 Chapter 19 of the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe, rave in addition, volume 2. This is the LibriVox Recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Marie-Marie Atéphidis. The collected works of Edgar Allan Poe, rave in addition, volume 2. William Wilson. What say of it? What say of conscience grim? That specter in my path. Timberlands far on either. Let me call myself, for the present, William Wilson. The fair page now lying before me, need not be solid with my real appellation. This has been already too much an object for the scorn, for the horror, for the distation of my race. To the utmost regions of the globe, have not the indignant winds rooted its unparalleled infamy? Oh, outcast of all outcast, most abandoned. To the earth art thou not forever dead. To its honors, to its flowers, to its golden aspiration, and a cloud, dense, dismal, and limitless. Does it not hang eternally between thy hopes and heaven? I would not, if I could, here or today, but the record of my later years of unspeakable misery and unpardonable cry. This epoch, this later years, took unto themselves a sudden elevation in turpitude, whose origin alone it is my present purpose to assign. Men usually grow base by degrees. From me, in an instant, all virtue dropped bodily as a mantle. From comparatively trivial weakness, I passed with a stride of a giant, into more than the enormities of an ill-gottenness. What chains, what one event brought this evil thing to pass? Bear with me while I've laid. Death approaches. And the shallow which foreigns him has thrown a softening influence over my spirit. I longed in passing through the demon valley, for the sympathy I had nearly said for the pity of my fellow men. I would feign, have them believe, that I have been, in some measure, the slave of circumstances beyond human control. I would wish them to seek out for me the details I am about to give. Some little oasis of fatality, I mean a wilderness of error. I would have them allow. With a cannot refrain from allowing. That although temptation may have ear while existed as great, man was nevertheless, at least, tempted before. Certainly, nevertheless, failed. And it is therefore that he has nevertheless suffered. I mean it indeed been living in a dream. And I might not now die in a victim to the horror and the mystery of the wildest of all sublunary visions. I am the descendant of a race whose imaginative and easily excitable temperament has at all times rendered there remarkable. And in my earliest infancy, I gave evidence of having fully inherited the family character. The advanced in years, it was more strongly developed. The coming, for many reasons, of course, serious disquiet to my friends and of positive injury to myself. I grew self-willed, addicted to the wildest caprices and a prey to the most ungovernable passions. Weak-minded and beset with constitutional infirmities akin to my own, my parents could do bad little to check the evil propensities which distinguished me. Some feeble and ill-directed efforts resulted in complete failure on their part, and, of course, in total triumph in mine. Then, sport, my voice was a household low. And at an age when few children have abandoned their living streams, I was left to the guidance of my own will and became, in all but name, the master of my own actions. My earliest recollections of a school life are connected with the large, rambling Elizabethan house in a misty-looking village of England where were a vast number of gigantic, annulled trees and were all the houses were excessively ancient. In truth, it was a dreamlike and spirit-soothing place that venerable old town. At this moment in fantasy, I feel the refreshing chillings of its deeply shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies and thrill new with undefined bald light the deep hollow note of the church bell breaking each hour with sullen and sudden roar upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in which the threaded Gothic steeple lie embedded in the sleep. It gives me perhaps as much of pleasure as I can now in any manner experience to dwell upon my new recollections of the school and its concerns. Steeped in misery as I am, misery alas, only too real, I shall be pardoned for seeking relief, however slight and temporary, with a weakness of a few rambling details. These, moreover, are truly trivial and even ridiculous in themselves. Assume to my fancy, advantageous importance as connected with a period in locality when and where I recognise the first ambiguous munitions of a destiny which afterwards so fully overshadowed me. Let me then remember the house, I have said, was old and regular. The grounds were extensive and a high and solid brick wall topped with a bed of mortar and broken glass encompassed the whole. This prison-like ramp had formed the limit of our domain. Beyond it we saw but thrice weak, once every Saturday afternoon, when attended by two ashes who were permitted to take brief walks in a body through some of the neighbouring fields and twice during Sunday when we were paraded in the same formal manner to the morning and evening service in one church of the village. This church, the principal of our school, was pastor with how deep a spirit of wonder and perplexity was I want to regard him from a remote pew in the gallery as with steps solemn and slow he ascended to the pulpit. This reverend man with countenance so demurely benign with robes so glossy and so clerically flowing with wigs so minutely powdered so rigid and so vast would this be he who of late with sour visits and in snuffy habiliments administered feral in hand the draconian loaves of the academy? Ah, gigantic paradox too utterly monstrous for a solution at an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a moral ponderous gate. It was riveted and studded with iron balls and so amounted with jagged iron spikes with impressions of deep awe did it inspire. It was never open save for the three periodical egressions and ingressions already mentioned than in every creek of its mighty hinges we found a plenitude of mystery a world of matter solemn remark of more solemn meditation the extensive enclosure was irregular in form having many capacious recesses of these, three or four of the largest constituted a playground it was level and covered with fine hard gravel I well remember it had no trees nor benches nor anything similar within it of course it was in the rear of the house in front lay a small parterre planted with a box and other shrubs but through this sacred division we passed only upon rare occasions indeed such as a first adventure school final departure then or perhaps when a pirate or friend having called for us we drivefully took our way home from the Christmas to our midsummer holidays but the house how quaint an old building was this to me how veritable a palace of enchantments there was really no end to its winding since incomprehensible subdivisions it was difficult to any given time to say with certainty upon which of its two stories when happened to be from each room to every other there should be found three or four steps either in ascent or descent the lateral branches were innumerable inconceivable and so returning in upon themselves that almost exact ideas in regard to the whole mansion were not very far different from those with which we pondered upon infinity during the five years of my residence here I was never able to ascertain with precision in what remote locality lay the little sleeping apartment aside to myself and some 18 or 20 other scholars the school room was the largest in the house I could not help thinking in the world it was very long, narrow and dismal low with pointed gothic windows and a ceiling of oak in a remote and terrible inspiring angle with a square enclosure of 18 feet compressing the sanctum during ours of our principal the Reverend Dr. Bransby toward a solid structure with a massed door sooner than open which in the absence of a dummy it would all have willingly perished by the Ben Foster view the walls were two other similar boxes father's reverence indeed but still greatly matters of all one of these was a pulpit to the classical usher when the English in Mathematical interspersed about the room crossing and re-crossing in the endless irregularity were innumerable benches and desks black, ancient and time-worn piled desperately with much-to-be thumb books and so besieged with initial letters names at full length, the grotesque figures and other multiplied efforts at the knife to have entirely lost what little of original form might have been in the portion days long departed a huge bucket with water stood at one extreme chair of the room and a clock of stupendous dimensions at the other encompassed by the massive walls of this venerable academy bypassed yet not until you more discussed the years and third last term of my life the deeming brain of childhood becrised no external world of incident to occupy or use it and the apparently dismal monotonous school was replete with more intense excitement than my ripe youth has derived from luxury or my full manhood from the crash did I best believe that my first mental development had made much of the end common even much of the entry upon mankind large the event of very early existence rarely leaving mature age and a definite impression all is grey shadow weak in irregular remembrance an indistinct regathering of feeble pleasures in this magaric pains with me this is not so in childhood I must have felt with the empty of a man were to now find stamped upon memory in lines as vivid as deep as durable as the exact cathodine in metals yet in fact in the fact of the world's view how little was there to remember the morning's awakening the nightly summons to bed beckoning the recitations the peretical half-holders and perambulations the playground with its brothels its pastimes its intrigues these by a mental source we long forgotten were made to involve a world in such sensation a world-rich incident a new universe of varied emotion of excitement the most passionate and spirit-staring all of monotonous cyclo-de-faire in truth the ardour the enthusiasm the imperiousness of my disposition soon rendered me a marked counter among my school masters and by slow but natural gradations gave me an ascendancy over all not greatly older than myself over all with a single exception exception was found in the person of his color although no relation bore the same Christian in surname as myself a circumstance in fact literally remarkable for notwithstanding a noble descent mine was one of those everyday appellations which seemed by a prescriptive right to have been, time out of mind the common property of the mob in this narrative I have therefore designated myself as William Wilson a fictitious title not very dissimilar to the real my namesake alone of those who in school for ideology constitute our set presumed to compete with me in the studies of the class in the sports and royals of the playground to refuse implicit belief in my assertions and submission to my will indeed to interfere with my arbitrary dictation in any respect whatsoever there is on earth a supreme and unqualified despotism it is the despotism of a master man in boyhood over the less energetic spirits of its companions Wilson's rebellion was to me a source of the greatest embarrassment the more so was in spite of the bravado with which in public I made a point of treating him and his pretensions I secretly felt that I feared him and could not help thinking the equality which he maintained so easily with myself approved of his true superiority since not to be overcome caused me a perpetual struggle that this superiority, even this equality wasn't true acknowledged by no one but myself our associates by some unaccountable blindness seemed not even to suspect it and his competition, his resistance and especially his impertinent and doggy interference with my purposes were not more pointed than private he appeared to be desegered alike of the ambition which urged another passionate energy of mine which enabled me to excel in his rivalry he might have been supposed to actuate its solely by a whimsical desire to thwart astonish or modify myself although there were times when I could not help observing with a feeling made up of wonder a basement and a peak but he mingled with his injuries, his insults or his contradictions a certain most inappropriate and assuredly most unwelcome affectionateness of mana I could only conceive this singular behaviour to arise from a consummate self-conceit assuming the vulgar errors of patronage and protection perhaps it was this latter trait in Wilson's conduct conjoined with our identity of name and the mere accident of our having entered the school upon the same day which set afloat the notion that we were brothers among the senior classes in the academy these do not usually inquire with much thickness into the affairs of their juniors I have before said or should have said that Wilson was not near the most remote degree connected with my family but assuredly if we had been brothers we must have been twins for after leaving Dr. Bransby's I casually learned that my name-seek was born on the 19th of January 1813 and this is a somewhat remarkable coincidence for the day is precisely that of my own nativity it may seem strange that in spite of the continual anxiety occasioned me by the rivalry of Wilson and his intolerable spirit of contradiction I couldn't bring myself to hate him all together we had to be sure nearly every day a quarrel in which yielding me publicly the palm of victory he in some manner contrived to make me feel that it was he who had deserved it yet a sense of pride on my part and a veritable dignity on his own kept us always upon what I called speaking terms while there were many points of strong congeniality in our tempers but been waiting to wake me in a sentiment which our position alone perhaps prevented from ripening into friendship it is difficult indeed to define or even to describe my real feelings towards him they formed a mockly and heterogeneous admixture some petulant animosity which was not yet hatred so I see more respect much fear with a world of uneasy curiosity to the moralist it will be unnecessary to say in addition that Wilson and myself were the most inseparable of companions it was no doubt the anomalous state of affairs existing between us which turned all my attacks upon him and there were many either open or covered into the channel of banter or a practical joke giving pain while assuming the aspect of mere fun rather than into more serious and determined hostility but my endeavours on this head were by no means uniform and successful even when my plans were the most wittly concocted for my name's sake had much about him in character that unassuming and quiet austerity with one enjoying the poverty of its own jokes has no heel of Achilles in itself and absolutely refuses to be laughed at I could find indeed but one vulnerable point in that lying in a personal peculiarity arising perhaps from a constitutional disease would have been spared by any antagonist lest his wits end on myself my rival had a weakness in the focal guttural organs which precluded him from raising his voice at any time above a very low whisper this defect I did not fail to take with poor advantage to lend my power Wilson's retaliations and kind were many and there was one form of his practical wit that distilled me beyond measure how his sagacity first discovered at all that so petty a thing would vex me is a question I never could solve but having discovered he habitually practised the annoyance I had always felt aversion to my corky patronymic and it's very common if not plebeian predominant the words were venom in my ears and when upon the day of my arrival a second William Wilson came also to the academy I felt angry with him for bearing the name and doubly disgusted with the name because a stranger bore it who would be the cause of its twofold repetition who would be constant in my presence and who's concerned that the ordinary routine of the school business must inevitably on account of the detestable coincidence and be often confounded with my own the feeling of accession less engendered grew stronger with every circumstance tending to show resemblance moral or physical between my rival and myself I had not then discovered the remarkable fact that we were the same age but I saw that we were of the same height that I perceived that we were even singularly alike in general culture of person and our line of feature I was galled too by the rude touching a relationship which happened growing current in the up-forms in a word nothing could more seriously disturb me otherwise crucially concealed such disturbance than any allusion to a similarity of mine person or condition existing between us but in truth I had no reason to believe that with the exception of the matter of relationship and in the case of Wilson himself this similarity had ever been made a subject of comment or even observed at all by our school fellows that he observed its knowledge bearing as effectively as I was apparent but that he could discover in such circumstances so fruitful field of annoyance can only be attributed as I said before to his more than ordinary penetration his cue which was too perfect an imitation of myself labelled in words and actions that most admirably did he play his part my dress it was an easy matter to copy my gait in general manner were without difficulty appropriated in spite of his constitutional defect even my voice did not escape him my loudly tones were of course unattempted but then the key it was identical and his singular whisper he grew a very echo of my own how greatly this most exquisite portray to harass me for it could not just be termed a caricature I will not now venture to describe I had but one consolation in the fact the imitation apparently was noticed by my self alone that I had to endure only the knowing and strangely sarcastic smiles of my namesake himself satisfied with having produced my bosom the intended effect he seemed chuckle in secret what a stingy had inflicted and was characteristically disregardful of the public applause which the success of his witty endeavours might have so easily elicited that his core did not feel his design perceived its accomplishment and participate in his sneer was for many anxious moments a riddle I could not resolve perhaps the gradation of his copy rendered it not so readily perceptible or more possibly I owed my security to the master heir of the copyist who disdaining the letter which in a painting is all the obtuse can see gay but the full spirit of his original from my individual contemplation in Chagrin I have already more than once spoken of the disgusting air of patronage which he assumed toward me and I face frequent or vicious interference with my will this interference often took the ungracious character of advice advice not openly given but hinted or insinuated that I received with the repugnance which gained strength as I grew in years yet at this distant day let me do him the simple justice to acknowledge that I can recall no occasion when suggestions of my arrival were on the side of those eras all fall so usual to his immature age and seeming inexperience that his moral sense at least if not the general talent and worldly wisdom was far keener than my own and that I might today have been better and thus a happy man had a less frequently rejected counsels embodying those mean whispers which I then but too cordially hated and too bitterly despised as it was I at length grew restive and extreme under his distestful supervision and daily resented more and more openly but I consider his intolerable arrogance I have said that in the first years of our connection as schoolmates my feelings in regard to him might have been easily ripened into friendship but in the latter months on my residence at the academy although the intrusion of his ordinary manner had beyond doubt in some measure abated my sentiments nearly similar proportion partook very much of positive hatred upon one occasion he saw this nothing and after his avoided or made show avoiding me it was about the same period if I remember and write that in an altercation of violence with him in which he was more than usually a thun of his guard and spoke and acted with an openness of demeanour rather foreign to his nature I discovered all fancy that I discovered in his accent his air and general appearance but something which first settled and then deeply interested me by bringing to mind the envisions of my earliest infancy wow, confused and thronging memories of a time when memory herself was yet unborn I cannot better describe the sensation which oppressed me than by saying that I could with difficulty shake of the belief of my having been acquainted with the truth before me at some epoch very long ago some point of the past very infinitely remote the delusion however faded rapidly as it came and I mention it at all but define the day of the last conversation I there held with my single namesake the shewed old house with its countless subdivisions had several outer chambers communicating with each other they were however this must necessarily happen in a building so awkwardly planned recesses, the odds and ends of the structure and these, the economy contingency of Dr. Bransby had also fitted up as dormitories although being the nearest closets they were capable of accommodating by a single individual one, these small apartments was occupied by Wilson one night about the close of my fifth year at the school and immediately after the altercation just mentioned funny given one wrapped in sleep I rose from bed a lamp in hand stole through a wellness of narrow passages from my own bedroom to that of my rival I had long been plotting one of those ill nature pieces of practical weight at his expense in which I had it to be uniformly unsuccessful it was my intention now to put my scheme in operation that I resolved to make him feel the whole extent of the malice with which I was imbued having reached his closet I noiselessly entered leaving the lamp with a shade of wood on the outside I advanced a step and listened to the sound of his tranquil breathing a shoe of his being asleep I returned took the light and with it again approached the bed close curtains were around it which in the prosecution of my plan I slowly and quietly withdrew when the bright rays fell vividly upon his sleeper and my eyes at the same moment upon his countenance I looked at the numbness an iceness of feeling instantly pervaded my frame my breast heaved my knees tutted my whole spirit became possessed with an objectless intolerable horror gasping for breath I lowered the lamp and still nearer proximity to the face were these these of willimancy I saw indeed there were his but I shook as if with a fit of the egg infancing there were not what was there about them to confound me in this manner aghast while my brain reeled with a multitude of incoherent thoughts not thus he appeared assuredly not thus in the revacity of his waking hours the same contour of person same day of arrival of the academy then his dogged and meaningless imitation of my gate of voice, my habits my manner was it in truth within the bounds of human possibility that what I now saw was the result merely of the habitual practice of the sarcastic imitation oh stricken and with a creeping shudder I extinguished the lamp passed silently from the chamber and left at once the holes at that old academy never to enter them again after a lapse of some more spent at home in mere idleness I found myself a student at Eden the brief interval had been sufficient to enable my remembrance of the events in Dr. Bramsby's or at least to affect the real change in the nature of the feelings with which I remember them the truth the tragedy the drama was no more I could now find room to doubt the evidence of my senses and seldom called up the subject at all but with wonder at the extent of human cruelty and the smile of the vivid force of the imagination which I terribly possessed neither was this species of skepticism likely to be diminished by the character of the life I laid at Eden the vortex of thoughtless fall into which I there so immediately and so recklessly plunged washed away all by the froth of my past hours engulfed at once every solid or serious impression and left to memory only the various telepathy of a former existence I do not wish, however, to trace the course of my miserable profligacy here a profligacy which defines the laws while it eluded the vigilance of the institution three years of folly passed without profit had but given me rooted habits of vice and added in a somewhat unusual dream to my bodily stature when after a week of soulless dissipation I invited a small party of the most distilled students to a secret carousel in my chambers we met at a later hour of the night for our debaucheries were to be faithfully protracted until morning the wine flowed freely and they were not wanting the other and perhaps more dangerous deductions so that a grey dome had already faintly appeared in the east while our delirious extravagance was at its height madly flushed with cart and intoxication I was in the act of insisting upon a toast of more than wanted profanity when my attention was suddenly diverted by the violent although partial and closing out the door of the apartment and by the eager voice of a servant from without he said that some person apparently in great haste demanded to speak with me in the hall wildly excited with wine the unexpected interruption rather delighted and surprised me I stuck it forward at once and a few steps brought me to the vestibule of the building in this slow and small room there hung no lamp and now no light at all was admitted save that of the exceedingly feeble door which meant sway through the same circular window as I put my foot over the threshold I became aware of the figure of a youth about my own height inhabited in a wide cursing me a morning frock cutting another fashion of one of my self war at the moment this the faint light enabled me to perceive but the features of his face I could not distinguish and upon my entering he strolled hurriedly up to me and seizing me by the arm with a gesture of battalence in patience whisper the words William Wilson in my ear I grew perfectly subbering in an instant there was that in the manner of the stranger and in the tremulous shake there's a uplifted finger as he held between my eyes which filled me with all qualified amazement but it was not this which had so violently moved me it was the pregnancy of solemn admonition in a singler low his sick utterance and above all it was the character the tone, the key of those few simple and familiar yet whispered syllables which came with a thousand strong memories of Biden days and struck upon my soul with a shock of a galvanic battery here I could recover the use of my sense if he was gone although this event failed not of a vivid effect upon my disordered imagination it wasn't evanescent as vivid for some weeks indeed I beated myself in earnest inquiry or was wrapped in a cloud of morbid speculation I did not pretend to disguise from my perception the identity of a singler individual who thus perseveringly interfered with my affairs and harassed me with his insinuated counsel but who this Wilson and who else came he and what were his purposes and neither of these points could I be satisfied merely ascertaining in regard to him that a sudden accident in his family had caused his removal from Dr. Bransby's academy on the afternoon of the day in which I myself had eloped but in a brief period I seized to think upon the subject my attention being all absorbed in a contemplated departure for Oxford neither I soon went the uncalculating vanity of my parents furnishing me with an outfit and unknown establishment which would enable me to indulge at will in the luxury already so dear to my heart for vying for fuses of expenditure with the hoagest airs of the wealthiest earldoms in Great Britain excited by such appliances to vise my constitutional temperament broke forth with redoubled ardour and I asperged even the common restraints of decency in the mad infatuation of my revels but it were absurd to pose in the detail of my extravagance let it suffice that amongst penitents I out-heroded Herod that had given name to a multitude of novel follies I added no brief appendix to the long catalogue of vices than usual in the most distilled university of Europe I could have credited however that I had even here so utterly fallen from the gentlemanly state as to seek a question to the vilest arts or the gumbled by profession having become an adept in his despicable science to practice it habitually as means of increasing my already enormous the expense of the weak minded among my fellow collegians such nevertheless with a fact and the very enormity of this offence against all manly and honourable sentiment prove beyond doubt the main if not the sole reason of the impunity with which it was committed who indeed among my most abandonous associates would not rather have disputed the clearest evidence of his senses than have suspected of such courses the gay, the frank the generous Willem Wilson the noblest and most commoner at Oxford him whose follies said his parasites were about the follies of youth and unbridled fancy whose errors but inimitable will whose darker spies but a careless and dashing extravagance I had been now two years successfully busy in his way where there it came to the university the young pavnyu nobunen rich said report as herodocetic his riches too as easily acquired I soon found him a weak intellect and of course marks him as a fitting subject for my skill I frequently engaged him in play and contrived with a gambler's usual art to let him win considerable sums the more effectively to entangle him in my snares my legs my skin being ripe I made him with a full intention that this meeting should be final and decisive for the chambers of a fellow commoner with a present equally intimate with both but who to do him justice entertained not even a remote suspicion of my desire to give to this a better colouring I had contrived to have assembled a party of some eight or ten and was solicitously careful the introduction of cards should appear accidental and originating the proposal of my contemplating Duke himself to be brief upon a viral topic none of low finesse was omitted so customary upon similar occasions that it is just a matter for wonder how any are still found so besotted as to fall its victim we had protracted our sitting far into the night and I had a length effecting the manoeuvre of getting glendoning as my soul antagonised game 2 was my favourite Igarthe the rest of the company interested in the extent of our play had abandoned their own cards and were standing around us as spectators the parvenu who had been induced by my artifices in the early part of the evening to drink deeply now shuffled dealt or played with a wild nervousness of manner for which his intoxication I thought might partially but could not altogether recount in a very short period he had become my debtor to a large amount when having taken a long draft of port he did precisely what I had been coolly anticipating he proposed to double our ready extravagant stakes with a well feigned show of reluctance and not until after my repeated refusal had seduced him into some angry words which gave colour of peak to my compliance did I finally comply the result of course did but prove how entirely the prey was my torment in less than an hour he had crudrupled his debt for some time his countenance had been using the flower with the tinge lented by the wife but now to my astonishment I perceived that it had grown to a paltruly fearful I say to my astonishment Glendoning had been represented to my ego inquiries as immeasurably wealthy and the sums which he had as yet lost although in themselves vast could not I suppose very seriously annoy much less so violently affected that it was overcome by the wine just swallowed with the idea which most readily presented itself and rather with the usual preservation of my own character under the eyes of my associates than from any less interested motive I was about to insist from trolley upon discontinuance of the play when some expressions at my elbow from among the company an ejaculation in visiting utter despair the part of Glendoning gave me to understand that I had effected his total ruin under circumstances which rendering him an object for the pity of all should have protected him from the ill offices even of a fiend what now might have been my countenance it is difficult to say the pitchable condition of my jupe had thrown an air of embarrassed gloom for some moments a profound silence was maintained during which I could not help feel my cheeks tingle with many burning glances of scorn or reproach cast upon me by the less abandoned of the party I will even own that an intolerable weight of anxiety was for a brief instant lifted from my bosom by the sudden an extraordinary interruption which ensued the wide heavy falling doors of the apartment were all at once thrown open to the full extent with a vigorous rushing impetuosity that extinguished as if by magic every candle in the room there light in dying enabled us just to perceive that a stranger had entered about my own height and closely muffled in a cloak the darkness however was now total and we could only feel that he was standing in amnesty before any one of us could recover from the extreme astonishment into which rudeness had thrown awe and he heard the voice of the intruder gentlemen he said in a low distinct and never to be forgotten whisper which thrilled to the very marrow of my bones gentlemen make no apology for the behavior because in this behaving I am bad fulfilling a duty where I beyond doubt uninformed of the true character of the person who has tonight won and he got a large sum of money from Lord Glendoning I will therefore put you upon an expeditious and decisive plan of obtaining this very necessary information pleased to examine the inner linings of the cuff of his left sleeve and the several little packages which may be found in the southwest capacious pockets of his embroidered morning wrapper while he spoke so profound was the stillness that one might have heard a pin drop upon the floor and seizing he departed at once and as abruptly as he had entered can I shall I describe my sensations must I say that I felt all the horrors of the damned most assuredly I had little time given for reflection many hands roughly seized me upon the spot and lights were immediately procured a search ensued in the lining of my sleeve were found all the cord cards essentially in the cart in the box of my wrapper a number of fax similesia those used at our sittings were an exception of mine where the species called technically the honours being slightly convex at the ends lower cards slightly convex at the sides in this disposition the tube who cuts as customary at the length of the pack will invariably find that he cuts his antagonist an honour while the gambler cutting at the breath will certainly cut nothing which may account in the rest of the game any burst of indignation upon his discovery would have affected me less than a silent contempt of the sarcastic composure with which it was received Mr. Wilson said our host was too keen to remove from beneath his feet an exceedingly luxurious cloak of wearer furrows Mr. Wilson did you property the weather was cold and upon quitting my own room I had thrown a cloak of my dressing wrapper putting it off upon reaching the scene of play I presumed his superior to seek here eyeing the folds of the garment with a bitter smile for any further evidence of his kill indeed we had enough we'll see the necessity I hope of quitting Oxford at all events of quitting instantly my chambers abased and humbled to the dust as I then was it is probable that I should have resented his galling language by immediate personal violence I had not my whole attention been at the moment arrested by a factor the most startling character with a cloak which I had worn was of a rare description of fur how rare how extravagantly costly shall not venture to say its fashion too was of my own fantastic invention for I was the student with an absurd degree of cox-cumming in matters of this fabulous nature when therefore Mr. Preston reached me but which he had picked upon the floor near the folding doors of the apartment it was with an astonishment nearly bordering upon terror that I perceived my own already hanging on my arm where I had no doubt in meeting you and that one presented me was but its exact counterpart in every in even the my newest possible particular the singular being who had so disastrously exposed me had been muffled I remembered in a cloak and none had been worn at all by any other members of our party with the exception of myself retaining some presence of mine I took the one offered me by Preston placed it unnoticed over my own left the apartment with a restless count of defiance the next morning at dawn of day commenced to have a journey from Oxford to the continent in a perfect agony of horror and of shame I fled in vain the evil destiny pursued me as if in exaltation and proved indeed that the exercise of its mysterious domain had as yet only begun scarcely had I set foot in Paris yet had fresh evidence of the detestable interest taken by this Wilson in my concerns years flew while I experienced no relief villain at Rome with how one timely it with how a spectral evidence stepped he in between me and my ambition at Vienna too at Berlin at Moscow where in truth had I not bit a cause to curse him within my heart from his inscrutable tyranny did I a length fleeing panicked chicken as for my pestilence and to the very ends of the earth I fled in vain and again and again sickle to commune with my own spirit would I demand the question who is he whence came he in what house of debt but no answer was there found and then I scrutinized with a minute scrutinizing the form and the methods and the leading traits of his important supervision but even here there was very little upon which to base conductor it was noticeable indeed that in no one of the multiplied instances in which he had a blade crossed my path had he so crossed it except to frustrate those schemes or to disturb the accent which he fully carried out might have resulted in a bit of mischief poor justification this in truth for an authority so imperiously assumed poor indemnity for natural rights of self-agency so pertiniciously so insultingly denied I had also been forced to notice that my tall mentor for a very long period of time whilst grouplessly and with reckless dexterity maintaining his whim of an identity of a parallel with myself had so contrived it in the execution of his varied interference with my will that I so not at any moment features of his face bewilson what he might this least was by the various of affectation or of folly could it for an instant have supposed that in my admonisher at Eaton illy destroy of my honor Oxford in him who thwarted by ambition at Rome and revenge at Paris my passionate love at Naples what he falsely turned my other eyes in Egypt as in this my art and me an evil genius could fall to recognize the willy willson of my school boy days the names say the companion in the rival the hated and derided rival at Dr. Bransby's impossible let me hasten the last even full scene of drama thus far I had succumbed to this imperious domination the sentiment of deep awe with which I habitually regarded the elevated character the majestic wisdom the apparent omnipresence and omnipotence of Wilson added to a feeling of even terror in which certain other traits in his nature and assumptions inspired me had operated hitherto to impress me with an idea of my own utter weakness in her business and to suggest an implicit all the bitterly reluctant submission to his arbitrary will but of late days I had given myself up entirely to one and this maddening influence upon my hereditary temper rendered me more and more impatient of control and began to murmur to hesitate to resist and was it only fancy which induced me to believe that with the increase of my own firmness that of my tormentor underwent a proportional diminution be it as it may and now began to feel the inspiration of a burning hope and the length nurtured my secret thoughts a stern and desperate resolution I would submit no longer to be enslaved it was at Rome during the carnival of 1800 I attended a masquerade in the Palazzo of Neapolitan Duke in the Ibrovia I had indulged more freely than usual in the excesses of the wine table and now the suffocating atmosphere of the crowd of ruins irritating beyond endurance the difficulty too forcing my way through the maze of the company contributed not a little to the ruffling of my temper I was anxiously seeking let me not say with what unworthy motive beyond the gay the beautiful wife for the aged and dirty in the Ibrovia with the two once cruel with confidence she had previously communicated to me the secret of the costume in which she would be habited and now having caught a glimpse of a person I was hurrying to make my way into her presence this moment I felt a light hand placed upon my shoulder I thought as I remembered low a manable whisper with my ear in an absolute frenzy of wrath I turned at once upon him who had thus interrupted me and seized him violently by the collar he was attired as I had expected in a costume all together similar to my own wearing a stylish cloak of blue velvet beguarded by the waist with a crimson belt sustaining a rip-shot like silk entirely covered his face SCANGEON said in a voice husky with rage while every syllable I uttered seemed as new fuel to my fury SCANGEON imposter a cursed villain you shall not you shall not dock me unto death follow me while I study where you stand and I broke my way from the ball room into a small anti-tambler joining dragging him unresistingly with me as I went upon entering I thrust him furiously from me he staggered against the wall while I closed the door with an oath and commanded him to draw he hesitated back for an instant then with a slight sigh ruined silence put himself upon his fence the contest was brief indeed I was frantic with every specious wild excitement and I felt within my single arm the energy and power of a multitude in a few seconds I forced him by sheer strength against the wence cutting thus getting him at mercy plunged my soul with brute ferusty repeatedly through and through his bosom at that instant some person tried to latch to the door I hastened to prevent an intrusion and then immediately returned to my dying antagonist but what human language can adequately portray that astonishment that horror which possessed me are the spectacle then presented to view the brief moment in which I averted my eyes had been sufficient to produce apparently a material change in the arrangements at the upper or further end of the room a large mirror so at first it seemed to me my confusion now stood where none had been perceptible before and as I stepped up to it in extremity of terror my known image with features all pale and dabbled in blood advanced to meet me with a feeble and tottering gait thus it appeared I say that was not it was my antagonist it was Wilson then to be formed in the agony of the dissolution his mask and claw clay where he had thrown them upon the floor not a thread in all his raiment not a line in all the marked and singular liniments of his face which was not even the most absolute identity my own it was Wilson that he spoke no longer in a whisper and I could have fancied that I myself was speaking what he said conquered I yield yet henceforth as I also dead dead to the world to heaven and to hope in me did thou exist and in my death see by this image which is I know how utterly thou hast murdered thyself William Wilson Recording by Maya Tafidis Chapter 20 of the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe Raven Edition Volume 2 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by David Lawrence The collected works of Edgar Allan Poe Raven Edition Volume 2 The Telltale Heart True Nervous Very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am but why will you say that I am mad the disease has sharpened my senses not destroyed not doled them above all was a sense of hearing acute I heard all things in the heaven and the earth I heard many things in hell harken 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 mad the eye of a vulture a pale blue eye with a film over it whenever it fell upon me my blood ran cold and so by degrees very gradually I made up my mind to take the life of the old man and thus rid myself of the eye forever now this is the point you fancy me mad mad men know nothing but you should have seen me you should have seen how wisely I proceeded in my foresight with what the simulation I went to work I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him and every night about midnight I turned the latch of his door and opened it oh so gently and then when I had made an opening sufficient for my head I put in a dark lantern all closed closed that no light shone out and then I thrust in my head oh you would have laughed see how cunningly I thrust it in I moved it slowly very very slowly so that I may 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 when a mad man had 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 so that 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 hardy 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 mine did never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers of my sagacity I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph to think that there I was opening the door little by little and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts I fairly chuckle at the idea and perhaps he heard me for he moved on the bed suddenly as if startled now you may think that I drew back but no, his room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness however the shutters were closed fast through fear of robbers and so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door and I kept pushing on it steadily, steadily I had my head in and was about to open the lantern when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening and the old man sprang up in bed crying out, who's there? I kept quite still and said nothing for a whole hour I did not move a muscle and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down he was still sitting up in the bed listening just as I have done night after night harkening to the death watches in the wall presently I heard a slight groan and I knew it was a groan of mortal terror it was not a groan of pain or of grief, oh no it was the low, stifling sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe I knew this sound well only a night, just at midnight when all the world slept it had welled up from my own bosom deepening with its dreadful echo the terror 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 that first slight noise when he had turned in the bed his fears had been ever since growing upon him he had fancied them causeless but could not he had been sane to himself it is nothing but the wind in the chimney it is only a mouse crossing the floor or it is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions but he had found all in vain all in vain because death in approaching him had 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 the length is simple dim ray like the thread of the spider shot out from the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye it was open wide wide open and I grew furious as I gazed upon it I saw it with perfect distinctness all a dull blue with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones but I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person as if my instinct precisely upon the damn spot and have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over acuteness of the sense now I say there came to my ears a low 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 meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased it grew quicker and quicker and louder and louder every instant the old man's terror must have been extreme it grew louder I say louder every moment do you mark me well I have told you that I am nervous so I am and now at the dead hour of the night amid the dreadful silence of that old house so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror yet for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still but the beating grew louder louder I thought the heart must burst and now a new anxiety sees 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 leapt into the room he shrieked once once only in an instant I dragged him to the floor and pulled a heavy bed over him then I smiled gaily to find the deed so far done but for many minutes the heart beat on with a muffled sound this however did not vex me it would not be heard through the wall at length it ceased the old man was dead I removed the bed and examined the corpse yes he was stone stone dead I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes there was no pulsation he was stone dead his eye would trouble me no more if still you think me mad you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body the night waned and I worked hastily but in silence first of all I dismembered the corpse off the head and the arms and the legs then I took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber and deposited all between the scantlings I then replaced the board so cleverly so cunningly that no human eye not even his could have detected anything wrong there was nothing to wash out no stain of any kind no blood spot whatever I had been too wary for that a tub had caught all when I made an end to these labours it was four o'clock still dark as midnight as the bells sounded the hour they 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 in 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 gentleman 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 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 very wild audacity of my perfect triumph placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim the officers were satisfied my manner had convinced them I was singularly at ease they sat and while I answered clearly they chatted of familiar things but air 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 definiteness until at length I found that the noise was not within my voice no doubt I now grew very pale but I talked more fluently and with a heightened voice yet the sound increased and what could I do it was a low dull quick sound much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton I gasped for breath and yet the officers heard it not I talked more quickly more vehemently but the noise steadily increased I arose and argued about trifles in a high key and with violent gesticulations but the noise steadily increased why would they not be gone I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides as if excited to fury by the observations of the men but the noise steadily increased oh god what could I do I foamed I raved I swore I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting and graded it upon the boards but the noise rose over all and continually increased it grew louder louder louder and still the men shattered pleasantly and smiled was it possible they heard not oh mighty god no no they heard they suspected they knew they were making a mockery of my horror this I thought and this I think but anything was better than this agony anything was more tolerable than this derision I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer I felt that I must scream or die and now again hark louder louder louder louder villains I shriek disemble no more I admit the deed tear up the planks here here it is the beating of his hideous heart end of the telltale heart recording by David Lawrence January 24 2009 in Brampton, Ontario Chapter 21 of the Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe Reven Edition Volume 2 This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Maria Tafidis The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe Reven Edition Volume 2 Berenice Decaybant me sodales si se pulcrum amiche usitarem coras messa le quantulum for le watas ebne ziat Misery is manifold The wretchedness of earth is multiple Overriching the wild horizon as a rainbow its hues are as many as the hues that arc is distinct to yet as intimately blended Overriching the wild 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 I have never ever seen sorrow But as in ethics evil is a consequence of good So in fact out of joy is sorrow born Another memory of past bliss is the language of today All the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasy which might have been My baptism name is Agis That of my family I was not mentioned Yet there are no towers in the land more time-honoured than my gloomy grave He read through holes Our line has been called race of visionaries and in many striking particulars in the character of the family mentioned 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 with that chamber and with its volumes of which Lacha 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 a 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 force of spiritual and meaning eyes of sounds musical yet sad a remembrance which will not be excluded a memory like a shadow they variable indefinite unsteady and like a shadow too that's the ability of my getting rid of it while the sunlight of my reason shall exist That chamber was I born Thus awaking from the long night of what seemed but was not non-entity at once into the very regions of fairyland into a palace of imagination into the wild domains 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 the reverie But it is singular that I as years rolled away and the noon of manhood found me still in the mention of my fathers It is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life Wonderful how total and inversion took place out of my commonest thought The realities of the world affected me as visions and as visions only while the wild ideas of the learning dreams became not the material of my everyday existence but some very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself Berenice and I were cousins and we grew up together in my paternal halls Yet differently we grew I ill of health and buried in gloom she agile graceful and overflowing with energy hers the ramble of the hillside mine the studies of the cloister I living with my own heart and addicted body and soul to the most intense and painful meditation she roaming carelessly through life with no thought or the shadows in her path all the silent flight of the raven winged hours Berenice I call upon her name Berenice and from the grey ruins of memory a thousand mulches recollections are startled at the sound vividly is her image forming now as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy oh gorgeous yet fantastic beauty oh silk amid the shrubberies of Arnaim oh nigh-admong its fountains and then then all is mystery and terror and a tale which should not be told disease felt like the simoon upon a frame and even while 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 a person alas the destroyer came and went and the victim who is she who is she who knew her not who knew her no longer as Berenice among the numerous strain of maladies super induced by that fatal and primary one which affected a revolution of so horrible a kind in the moral and physical being of my cousin maybe mentioned as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature a species of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating in trance itself trance very nearly resembling positivity solution and from which her manner of recovery was in most instances startlingly abrupt in the meantime my own disease or I have been told that I should call it by no other appellation my own disease and grew rapidly upon me and assumed finally a mono menu character of a novel in extraordinary form hourly and morbidly gaining vigor and a length obtaining over me the most incomprehensible ascendancy this mono menu if I must so term it consistent in morbid irritability of those properties of mine in metaphysical science termed the attentive it is more than probable that I'm not understood but a fear indeed that 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 busy then buried themselves in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe to muse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the margin or in the typography of a book to become absorbed for the better part of summer's day in a quaint shadow falling slant upon the tapestry or upon the floor to lose myself for an entire night in watching this tiny flame of 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 seems to convey any idea whatever to the mind to lose all sense of emotional physical existence by means of absolute bodily questions long and obstinately persevering such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties not indeed altogether unparalleled but certainly biding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation yet let me not be misapprehended the undue earnest and morbid attention guided by objects in their own nature frivolous must not be confounded in character without ruminating propensity common to all mankind more especially indulged in my persons of ardent imagination it was not even as might be at first opposed in extreme condition or exaggeration of such propensity but primarily and essentially distinct and different in 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 suggestions issued therefrom until at the conclusion of a daydream often replete with luxury he finds the incitamentum 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 center the meditations were never pleasurable and at the termination of the reverie the first cause so far from being out of sight had attained a supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing feature of the disease in a word the powers of mind more particularly exorcised were with me as I have said before they attended an hour with a daydreamer the speculated my books at this epoch if they didn't actually serve to irritate the disorder partook to be perceived largely in their imaginative inconsequential nature or the characteristic qualities of the disorder itself I well remember among others the treatise of the noble italian coelius segundus curio the amplitudine beati regni dei saint austin's great work the city of god and their tulions the carne christi in which the paradoxical sentence mortus est dei filius credibli est cui adeptum est et sepultus resurexit curtum est cui impossibil est occupying my undivided time for many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation thus it will appear that shaken from its balance only by trivial things my reason bore resemblance to that ocean crack spoken of by ptolemy hefestion which steadily resisting the attacks of human violence when the fiercer fury of the waters and the winds travelled only to the touch of the flower called us now and although too careless thinker it might appear a matter beyond doubt that the alteration produced by her unhappy melody in the moral condition of baroness would have formed me many objects for the exercise of that intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been at some trial in explaining that 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 the total wreck of a fair and gentle life I did not fold upon the frequently and bitterly upon the one working means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass by the reflections partook not on the idiosyncrasy of my disease the world such as would have occurred under similar circumstances to the ordinary mass of mankind true to its own character but disorder revels in the less important but most totaling changes wrote in the physical frame of baroness in the singular and most appalling distortion of a personal identity during the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty most surely I had never loved her in the strange anomaly of my existence feelings with me had never been at heart and my passions always were blind through the gray of the early morning among the trellis shadows of the forest at noon day and in the silence of my library at night she had fit by my eyes and I had seen her not as the living and breathing baroness but as the baroness of a dream not as a being of the earth earthy but as the obstruction of being not as a thing to admire but to analyze not as an object of love but as a theme of the most obstruous although the sultry speculation and now now I shadowed in her presence and grew pale at her approach yet bitterly lamenting her fallen 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 approaching when upon an afternoon in the winter of the year one of those unseasonably warm calm and misty days which are the nerves of the beautiful house I sat and sat as I thought alone in the inner apartment of the library but uplifting my eyes I saw the baroness stood before me own excited imagination all the misty influence of the atmosphere all the uncertain twilight of the chamber all the grey draperies all around a figure the cozy and so vacillating and indistinct in outline I could not tell she spoke no word and I not for worlds could I have out of the syllable and I sit chill around through my frame since I've been sufferable anxiety oppressed me consuming curiosity pervading my soul and sinking back upon the chair I remained for some time breathless and motionless with my eyes riveted upon a person alas its emissation was excessive and not one vestige of the fulver being lured in any single line of the contour my burning glances the length fell upon the face the forehead was high very pale and singularly 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 the fantastic character with the reigning melancholy of the continents the eyes were lifeless and lustless and seemingly pupilless and I shrunk involuntarily from the glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips they parted and in a smile of peculiar meaning the teeth of the changed baroness disclosed themselves slowly to my view who would to god that I had never beheld them or that having done so I had died the shutting of a door this told me and looking up I found that my cousin had departed from the chamber but from the disordered chamber of my brain had not last departed I 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 pure of a smile had sufficed grounded upon my memory I saw them now even more unequivocally that I beheld them then the teeth the teeth they were here and there and everywhere and visibly in palmery before me long narrow and excessively white with pale lips writhing about them as in the very moment of their first terrible development then came the full fury of my monomania and I struggled in vain against a strange and irresistible influence in the multiplied objects of the external world I had no those bad for the teeth for these along with a friend's desire all of the matters and all different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation they they alone were present to the mental eye and they in their soul individuality became the essence of my mental life I held them in every light I turned them in every attitude I saw their characteristics I dwelled upon the peculiarities I pondered upon the conformation I'm used upon the alteration in their nature I shattered as I was signed to them in imagination a sensitive and sentient power and even when unassisted by the lips a capability of moral expression of mademoiselle it had been well said that all these parts of the feelings of bareness are more seriously believed that all these teeth were desidés desidés here was the idiotic thought that destroyed me desidés I there are four rituals that I coveted them so madly I felt that their possession could alone ever restore me to peace and giving me back to reason and the evening closed it upon me thus and then the darkness came and tarred and went and the day again dawn and the mist of a second night and all 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 ascendancy with the most vivid heathen thickness floated about amid the changing lights and shadows of the chamber the length they are broken upon my dreams a cry as of horror and dismay and they run to after a pose succeeded the sound of troubled voices intermingled with many low mornings of sorrow or of pain I rose from my seat throwing open one of the doors of the library so standing out in the enter chamber a servant made no one tears who told me that Baroness was no more she had been seized with epilepsy in the early morning and now the closing 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 fully 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 Baroness had been interred but of a dreary period which intervened I had no positive at least no definite comprehension yet its memory was replete of the horror more horrible 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 uninteligible recollections I strived to decipher them but in vain whatever ran on like the spirit of a departed sound the thrilling piercing shriek and my voice seemed to be ringing in my ears I had done a deed what was it I asked myself the question loud and the whispering echoes as the chamber answered me what was it on the table beside me burned lamp and near it lay a little box it was of no remarkable character and I had seen it frequently before for it was a property of a family physician but how came it there upon a table and with a shadow and regarding it these things were in no manner to be accounted for and my eyes and legs dropped to the open pages of a book and to a sentence underscored therein the words were the singular but simple ones at the point of being desired decabant me so dalle si se pulcrum amico e usitare cura smessele quantulmo for eleguatas why then as I pierced them did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end as the blood of my body became congealed with my veins there came a light tap at the library door and pale as the tent of two a mini lantern on tiptoe his looks were wild with terror and he spoke to me the voice tremulous husky and very I said he some broken sentences I heard he told of a wild cry disturbing the silence of the night of the gathering together of a household of a search in the direction of the sound and then his tones grew really distinct as he whispered me of a violated grave of a disfigured body shrouded with still breathing still palpitating still alive he pointed to garments they were muddy and cluttered with gore I spoke not and he took me gently by the hand it was indented 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 bound into 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 rattling sound they rolled out some instruments of dental surgery intermingle with 32 small white and ivory looking substances that were scattered to and fro by the floor and of baroness recording by maria da finis