length unbound me, and I was per- mitted 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 con- veyed 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 immovable 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 (147) 148 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 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 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, 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 ap- peared swallowed up in a mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and night were the universe. I had swooned ; but still will not say that all of con- sciousness 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 slum- bers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterwards (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, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 149 that of the sense of physical existence. It seems prob- able 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 dis- tinguish its shadows from those of the tomb ? But if the 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 re- member, 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 indis- tinctly of tall figures that lifted and bore me in silence down down still down till a hideous dizziness op- pressed 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 through- out all things; as if those who bore me (a ghastly train !) had outrun, in their descent, the limits of the 150 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 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. 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 dra- peries, 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 black- ness of eternal night encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness seemed to op- press and stifle me. The atmosphere was intolerably THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 151 close. I still lay quietly, and made effort to exercise my reason. I brought to mind the inquisitorial pro- ceedings, and attempted from that point to deduce my real condition. The sentence had passed, and it ap- peared 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 re- manded 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 imme- diate 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 sus- pense 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. 152 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. And now, as I still continued to step cautiously on- ward, 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 dark- ness; 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 pro- cess, 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, never- theless, 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 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 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 153 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 tjpon this circum- stance, but ate and drank with avidity. Shortly after- wards 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 in these re- searches, 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, how- ever, 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. I stepped on it, and fell violently on my face. In the confusion attending my fall, I did not immedi- ately apprehend a somewhat startling circumstance, 154 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 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 seem- ingly 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 reverbera- tions 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 sud- denly 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 In- quisition. To the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors. I had been re- served 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. THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 155 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 drank 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 wall 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 terrible circumstances which en- vironed me, than 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 156 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 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 arous- ing from lethargy or sleep ! The angles were simply those of a few slight depressions or niches at odd inter- vals. 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 dis- figured 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 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. THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 157 It passed in many convolutions about my limbs and body, leaving at liberty only my head, and my left arm to such an extent that I could by dint of much exer- tion 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 con- structed 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 the 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 atten- tively. 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 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. 158 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. It might have been half an hour, perhaps even an hour (for I could take but imperfect note of time), before I again cast my eyes upward. What I then saw con- founded and amazed me. The sweep of the pendulum had increased in extent by nearly a yard. As a natu- ral consequence, its velocity was also much greater. But what mainly disturbed me was the idea that it had perceptively 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 t lie pit, whose horrors had been destined for so bold a recusant as myself, the pit, typical of hell, and regarded by rumor as the Ultima Thule of all their punish- ments. The plunge into this pit I had avoided by the merest accidents, and I knew that surprise or entrap- ment 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 oscillations of the steel ! Inch by inch line THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 159 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 pain- ful 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 busi- ness had I with hope ? It was, as I say, a half-formed thought man has many such, which are never com- pleted. I felt that it was of joy of hope ; but I 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 160 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 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 its terrifically wide sweep (some thirty feet or more) and the 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 atten- tion as if, in so dwelling, I could arrest here the de- scent 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 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 predom- inant. 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 fasten- ings 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 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 161 outward or upward whirls with the eagerness of the most unmeaning despair ; they closed themselves spas- modically 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 first stroke of the razor-like 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 1 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, my last hope frus- trated, 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 origi- nal position when there flashed upon my mind what I Vol. L-ii. 162 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 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 indeter- minately 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 swarm- ing 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 pre- vent them, all but a small 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 breath- lessly still. At first the ravenous animals were startled and terri- fied 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 re- mained without motion, one or two of the boldest leaped upon the framework and smelt at the surcingle. This seemed the signal for a general rush. Forth THE PIT AND THE PEND UL UM. 163 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 ban- dage. 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 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 en- dured in vain. I at length felt that I was free. The surcingle hung in ribbons 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 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 164 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 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 eyes nervously around on the barriers of iron that hemmed me in. Something un- usual some change which at first I could not appre- ciate distinctly it was obvious had taken place in the apartment. For many minutes of a dreamy and trembling abstraction I busied myself in vain, uncon- nected 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 en- deavored, but of 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 vapor of heated iron ! A suffocating odor pervaded the prison ! A deeper glow THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 165 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 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 endeavored 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 altera- tion stopped not here I neither hoped nor desired it to stop. I could have clasped the red walls to my 166 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. bosom as a garment of eternal peace. " Death," I said, " any death but that of the pit ! " Fool ! might I not have 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 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. 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 sym- pathy 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-depopu- lated, 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 nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair from without or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance (167) 168 THE MASQUE OF THE BED DEATH. 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 improvisa- tori, there were ballet dancers, there were musicians, there was beauty, there was wine. All these and secu- rity 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 un- usual 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 dis- posed 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 THE MASQUE OF THE BED DEATH. 169 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 tapes- tries 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 deco- rations. 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 projected 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 eastern 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 pendu- lum 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 170 THE MASQUE OF THE EED DEATH. of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were con- strained to pause momentarily in their performance to 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 medi- tation as before. But in spite of these things it was a gay and magnifi- cent 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 movable embel- lishments of the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great ftte ; 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 THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH. 171 has been since seen in "Hernani." There were ara- besque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the mad-man fashions. There were 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 east- wardly 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 pane : and the blackness of the sable drapery appalls : 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 gayeties of the other apartments. But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there 172 THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH. 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 reveled. 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 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 THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH. 173 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 revelers 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 move- ment, 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 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 delib- erate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. But, from a certain nameless awe with which 174 THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH. 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 assem- bly, 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, mad- dening 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 pur- suer. 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 revelers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and seizing the mummer, 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 THE MASQUE OF THE BED DEATH. 175 by one dropped the revelers 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. THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO. The thousand injuries of Fortunate 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 definitively 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 Fortunate 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 Fortunate 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 adapted to suit the time and opportunity to practice imposture upon the British and Austrian millionaires. In painting and gemmary Fortunate, like his countrymen, was a quack, but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this Vol. I. 12. (177) 178 THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO. respect I did not differ from him materially; I was skillful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could. 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 Amon- tillado, and I have my doubts." " How ? " said he, " Amontillado ? A pipe ? Impos- sible ! 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 con- sulting 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." " And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for your own." " Come let us go." "Whither?" THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO. 179 " To your vaults." " My friend, no ; I will not impose upon your good nature. I perceive you have an engagement. Lu- chesi " " 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 noth- ing. Amontillado I You have been imposed upon; and as for Luchesi, he cannot distinguish Sherry from Amontillado." Thus speaking, Fortunate possessed himself of my arm. Putting on a mask of black silk, and drawing a roque- laure closely about my person, I suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo. There were no attendants at home ; they had ab- sconded to make merry in honor 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 in- sure their immediate disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned. I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to Fortunate, 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 bella upon his cap jingled as he strode. " The pipe," said he. 180 THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO. " It is farther on," said I ; " but observe the white webwork which gleams from these cavern walls." He turned towards me, and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxi- cation. " 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. Be- sides, there is Luchesi " " Enough," he said ; " the cough is a mere noth- ing ; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough." " True true," I replied ; " and, indeed, I had no in- tention 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." THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO. 181 " 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 num- erous family." " I forget your arms." " A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure ; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are embedded 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 and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the 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 move- ment a grotesque one. " You do not comprehend ? " he said. " Not I," I replied. " Then you are not of the brotherhood." 182 THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO. "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. " It is this," I answered, producing a trowel from be- neath the folds of my roquelaure. "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 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 per- ceived 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 Fortunate, uplifting his dull THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO. 183 torch, endeavored to pry into the depths of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did not enable us to see. " Proceed," I said ; " herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchesi " " He is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed immedi- ately 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 de- pended a short chain, from the other a padlock. Throw- ing 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 uncovered 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 Fortunate had in 184 THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO. a great measure worn off. The earliest 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 labors 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 re- approached the wall. I replied to the yells of him who clamored. I re-echoed I aided I surpassed them in volume and in strength. I did this, and the clamorer 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. It was succeeded THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO. 185 by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognizing as that of the noble Fortunate. The voice said " Ha ! ha ! ha ! he ! he ! a very good joke indeed an excellent jest. We will 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 Fortunate 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 " Fortunate ! " No answer. I called again " Fortunate ! " No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remain- ing aperture and let it fall within. There came forth in return 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 labor. 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 a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat I MESMERIC REVELATION. Whatever doubt may still envelop the rationale of mesmerism, its startling facts are now almost univer- sally admitted. Of these latter, those who doubt are your mere doubters by profession an unprofitable and disreputable tribe. There can be no more absolute waste of time than the attempt to prove at the present day that man, by mere exercise of will, can so impress his fellow as to cast him into an abnormal condition, of which the phenomena resemble very closely those of death, or at least resemble them more nearly than they do the phenomena of any other normal condition within our cognizance ; that, while in this state, the person so impressed employs only with effort, and then feebly, the external organs of sense, yet perceives with keenly refined perception, and through channels supposed unknown, matters beyond the scope of the physical organs; that, moreover, his intellectual faculties are wonderfully exalted and invigorated ; that his sympa- thies with the person so impressing him are profound ; and, finally, that his susceptibility to the impression increases with its frequency, while, in the same propor- tion, the peculiar phenomena elicited are more extended and more pronounced. I say that these which are the laws of mesmerism in its general features it would be supererogation to (187) 188 MESMERIC REVELATION. demonstrate, nor shall I inflict upon my readers so needless a demonstration to-day. My purpose at present is a very different one indeed. I am impelled, even in the teeth of a world of prejudice, to detail without comment the very remarkable substance of a colloquy occurring between a sleep-waker and myself. I had been long in the habit of mesmerizing the person in question (Mr. Vankirk), and the usual acute susceptibility and exaltation of the mesmeric percep- tion had supervened. For many months he had been laboring under confirmed phthisis, the more distressing effects of which had been relieved by my manipulations, and on the night of Wednesday, the fifteenth instant, I was summoned to his bedside. The invalid was suffering with acute pain in the region of the heart, and breathed with great difficulty, having all the ordinary symptoms of asthma. In spasms such as these he had usually found relief from the applica- tion of mustard to the nervous centres, but to-night this had been attempted in vain. As I entered his room he greeted me with a cheerful smile, and although evidently in much bodily pain, appeared to be mentally quite at ease. " I sent for you to-night, " he said, " not so much to administer to my bodily ailment, as to satisfy me concerning certain psychical impressions which of late have occasioned me much anxiety and surprise. I need not tell you how skeptical I have hitherto been on the topic of the soul's immortality. I cannot deny that there has always existed, as if in that very soul which I have been denying, a vague half-sentiment of its own existence. But this half-sentiment at no time amounted to conviction. With it my reason had nothing to do. All attempts at logical inquiry resulted, MESMERIC REVELATION. 189 indeed in leaving me more skeptical than before. I had been advised to study Cousin. I studied him in his own works, as well as in those of his European and American echoes. The ' Charles Elwood ' of Mr. Brownson, for example, was placed in my hands. I read it with profound attention. Throughout I found it logical, but the portions which were not merely logical were unhappily the initial arguments of the disbelieving hero of the book. In his summing up it seemed evident to me that the reasoner had not even succeeded in convincing himself. His end had plainly forgotten his beginning, like the government of Trin- culo. In short, I was not long in perceiving that if man is to be intellectually convinced of his own im- mortality, he will never be so convinced by the mere abstractions which have been so long the fashion of the moralists of England, of France, and of Germany. Abstractions may amuse and exercise, but take no hold on the mind. Here upon earth, at least, philosophy, I am persuaded, will always in vain call upon us to look upon qualities as things. The will may assent the soul the intellect, never. " I repeat, then, that I only half-felt, and never intel- lectually believed. But latterly there has been a certain deepening of the feeling, until it has come so nearly to resemble the acquiescence of reason, that I find it difficult to distinguish between the two. I am enabled, too, plainly to trace this effect to the mesmeric in- fluence. I cannot better explain my meaning than by the hypothesis that the mesmeric exaltation enables me to perceive a train of ratiocination which, in my abnormal existence, convinces, but which, in full ac- cordance with the mesmeric phenomena, does not extend, except through its effect, into my normal condition. 190 MESMERIC REVELATION. In sleep-waking, the reasoning and its conclusion the cause and its effect are present together. In my natu- ral state, the cause vanishing, the effect only, and per- haps only partially, remains. " These considerations have led me to think that some good results might ensue from a series of well-directed questions propounded to me while mesmerized. You have often observed the profound self-cognizance evinced by the sleep-waker the extensive knowledge he dis- plays upon all points relating to the mesmeric condition itself; and from this self-cognizance may be deduced hints for the proper conduct of a catechism." I consented of course to make this experiment. A few passes threw Mr. Vankirk into the mesmeric sleep. His breathing became immediately more easy, and he seemed to suffer no physical uneasiness. The following conversation then ensued V. in the dialogue repre- senting the patient, and P. myself: P. Are you asleep ? V. Yes no ; I would rather sleep more soundly. P. [ After a few more passes.'] Do you sleep now ? V. Yes. P. How do you think your present illness will result? V- [ After a long hesitation and speaking as if with effort^] I must die. P. Does the idea of death afflict you ? V. [ Very quickly.'] No no ! P. Are you pleased with the prospect ? V. If I were awake I should like to die, but now it is no matter. The mesmeric condition is so near death as to content me. P. I wish you would explain yourself, Mr. Vankirk. V. I am willing to do so, but it requires more effort MESMERIC REVELATION. 191 than I feel able to make. You do not question me properly. P. What then shall I ask? V. You must begin at the beginning. P. The beginning ! but where is the beginning ? F. You know that the beginning is God. [This was said in a low fluctuating tone, and with every sign of the most profound veneration.] P. What, then, is God? F. [Hesitating for many minutes.] I cannot tell. P. Is not God spirit ? F. While I was awake I knew what you meant by " spirit," but now it seems only a word ; such, for in- stance, as truth, beauty a quality, I mean. P. Is not God immaterial ? F. There is no immateriality it is a mere word. That which is not matter, is not at all unless qualities are things. P. Is God, then, material ? F. No. [This reply startled me very much."] P. What, then, is He ? F. [After a long pause, and mutteringly] I see but it is a thing difficult to tell. [ Anot her long pause.] He is not spirit, for He exists. Nor is He matter, OB you understand it. But there are gradations of matter of which man knows nothing; the grosser impelling the finer, the finer pervading the grosser. The atmos- phere, for example, impels the electric principle, while the electric principle permeates the atmosphere. These gradations of matter increase in rarity or fineness until we arrive at a matter unparticled without particles indivisible one; and here the law of impulsion and'" permeation is modified. The ultimate or unparticled matter not only permeates all things but impels all 192 MESMERIC REVELATION. things and thus is all things within itself. This matter is God. What men attempt to embody in the word " thought " is this matter in motion. P. The metaphysicians maintain that all action is reducible to motion and thinking and that the latter is the origin of the former. F. Yes ; and I now see the confusion of idea. Mo- tion is the action of mind not of thinking. The unparticled matter, or God, in quiescence, is (as nearly as we can conceive it) what men call mind. And the power of self-movement (equivalent in effect to human volition) is, in the unparticled matter, the result of its unity and omniprevalence ; how I know not, and now clearly see that I shall never know. But the unparti- cled matter, set in motion by a law, or quality, existing within itself, is thinking. P. Can you give me no more precise idea of what you term the unparticled matter? V. The matters of which man is cognizant escape the senses in gradation. We have, for example, a metal, a piece of wood, a drop of water, the atmosphere, a gas, caloric, electricity, the luminiferous ether. Now we call all these things matter, and embrace all matter in one general definition ; but in spite of this, there can be no two ideas more essentially distinct than that which we attach to a metal, and that which we attach to the luminiferous ether. When we reach the latter, we feel an almost irresistible inclination to class it with spirit or with nihility. The only consideration which restrains us is our conception of its atomic constitution ; and here, even, we have to seek aid from our notion of an atom, as something possessing an infinite minuteness, solidity, palpability, weight. Destroy the idea of the atomic constitution and we should no longer be able to MESMERIC REVELATION. 193 regard the ether as an entity, or at least as matter. For want of a better word we might term it spirit. Take, now, a step beyond the luminiferous ether con- ceive a matter as much more rare than the ether, as this ether is more rare than the metal, and we arrive at once (in spite of all the school dogmas) at a unique mass an unparticled matter. For although we may admit infinite littleness in the atoms themselves, the infinitude of littleness in the spaces between them is an absurdity. There will be a point there will be a degree of rarity, at which, if the atoms are sufficiently numerous, the interspaces must vanish, and the mass absolutely coalesce. But the consideration of the atomic constitution being now taken away, the nature of the mass inevitably glides into what we conceive of spirit. It is clear, however, that it is as fully matter as before. The truth is, it is impossible to conceive spirit, since it is impossible to imagine what is not. When we flatter ourselves that we have formed its conception, we have merely deceived our understanding by the con- sideration of infinitely rarefied matter. P. There seems to me an insurmountable objection to the idea of absolute coalescence ; and that is the very slight resistance experienced by the heavenly bodies in their revolutions through space a resistance now ascertained, it is true, to exist in some degree, but which is, nevertheless, so slight as to have been quite over- looked by the sagacity even of Newton. We know that the resistance of bodies is chiefly in proportion to their density. Absolute coalescence is absolute density. Where there are no interspaces there can be no yield- ing. An ether absolutely dense would put &n infinitely more effectual stop to the progress of a star than would an ether of adamant or of iron. Vol. I. 13. 194 MESMEEIC REVELATION. P. Your objection is answered with an ease which is nearly in the ratio of its apparent unanswerability. As regards the progress of the star, it can make no difference whether the star passes through the ether or the ether through it. There is no astronomical error more unaccountable than that which reconciles the known retardation of the comets with the idea of their passage through an ether : for, however rare this ether be supposed, it would put a stop to all sidereal revolu- tion in a very far briefer period than has been admitted by those astronomers who have endeavored to slur over a point which they found it impossible to comprehend. The retardation actually experienced is, on the other hand, about that which might be expected from the friction of the ether in the instantaneous passage through the orb. In the one case, the retarding force is momen- tary and complete within itself in the other it is end- lessly accumulative. P. But in all this in this identification of mere matter with God is there nothing of irreverence ! [ J was forced to repeat this question before the sleep-waker fully comprehended my meaning.'] V. Can you say why matter should be less reverenced than mind ? But you forget that the matter of which I speak is in all respects the very " mind " or " spirit " of the schools, so far as regards its high capacities, and is, moreover, the " matter " of these schools at the same time. God, with all the powers attributed to spirit, is but the perfection of matter. P. You assert, then, that the unparticled matter in motion is thought ? F. In general this motion is the universal thought of the universal mind. This thought creates. All created things are but the thoughts of God. MESMERIC REVELATION. 195 P. You say, " in general." F. Yes. The universal mind is God. For new in- dividualities matter is necessary. P. But you now speak of "mind" and "matter" as do the metaphysicians. V. Yes to avoid confusion. When I say " mind," I mean the unparticled or ultimate matter ; by "matter," I intend all else. P. You were saying that "for new individualities matter is necessary." F Yes; for mind existing unincorporate is merely God. To create individual thinking beings it was neces- sary to incarnate portions of the divine mind. Thus man is individualized. Divested of corporate investiture, he were God. Now, the particular motion of the incarnated portions of the unparticled matter is the thought of man, as the motion of the whole is that of God. P. You say that divested of the body man will be God? F. [After much hesitation^ I could not have said this ; it is an absurdity. P. [Referring to my notes."] You did say that " di- vested of corporate investiture man were God." F. And this is true. Man thus divested would be God would be unindividualized. But he can never be thus divested at least never will be else we must imagine an action of God returning upon itself a pur- poseless and futile action. Man is a creature. Crea- tures are thoughts of God. It is the nature of thought to be irrevocable. P. I do not comprehend. You say that man will, never put off the body ? F. I say that he will never be bodiless. P. Explain. 196 MESMERIC REVELATION. V. There are two bodies the rudimental and the complete ; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call " death " is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full design. P. But of the worm's metamorphosis we are palpably cognizant. V. We, certainly but not the worm. The matter of which our rudimental body is composed is within the ken of the organs of that body ; or, more distinctly, our rudimental organs are adapted to the matter of which is formed the rudimental body, but not to that of which the ultimate is composed. The ultimate body thus escapes our rudimental senses, and we perceive only the shell which falls in decaying from the inner form, not that inner form itself; but this inner form, as well as the shell, is appreciable by those who have already acquired the ultimate life. P. You have often said that the mesmeric state very nearly resembles death. How is this ? V. When I say that it resembles death, I mean that it resembles the ultimate life ; for when I am entranced the senses of my rudimental life are in abeyance, and I perceive external things directly, without organs, through a medium which I shall employ in the ultimate, unorganized life. P. Unorganized? V. Yes ; organs are contrivances by which the indi- vidual is brought into sensible relation with particular classes and forms of matter to the exclusion of other classes and forms. The organs of man are adapted to his rudimental condition, and to that only; his ultimate MESMERIC REVELATION. 197 condition, being unorganized, is of unlimited comprehen- sion in all points but one the nature of the volition of God that is to say, the motion of the. unparticled matter. You will have a distinct idea of the ultimate body by conceiving it to be entire brain. This it is not ; but a conception of this nature will bring you near a comprehension of what it is. A luminous body im- parts vibration to the luminiferous ether. The vibra- tions generate similar ones within the retina ; these again communicate similar ones to the optic nerve. The nerve conveys similar ones to the brain ; the brain, also, simi- lar ones to the unparticled matter which permeates it. The motion of this latter is thought, of which perception is the first undulation. This is the mode by which the mind of the rudimental life communicates with the ex- ternal world ; and this external world is, to the rudi- mental life limited through the idiosyncrasy of its organs. But in the ultimate unorganized life the external world reaches the whole body (which is of a substance having affinity to brain, as I have said), with no other interven- tion than that of an infinitely rarer ether than even the luminiferous ; and to this ether in unison with it the whole body vibrates, setting in motion the unparticled matter which permeates it. It is to the absence of idiosyncratic organs, therefore, that we must attribute the nearly unlimited perception of the ultimate life. To rudimental beings, organs are the cages necessary to confine them until fledged. P. You speak of rudimental "beings." Are there other rudimental thinking beings than man ? F. The multitudinous conglomeration of rare matter into nebulae, planets, suns, and other bodies which are neither nebulae, suns nor planets, is for the sole purpose of supplying pabulum for the idiosyncrasy of the organs 198 MESMERIC REVELATION. of an infinity of rudimental beings. But for the neces- sity of the rudimental, prior to the ultimate life, there would have been no bodies such as these. Each of these is tenanted by a distinct variety of organic, rudimental thinking creatures. In all, the organs vary with the features of the place tenanted. At death, or metamorphosis, these creatures, enjoying the ultimate life immortality and cognizant of all secrets but the one, act all things and pass everywhere by mere volitioa : indwelling, not the stars, which to us seem the sole palpabilities, and for the accommodation of which we blindly deem space created but that SPACE itself that infinity of which the truly substantive vastness swallows up the star-shadows blotting them out as nonentities from the perception of the angel. P. You say that " but for the necessity of the rudi- mental life " there would have been no stars. But why this necessity ? F. In the inorganic life, as well as in the inorganic matter generally, there is nothing to impede the action of one simple unique law the Divine volition. With the view of producing impediment, the organic life and matter (complex, substantial, and . law-encumbered), were contrived. P. But again why need this impediment have been produced ? V. The result of law inviolate is perfection right negative happiness. The result of law violate is imperfection, wrong, positive pain. Through the im- pediments afforded by the number, complexity, and substantiality of the laws of organic life and matter, the violation of law is rendered to a certain extent practicable. Thus pain, which in the inorganic life is impossible, is possible in the organic. MESMERIC REVELATION. 199 P. But to what good end is pain thus rendered possible ? F All things are either good or bad by comparison. A sufficient analysis will show that pleasure, in all cases, is but the contrast of pain. Positive pleasure is a mere idea. To be happy at any one point we must have suffered at the same. Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed. But it has been shown that in the inorganic life pain cannot be, thus the necessity for the organic. The pain of the primi- tive life of Earth is the sole basis of the bliss of the ultimate life in Heaven. P. Still there is one of your expressions which I find it impossible to comprehend " the truly substantive vastness of infinity." F. This, probably, is because you have no sufficiently generic conception of the term " substance " itself. We must not regard it as a quality but as a sentiment ; it is the perception, in thinking beings, of the adapta- tion of matter to their organization. There are many things on the Earth, which would be nihility to the inhabitants of Venus many things visible and tangible in Venus which we could not be brought to appreciate as existing at all. But to the inorganic beings to the angels the whole of the unparticled matter is sub- stance ; that is to say, the whole of what we term " space " is to them the truest substantiality ; the stars, meantime, through what we consider their materiality, escaping the angelic sense, just in proportion as the unparticled matter through what we consider its imma- teriality eludes the organic. As the sleep-waker pronounced these latter words in a feeble tone, I observed on his countenance a singular expression, which somewhat alarmed me, and induced 200 MESMERIC REVELATION. me to awake him at once. No sooner had I done this, than, with a bright smile irradiating all his features, he fell back upon his pillow and expired. I noticed that in less than a minute afterward his corpse had all the stern rigidity of stone. His brow was of the coldness of ice. Thus, ordinarily, should it have appeared only after long pressure from Azrael's hand. Had the sleep- waker, indeed, during the latter portion of his discourse, been addressing me from out the region of the shadows? 1 CASH OFM.VALDEMAR THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAK. 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 further 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 fads as far as I comprehend them myself. , They are, suc- cinctly, these : My attention for the last three years had been re- peatedly 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 (201) 202 THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR. arrested by the process. There were other points to be ascertained, but these most excited my curiosity the last in especial, from the immensely 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 Harlem, 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 antici- pate. His will was at no period positively or thor- oughly 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 ap- proaching 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 THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR. 203 of M. Valdemar. I knew the steady philosophy of 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 of 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 re- ceived, 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 exces- sive. The pulse was barely perceptible. He retained, 204 THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR. nevertheless, in a very remarkable manner, both his mental power and a certain degree of physical strength. He spoke with distinctness took some palliative medi- cines without aid and, when I entered the room, was occupied in penciling memoranda in a pocketbook. He was propped up in the bed by pillows. Doctors D and F were in attendance. After pressing Valdemar's hand, I took these gentle- men 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 1 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 run- ning 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 ossifica- tion had proceeded with very unusual rapidity; no sign of it had been discovered a month before, and the adhesion had only been observed during the three pre- vious 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 bedside to hold conversa- tion 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 next night. THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR. 205 When they had gone, I spoke freely with M. Valde- mar 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 1), relieved me from farther embarrass- ment. 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 1 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 1, 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 mesmerized " adding immediately afterwards, ; " I fear you have deferred it too long." 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 206 THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAB. 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 hesi- tation 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 ap- parent ; 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 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 loins. The head was very slightly elevated. THE CASE OF H. 7ALDEMAE. 207 "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 in 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 1 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 cer- tainly 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, I had never perfectly succeeded before, and assuredly I had little thought of succeeding now ; but, to my astonish- ment, 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 this 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 a ball ; the 208 THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR. lips moved sluggishly, and from between them, in a barely audible whisper, issued the words : "Yes; asleep now. Do not awake 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. J 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 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 THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR. 209 themselves slowly open, the pupils disappearing upwardly ; the skin generally assumed a cadaverous hue, resembling not so much parchment as white paper : and the circu- lar 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 com- pletely ; 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 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 dis- tended 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 con- sidered 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 Vol. L 14. 210 THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAE. 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 intona- tion as well adapted to convey some idea of its un- earthly 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 gelat- inous 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 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 J 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 1 (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 1. 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 THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAE. 211 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 influ- ence 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 under- standing of the sleep-waker's state at this epoch. Other nurses were procured; and at ten o'clock I left the house in company with the two physicians and Mr. 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 agree- ing 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 pro- cess. It seemed clear to us all that to awaken M. Val- demar 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 sleep-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 212 THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR. 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, as especially remarkable, that this lowering of the pupil was accompanied by the profuse outflowing of a yellowish ichor (from beneath the lids) of a pungent and highly offensive odor. It was now suggested that I should attempt to influ- ence 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 vio- lently 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 ! / 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 recompose 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 ; THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR. 213 and I am sure that all in the room were prepared to see the patient awaken. For what really occurred, however, it is quite impos- sible that any human being could have been prepared. As I rapidly made the mesmeric passes, amid ejacu- lations 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. MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN A BOTTLE MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. Qui n'a plus qu'un moment a vivre N'a plus rien a dissimuler. QUINAULT ATYS. Of my country and of my family I have little to say. Ill-usage and length of years have driven me from the one, and estranged me from the other. Hereditary wealth afforded me an education of no common order, and a contemplative turn of mind enabled me to methodize the stores which early study very diligently garnered up. Beyond all things, the works of the German moralists gave me great delight ; not from any ill-advised admiration of their eloquent madness, but from the ease with which my habits of rigid thought enabled me to detect their falsities. I have often been reproached with the aridity of my genius ; a deficiency of imagination has been imputed to me as a crime ; and the Pyrrhonism of my opinions has at all times rendered me notorious. Indeed, a strong relish for physical philosophy has, I fear, tinctured my mind with a very common error, of this age I mean the habit of referring occurrences, even the least sus- ceptible of such reference, to the principles of that science. Upon the whole, no person could be less liable than myself to be led away from the severe pre- cincts of truth by the ignes fatui of superstition. I have thought proper to premise thus much, lest the incredible tale I have to tell should be considered rather the raving of a crude imagination than the (215) 216 MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. positive experience of a mind to which the reveries of fancy have been a dead letter and a nullity. After many years spent in foreign travel, I sailed in the year 18 , from the port of Batavia, in the rich and populous island of Java, on a voyage to the Archipelago of the Sunda Islands. I went as a passenger having no other inducement than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me as a fiend. Our vessel was a beautiful ship of about four hundred tons, copper-fastened, and built at Bombay of Malabar teak. She was freighted with cotton-wool and oil, from the Lachadive Islands. We had also on board coir, jaggeree, ghee, cocoanuts, and a few cases of opium. The stowage was clumsily done, and the vessel conse- quently crank. We got under way with a mere breath of wind, and for many days stood along the eastern coast of Java, without any other incident to beguile the monotony of our course than the occasional meeting with some of the small grabs of the Archipelago to which we were bound. One evening, leaning over the taffrail, I observed a very singular isolated cloud to the N. W. It was remarkable, as well for its color as from its being the first we had seen since our departure from Batavia. I watched it attentively until sunset, when it spread all at once to the eastward and westward, girting in the horizon with a narrow strip of vapor, and looking like a long line of low beach. My notice was soon afterwards attracted by the dusky-red appearance of the moon, and the peculiar character of the sea. The latter was undergoing a rapid change, and the water seemed more than usually transparent. Although I could distinctly see the bottom, yet, heaving the lead, MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. 217 I found the ship in fifteen fathoms. The air now became intolerably hot, and was loaded with spiral exhalations similar to those arising from heated iron. As night came on, every breath of wind died away, and a more entire calm it is impossible to conceive. The flame of a candle burned upon the poop without the least perceptible motion, and a long hair, held between the finger and thumb, hung without the possibility of detecting a vibration. However, as the captain said he could perceive no indication of danger, and as we were drifting in bodily to shore, he ordered the sails to be furled and the anchor let go. No watch was set, and the crew consisting principally of Malays, stretched themselves deliberately upon deck, I went below not without a full presentiment of evil. Indeed, every appearance warranted me in apprehend- ing a simoon. I told the captain my fears; but he paid no attention to what I said, and left me without deigning to give a reply. My uneasiness, however, pre- vented me from sleeping, and about midnight I went upon deck. As I placed my foot upon the upper step of the companion-ladder, I was startled by a loud hum- ming noise, like that occasioned by the rapid revolution of a mill-wheel, and before I could ascertain its meaning, I found the ship quivering to its centre. In the next instant a wilderness of foam hurled us upon our beam- ends, and, rushing over us fore and aft, swept the entire decks from stem to stern. The extreme fury of the blast proved, in a great measure, the salvation of the ship. Although com- pletely water-logged, yet, as her masts had gone by the board, she rose, after a minute, heavily from the sea, and, staggering a while beneath the immense pressure of the tempest, finally righted. 218 MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. By what miracle I escaped destruction it is impos- sible to say. Stunned by the shock of the water, I found myself upon recovery, jammed in between the stern-post and rudder. With great difficulty I gained my feet, and, looking dizzily around, was at first struck with the idea of our being among breakers ; so terrific, beyond the wildest imagination, was the whirlpool of mountainous and foaming ocean within which we were engulfed. After a while I heard the voice of an old Swede, who had shipped with us at the moment of our leaving port. I hallooed to him with all my strength, and presently he came reeling aft. We soon discovered that we were the sole survivors of the accident. All on deck, with the exception of our- selves, had been swept overboard ; the captain and mates must have perished as they slept, for the cabins were deluged with water. Without assistance we could expect to do little for the security of the ship, and our exertions were at first paralyzed by the momentary expectation of going down. Our cable had, of course, parted like pack-thread, at the first breath of the hurricane, or we should have been instan- taneously overwhelmed. We scudded with frightful velocity before the sea, and the water made clear breaches over us. The framework of our stern was shattered excessively, and in almost every respect we had received considerable injury ; but to our extreme joy we found the pumps unchoked, and that we had made no great shifting of our ballast. The main fury of the blast had already blown over, and we appre- hended little danger from the violence of the wind; but we looked forward to its total cessation with dis- may ; well believing, that in our shattered condition, we should inevitably perish in the tremendous swell MS. FOUND JN A BOTTLE. 219 which would ensue. But this very just apprehension seemed by no means likely to be soon verified. For five entire days and nights during which our only sub- sistence was a small quantity of jaggeree, procured with great difficulty from the forecastle the hulk flew at a rate defying computation, before rapidly succeeding flaws of wind, which, without equaling the first violence of the simoon, were still more terrific than any tempest I had before encountered. Our course for the first four days was, with trifling variations, S. E. and by S. ; and we must have run down the coast of New Holland. On the fifth day the cold became extreme, although the wind had hauled round a point more to the northward. The sun arose with a sickly yellow lustre, and clam- bered a very few degrees above the horizon emitting no decisive light. There were no clouds apparent, yet the wind was upon the increase and blew with a fitful and unsteady fury. About noon, as nearly as we could guess, our attention was again arrested by the appear- ance of the sun. It gave out no light, properly so called, but a dull and sullen glow without reflection, as if all its rays were polarized. Just before sinking wifhin the turgid sea, its central fires suddenly went out, as if hurriedly extinguished by some unaccountable power. It was a dim, silver-like rim, alone, as it rushed down the unfathomable ocean. We waited in vain for the arrival of the sixth day that day to me has not arrived to the Swede never did arrive. Thenceforward we were enshrouded in pitchy darkness, so that we could not have seen an object at twenty paces from the ship. Eternal night continued to envelop us, all unrelieved by the phosphoric sea- brilliancy to which we had been accustomed in the tropics. We observed, too, that, although the tempest 220 MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. continued to rage with unabated violence, there was no longer to be discovered the usual appearance of surf, or foam, which had hitherto attended us. All around were horror, and thick gloom, and a black sweltering desert of ebony. Superstitious terror crept by degrees into the spirit of the old Swede, and my own soul was wrapped up in silent wonder. We neglected all care of the ship as worse than useless, and securing our- selves, as well as possible, to the stump of the mizzenmast, looked out bitterly into the world of ocean. We had no means of calculating time, nor could we form any guess of our situation. We were, however, well aware of having made farther to the southward than any previous navigators, and felt great amazement at not meeting with the usual impediments of ice. In the meantime every moment threatened to be our last every mountainous billow hurried to overwhelm us. The swell surpassed anything I had imagined possible, and that we were not instantly buried is a miracle. My companion spoke of the lightness of our cargo, and reminded me of the excellent qualities of our ship ; but I could not help feeling the utter hopelessness of hope itself, and prepared myself gloomily for that death which I thought nothing could defer beyond an hour, as, with every knot of way the ship made, the swelling of the black stupendous seas became more dismally appalling. At times we gasped for breath at an eleva- tion beyond the albatross at times became dizzy with the velocity of our descent into some watery hell, where the air grew stagnant, and no sound disturbed the slumbers of the kraken. We were at the bottom of one of the abysses, when a quick scream from my companion broke fearfully upon the night. " See I see ! " cried he, shrieking in my MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. 221 ears, " Almighty God ! see ! see ! " As he spoke, I became aware of a dull, sullen glare of red light which streamed down the sides of the vast chasm where we lay, and threw a fitful brilliancy upon our deck. Cast- ing my eyes upwards, I beheld a spectacle which froze the current of my blood. At a terrific height directly above us, and upon the very verge of the precipitous descent, hovered a gigantic ship, of perhaps four thou- sand tons. Although up reared upon the summit of a wave more than a hundred times her own altitude, her apparent size still exceeded that of any ship of the line or East Indiaman in existence. Her huge hull was of a deep dingy black, unrelieved by any of the customary carvings of a ship. A single row of brass cannon pro- truded from her open ports, and dashed from their polished surfaces the fires of innumerable battle-lanterns, which swung to and fro about her rigging. But what mainly inspired us with horror and astonishment was, that she bore up under a press of sail in the very teeth of that supernatural sea, and of that ungovernable hurricane. When we first discovered her, her bows were alone to be seen, as she rose slowly from the dim and horrible gulf beyond her. For a moment of intense terror she paused upon the giddy pinnacle, as if in contemplation of her own sublimity, then trembled and tottered, and came down. At this instant, I know not what sudden self-pos- session came over my spirit. Staggering as far aft as I could, I awaited fearlessly the ruin that was to over- whelm. Our own vessel was at length ceasing from her struggles, and sinking with her head to the sea. The shock of the descending mass struck her, conse- quently, in that portion of her frame which was already under water, and the inevitable result was to hurl 222 MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. me, with irresistible violence, upon the rigging of the stranger. As I fell, the ship hove in stays, and went about, and to the confusion ensuing I attributed my escape from the notice of the crew. With little difficulty I made my way, unperceived, to the main hatchway, which was partially open, and soon found an opportu- nity of secreting myself in the hold. Why I did so I can hardly tell. An indefinite sense of awe, which at first sight of the navigators of the ship had taken hold of my mind, was perhaps the principle of my concealment. I was unwilling to trust myself with a race of people who had offered, to the cursory glance I had taken, so many points of vague novelty, doubt, and apprehension. I therefore thought proper to contrive a hiding place in the hold. This I did by removing a small portion of the shifting-boards, in such a manner as to afford me a con- venient retreat between the huge timbers of the ship. I had scarcely completed my work, when a footstep in the hold forced me to make use of it. A man passed by my place of concealment with a feeble and unsteady gait. I could not see his face, but had an opportunity of observing his general appearance. There was about it an evidence of great age and infirmity. His knees tottered beneath a load of years, and his entire frame quivered under the burden. He muttered to himself, in a low broken tone, some words of a language which I could not understand, and groped in a corner among a pile of singular-looking instruments, and decayed charts of navigation. His manner was a wild mixture of the peevishness of second childhood and the solemn dignity of a God. He at length went on deck, and I saw him no more. * * * * MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. 223 A feeling, for which I have no name, has taken pos- session of my soul a sensation which will admit of no analysis, to which the lessons of bygone time are inade- quate, and for which I fear futurity itself will offer me no key. To a mind constituted like my own, the latter consideration is an evil. I shall never I know that I shall never be satisfied with regard to the nature of my conceptions. Yet it is not wonderful that these conceptions are indefinite, since they have their origin in sources so utterly novel. A new sense a new entity is added to my soul. 5|C ?f 3J *j It is long since I first trod the deck of this terrible ship, and the rays of my destiny are, I think, gathering to a focus. Incomprehensible men ! Wrapped up in meditations of a kind which I cannot divine, they pass me by unnoticed. Concealment is utter folly on my part, for the people will not see. It was but just now that I passed directly before the eyes of the mate ; it was no long while ago that I ventured into the cap- tain's own private cabin, and took thence the materials with which I write, and have written. I shall from time to time continue this journal. It is true that I may not find an opportunity of transmitting it to the world, but I will not fail to make the endeavor. At the last moment I will enclose the MS. in a bottle and cast it within the sea. * * * * An incident has occurred which has given me new room for meditation. Are such things the operation of ungoverned chance? I have ventured upon deck and thrown myself down, without attracting any notice, among a pile of ratline stuff and old sails, in the bottom of the yawl. While musing upon the 224 MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. singularity of my fate, I unwittingly daubed with a tar brush the edges of a neatly folded studding-sail which lay near me on a barrel. The studding-sail is now bent upon the ship, and the thoughtless touches of the brush are spread out into the word DISCOVERY. I have made many observations lately upon the structure of the vessel. Although well armed, she is not, I think, a ship of war. Her rigging, build, and general equipment, all negative a supposition of this kind. What she is not, I can easily perceive ; what she is, I fear it is impossible to say. I know not how it is, but in scrutinizing her strange model and singular cast of spars, her huge size and overgrown suits^ of canvas, her severely simple bow and antiquated stern, there will occasionally flash across my mind a sensa- tion of familiar things, and there is always mixed up with such indistinct shadows of recollection an un- accountable memory of old foreign chronicles and ages long ago. *T* ** *l* *T* I have been looking at the timbers of the ship. She is built of a material to which I am a stranger. There is a peculiar character about the wood which strikes me as rendering it unfit for the purpose to which it has been applied. I mean its extreme porousness, considered independently of the worm-eaten condition which is a consequence of navigation in these seas, and apart from the rottenness attendant upon age. It will appear per- haps an observation somewhat over-curious, but this wood would have every characteristic of Spanish oak, if Spanish oak were distended by any unnatural means. In reading the above sentence, a curious apothegm of an old weather-beaten Dutch navigator comes full upon my recollection. " It is as sure," he was wont to .MSI FOUND IN A BOTTLE. 225 say, when any doubt was entertained of his veracity, " as sure as there is a sea where the ship itself will grow in bulk like the living body of the seaman." * * * * About an hour ago, I made bold to thrust myself among a group of the crew. They paid me no manner of attention, and, although I stood in the very midst of them all, seemed utterly unconscious of my presence. Like the one I had first seen in the hold, they all bore about them the marks of a hoary old age. Their knees trembled with infirmity; their shoulders were bent double with decrepitude; their shriveled skins rattled in the wind; their voices were low, tremulous, and broken, their eyes glistened with the rheum of years ; and their gray hairs streamed terribly in the tempest. Around them, on every part of the deck, lay scattered mathematical instruments of the most quaint and obso- lete construction. ***** I mentioned some time ago the bending of a studding- sail. From that period, the ship, being thrown dead off the wind, has continued her terrific course due south, with every rag of canvas packed upon her, from her trucks to her lower studding-sail booms, and rolling every moment her top-gallant yard-arms into the most appall- ing hell of water which it can enter into the mind of man to imagine. I have just left the deck, where I find it impossible to maintain a footing, although the crew seem to experience little inconvenience. It appears to me a miracle of miracles that our enormous bulk is not swallowed up at once and forever. We are surely doomed to hover continually upon the brink of eternity, without taking a final plunge into the abyss. From billows a thousand times more stupendous than any I have even seen, we glide away with the facility of the arrowy sea-gull ; and the colossal waters rear their heads Vol. I 15. 228 MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. above us like demons of the deep, but like demons confined to simple threats, and forbidden to destroy. I am led to attribute these frequent escapes to the only natural cause which can account for such effect. I must suppose the ship to be within the influence of some strong current, or impetuous under-tow. * * * I have seen the captain face to face, and in his own cabin but, as I expected, he paid me no attention. Although in his appearance there is, to a casual ob- server, nothing which might bespeak him more or less than man, still, a feeling of irrepressible reverence and awe mingled with the sensation of wonder with which I regarded him. In stature, he is nearly my own height ; that is, about five feet eight inches. He is of a well-knit and compact frame of body, neither robust nor remark- able otherwise. But it is the singularity of the expres- sion which reigns upon the face it is the intense, the wonderful, the thrilling evidence of old age, so utter, so extreme, which excites within my spirit a sense a senti- ment ineffable. His forehead, although little wrinkled, seems to bear upon it the stamp of a myriad of years. His gray hairs are records of the past, and his grayer eyes are sibyls of the future. The cabin floor was thickly strewn with strange, iron-clasped folios, and mouldering instruments of science, and obsolete long- forgotten charts. His head was bowed down upon his hands, and he pored with a fiery unquiet eye over a paper which I took to be a commission, and which, at all events, bore the signature of a monarch. He mut- tered to himself as did the first seaman whom I saw in the hold some low peevish syllables of a foreign tongue; and although the speaker was close at my elbow, his voice seemed to reach my ears from the distance of a mile. ***** MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. 227 The ship and all in it are imbued with the spirit of Eld. The crew glide to and fro like the ghosts of buried centuries ; their eyes have an eager and uneasy meaning ; and when their figures fall athwart my path in the wild glare of the battle-lanterns, I feel as I have never felt before, although I have been all my life a dealer in antiquities, and have imbibed the shadows of fallen columns at Balbec, and Tadmor, and Persepolis, until my very soul has become a ruin. When I look around me I feel ashamed of my former apprehensions. If I trembled at the blast which has hitherto attended us, shall I not stand aghast at a war- ring of wind and ocean, to convey any idea of which the words tornado and simoon are trivial and ineffec- tive ? All in the immediate vicinity of the ship is the blackness of eternal night, and a chaos of foamless water ; but, about a league on either side of us, may be seen, indistinctly and at intervals, stupendous ramparts of ice towering away into the desolate sky, and looking like the walls of the universe. * * * As I imagined, the ship proves to be in a current if that appellation can properly be given to a tide which howling and shrieking by the white ice, thunders on to the southward with a velocity like the headlong dashing of a cataract. * * * To conceive the horror of my sensations is, I presume, utterly impossible ; yet a curiosity to penetrate the mysteries of these awful regions predominates even over my despair, and will reconcile me to the most hideous aspect of death. It is evident that we are hurrying onwards to some exciting knowledge some never-to-be- imparted secret, whose attainment is destruction. Per- haps this current leads us to the southern pole itself. 228 MS, FOUND IN A BOTTLE. It must be confessed that a supposition apparently so wild has every probability in its favor. # # # # The crew pace the deck with unquiet and tremulous step ; but there is upon their countenances an expres- sion more of the eagerness of hope than of the apathy of despair. In the meantime the wind is still in our poop, and as we carry a crowd of canvas the ship is at times lifted bodily from out the sea ! Oh, horror upon horror ! the ice opens suddenly to the right, and to the left, and we are whirling dizzily, in immense concentric circles, round and round the borders of a gigantic amphitheatre, the summit of whose walls is lost in the darkness and the distance. But little time will be left me to ponder upon my destiny ! The circles rapidly grow small we are plunging madly within the grasp of the whirlpool and amid a roaring, and bellowing and thundering of ocean and of tempest, the ship is quivering O God ! and going down ! Note. The " MS. Found In a Bottle " was originally published in 1831, and it was not until many years afterwards that I became acquainted with the maps of Mercator, in which the ocean is represented as rushing, by four mouths, into the (northern) Polar Gulf, to be absorbed into the bowels of the earth ; the Pole itself being represented by a black rock towering to a prodigious height. A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways ; nor are the models that we frame any way commensurate to the vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, which have a depth in them greater than the wett of Democrittis. JOSEPH GLANVILL. We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the old man seemed too much ex- hausted to speak. "Not long ago," said he at length, "and I could have guided you on this route as well as the youngest of my sons ; but about three years past, there happened to me an event such as never happened before to mortal man or at least such as no man ever survived to tell of and the six hours of deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up body and soul. You sup- pose me a very old man but I am not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion, and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look over this little cliff without getting giddy ? " The " little cliff," upon whose edge he had so care- lessly thrown himself down to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung over it, while he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his elbow on its extreme and slippery edge this " little cliff" arose, a sheer unobstructed precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet from the world of (229) 230 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. crags beneath us. Nothing would have tempted me to within half a dozen yards of its brink. In truth so deeply was I excited by the perilous position of my com- panion, that I fell at full length upon the ground, clung to the shrubs around me, and dared not even glance upward at the sky while I struggled in vain to divest myself of the idea that the very foundations of the mountain were in danger from the fury of the winds. It was long before I could reason myself into sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the distance. " You must get over these fancies," said the guide, " for I have brought you here that you might have the best possible view of the scene of that event I mentioned and to tell you the whole story with the spot just under your eye." " We are now," he continued in that particularizing manner which distinguished him "we are now close upon the Norwegian coast in the sixty-eighth degree of latitude in the great province of Nordland and in the dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon whose top we sit is Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now raise yourself up a little higher hold on to the grass if you feel giddy so and look out, beyond the belt of vapor beneath us into the sea." I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer's account of the Mare Tenebrarum. A panorama more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horribly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against it, its white and ghastly crest, howling and A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. 231 shrieking forever. Just opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible a small, bleak-looking island ; or, more properly, its position was discernible through the wilderness of surge in which it was enveloped. About two miles nearer the land arose another of smaller size, hideously craggy and barren, and encompassed at various intervals by a clus- ter of dark rocks. The appearance of the ocean, in the space between the more distant island and the shore, had something very unusual about it. Although at the time so strong a gale was blowing landward that a brig in the remote offing lay to under a double-reefed try-sail, and con- stantly plunged her whole hull out of sight, still there was here nothing like a regular swell, but only a short, quick, angry cross dashing of water in every direction as well in the teeth of the wind as otherwise. Of foam there was little except in the immediate vicinity of the rocks. " The island in the distance," resumed the old man, " is called by the Norwegians Vurrgh. The one mid- way is Moskoe. That a mile to the northward is Ambaaren. Yonder are Islesen, Hotholm, Keildhelm, Suarven, and Buckholm. Farther off- between Moskoe and Vurrgh are Otterholm, Flimen, Sandflesen, and Stockholm. These are the true names of the places but why it has been thought necessary to name them at all, is more than either you or I can understand. Do you hear anything ? Do you see any change in the water?" We had now been about ten minutes upon the top of Helseggen, to which we had ascended from the interior of Lofoden, so that we had caught no glimpse 232 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. of the sea until it had burst upon us from the summit. As the old man spoke, I became aware of a loud and gradually increasing sound, like the moaning of a vast herd of buffaloes upon an American prairie ; and at the same moment I perceived that what seamen term the chopping character of the ocean beneath us, was rapidly changing into a current which set to the eastward. Even while I gazed this current acquired a monstrous velocity. Each moment added to its speed to its headlong impetuosity. In five minutes the whole sea as far as Vurrgh was lashed into ungovernable fury ; but it was between Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar held its sway. Here the vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into frenzied convulsion heaving, boil- ing, hissing gyrating in gigantic and innumerable vor- tices, and all whirling and plunging on to the eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes except in precipitous descents. In a few moments more, there came over the scene another radical alteration. The general surface grew somewhat more smooth, and the whirlpools one by one disappeared, while prodigious streaks of foam became apparent where none had been seen before. These streaks, at length, spreading out to a great distance, and entering into combination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form the germ of another more vast. Suddenly very suddenly this assumed a distinct and definite existence in a circle of more than a mile in diameter. The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray ; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. 233 jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half-shriek, half-roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony to heaven. The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked. I threw myself upon my face, and clung to the scant herbage in an excess of nervous agitation. " This," said I at length, to the old man " this can be nothing else than the great whirlpool of the Mael- strom." " So it is sometimes termed," said he. " We Nor- wegians call it the Moskoe-strom, from the island of Moskoe in the midway." The ordinary accounts of this vortex had by no means prepared me for what I saw. That of Jonas Ramus, which is perhaps the most circumstantial of any, cannot impart the faintest conception either of the magnificence, or of the horror of the scene or of the wild bewildering sense of the novel which confounds the beholder. I am not sure from what point of view the writer in question surveyed it, nor at what time ; but it could neither have been from the summit of Helseggen, nor during a storm. There are some passages of his description, nevertheless, which may be qiioted for their details, although their effect is exceedingly feeble in conveying an impression of the spectacle. " Between Lofoden and Moskoe," he says, " the depth of the water is between thirty-five and forty fathoms ; but on the other side, toward Ver (Vurrgh), this depth decreases so as not to afford a convenient pas- sage for a vessel, without the risk of splitting on the 234 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. rocks, which happens even in the calmest weather. When it is flood, the stream runs up the country between Lofoden and Moskoe with a boisterous rapidity, but the roar of its impetuous ebb to the sea is scarce equaled by the loudest and most dreadful cataracts the noise being heard several leagues off, and the vortices or pits are of such an extent and depth, that if a ship comes within its attraction it is inevitably absorbed and carried down to the bottom and there beat to pieces against the rocks, and when the water relaxes the fragments thereof are thrown up again. But these intervals of tranquillity are only at the turn of the ebb and flood, and in calm weather, and last but a quarter of an hour, its violence gradually returning. When the stream is most boisterous, and its fury heightened by a storm, it is dangerous to come within a Norway mile of it. Boats, yachts, and ships have been carried away by not guarding against it before they were within its reach. It likewise happens frequently that whales come too near the stream, and are overpowered by its violence, and then it is impos- sible to describe their howlings and bellowings in their fruitless struggles to disengage themselves. A bear once, attempting to swim from Lofoden to Moskoe, was caught by the stream and borne down, while he roared terribly, so as to be heard on shore. Large stocks of firs and pine trees, after being absorbed by the current, rise again broken and torn to such a degree as if bristles grew upon them. This plainly shows the bottom to consist of craggy rocks, among which they are whirled to and fro. This stream is regulated by the flux and reflux of the sea it being constantly high and low water every six hours. In the year 1645, early in the morning of Sexagesima Sunday, it raged A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. 235 with such noise and impetuosity that the very stones of the houses on the coast fell to the ground." In regard to the depth of the water, I could not see how this could have been ascertained at all in the immediate vicinity of the vortex. The " forty fathoms " must have reference only to portions of the channel close upon the shore either of Moskoe or Lofoden. The depth in the centre of the Moskoe-strom must be im- measurably greater ; and no better proof of this fact is necessary than can be obtained from even the sidelong glance into the abyss of the whirl which may be had from the highest crag of Helseggen. Looking down from this pinnacle upon the howling Phlegethon below, I could not help smiling at the simplicity with which the honest Jonas Ramus records, as a matter difficult of belief, the anecdotes of the whales and the bears ; for it appeared to me, in fact, a self-evident thing that the largest ship of the line in existence coming within the influence of that deadly attraction could resist it as little as a feather the hurricane, and must disappear bodily and at once. The attempts to account for the phenomenon some of which I remember seemed to me sufficiently plausible in perusal now wore a very different and unsatisfac- tory aspect. The idea generally received is that this as well as three smaller vortices among the Ferroe Islands, " have no other cause than the collision of waves rising and falling at flux and reflux against a ridge of rocks and shelves, which confines the water so that it precipitates itself like a cataract ; and thus the higher the flood rises the deeper must the fall be, and the natural result of all is a whirlpool or vortex, the prodigious suction of which is sufficiently known by lesser experiments." These are the words of the 236 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Kircher and others imagine that in the centre of the channel of the Maelstrom is an abyss penetrating the globe, and issuing in some very remote part the Gulf of Bothnia being somewhat decidedly named in one instance. This opinion, idle in itself, was the one to which, as I gazed, my imagination most readily assented ; and mentioning it to the guide, I was rather surprised to hear him say that, although it was the view almost universally entertained of the sub- ject by the Norwegians, it nevertheless was not his own. As to the former notion he confessed his inability to com- prehend it ; and here I agreed with him for however conclusive on paper, it becomes altogether unintelligible, and even absurd, amid the thunder of the abyss. " You have had a good look at the whirl now," said the old man, " and if you will creep round this crag so as to get in its lee, and deaden the roar of the water, I will tell you a story that will convince you I ought to know something of the Moskoe-strom." I placed myself as desired, and he proceeded. " Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner- rigged smack of about seventy tons burthen, with which we were in the habit of fishing among the islands beyond Moskoe, nearly to Vurrgh. In all violent eddies at sea there is good fishing at proper opportuni- ties if one has only the courage to attempt it, but among the whole of the Lofoden coastmen, we three were the only ones who made a regular business of going out to the islands as I tell you. The usual grounds are a great way lower down to the southward. There fish can be got at all hours, without much risk, and there- fore these places are preferred. The choice spots over here among the rocks, however, not only yield the finest variety, but in far greater abundance, so that we A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. 237 often got in a single day what the more timid of the craft could not scrape together in a week. In fact, we made it a matter of desperate speculation the risk of life standing instead of labor, and courage answering for capital. "We kept the smack in a cove about five miles higher up the coast than this ; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take advantage of the fifteen minutes' slack to push across the main channel of the Moskoe-strom, far above the pool, and then drop down upon anchorage somewhere near Otterholm, or Sand- flesen, where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere. Here we used to remain until nearly time for slack- water again, when we weighed and made for home. We never set out upon this expedition without a steady side wind for going and coming one that we felt sure would not fail us before our return and we seldom made a miscalculation upon this point. Twice during six years we were forced to stay all night at anchor on account of a dead calm, which is a rare thing indeed, just about here ; and once we had to remain on the grounds nearly a week, starving to death, owing to a gale which blew up shortly after our arrival, and made the channel too boisterous to be thought of. Upon this occasion we should have been driven out to sea in spite of everything (for the whirl- pools threw us round and round so violently that at length we fouled our anchor and dragged it) if it had not been that we drifted into one of the innumerable cross currents here to-day and gone to-morrow which drove us under the lee of Flimen, where by good luck, we brought up. " I could not tell you the twentieth part of the diffi- culties we encountered 'on the grounds' it is a bad 238 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. spot to be in, even in good weather but we made shift always to run the gauntlet of the Moskoe-strom itself without accident : although at times my heart has been in my mouth when we happened to be a minute or so behind or before the slack. The wind sometimes was not as strong as we thought it at starting, and then we made rather less way than we could wish, while the current rendered the smack unmanageable. My eldest brother had a son eighteen years old, and I had two stout boys of my own. These would have been of great assistance at such times in using the sweeps, as well as afterwards in fishing, but somehow, although we ran the risk ourselves, we had not the heart to let the young ones get into the danger for, after all is said and done, it was a horrible danger, and that is the truth. " It is now within a few days of three years since what I am going to tell you occurred. It was on the tenth day of July, 18 , a day which the people of this part of the world will never forget for it was one in which blew the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the heavens ; and yet all the morning, and indeed until late in the afternoon, there was a gentle and steady breeze from the southwest, while the sun shone brightly so that the oldest seaman among us could not have foreseen what was to follow. " The three of us my two brothers and myself had crossed over to the islands about two o'clock p. m., and had soon nearly loaded the smack with fine fish, which, we all remarked, were more plentiful that day than we had ever known them. It was just seven by my watch when we weighed and started for home, so as to make the worst of the Strom at slackwater, which we knew would be at eight. A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM, 239 "We set out with a fresh wind on our starboard quarter, and for some time spanked along at a great rate, never dreaming of danger, for indeed we saw not the slightest reason to apprehend it. All at once we were taken aback by a breeze from over Helseggen. This was most unusual something that had never happened to us before and I began to feel a little uneasy without exactly knowing why. We put the boat on the wind, but could make no headway at all for the eddies, and I was put upon the point of pro- posing to return to the anchorage, when, looking astern, we saw the whole horizon covered with a singular copper-colored cloud that rose with the most amazing velocity. " In the meantime the breeze that had headed us off fell away, and we were dead becalmed, drifting about in every direction. This state of things, however, did not last long enough to give us time to think about it. In less than a minute the storm was upon us in less than two the sky was entirely overcast and what with this and the driving spray it became suddenly so dark that we could not see each other in the smack. " Such a hurricane as then blew it is folly to attempt describing. The oldest seaman in Norway never experi- enced anything like it. We had let our sails go by the run before it cleverly took us; but, at the first puff, both our masts went by the board as if they had been sawed off the mainmast taking with it my youngest brother, who had lashed himself to it for safety. " Our boat was the lightest feather of a thing that ever sat upon water. It had a complete flush deck, with only a small hatch near the bow, and this hatch it had always been our custom to batten down when about to cross the Strom by way of precaution against 240 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. the chopping seas. But for this circumstance we should have foundered at once for we lay entirely buried for some moments. How my elder brother escaped destruc- tion I cannot say, for I never had an opportunity of ascertaining. For my part, as soon as I had let the fore- sail run, I threw myself flat on deck, with my feet against the narrow gunwale of the bow, and with my hands grasping a ring-bolt near the foot of the fore-mast. It was mere instinct that prompted me to do this which was undoubtedly the very best thing I could have done for I was too much flurried to think. " For some moments we were completely deluged, as I say, and all this time I held my breath, and clung to the bolt. "When I could stand it no longer I raised myself upon my knees, still keeping hold with my hands, and thus got my head clear. Presently our little boat gave herself a shake, just as a dog does in coming out of the water, and thus rid herself in some measure of the seas. I was now trying to get the better of the stupor that had come over me, and to collect my senses so as to see what was to be done, when I felt somebody grasp my arm. It was my elder brother, and my heart leaped for joy, for I had made sure that he was overboard but the next moment all this joy was turned into horror for he put his mouth close to my ear, and screamed out the word ' MosJcoe-strom ! ' " No one ever will know what my feelings were at that moment. I shook from head to foot, as if I had had the most violent fit of the ague. I knew what he meant by that one word well enough I knew what he wished to make me understand. With the wind that now drove us on we were bound for the whirl of the Strom, and nothing could save us I " You perceive that in crossing the Strom channel, A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. 241 we always went a long way up above the whirl, even in the calmest weather, and then had to wait and watch carefully for the slack but now we were driving right upon the pool itself, and in such a hurricane as this ! ' To be sure,' I thought, ' we shall get there just about the slack there is some little hope in that ' but in the next moment I cursed myself for being so great a fool as to dream of hope at all. I knew very well that we were doomed had we been ten times a ninety- gun ship. " By this time the first fury of the tempest had spent itself, or perhaps we did not feel it so much as we scudded before it, but at all events the seas, which at first had been kept down by the wind and lay flat and frothing, now got up into absolute mountains. A singular change, too, had come over the heavens. Around in every direction it was still as black as pitch, but nearly overhead there burst out, all at once, a circular rift of clear sky as clear as I ever saw, and of a deep bright blue and through it there blazed forth the full moon with a lustre that I never before knew her to wear. She lit up everything about us with the greatest distinctness but O God, what a scene it was to light up ! " I now made one or two attempts to speak to my brother but, in some manner which I could not understand, the din had so increased that I could not make him hear a single word, although I screamed at the top of my voice in his ear. Presently he shook his head, looking as pale as death, and held up one of his fingers as if to say ' listen ! ' " At first I could not make out what he meant but soon a hideous thought flashed upon me. I dragged my watch from its fob. It was not going. I glanced Vol. I.-16. 242 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. at its face by the moonlight, and then burst into tears as I flung it far away into the ocean. It had run down at seven o'clock ! We were behind the time of the slack, and the whirl of the Strom was in full fury t " When a boat is well built, properly trimmed, and not deep laden, the waves in a strong gale, when she is going large, seem always to slip from beneath her which appears very strange to a landsman and this is what is called riding, in sea-phrase. Well, so far we had ridden the swells very cleverly, but presently a gigantic sea happened to take us right under the counter, and bore us with it as it rose up up as if into the sky. I would not have believed that any wave could rise so high. And then down we came with a sweep, a slide, and a plunge, that made me feel sick and dizzy, as if I was falling from some lofty moun- tain-top in a dream. But while we were up I had thrown a quick glance around and that one glance was all-sufficient. I saw our exact position in an in- stant. The Moskoe-strom whirlpool was about a quar- ter of a mile dead ahead but no more like the every- day Moskoe-strom, than the whirl as you now see it is like a mill-race. If I had not known where we were, and what we had to expect, I should not have recog- nized the place at all. As it was, I involuntarily closed my eyea in horror. The lids clenched themselves together as if in a spasm. "It could not have been more than two minutes afterward until we suddenly felt the waves subside, and were enveloped in foam. The boat made a sharp half turn to larboard, and then shot off in its new direction like a thunderbolt. At the same moment the roaring noise of the water was completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek such a sound as you might 243 imagine given out by the waste pipes of many thousand steam vessels letting off their steam altogether. We were now in the belt of surf that always surrounds the whirl ; and I thought of course that another moment would plunge us into the abyss down which we could only see indistinctly on account of the amazing velocity with which we were borne along. The boat did not seem to sink into the water at all, but to skim like an air-bubble upon the surface of the surge. Her starboard side was next the whirl, and on the larboard arose the world of ocean we had left. It stood like a huge writh- ing wall between us and the horizon. " It may appear strange, but now, when we were in the very jaws of the gulf, I felt more composed than when we were only approaching it. Having made up my mind to hope no more, I got rid of a great deal of that terror which unmanned me at first. I suppose it was despair that strung my nerves. " It may look like boasting but what I tell you is truth I began to reflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner, and how foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my own individual life in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God's power. I do believe that I blushed with shame when this idea crossed my mind. After a little while I became possessed with the keenest curiosity about the whirl itself. I positively felt a wish to explore its depths, even at the sacrifice I was going to make ; and my principal grief was that I should never be able to tell my old companions on shore about the mysteries I should see. These, no doubt, were singular fancies to occupy a man's mind in such extremity, and I have often thought since that the revolutions of the boat around the pool might have rendered me a little light-headed. 244 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. "There was another circumstance which tended to restore my self-possession, and this was the cessation of the wind, which could not reach us in our present situa- tion for, as you saw yourself, the belt of surf is con- siderably lower than the general bed of the ocean, and this latter now towered above us, a high, black, moun- tainous ridge. If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale you can form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by the wind and spray together. They blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all power of action or reflection. But we were now, in a great measure, rid of these annoyances just as death-con- demned felons in prison are allowed petty indulgences, forbidden them while their doom is yet uncertain. " How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impossible to say. We careered round and round for perhaps an hour, flying rather than floating, getting gradually more and more into the middle of the surge, and then nearer and nearer to its horrible inner edge. All this time I had never let go of the ring-bolt. My brother was at the stern, holding on to a small empty water-cask which had been securely lashed under the coop of the counter, and was the only thing on deck that had not been swept overboard when the gale first took us. As we approached the brink of the pit he let go his hold upon this, and made for the ring, from which, in the agony of his terror, he endeavored to force my hands, as it was not large enough to afford us both a secure grasp. I never felt deeper grief than when I saw him attempt this act although I knew he was a madman when he did it a raving maniac through sheer fright. I did not care, however, to contest the point with him. I knew it could make no difference whether either of us held on at all, so I let A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. 245 him have the bolt, and went astern to the cask. This there was no great difficulty in doing, for the smack flew round steadily enough, and upon an even keel, only swaying to and fro with the immense sweeps and swelters of the whirl. Scarcely had I secured myself in my new position when we gave a wild lurch to star- board, and rushed headlong into the abyss. I muttered a hurried prayer to God, and thought all was over. " As I felt the sickening sweep of the descent I had instinctively tightened my hold upon the barrel, and closed my eyes. For some seconds I dared not open them, while I expected instant destruction, and won- dered that I was not already in my death struggles with the water. But moment after moment clasped. I still lived. The sense of falling had ceased ; and the motion of the vessel seemed much as it had been before while in the belt of foam, with the exception that she now lay more along. I took courage, and looked once again upon the scene. " Never shall I forget the sensations of awe, horror, and admiration with which I gazed about me. The boat appeared to be hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel vast in circumference, prodigious in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides might have been mistaken for ebony but for the bewildering rapidity with which they spun around, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiance they shot forth, as the rays of the full moon, from that cir- cular rift amid the clouds which I have already de- scribed, streamed in a flood of golden glory along the black walls, and far away down into the inmost recesses of the abyss. " At first I was too much confused to observe any- thing accurately. The general burst of terrific grandeur 246 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. was all that I beheld. When I recovered myself a little, however, my gaze fell instinctively downward. In this direction I was able to obtain an unobstructed view from the manner in which the smack hung on the inclined surface of the pool. She was quite upon an even keel that is to say, her deck lay in a plane parallel with that of the water but this latter sloped at an angle of more than fifty-five degrees, so that we seemed to be lying upon our beam ends. I could not help observing, nevertheless, that I had scarcely more difficulty in main- taining my hold and footing in this situation than if 'we had been upon a dead level, and this, I suppose, was owing to the speed at which we revolved. The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom of the profound gulf; but still I could make out nothing distinctly, on account of a thick mist in which everything there was enveloped, and over which there hung a magnificent rainbow, like that narrow and tottering bridge which Mussulmans say is the only path- way between Time and Eternity. This mist or spray was no doubt occasioned by the clashing of the great walls of the funnel as they all met together at the bottom, but the yell that went up to the heavens from out of that mist I dare not attempt to describe. " Our first slide into the abyss itself, from the belt of foam above, had carried us a great distance down the slope, but our farther descent was by no means pro- portionate. Round and round we swept not with any uniform movement but in dizzying swings and jerks, that sent us sometimes only a few hundred yards sometimes nearly the complete circuit of the whirl. Our progress downward at each revolution was slow but very perceptible. " Looking about me upon the wide waste of liquid A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. 247 ebony on which we were thus borne, I perceived that our boat was not the only object in the embrace of the whirl. Both above and below us were visible fragments of vessels, large masses of building timber and trunks of trees, with many smaller articles, such as pieces of house furniture, broken boxes, barrels and staves. I have already described the unnatural curiosity which had taken the place of my original terrors. It appeared to grow upon me as I drew nearer and nearer to my dreadful doom. I now began to watch, with a strange interest, the numerous things that floated in our com- pany. I must have been delirious, for I even sought amusement in speculating upon the relative velocities of their several descents toward the foam below. 'This fir-tree,' I found myself at one time saying, ' will cer- tainly be the next thing that takes the awful plunge and disappears,' and then I was disappointed to find that the wreck of a Dutch merchant ship overtook it and went down before. At length, after making several guesses of this nature, and being deceived in all, this fact the fact of my invariable miscalculation set me upon a train of reflection that made my limbs again tremble, and my heart beat heavily once more. "It was not a new terror that thus affected me, but the dawn of a more exciting hope. This hope arose partly from memory, and partly from present observa- tion. I called to mind the great variety of buoyant matter that strewed the coast of Lofoden, having been absorbed and then thrown forth by the Moskoe- strom. By far the greater number of the articles were shattered in the most extraordinary way so chafed and roughened as to have the appearance of being stuck full of splinters but then I distinctly recollected that there were some of them which were 248 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. not disfigured at all. Now I could not account for this difference except by supposing that the roughened frag- ments were the only ones which had been completely absorbed that the others had entered the whirl at so late a period of the tide, or, for some reason, had descended so slowly after entering, that they did not reach the bottom before the turn of the flood came, or of the ebb, as the case might be. I conceived it possible, in either instance, that they might thus be whirled up again to the level of the ocean, without undergoing the fate of those which had been drawn in more early, or absorbed more rapidly. I made also, three important observations. The first was that, as a general rule, the larger the bodies were the more rapid their descent ; the second, that, between two masses of equal extent, the one spherical and the other of any other shape, the superiority in speed of descent was with the sphere ; the third, that, between two masses of equal size, the one cylindrical and the other of any other shape, the cylinder was absorbed the more slowly. Since my escape I have had several conversations on this subject with an old schoolmaster of the district, and it was from him that I learned the use of the words 'cylinder' and 'sphere.' He explained to me although I have forgotten the explanation how what I observed was in fact the natural consequence of the forms of the floating frag- ments, and showed me how it happened that a cylinder swimming in a vortex offered more resistance to its suction, and was drawn in with greater difficulty than an equally bulky body of any form whatever.* " There was one startling circumstance which went a great way in enforcing these observations and rendering me anxious to turn them to account, and this was that See Archimedes " De Incidentibtts in Fluido"W). 2. A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. 249 at every revolution we passed something like a barrel, or else the yard or the mast of a vessel, while many of these things which had been on our level, when I first opened my eyes upon the wonders of the whirlpool were now high up above us, and seemed to have moved but little from their original station. " I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash myself securely to the water-cask upon which I now held, to cut it loose from the counter, and to throw myself with it into the water. I attracted my brother's atten- tion by signs, pointed to the floating barrels that came near us, and did everything in my power to make him understand what I was about to do. I thought at length that he comprehended my design, but whether this was the case or not, he shook his head despairingly, and refused to move from his station by the ring-bolt. It was impossible to reach him, the emergency admitted of no delay, and so, with a bitter struggle, I resigned him to his fate, fastened myself to the cask by means of the lashings which secured it to the counter, and precipitated myself with it into the sea without another moment's hesitation. " The result was precisely what I had hoped it might be. As it is myself who now tell you this tale as you see that I did escape and as you are already in posses- sion of the mode in which this escape was eifected, and must therefore anticipate all that I have further to say, I will bring my story quickly to conclusion. It might have been an hour or thereabout after my quitting the smack, when, having descended to a vast distance be- neath me, it made three or four wild gyrations in rapid succession, and, bearing my loved brother with it, plunged headlong at once and for ever into the chaos of foam below. The barrel to which I was attached sunk 250 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. very little farther than half the distance between the bottom of the gulf and the spot at which I leaped over- board, before a great change took place in the character of the whirlpool. The slope of the sides of the vast funnel became momently less and less steep. The gyra- tions of the whirl grew gradually less and less violent. By degrees the froth and the rainbow disappeared, and the bottom of the gulf seemed slowly to uprise. The sky was clear, the winds had gone down, and the full moon was setting radiantly in the west, when I found myself on the surface of the ocean, in full view of the shores of Lofoden, and above the spot where the pool of the Moskoe-strom had been. It was the hour of the slack but the sea still heaved in mountainous waves from the effects of the hurricane. I was borne violently into the channel of the Strom, and in a few minutes was hurried down the coast into the ' grounds ' of the fishermen. A boat picked me up, exhausted from fatigue and (now that the danger was removed) speechless from the memory of its horror. Those who drew me on board were my old mates and daily companions, but they knew me no more than they would have known a traveler from the spirit-land. My hair, which had been raven-black the day before, was as white as you see it now. They say, too, that the whole expression of my countenance had changed. I told them my story they did not believe it. I now tell it to you, and I can scarcely expect you to put more faith in it than did the merry fishermen of Lofoden." iLACK CAT THE BLACK CAT 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 house- hold 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 baroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the commonplace 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 (251) 252 THE BLACK CAT. my manhood I derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure. To those who have cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the nature or the in- tensity 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 intemper- ance had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more THE BLACK CAT. 253 moody, more irritable, more regardless of the 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 suffi- cient 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 penknife, 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, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed. 254 THE BLACK CAT. 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 that I am that per- verseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart one of the indivisible primary faculties or senti- ments which gave direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or 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 a 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 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 THE BLACK CAT. 255 thing were possible, even beyond the reach of the infi- nite 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 con- flagration. 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 cjrowd were collected, and many persons seemed to be examining a particular portion of it with very minute and eager attention. The words " strange ! " " singular 1 " and other similar expressions, excited my curiosity. I approached and saw, as if graven in bos relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. The impression was given with an accuracy truly marvelous. 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 256 THE BLACK GAT. 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 fre- quented for another pet of the same species, and of somewhat similar appearance, with which to supply its place. One night as I sat half-stupefied in a den of more than infamy, my attention was suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon the head of one of the immense hogsheads of gin or of rum, which constituted the chief furniture of the apartment. I had been look- ing 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 there- upon. 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 THE BLACK CAT. 257 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, pre- venting me from physically abusing it. I did not, for some weeks, 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 Vol. L 17. 258 THE SLACK CAT. 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 foot- steps 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 chimeras it would be possible to conceive. My wife had called my attention more than once 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 THE SLACK CAT. 259 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 wretched- ness 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 woe ! 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 nightmare 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 of all things and of all mankind ! while from the sudden frequent and ungovernable out- bursts of a fury to which I now blindly abandoned my- self, 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 260 THE SLACK CAT. 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 inter- ference 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 forth- with and with entire deliberation to the task of conceal- ing 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 merchandise, 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 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 rest 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 anything suspicious. And in this calculation I was not deceived. By THE BLACK CAT. 261 means of a crowbar 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 relaid 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 brick work. 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 last, 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 previous anger, and forbore 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; ay, 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 free- man. The monster, in terror, had fled the premises for ever ! 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 262 THE BLACK CAT. 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 what- ever. 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 triumph, and to render doubly sure their assurance of my guilt- lessness. " 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-by, gentlemen, this this is a very well con- structed 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 frenzy of bra- vado, 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 THE BLACK CAT. 263 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 damned 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 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 1 THE ASSIGNATION. Stay for me there ! I will not fail To meet thee in that hollow vale. Exeqvy on the death of his wife, by Henry King, Bishop of CMchester. Ill-fated and mysterious man! bewildered in the brilliancy of thine own imagination, and fallen in the flames of thine own youth ! Again in fancy I behold thee ! Once more thy form hath risen before me ! not oh not as thou art in the cold valley and shadow but as thou shouldst be squandering away a life of magnificent meditation in that city of dim visions, thine own Venice which is a star-beloved Elysium of the sea, and the wide windows of whose Palladian palaces look down with a deep and bitter meaning upon the secrets of her silent waters. Yes ! I repeat it as thou shouldst be. There are surely other worlds than this other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude other speculations than the specula- tions of the sophists. Who then shall call thy conduct into question ? who blame thee for thy visionary hours, or denounce these occupations as a wasting away of life, which were but the overflowings of thine everlasting energies ? It was at Venice, beneath the covered archway there called the Ponte di Sospiri, that I met for the third or fourth time the person of whom I speak. It is with (265) 266 THE ASSIGNATION. a confused recollection that I bring to mind the circumstances of that meeting. Yet I remember ah ! how should I forget ? the deep midnight, the Bridge of Sighs, the beauty of woman, and the Genius of Romance, that stalked up and down the narrow canal. It was a night of unusual gloom. The great clock of the Piazza had sounded the fifth hour of the Italian evening. The square of the Campanile lay silent and deserted, and the lights in the old Ducal Palace were dying fast away. I was returning home from the Piazetta by way of the Grand Canal. But as my gondola arrived opposite the mouth of the canal San Marco, a female voice from its recesses broke suddenly upon the night in one wild, hysterical, and long-con- tinued shriek. Startled at the sound, I sprang upon my feet ; while the gondolier, letting slip his single oar, lost it in the pitchy darkness beyond a chance of recovery, and we were consequently left to the guidance of the current which here sets from the greater into the smaller channel. Like some huge and sable-feathered condor, we were slowly drifting down towards the Bridge of Sighs, when a thousand flambeaux flashing from the windows, and down the staircases of the Ducal Palace, turned all at once that deep gloom into a livid and pre- ternatural day. A child, slipping from the arms of its own mother had fallen from an upper window of the lofty structure into the deep and dim canal. The quiet waters had closed placidly over their victim ; and although my own gondola was the only one in sight, many a stout swimmer, already in the stream, was seeking in vain upon the surface the treasure which was to be found, alas ! only within the abyss. Upon the broad black marble flagstones at the entrance of the palace, and a THE ASSIGNATION. 267 few steps above the water, stood a figure which none who then saw can have ever since forgotten. It was the Marchesa Aphrodite the adoration of all Venice the gayest of the gay the most lovely where all were beautiful but still the young wife of the old and in- triguing Mentoni, and the mother of that fair child, her first and only one, who now, deep beneath the murky water, was thinking in bitterness of heart upon her sweet caresses, and exhausting its little life in struggles to call upon her name. She stood alone. Her small, bare, and silvery feet gleamed in the black marble beneath her. Her hair, not as yet more than half loosened for the night from its ball-room array, clustered amid a shower of diamonds round and round her classical head, in curls like those of the young Hyacinth. A snowy-white and gauze- like drapery seemed to be nearly the sole covering to her delicate form ; but the midsummer and midnight air was hot, sullen and still, and no motion in the statue- like form itself stirred even the folds of that raiment of very vapor which hung around it as the heavy marble hangs around the Niobe. Yet strange to say her large lustrous eyes were not turned down- wards upon that grave wherein her brightest hope lay buried but riveted in a widely different direction! The prison of the Old Republic is, I think, the state- liest building in all Venice ; but how could that lady gaze so fixedly upon it, when beneath her lay stifling her own child? Yon dark gloomy niche, too, yawns right opposite her chamber window what then could there be in its shadows, in its architecture, in its ivy-wreathed and solemn cornices that the Marchesa di Mentoni had not wondered at a thousand times before? Nonsense! Who does not remember, that 268 THE ASSIGNATION. at such a time as this, the eye like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of its sorrow, and sees in innumer- able far-off places, the woe which is close at hand ? Many steps above the Marchesa, and within the arch of the water-gate, stood in full dress, the Satyr-like figure of Mentoni himself. He was occasionally occu- pied in thrumming a guitar, and seemed ennuye to the very death, as at intervals he gave directions for the recovery of his child. Stupefied and aghast, I had myself no power to move from the upright position I had assumed upon first hearing the shriek, and must have presented to the eyes of the agitated group a spectral and ominous appearance, as with pale counten- ance and rigid limbs I floated down among them in that funeral gondola. All efforts proved in vain. Many of the most ener- getic in the search were relaxing their exertions, and yielding to a gloomy sorrow. There seemed but little hope for the child (how much less then for the mother !) but now, from the interior of that dark niche which has been already mentioned as forming a part of the Old Republican prison, and as fronting the lattice of the Marchesa, a figure muffled in a cloak stepped out within reach of the light, and, pausing a moment upon the verge of the giddy descent, plunged headlong into the canal. As in an instant afterwards he stood with the still living and breathing child within his grasp upon the marble flagstones by the side of the Marchesa, his cloak heavy with the drenching water became unfastened, and, falling in folds about his feet, discovered to the wonder-stricken spectators the graceful person of a very young man, with the sound of whose name the greater part of Europe was then ringing. THE ASSIGNATION. 269 No word spoke the deliverer. But the Marchesa ! She will now receive her child she will press it to her heart she will cling to its little form, and smother it with her caresses. Alas ! another's arms have taken it from the stranger another's arms have taken it away, and borne it afar off, unnoticed, into the palace ! And the Marchesa! Her lip her beautiful lip trembles: tears are gathering in her eyes those eyes which, like Pliny's acanthus, are " soft and almost liquid." Yes ! tears are gathering in those eyes and see ! the entire woman thrills throughout the soul, and the statue has started into life ! The pallor of the marble coun- tenance, the swelling of the marble bosom, the very purity of the marble feet, we behold suddenly flushed over with a tide of ungovernable crimson ; and a slight shudder quivers about her delicate frame, as a gentle air at Napoli about the rich silver lilies in the grass. Why should that lady blush? To this demand there is no answer except that having left, in the eager haste and terror of a mother's heart, the privacy of her own boudoir, she has neglected to enthrall her tiny feet in their slippers, and utterly forgotten to throw over her Venetian shoulders that drapery which is their due. "What other possible reason could there have been for her so blushing ? for the glance of those wild appealing eyes? for the unusual tumult of that throbbing bosom ? for the convulsive pressure of that trembling hand? that hand which fell, as Mentoni turned into the palace, accidentally, upon the hand of the stranger. What reason could there have been for the low the singularly low tone of those unmean- ing words which the lady uttered hurriedly in bidding him adieu ? " Thou hast conquered, " she said, or the 270 THE ASSIGNATION. murmurs of the water deceived me ; " thou hast con- quered one hour after sunrise we shall meet so let it be ! " ^|C 5)C |C 9|C *JC 5JC The tumult had subsided, the lights had died away within the palace, and the stranger whom I now recog- nized stood alone upon the flags. He shook with incon- ceivable agitation, and his eye glanced around in search of a gondola. I could not do less than offer him the service of my own ; and he accepted the civility. Hav- ing obtained an oar at the water-gate, we proceeded together to his residence, while he rapidly recovered his self-possession, and spoke of our former slight acquaint- ance in terms of great apparent cordiality. There are some subjects upon which I take pleasure in being minute. The person of the stranger let me call him by this title, who to all the world was still a stranger the person of a stranger is one of these subjects. In height he might have been below rather than above the medium size : although there were moments of intense passion when his frame actually expanded and belied the assertion. The light, almost slender symmetry of his figure, promised more of that ready activity which he evinced at the Bridge of Sighs, than of that Herculean strength which he has been known to wield without an effort, upon occasions of more dangerous emergency. With the mouth and chin of a deity singular, wild, full, liquid eyes, whose shadows varied from pure hazel to intense and brilliant jet and a profusion of curling black hair, from which a forehead of unusual breadth gleamed forth at intervals all light and ivory his were features than which I have seen none more classically regular, except, perhaps, the marble ones of the Emperor Commodus. Yet his THE ASSIGNATION. 271 countenance was, nevertheless, one of those which all men have seen at some period of their lives, and have never afterwards seen again. It had no peculiar it had no settled predominant expression to be fastened upon the memory ; a countenance seen and instantly forgotten but forgotten with a vague and never-ceasing desire of recalling it to mind. Not that the spirit of each rapid passion failed, at any time, to throw its own distinct image upon the mirror of that face but that the mirror, mirror-like, retained no vestige of the passion when the passion had departed. Upon leaving him on the night of our adventure, he solicited me, in what I thought an urgent manner, to call upon him very early the next morning. Shortly after sunrise I found myself accordingly at his Palazzo, one of those huge structures of gloomy, yet fantastic pomp, which tower above the waters of the Grand Canal in the vicinity of the Kialto. I was shown up a broad winding staircase of mosaics into an apartment whose unparalleled splendor burst through the opening door with an actual glare, making me blind and dizzy with luxuriousness. I knew my acquaintance to be wealthy. Report had spoken of his possessions in terms which I had even ventured to call terms of ridiculous exaggeration. But as I gazed about me, I could not bring myself to believe that the wealth of any subject in Europe could have supplied the princely magnificence which burned and blazed around. Although, as I say, the sun had arisen, yet the room was still brilliantly lighted up. I judge from this cir- cumstance, as well as from an air of exhaustion in the countenance of my friend, that he had not retired to bed during the whole of the preceding night. In the 272 THE ASSIGNATION. architecture and embellishments of the chamber, the evident design had been to dazzle and astound. Little attention had been paid to the decora of what is techni- cally called keeping, or to the proprieties of nationality. The eye wandered from object to object, and rested upon none neither the grotesques of the Greek painters, nor the sculptures of the best Italian days, nor the huge carvings of untutored Egypt. Rich draperies in every part of the room trembled to the vibration of low, melancholy music, whose origin was not to be discovered. The senses were oppressed by mingled and conflicting perfumes, reeking up from strange convolute censers, together with multitudinous flaring and flickering tongues of emerald and violet fire. The rays of the newly risen sun poured in upon the whole, through windows, formed each of a single pane of crimson-tinted glass. Glancing to and fro, in a thousand reflections, from curtains which rolled from their cornices like cataracts of molten silver, the beams of natural glory mingled at length fitfully with the artificial light, and lay weltering in subdued masses upon a carpet of rich, liquid-looking cloth of Chili gold. " Ha ! ha ! ha ! ha ! ha ! ha ! " laughed the pro- prietor, motioning me to a seat as I entered the room, and throwing himself back at full length upon an otto- man. " I see," said he, perceiving that I could not immediately reconcile myself to the bienseance of so singular a welcome " I see you are astonished at my apartment at my statues my pictures my origi- nality of conception in architecture and upholstery ! absolutely drunk, eh, with my magnificence? But pardon me, my dear sir (here his tone of voice dropped to the very spirit of cordiality), pardon me for my un- charitable laughter. You appeared so utterly astonished. THE ASSIGNATION. 273 \ Besides, some things are so completely ludicrous that a man must laugh or die. To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths! Sir Thomas More a very fine man was Sir Thomas More Sir Thomas More died laughing, you remember. Also in the Absurdities of Ravisius Textor there is a long list of characters who came to the same magnificent end. Do you know, however," continued he, musingly, " that at Sparta (which is now Palseochori), at Sparta, I say, to the west of the citadel, among a chaos of scarcely visible ruins, is a kind of socle upon which are still legible the letters AAM. They are undoubtedly part of TEAAHMA. Now, at Sparta, were a thou- sand temples and shrines to a thousand different divini- ties. How exceedingly strange that the altar of Laughter should have survived all the others! But in the present instance," he resumed, with a singular alteration of voice and manner, " I have no right to be merry at your expense. You might well have been amazed. Europe cannot produce anything so fine as this my little regal cabinet. My other apartments are by no means of the same order mere ultras of fashion- able insipidity. This is better than fashion is it not ? Yet this has but to be seen to become the rage that is with those who could afford it at the cost of their entire patrimony. I have guarded, however, against any such profanation. With one exception you are the only human being, besides myself and my valet, who has been admitted within the mysteries of these imperial precincts since they have been bedizened as you see I bowed in acknowledgment for the overpowering sense of splendor, and perfume, and music, together VoL I. 18. 274 THE ASSIGNATION. with the unexpected eccentricity of his address and manner, prevented me from expressing in words my appreciation of what I might have construed into a compliment. " Here," he resumed, arising and leaning on my arm as he sauntered around the apartment, " here are paint- ings from the Greeks to Cimabue, and from Cimabue to the present hour. Many are chosen, as you see, with little deference to the opinions of Virtu. They are all, however, fitting tapestry for a chamber such as this. Here, too, are some chefs d'ceuvre of the unknown great ; and here unfinished designs by men celebrated in their day, whose very names the perspicacity of the academies has left to silence and to me. What think you," said he, turning abruptly as he spoke "what think you of this Madonna della Pieta ? " " It is Guido's own," I said, with all the enthusiasm of my nature, for I had been poring intently over its surpassing loveliness. " It is Guido's own ! how could you have obtained it ? She is undoubtedly in painting what the Venus is in sculpture." "Ha!" said he thoughtfully, "the Venus the beautiful Venus ? the Venus of the Medici ? she of the diminutive head and the gilded hair ? Part of the left arm (here his voice dropped so as to be heard with difficulty) and all the right are restorations ; and in the coquetry of that right arm lies, I think, the quintessence of all affectation. Give me the Canova ! The Apollo, too, is a copy there can be no doubt of it blind fool that I am who cannot behold the boasted inspiration of the Apollo ! I cannot help pity me ! I cannot help preferring the Antinous. Was it not Socrates who said that the statuary found his statue in the block of THE ASSIGNATION. 275 marble? Then Michael Angelo was by no means original in his couplet 'Non ha I'ottimo artista alcun concetto Che un marmo solo in se non circonscriva.' " It has been or should be remarked that in the manner of the true gentleman we are always aware of a differ- ence from the bearing of the vulgar, without being at once precisely able to determine in what such difference consists. Allowing the remark to have applied in its full force to the outward demeanor of my acquaintance, I felt it on that eventful morning still more fully appli- cable to his moral temperament and character. Nor can I better define that peculiarity of spirit which seemed to place him so essentially apart from all other human beings, than by calling it a habit of intense and con- tinual thought pervading even his most trivial actions intruding upon his moments of dalliance, and inter- weaving itself with his very flashes of merriment like adders which writhe from out the eyes of the grinning masks in the cornices around the temples of Persepolis. I could not help, however, repeatedly observing through the mingled tone of levity and solemnity with which he rapidly descanted upon matters of little im- portance, a certain air of trepidation a degree of nervous unction in action and in speech an unquiet excitability of manner which appeared to me at all times unaccountable, and upon some occasions even filled me with alarm. Frequently, too, pausing in the middle of a sentence whose commencement he had apparently forgotten, he seemed to be listening in the deepest atten- tion as if either in momentary expectation of a visitor, or to sounds which must have had existence in his imagination alone. 276 THE ASSIGNATION. It was during one of these reveries or pauses of ap- parent abstraction, that, in turning over a page of the poet and scholar Politian's beautiful tragedy, "The Orfeo " (the first native Italian tragedy), which lay near me upon an ottoman, I discovered a passage underlined in pencil. It was a passage towards the end of the third act a passage of the most heart-stirring excitement a passage which, although tainted with impurity, no man shall read without a thrill of novel emotion no woman without a sigh. The whole page was blotted with fresh tears ; and upon the opposite interleaf were the following English lines, written in a hand so very different from the peculiar characters of my acquaintance, that I had some difficulty in recognizing it as his own : Thou wast that all to me, love, For which my soul dirt pine A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers; And all the flowers were mine. Ah, dream too bright to last ! Ah, starry Hope, that didst arise But to be overcast ! A voice from out the Future cries, " Onward ! "but o'er the past (Dim gulf ! ) my spirit hovering lies, Mute motionless aghast ! For alas ! alas ! with me The light of life is o'er. " No more no more no more," (Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the shore), Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, Or the stricken eagle soar ! Now all my hours are trances ; And all my nightly dreams Are where thy dark eye glances. And where thy footstep gleams In what ethereal dances By what Italian streams ! THE ASSIGNATION. 277 Alas ! for that accursed time They bore thee o'er the billow, From love to titled age and crime, And au unholy pillow ! From me, and from our misty clime. Where weeps the silver willow I That these lines were written in English a language with which I had not believed their author acquainted afforded me little matter for surprise. I was too well aware of the extent of his acquirements, and of the sin- gular pleasure he took in concealing them from obser- vation, to be astonished at any similar discovery ; but the place of date, I must confess, occasioned me no little amazement. It had been originally written in London, and afterwards carefully overscored not, however, so effectually as to conceal the word from a scrutinizing eye. I say this occasioned me no little amazement ; for I well remember that, in a former conversation with my friend, I particularly inquired if he had at any time met in London the Marchesa di Mentoni (who for some years previous to her marriage had resided in that city), when his answer, if I mistake not, gave me to understand that he had never visited the metropolis of Great Britain. I might as well here mention that I have more than onpe heard (without, of course, giving credit to a report in- volving so many improbabilities), that the person of whom I speak was, not only by birth, but in education an Englishman. 3fC 5f 3| *$* *{ 5jC " There is one painting," said he, without being aware of my notice of the tragedy " there is still one paint- ing which you have not seen." And throwing aside a drapery, he discovered a full-length portrait of the Mar- chesa Aphrodite. Human art could have done no more in the delineation 278 THE ASSIGNATION. of her superhuman beauty. The same ethereal figure which stood before me the preceding night upon the steps of the Ducal Palace, stood before me once again. But in the expression of the countenance, which was beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked (incom- prehensible anomaly!) that fitful stain of melancholy which will ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful. Her right arm lay folded over her bosom. With her left she pointed downward to a curi- ously fashioned vase. One small, fairy foot, alone vis- ible barely touched the earth ; and scarcely discernible in the brilliant atmosphere which seemed to encircle and enshrine her loveliness, floated a pair of the most delicately imagined wings. My glance fell from the painting to the figure of my friend, and the vigorous words of Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois quivered instinc- tively upon my lips : " He is up There like a Roman statue f He will stand Till Death hath made him marble ! " " Come," he said at length, turning towards a table of richly enameled and massive silver, upon which were a few goblets fantastically stained, together with two large Etruscan vases, fashioned in the same extra- ordinary model as that in the foreground of the portrait, and filled with what I supposed to be Johannisberger. " Come," he said abruptly, " let us drink ! It is early but let us drink. It is indeed early," he continued musingly, as a cherub with a heavy golden hammer made the apartment ring with the first hour after sun- rise : " it is indeed early but what matters it ? let us drink ! Let us pour out an offering to yon solemn sun which these gaudy lamps and censers are so eager to subdue!" And, having made me pledge him in a THE ASSIGNATION. 279 bumper, he swallowed in rapid succession several goblets of the wine. " To dream," he continued, resuming the tone of his desultory conversation, as he held up to the rich light of a censer one of the magnificent vases "to dream has been the business of my life. I have therefore framed for myself, as you see, a bower of dreams. In the heart of Venice could I have erected a better ? You behold around you, it is true, a medley of architectural embellishments. The chastity of Ionia is offended by antediluvian devices, and the sphinxes of Egypt are outstretched upon carpets of gold. Yet the effect is incongruous to the timid alone. Proprieties of place, and especially of time, are the bugbears which terrify man- kind from the contemplation of the magnificent. Once I was myself a decorist ; but that sublimation of folly has palled upon my soul. All this is now the fitter for my purpose. Like these arabesque censers, my spirit is writhing in fire, and the delirium of this scene is fash- ioning me for the wilder visions of that land of real dreams whither I am now rapidly departing." He here paused abruptly, bent his head to his bosom, and seemed to listen to a sound which I could not hear. At length, erecting his frame, he looked upward, and ejaculated the lines of the Bishop of Chichester : " Stay for me there ! Iioittiiotfail To meet thee in that hollow vale." In the next instant, confessing the power of the wine, he fhrew himself at full length upon an ottoman. A quick step was now heard upon the staircase, and a loud knock at the door rapidly succeeded. I was hastening to anticipate a second disturbance, when a page of Mentoni's household burst into the room, and 280 THE ASSIGNATION. faltered out, in a voice choking with emotion, the inco- herent words, " My mistress ! my mistress ! Poisoned ! poisoned ! Oh, beautiful oh, beautiful Aphrodite ! " Bewildered, I flew to the ottoman, and endeavored to arouse the sleeper to a sense of the startling intelligence. But his limbs were rigid his lips were livid his lately beaming eyes were riveted in death. I staggered back towards the table my hand fell upon a cracked and blackened goblet and a consciousness of the entire and terrible truth flashed suddenly over my soul. 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 ! One of his eyes resembled that 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 my- self of the eye for ever. 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 (281) 282 THE TELL-TALE HEART. 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 so that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my 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 had 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 sa- gacity. 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 THE TELL-TALE HEART. 283 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 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 lan- tern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in the 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 ; j ust as I have done night after night hearken- ing 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 over- charged 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 cross- ing the floor," or " It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp." Yes, he has been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions; but he had 284 THE TELL-TALE HEART. found all in vain. All in vain, because Death in ap- proaching him had 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 single dim ray like the thread of the spider shot out from the crevice and fell 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 now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses ? 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 eye. Mean- time the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder, every in- stant. The old man's terror must have been extreme ! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment ! do you THE TELL-TALE HEART. 285 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 neighbor ! 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 beats 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 min- utes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more. If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precaution I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. I 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 was nothing to wash out no stain of any kind no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that. When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clock still dark as midnight. As the bell 286 THE TELL-TALE HEART. 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 neighbor 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 gentle- men 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 con- vinced 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 distinct : I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling : but it continued and gained definitive- ness 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 THE TELL-TALE HEART. 287 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 ex- cited to fury by the observations of the men but the noise steadily increased. O 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 in- creased. It grew louder louder louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possi- ble they heard not ? Almighty God ! no, no ! They heard ! they suspected ! they knew ! they were mak- ing 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 ! " A 000 064 322 1