 CHAPTER VII THE BLACK CAT The most wild yet most homely narrative, which I'm about to pin, 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 unburden my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world plainly succulently, and without comment a series of mere household events. In their consequences these events have terrified, tortured, 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 for Xs. However, perhaps some intellect may be found, which will reduce my phantomsism to commonplace. Some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive in all 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 facility and humanity of my dispensation. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my time and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them. This peculiarity of character grew with my growth and, in my manhood, I derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure. To those who have cherished an infection of a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus derivable. There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him, who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of a mere man. I married early and was happy to find my wife a disposition not uncongenial to with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We had birds, goldfish, 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. And 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 we guard all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point, and I mentioned a 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 whenever 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 threw the instrumentality of the feigned intemperance. Had I, I blushed to confess it. Experienced a radical alteration for the worse. I grew day by day more 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 sufficient regard to restain me from maltreating him. As I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog, 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 irritable 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 mellevance, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fiber of my frame, I took from my waistcoat a pocket, a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of his eyes from the socket. I flushed, burned, I shuddered, while I penned the damnable atrocity. When reason returned in 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 excesses, and soon downed in wine, all memory of the deed. In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket of the lost eye presented, it is true, a frightful experience, but he no longer appeared to suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual, but, as might be expected, fled in extreme horror 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 way to irritation, and then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of perverseness, of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart. One of the indivisible primary faculties or sentiments which give direction to the character of man, who has not a hundred times found himself committing a vile or a silly action for no other reason than 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? The spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to affects itself, to offer violence to its own nature, to do wrong for the wrong sake only. That urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon, the unoffending brute. One morning in cold blood I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree, hung it, with the tear 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 thing were possible, even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the most merciful and most terrible God. On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done I was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. Curtains of my bed were in flames, the whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that my wife, a servant and myself, made our escape from the conflagration. The destruction was complete, my entire worldly wealth was swallowed up, and I resigned myself thenceforth 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 have even a possible link imperfect. On the day succeeding the fire I visited the ruins, the walls, with one exception had fallen in. This exception was found in a compartment wall, not very thick, which stood about the middle of the house and against which had rested the head of my bed. The plastering had here, in great measure resisted the action of the fire, a fact which I attributed to its having been recently spread. About this wall a dense crowd were collected, and many persons seemed to be examining a particular portion of it with very minute and eager attention. The word strange seemed to be similar, and other similar expressions excited my curiosity. I approached and saw, as if graven and base relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. The impression was given with an accuracy truly marvellous. There was a rope around 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 a length reflection came to my aid, the cat. I remembered had been hung in a garden adjacent to the house. Upon the alarm of fire this garden had been immediately filled by a 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 a rousing me from sleep. The falling of the other walls 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 sought, 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 sediment that seemed but was not remorse. It went so far as to regret the loss of the animal, and to look about me among the vile haunts which I now habitually frequented, for another pet of the same species, and of somewhat similar appearance with which to supply its place. One night as I sat half 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 stiff furniture of the apartment. I had been looking steadily at the top of this hogshead for some minutes, and what now caused me surprise was the fact that I had not sooner perceived the object thereupon. I approached it, and touched with my hand it was a black cat, a very large one, fully as large as Pluto, and closely resembling him every respect but one. Pluto had not a white hair upon any portion of his body, but this cat had a large, although indefinite, spot 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 had once offered to purchase it of the landlord, but this person made no claim to it. Not knowing it had never seen it before. I continued my caresses, and when I prepared to go home the animal he venced a disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to do so, occasionally stooping and panning it as I proceeded. When it reached the house it domesticated itself at once and became immediately a great favorite with my wife. For my own part I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was just the reverse of what I had anticipated, but I know not how or why it was. Its evident fondness for myself, rather disgusted and annoyed. By slow degrees these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature, a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty preventing me from physically abusing it. I did not for some weak 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 audacious presence, as from the breath of a pestilence. What added no doubt to my hatred of the beast was the discovery on the morning after I brought it home that, like Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however, only endeared it to my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed, in a high degree, that humanity of feeling which had once been my distinguishing trait, and a source of many of my simplest and purest pleasures. With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase. It followed my footsteps with a persistency which it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat, it would crotch 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, partially by the member of my former crime, but chiefly, let me confess it once, by absolute dread 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 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 the 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, decreased nearly imperceptible, and which for a long time my reason struggled to reject this fanciful, rigorous distinctness of outline. It was now the representation of an object that I shudder to name, and for this, above all, I loathed and dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster had I dared. It was now, I say, the image of a hideous, of a ghastly thing, of the gallows, oh mournful and terrible engine of horror, and of crime, of agony, and of death. And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere humanity, and a brute beast whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed, a brute beast, to work out for me, for me a man, fashioned in the image of the High God, so much of insufferable woe. Alas, neither by day nor by night knew I the blessing of rest any more. During the former, the creature let 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 fast 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 soul intimates, the darkest and most evil thoughts, the moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatred of all things, and of all mankind, while from the sudden frequent and ungovernable outburst of a fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas, was the most unusual and most patient of sufferers. One day she accompanied me, upon some household errand into the cellar of the old building, which our property compelled us to inhabit. The cat followed me down the steep stairs, and nearly throwing me headlong, exasperated me to madness, uplifting acts and forgetting my wrath, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a blow at the animal which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal had it descended as I had wished, but this blow was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded by the interference into a rage more than demonical, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead on the spot without a groan. The hideous murder accomplished I set myself forthwith, and with entire deliberation to the task of concealing the body. I knew that I could not remove it from the house, either by day or by night, without the risk of being observed by the neighbors. Many projects entered my mind. At one period I had 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 of 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 consider 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 a cellar was well adapted. Its walls were loosely constructed and had lately been plastered throughout with rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had prevented from hardening. Moreover, in one of the walls was a projection caused by a false chimney or fireplace that had been filled up and made to resemble the red of the cellar. I made no doubt that I could readily displace the bricks at this point, insert the corpse, and wall the whole up as before, so that no eye could detect anything suspicious. And in this calculation I was not deceived. By 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 relayed the whole structure as it originally stood, having procured mortar, sand, and hair, with every possible precaution. I prepared a plaster which could not be distinguished from the old, and with this I very carefully went over the new brickwork. When I had finished I felt satisfied that all was all right. The wall did not present the slightest appearance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was picked up with the minutest care. I looked around triumphantly and said to myself, here at least, then my labor has not been in vain. My next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause of so much wretchedness, for I had at length firmly resolved to put it to death. Had I been able to meet with it at the moment there could have been no doubt of its fate, but it appeared that the crafty animal had been alarmed at the violence of my previous anger, and for bored 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. I slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul. The second and 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 forever. I should behold it no more. My happiness was supreme. The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. Some few inquiries had been made, but these had been readily answered. Even a search had been instituted, but of course nothing was to be discovered. I had looked upon my future of velocity as secured. On the fourth day of the assassination, 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 whatsoever. 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 a muscle. My heart beat calmly as that of one who slumbers in innocence. I walked the cellar from in to in. 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 guiltlessness. Gentlemen, I said at last as the party ascended the steps. I delight to have allied your suspicions. I wish you all health and little more courtesy. By the by, gentlemen, this is a very well constructed house. In the rabid desire to say something easily I scarcely knew what I muttered at all. I may say an exceedingly well constructed house. These walls are you are you going, gentlemen? These walls are solidly put together. And here, through the mere frenzy of bravado, I wrapped heavily with a cane which I held in my hand upon the very portion of the brickwork behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom. But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the archfiend. No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb, by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swallowing into one long, loud, and continuous grain, 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 exalt in the damned nation. 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 awe, in the next a dozen 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! The Fall of the House of Usher Zankur est anut suspendu, si dat qu'on les toucher il raison. De Bebringar During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself as the shades of the evening drew on within view of the melancholy house of usher. I knew 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 mirror 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 everyday life, the hideous dropping off of the veil, there was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into ought of the sublime. What was it, I pause to think, what was it that so unnerve me in the contemplation of the house of Usher? It was a mystery, all unsolvable, nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion that while beyond doubt there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us. Still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression. And acting about this idea, I ran my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay an unruffled luster by the dwelling and gazed down, but with a shudder even more throwing 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 proposed to myself a sojourn. Of some weeks, its proprietor, Rodrik 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 important nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness, of a mental disorder which oppressed him, and in 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 heart that went with his request, which allowed me no room for hesitation and, I accordingly, obeyed forthwith, what I still considered a very singular summons. Although as boys we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages in many works of exalted art and manifested of late, in repeated deeds of unifficent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intercedes, 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 lame. It was this deficiency I considered, while running over the thought, the perfect keeping of the character of the premises, with the accredited character of the people, while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in his long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other. It was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent, undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony of 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 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 uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy, a fancy so ridiculous indeed, that I would mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination as reality to believe that about the whole mansion, and domain, there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity, an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and a silent tarn, a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and ledden-hued. Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scan more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal features seem to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. My newt fungi overspread the whole exterior, 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 of the external air, beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zig-zag 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 stately step, thence conducted me in silence through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed. I know not how to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken, while the objects around me, while the carvings of the ceilings, the somber tapestries of the walls, deep on blackness of the floors, 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 physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. That 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 so vast a distance from the black, oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of incrimsum light made their way through the trellis-panes and served to render sufficiently distant the more prominent object around. The eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remote 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 I sure 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 constrained effort of the ennoying man of the world. A glance, however, at his continence convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down and from 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 one being before me, with the companion of my early boyhood, yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverness of complexion and eye-large liquid and luminous beyond comparison, lip somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surprisingly beautiful curve, a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual and similar formations, a finely molded chin, speaking in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy, hair of a more than web-like softness in tenuity, these features within an ordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a continence not easy to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features and of the expression they were want to convey lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin and the now miraculous luster of the eye above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face. I could not even with effort connect its arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity. In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence, an inconsistency, and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy, an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter than by reminiscence of certain boy's traits and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical confirmation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision, when the animal spirit seemed utterly in abeyance, to the species of energetic concision that abrupt weighty, unhurried and hollow-sounding enunciation that led in self-balance 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 in my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He entered at some length into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and 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 unusual sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me, although perhaps the terms and the general manager of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses. The most insipid food was alone and durable. 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 burdened 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 event of the future, not in themselves, but in the 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, to 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 more over at intervals and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions of the dwelling which he tenanted and went for many years. He had never ventured forth, in regard to an influence whose superstitious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be restated. 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 all the gray walls and turrets and the dim tarn into which they all looked down had at length brought upon the morale of his existence. He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar room which thus affected him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin, to the severe and long-continued illness, indeed to the evidently approaching disillusion of a tenderly beloved sister, his sole companion for long years, his last and only relative on earth. Her decease, he said, with the bitterness which I can never forget, would leave him, him hopeless in the frail, the last of the ancient race of the ushers, while he spoke, the Lady Madeleine, for so she was called, passed lowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment, not unmingled with dread, and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door at length closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the continence of her brother. But he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary oneness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears. The disease of the Lady Madeleine had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person and frequent, although transient, affections of a partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had not be taken 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 attain. 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 together, or I listened as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more, unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom. I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the occupation, in which he involved me, or led me the way, an excited and highly distempered ideality through a sulfurous luster overall. His long improvised dirages will ring forever in my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew touch by touch, into vigousness in which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I shuddered, knowing not why. From these paintings vivid as their images now are before me, I would in vain endeavour to induce 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 an overhauled attention. If ever, mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me, at least, in the circumstances then surround me, there arose, out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe. No shadow of which fell dry ever yet, in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of facility. 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 serve well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceedingly 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 discernable, 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 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 fervent facility of his impromptuous could not be so accounted for. They must have been and were in the notes as well as in the words of his wild fantasias, for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations. The result of that intense mental collatedness, and concentration to which I have previously eluded, is observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered, I was, perhaps more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it because in the under-ormistic 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. In the greenest of our valleys, by good angels tenanted, once a fair and stately palace, radiant palace reared its head. In the monarch thoughts, domination, it stood here, never a thrift spread opinion over fabric half so fair. Banners yellow, glorious golden, on its roof did float and flow, thus 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. Wanderers in that happy valley, through two luminous windows saw, spirits moving musically, to a lute's well-tuned law, round about a throne were sitting. For by Hawn, the state his glory well befitting, the ruler of the realm was seen. And all with pearl and ruby glowing was the fair palace door, through which came floating, flowing, flowing, and sparkling evermore, a troupe of echoes whose sweet duty was but to sing. In voices of surpassing beauty, the wit and wisdom of their king. But evil things in robes of sorrow assailed the monarch's highest state. Ah, let us mourn for Nevermarrow, 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. And travelers now within that valley, through the red-litten windows, see vast forms that move fantastically, to a discord melody, while like a rapid, ghastly river, through the pale door a hideous throng rush out forever and laugh but smile no more. I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of ushers which I mention not so much on account of its novelty, for other man of thought does. As on account of the pertinency 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 an organization. I lack words to express the full extent or the earnest abandon of his persuasion. The belief, however, was connected, as I have previously hinted, with the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience had been, here he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of the stones, in the order of their arrangement as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and the decayed trees which stood round, 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 hear started as he spoke, in the gradual, yelt, certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yelt, important, and terrible influence which for centuries had moldered 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 middle existence of the invalid, were as might be supposed in strict keeping with this character of phantasm, he poured together over such works as were not at chestre, croissant, the best flicker of Macaulaymi, the heaven and hell of Schwentpark, the subterranean voyage of Nicholas Klim by Holberg, the churcancy of Robert Flood of Jean de Engie, and Dela Chambre, the journey into the blue distance of Terrick, and the city of the sun, Campanella, one favored volume was a small octavio edition of Dictatorium, including Zedzerium, by the Dominican Emig de Goin, and there were passages of Pompey Esmela about the old African satars and of Egyptians over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the pursuant of an exceedingly rare and curious book in Quattro-Gothic, the manual of a forgotten church, the Vigarre Matorium Secunum Corum Estelle Magantee. I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac when one evening having informed me abruptly that the Lady Madeleine was no more. He stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, previously to its final internment, in one of the numerous faults within the main walls of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular proceeding was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution, so he told me, by consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial ground of the family. I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister continence 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 at best but a harmless and by no means unnatural precaution. At the request of Usher I personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment, the body having been engulfed we too alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it and which had been so long unopened that our torches half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere gave us little opportunity for investigation. Was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light, lying at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment, it had been used apparently in more futile times for the worst purposes of a dojong 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 tenet, a striking similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention, and usher, dividing perhaps my thought. Remembered out some words for which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcity and 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 catechryptical 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 depth. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and having secured the door of iron made our way with toil into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house. And now some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary manner had vanished, his ordinary occupations were neglected, or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectionalist step. The pallor of his continents assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue, but the luminous 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 utterances. 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 that into the mere inexplicable vagarities of madness. For I beheld him gazing upon vacantly for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrified, that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me by slow yet certain degrees the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions. It was especially upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or eighth day after the placing of the Lady Madeleine, within the Dijon, 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 influence of the gloomy furniture of the room, of the dark and tattered draperies which tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame, and at length there sat upon my fairy heart an incubus of utterly ceaseless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber hearkened. I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me, to certain low and indefinite sounds which came through the pauses of the storm at long intervals. I knew not whence, overpowered by an intense sediment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable. I threw on my clothes with haste, for I felt that I should sleep no more during the night, and endeavored to arouse myself from the pitiable condition, and to which I had fallen, by a pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment. I had taken a few turns in this manner, when a light step on an adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognize it as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he wrapped with a gentle touch at my door, and entered bearing a lamp. His continence was, as usual, cadaversly wan, but moreover there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes, and evidently restrained his starea in his whole demeanor. His air appalled me, but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief. You have not seen it, he said abruptly, after having stared about him for some moments in silence. You have not then seen it, but stay, you will. 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 temptuous, yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently collected its force in our vicinity, for there were frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind, and the exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this. Yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars, nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the undersurfaces 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 enshrouded the mansion. You must not, you shall not behold this, said I, shudderingly to Usher, as I led him with a gentle violence from the window to a seat. These appearances which bewildered you are merely electrical phenomena not uncommon, or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the ranked mismania 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. The antique volume which I had taken up was the mad trist of Sir Lancelot 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 proxility which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand, and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac might find relief, for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies, even in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed, by the wild overstrained air of vivacity, with which he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale? I might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design. I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story, where Ethel read the hero of the trist, having sought in vain for peaceable admission unto the dwelling of her hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by force. Here it will be remembered the words of the narrative run thus. And Ethel read, who was by nature a doubty heart, and who was now mighty with all on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who in soothe was 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 gauntlet to hand, and now pulling therewith sturdily, he so cracked and ripped and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry hollow-sounding wood, alarmed, the hand reverberated throughout the forest. At the termination of this sentence, I started for a moment, paused, for it appeared to me, although I had once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me. It appeared to me that, from some very remote portion of the mansion, there came in distinctly 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 rippling sound which Sir Lancelot had so particularly described. It was beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention, for amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary commingled noises of the still-increasing storm the sound in itself had nothing, surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the story. But the good champion, Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit, but in the stead thereof a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sat 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 inwritten, who entereth herein a conqueror hath been, 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 pesky breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh, and with also piercing. The Ethelred had feigned to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never before heard. Here again I paused abruptly and now with a feeling of wild amazement, for there could be no doubt whatever, that in this instance I did actually hear. Although from what direction it proceeded I found it impossible to say. A low and apparently distant but harsh protracted and most unusual screaming or grating sound, the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the romance her. 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 predominant, I still retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting by any observation the sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds in question, although assuredly a strange alteration had during the last few minutes taken place in his 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, print profile. The motion of his body too was at variance with this idea. 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 Lancelot, which thus proceeded. And now the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon, be thinking himself of the brazen shield and of the breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall, which ensued it. Feet upon the silver floor with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound. No sooner had these syllables passed my lips than as if a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of silver. I became aware of a distinct hollow metallic and clangorous yet apparently muffled, reverberation, completely unnerved. I leaped to my feet, but the measured rocking movement usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole continents there reigned a stoning rigidity. But as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person. A sickly smile quavered about his lips, and I saw that he spoke in low, low, hurried and jibbering murmur as his unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous impart of his words. Not hear it, yes, I hear it, and have heard it. 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, ethered, ha, ha, the breaking of the hermit's door, and the death cry of the dragon, and the clanger of the shield, say, rather, the rendering of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault. Oh, whether shall I fly? Will she not be here and on? Is she not her in? My haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Mad man here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrinked out his syllabus as if in the effort he were giving up his soul. Mad man, I tell you that she now stands without the door. As if in superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell, the huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed through slowly back upon the instant their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust, but then without these doors there did stand the lofty and enshrounded figure of the lady, Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes and the evidence of some bitter struggles upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and wailing to and fro upon a threshold. Then with a low moaning cry fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and her violent and now final death agonies bore him to the floor of 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 lone behind me. The radiance was that of the full setting, the blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely discernable fissure of which I have before spoken, as extending from the roof of the building in the zig-zag direction to the base. While I gazed as fissure rapidly widened, there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind. The entire orb of the satellite bursted 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 a deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the House of Usher. END OF THE FALL THE HOUSE OF USHER ALKMAN The mountain pinnacle slumber, valleys, crags, and caves are silent. Listen to me, said the demon, as he placed his hand upon my head. The region of which I speak is a dreary region in Libya by the borders of the river Zaire, and there is no quiet there, nor silence. The waters of the river have a saffron and sickly hue, and they flow not onwards to the sea, but palpitate forever and forever beneath the red eye of the sun with a tumultuous and convulsive motion. For many miles on either side of the river's oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic water lilies. They sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and stretch towards the heaven their long and ghastly necks, and nod to and fro their everlasting heads. And there is an indistinct murmur which cometh out from among them like the rushing of subterine water, and they sigh one unto the other. But there is a boundary to their realm, the boundary of the dark, horrible, lofty forest. There, like the waves about the Hebrides, the low underwood is agitated continually, but there is no wind throughout the heaven, and the tall primeval trees rock eternally hither and thither with a crashing and mighty sound, and from their high summits one by one drop everlasting dews, and at the roots strange poisonous flowers lie writhing in perturbed slumber, and overhead with a rustling and loud noise the gray clouds rush westwardly forever until they roll a cataract over the fiery wall of the horizon. But there is no wind throughout the heaven, and by the shores of the river Zaire there is neither quiet nor silence. It was night, and the rain fell, and falling it was rain, but having fallen it was blood, and I stood in the morass among the tall and the rain fell upon my head, and the lilies sighed one on to the other in the solemnity of their desolation. And all at once the moon arose through the thin ghastly mist and was crimson in color, and my eyes fell upon a huge gray rock which stood by the shore of the river, and was lighted by the light of the moon, and the rock was gray and ghastly and tall, and the rock was gray. Upon its front were characters engraven in the stone, and I walked through the morass of water lilies until I came close unto the shore that I might read the characters upon the stone, but I could not decipher them, and I was going back into the morass when the moon shone with a fuller red, and I turned and looked again upon the rock and upon the characters, and the characters were desolation. And I looked upwards, and there stood a man upon the summit of the rock, and I hid myself among the water lilies that I might discover the actions of the man, and the man was tall and stately in form, and was wrapped up from his shoulders to his feet in the toga of old Rome, and the outlines of his figure were indistinct, but his features were the features of a deity, for the mantle of the night, and of the mist, and of the moon, and of the dew had left uncovered the features of his face, and his brow was lofty with thought, and his eye wild with care, and in the few furrows upon his cheek I read the fables of sorrow and weariness and disgust with mankind, and a longing after solitude. And the man sat upon the rock, and leaned his head upon his hand, and looked out upon the desolation. He looked down into the low, unquiet shrubbery, and up into the tall primeval trees, and up higher at the rustling heaven, and into the crimson moon, and I lay close within shelter the lilies, and observed the actions of the man, and the man trembled in the solitude, but the night waned, and he sat upon the rock. And the man turned his attention from the heaven, and looked out upon the dreary river Zaire, and upon the yellow ghastly waters, and upon the pale legions of the water lilies, and the man listened to the size of the water lilies, and to the murmur that came up from among them, and I lay close within my covert, and observed the actions of the man, and the man trembled in the solitude, but the night waned, and he sat upon the rock. Then I went down into the recesses of the morass, and waited afar in among the wilderness of the lilies, and called on to the hippopotamia which dwelt among the fens and the recesses of the morass. And the hippopotamia heard my call, and came, with the behemoth, on to the foot of the rock, and roared loudly and fearfully beneath the moon, and I lay close within my covert, and observed the actions of the man, and the man trembled in the solitude, but the night waned, and he sat upon the rock. Then I cursed the elements with the curse of tumult, and a frightful tempest gathered in the heaven where, before there had been no wind, and the heaven became livid with the violence of the tempest, and the rain beat upon the head of the man, and the floods of the river came down, and the river was tormented into foam, and the water lilies shrieked within their beds, and the forest crumbled before the wind, and the thunder rolled, and the lightning fell, and the rock rocked to its foundation, and I lay close within my covert, and observed the actions of the man, and the man trembled in the solitude, but the night waned, and he sat upon the rock. Then I grew angry, and cursed, with a curse of silence, the river, and the lilies, and the wind, and the forest, and the heaven, and the thunder, and the size of the water lilies, and they became accursed, and were still, and the moon ceased to totter up its pathway to heaven, and the thunder died away, and the lightning did not flash, and the clouds hung motionless, and the waters sunk to their level, and remained, and the trees ceased to rock, and the water lilies sighed no more, and the murmur was heard no longer from among them, nor any shadow of sound throughout the vast, illimitable desert, and I looked upon the characters of the rock, and they were changed, and the characters were silence. And mine eyes fell upon the countenance of the man, and his countenance was won with terror. And hurriedly he raised his head from his hand, and stood forth upon the rock, and listened, but there was no voice throughout the vast, illimitable desert, and the characters upon the rock were silence. And the man shuddered, and turned his face away, and fled afar off in haste, so that I beheld him no more. Now there are fine tales in the volumes of the Magi, in the ironbound, melancholy volumes of the Magi. Therein I say are glorious histories of the heaven, and of the earth, and of the mighty sea, and of the genie that overruled the sea, and the earth, and the lofty heaven. There was much lore, too, in the sayings which were said by the Sibyls, and holy, holy things were heard of old by the dim leaves that trembled around Adona. But as Allah liveth, that fable which the demon told me as he sat by my side in the shadow of the tomb, I hold to be the most wonderful of all. And as the demon made an end of his story, he fell back within the cavity of the tomb, and laughed, and I could not laugh with the demon, and he cursed me because I could not laugh, and the lynx which dwelt forever in the tomb came out there from, and laid down at the feet of the demon, and looked at him steadily in the face. End of Silence of Fable Recording by Nick Number Chapter 10 of The Collected Works of Edgar Allen 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 Nick Number The Collected Works of Edgar Allen Poe, Raven Edition, Volume 2, The Mask of the Red Death The Red Death had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal or so hideous. Blood was its avatar and its seal, the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim were the pest ban, which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow men, and the whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease were the incidents of half an hour. But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hail and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the Prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions, the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime, it was folly to grieve or to think. The Prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons. There were improvisatory. There were ballet dancers. There were musicians. There was beauty. There was wine. All these in security were within. Without was the red death. It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence. It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade, but first let me tell 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 bazaar. The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass, whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue, and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange. The fifth with white. The sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet, a deep blood color. Now in no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candle-abrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro, or depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire that protected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illuminated the room, and thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber the effect of the firelight that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood tinted panes was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all. It was in this apartment also that there stood against the western wall a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang, and when the minute hand made the circuit of the face and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical. But of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause momentarily in their performance to hearken to the sound, and thus the Walters 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 embraced three thousand and six hundred seconds of the time that flies, there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before. But in spite of these things it was a gay and magnificent revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colors and effects. He disregarded the decor of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric luster. 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 embellishments of the seven chambers upon occasion of this great fate, 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 pecancy and phantasm, much of what has been seen since in Ernani. There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams, and these, the dreams, writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps, and anon there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet, and then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent, save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand, but the echoes of the chime die away. They have endured but an instant, and a light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many tinted windows through which stream the rays from the tripods. But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the maskers who venture, for the night is waning away, and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes, and the blackness of a sable drapery appalls, and to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet there comes from the near-clock of ebony a muffled peel more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote gayities 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 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 of 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 outherited 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 that are matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company indeed seemed now deeply to feel than 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 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 murmur 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 the spectral image, which with a slow and solemn movement as if more fully to sustain its role stalked to and fro among the waltzers, he was seen to be convulsed in the first moment with a strong shudder of either 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 deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the murmur had inspired the whole party, there were found none who put forth hand to seize him, so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the Prince's person. And, while the vast assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from the centers of the room to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber to the purple, through the purple to the green, through the green to the orange, through this again to the white, and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that it seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached in rapid impetuosity to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry, and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the 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 an unutterable horror at finding the grave sermons and corpse-like mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form. And now was acknowledged the presence of the red death. He had come like a thief in the night, and one by one dropped the 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 a limitable dominion over all. End of THE MASK OF THE RED DEATH RECORDING BY NIC NUMBER CHAPTER XI OF THE COLLECTED WORKS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE RAVEN EDITION VOLUME II 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 ALLAN WINTERROUD THE COLLECTED WORKS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE RAVEN EDITION VOLUME II THE CASK OF A MONTIADO THE THOUSAND INJURIES OF FORCINATO I HAD BORN AS I BEST COULD, BUT WHEN HE VENTURED UPON INSULT, I VALID REVENGE YOU, WHO KNOWS SO WELL 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 Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my want, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation. He had a weak point, this Fortunato, although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part, their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity, to practice imposter upon the British and Austrian millionaires. In painting and gemery, Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack. But in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this respect, I did not differ from him materially. I was skillful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could. 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, party-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 ringing his hand. I said to him, my dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkably well you are looking today! But I have received a pipe of what passes for a Montiato, and I have my doubts. How, said he, a Montiato, a pipe? Impossible! And in the middle of the carnival? I have my doubts, I replied, and I was silly enough to pay the full Montiato price without consulting you in the matter. You were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain. A Montiato? I have my doubts. A Montiato? And I must satisfy them. A Montiato! As you are engaged, I am on my way to Lucchese. If anyone has a critical turn, it is he. He will tell me, Lucchese cannot tell a Montiato from Sherry. And yet some fools will have it, that his taste is a match for your own. Come, let us go. Wither, to your vaults. My friend, no. I would not oppose upon your good nature. I perceive you have an engagement. Lucchese? 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 nighter. Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing, a Montiato. You have been opposed upon. And as for Lucchese, he cannot distinguish Sherry from a Montiato. Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm. Putting on a mask of black silk, and drawing a rocolaire closely about my person, I suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo. There were no attendants at home. They had absconded to make merry in 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 ensure their immediate disappearance, one at all, as soon as my back was turned. I took from their sconces to Flambeau, and giving one to Fortunato, 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 Montressors. The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap jingled as he strode. The pipe, said he. It is farther on, said I, but observe the white web work which gleams from these cavern walls. He turned towards me, and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs that distilled the room of intoxication. Niter, he asked at length. Niter, I replied. How long have you had that cough? My forefriend found it impossible to reply for many minutes. It is nothing, he said at last. Come, I said, with decision. We will go back. Your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved. You are happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter. We will go back. You will be ill, and I cannot be responsible. Besides, there is Lucchese. Enough, he said. The cold is a mere nothing. It will not kill me. I shall not die of cough. True, true, I replied. And indeed, I had no intention of alarming you unnecessarily, but you should use all proper caution. A draught of this madock 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 mold. Drink, I said, presenting him the wine. He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly, while the bells jingled. I drink, he said, to the buried that repose around us, and I to your long life. He again took my arm, and we proceeded. These vaults, he said, are extensive. The Montressors, I replied, were a great and numerous family. I forget your arms. A huge human foot door in a field azure. The foot crushes a serpent, rampant whose fangs are embedded in the heel. And the motto? Nimo me impune lacacit. Good, he said. The wine sparkled in his eyes, and the bells jingled. My own fancy grew warm with the madock. We had passed through walls of piled bones, with casks and punches intermingling into the innermost recesses of the catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize Fortunato by an arm above the elbow. The nighter, 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 draft of the madock. I broke and reached him a flagon of the grav. He emptied it at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed, and through the bottle upwards was a gesticulation I did not understand. I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement, a grotesque one. You do not comprehend, he said. Not I, I replied. Then you are not of the brotherhood. How? You are not of the masons. Yes, yes, I said. Yes, yes. You impossible, a mason. A mason, I replied. A sign, he said. It is this, I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the folds of my rocolaire. You jest, he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces, but let us proceed to the amanteado. 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 amanteado. We passed through a range of low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived in a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeau 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 perceived a still interior recess, in depth about four feet, in width three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no special use in itself, but formed merely the interval between two of the colossal supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by one of their circumscribing walls of solid granite. It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, 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 Lucchesi, he is an ignoramus, interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron stables, distant from each other about two feet horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain from the other a padlock. Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure it. He was too much astounded to resist. With drawing the key, I stepped back from the recess. Pass your hand, I said, over the wall, you cannot help feeling the nighter. 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 powder. 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 my masonry when I discovered that the intoxication of Fortunato had in 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 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, sixth, and the seventh tier. The wall was now nearly upon a level with my breast. I again paused and, holding the flambeau 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-approach 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 clamor 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 by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognizing as that of the noble Fortunato. The voice said, a very good joke indeed, an excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it at the Palazzo over our wine. The Amontiato, I said. Yes, the Amontiato. But is it not getting late? Will not they be awaiting us at the Palazzo, the Lady Fortunato, and the rest? Let us be gone. Yes, I said. Let us be gone. For the love of God, Montresor. Yes, I said. For the love of God. But to these words I harken in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I called aloud, Fortunato. No answer. I called again, Fortunato. No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. There came forth in 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 to my labor. I forced the last stone into its position. I plastered it up. Against the new masonry, I re-erected the old ram part of bones. For the half of a century, no mortal has to serve them. In Pace, Requisat. End of The Cask of Amontiato. Recording by Alan Winteroud, boomcoach.blogspot.com