 William Wilson by Edgar Allan Poe. What say of it? What say of conscience grim, that specter in my path? Chamberlain's pharaoh Neda. Let me call myself for the present William Wilson. The fair page now lying before me need not be sullied with my real appellation. This has been already too much an object for the scorn, for the horror, for the detestation of my race. To the uttermost regions of the globe have not the indignant winds brooded its unparalleled infamy? Oh, outcast of all outcasts, most abandoned! To the earth art thou not forever dead? To its honors, to its flowers, to its golden aspirations? And a cloud, dense, dismal, and limitless, does it not hang eternally between thy hopes and heaven? I would not, if I could, hear or today embody a record of my later years of unspeakable misery and unpardonable crime. This epic, these later years, took unto themselves a sudden elevation in turpitude, whose origin alone it is my present purpose to assign. Men usually grow based by degrees. From me in an instant all virtue dropped bodily as a mantle. From comparatively trivial wickedness I passed, with the stride of a giant, into more than the enormities of an illa gabalesce. What chance! What one event brought this evil thing to pass? Bear with me while I relate. Death approaches, and the shadow which foreruns him has thrown a softening influence over my spirit. I long in passing through the dim valley for the sympathy I had nearly said for the pity of my fellow men. I would faint have them believe that I have been, in some measure, the slave of circumstances beyond human control. I would wish them to seek out for me in the details I am about to give some little oasis of fatality amid a wilderness of error. I would have them allow, what they cannot refrain from allowing, that although temptation may have erewhile existed as great, man was never thus at least tempted before, certainly never thus fell. And is it therefore that he has never thus suffered? Have I not indeed been living in a dream? And am I not now dying a victim to the horror and the mystery of the wildest of all sublunary visions? I am the descendant of a race whose imaginative and easily excitable temperament has at all times rendered them remarkable, and in my earliest infancy I gave evidence of having fully inherited the family character. As I advanced in years it was more strongly developed, becoming for many reasons a cause of serious disquietude to my friends, and a positive injury to myself. I grew self-willed, addicted to the wildest caprices, and a prey to the most ungovernable passions. Weak-minded, and beset with constitutional infirmities akin to my own, my parents could do but little to check the evil propensities which distinguished me. Some feeble and ill-directed efforts resulted in complete failure on their part, and of course in total triumph on mine. Henceforward my voice was a household law, and at an age when few children have abandoned their leading strings, I was left to the guidance of my own will, and became in all but name the master of my own actions. My earliest recollections of a school life are connected with a large, rambling Elizabethan house in a misty-looking village of England, where were a vast number of gigantic and gnarled trees, and where all the houses were excessively ancient. In truth it was a dreamlike and spirit-soothing place, that venerable old town. At this moment in fancy I feel the refreshing chilliness of its deeply shadowed avenues, inhaled the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew with undefinable delight at the deep hollow note of the church bell, breaking each hour with sullen and sudden roar upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in which the fretted Gothic steeple lay embedded, and asleep. It gives me perhaps as much of pleasure as I can now in any manner experience to dwell upon minute recollections of the school and its concerns. Steeped and misery as I am, misery alas only too real, I shall be pardoned for seeking relief, however slight and temporary, in the weakness of a few rambling details. These, moreover, utterly trivial and even ridiculous in themselves, assume to my fancy adventitious importance, as connected with a period and a locality where and when I recognize the first ambiguous munitions of the destiny which afterwards so fully overshadowed me. Let me then remember. The house, I have said, was old and irregular. The grounds were extensive and a high and solid brick wall topped with a bed of mortar and broken glass encompassed the whole. This prison-like rampart formed the limit of our domain. Beyond it we saw but thrice a week, once every Saturday afternoon, when, attended by two ushers, we were permitted to take brief walks in a body through some of the neighboring fields, and twice during Sunday, when we were paraded in the same formal manner to the morning and evening service in the one church of the village. Of this church the principal of our school was pastor. With how deep a spirit of wonder and perplexity was I want to regard him from our remote pew in the gallery, as with step solemn and slow he ascended the pulpit. This reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered so rigid and so vast. Any he who of late with sour visage and in snuffy habiliments administered ferrule in hand the draconian laws of the academy, oh gigantic paradox too utterly monstrous for solution, at an angle of the ponderous wall found a more ponderous gate. It was riveted and studded with iron bolts and surmounted with jagged iron spikes. What impressions of deep awe did it inspire? It was never opened, save for the three periodical egressions and ingressions already mentioned. Then in every creek of its mighty hinges we found a plenitude of mystery, a world of matter for solemn remark, or for more solemn meditation. The extensive enclosure was irregular in form, having many capacious recesses. The first three or four of the largest constituted the playground. It was level and covered with fine hard gravel. I will remember it had no trees, nor benches, nor anything similar within it. Of course it was in the rear of the house. In front lay a small parterre, planted with box and other shrubs. But through this sacred division we passed only upon rare occasions indeed, such as a first advent to school, or final departure events. Or perhaps, when a parent or friend having called for us, we joyfully took our way home for the Christmas or mid-summer holy days. But the house, how quaint an old building was this, to me how veritably a palace of enchantment. There really was no end to its windings, to its incomprehensible subdivisions. It was difficult, at any given time, to say with certainty upon which of its two stories one happened to be. From each room to every other there were sure to be found three or four steps, either an ascent or descent. Then the lateral branches were innumerable, inconceivable, and so returning in upon themselves that our most exact ideas in regard to the whole mansion were not very far different from those with which we pondered upon infinity. During the five years of my residence here I was never able to ascertain with precision in what remote locality lay the little sleeping apartment assigned to myself and some eighteen or twenty other scholars. The school room was the largest in the house. I could not help thinking in the world. It was very long, narrow, and dismally low, with pointed gothic windows and a ceiling of oak. In a remote and terror-inspiring angle was a square enclosure of eight or ten feet, comprising the sanctum, during ours, of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. It was a solid structure with massy door, sooner than open in which the absence of the Dominic would all have willingly perished by the Pennfort Edure. In other angles were two other similar boxes, far less reverenced indeed, but still greatly matters of awe. One of these was the pulpit of the classical usher, one of the English and mathematical. Interspersed about the room, crossing and recrossing an endless irregularity were innumerable benches and desks, black, ancient and time-worn, piled desperately with much-bethumbed books, and so besiemed with initial letters, names at full length, grotesque figures, and other multiplied efforts of the knife, as to have entirely lost what little of original form might have been their portion in days long departed. A huge bucket with water stood at one extremity of the room and a clock of stupendous dimensions at the other. Compassed by the massy walls of this venerable academy, I passed, yet not in tedium or disgust, the years of the third lustrum of my life. The teeming brain of childhood requires no external world of incident to occupy or amuse it, and the apparently dismal monotony of a school was replete with more intense excitement than my ripe or youth has derived from luxury or my full manhood from crime. Yet I must believe that my first mental development had in it much of the uncommon, even much of the eutree. Upon mankind at large the events of very early existence rarely leave in mature age any definite impression, all is gray shadow, a weak and irregular remembrance, an indistinct regathering of feeble pleasures, and phantasmagoric pains. With me this is not so. In childhood I must have felt with the energy of a man what I now find stamped upon memory and lines as vivid, as deep, and as durable as the excergs of the Carthaginian Medals. Yet in fact, in the fact of the world's view, how little there was to remember. The morning's awakening, the nightly summons to bed, the connings, the recitations, the periodical half-holidays and perambulations, the playground with its broils, its pastimes, its intrigues. In truth the ardor, the enthusiasm, and the imperiousness of my disposition soon rendered me a marked character among my schoolmates, and by slow but natural gradations gave me an ascendancy overall not greatly older than myself. Overall with a single exception. This exception was found in the person of a scholar who although no relation bore the same Christian and surname as myself. A circumstance in fact little remarkable for notwithstanding a noble descent, mine was one of those everyday appellations which seemed by prescriptive right to have been time out of mind, common property of the mob. In this narrative I have therefore designated myself as William Wilson, a fictitious title not very dissimilar to the real. My namesake alone of those who in school phraseology constituted our set, presumed to compete with me in the studies of the class, in the sports and broils of the playground, to refuse implicit belief in my assertions and the submission to my will, indeed to interfere with my arbitrary dictation in any respect whatsoever. If there is on earth a supreme and unqualified despotism, it is the despotism of a mastermind in boyhood over the less energetic spirits of its companions. Wilson's rebellion was to me a source of the greatest embarrassment. The more so as in spite of the bravado with which in public I made a point of treating him and his pretensions, I secretly felt that I feared him and could not help thinking the equality which he maintained so easily with myself a proof of his true superiority, since not to be overcome cost me a perpetual struggle. Yet this superiority, even this equality, was in truth acknowledged by no one but myself. Our associates by some unaccountable blindness seemed not to even suspect it. Indeed his competition, his resistance, and especially his impertinent and dogged interference with my purposes, were not more pointed than private. He appeared to be destitute alike of the ambition which urged and of the passionate energy of mind which enabled me to excel. In his rivalry he might have been supposed actuated solely by a whimsical desire to thwart, astonish, or mortify myself. Although there were times when I could not help observing with a feeling made up of wonder, abasement, and peak, that he mingled with his injuries, his insults, or his contradictions a certain most inappropriate and assuredly most unwelcome affectionateness of manner. I could only conceive this singular behavior to arise from a consummate self-conceit assuming the vulgar heirs of patronage and protection. Perhaps it was this latter trait in Wilson's conduct conjoined with our identity of name and the mere accident of our having entered the school upon the same day which set afloat the notion that we were brothers among the senior classes of the academy. These do not usually inquire with much strictness into the affairs of their juniors. I have before said or should have said that Wilson was not in the most remote degree connected to my family. But assuredly if we had been brothers, we must have been twins. For after leaving Dr. Bransby's, I casually learned that my namesake was born on the 19th of January, 1813, and this is a somewhat remarkable coincidence, for that day is precisely that of my own nativity. It may seem strange that in spite of the continual anxiety occasioned me by the rivalry of Wilson and his intolerable spirit of contradiction, I could not bring myself to hate him altogether. We had to be sure, nearly every day a quarrel in which, yielding me publicly the palm of victory, he in some manner contrived to make me feel that it was he who had deserved it. Get a sense of pride on my part and a veritable dignity on his own kept us always upon what are called speaking terms. While there were many points of strong congeniality in our tempers, operating to awake in me a sentiment which our position alone perhaps prevented from ripening into friendship. It is difficult indeed to define or even to describe my real feelings towards him. They formed a motley and heterogeneous admixture, some petulant animosity which was not yet hatred, some esteem, more respect, much fear with a world of uneasy curiosity. To the moralist it will be unnecessary to say in addition that Wilson and myself were the most inseparable of companions. It was no doubt the anomalous state of affairs existing between us which turned all my attacks upon him and they were many, either open or covert, into the channel of banter or practical joke giving pain while assuming the aspect of mere fun rather than into a more serious and determined hostility. But my endeavors on this head were by no means uniformly successful even when my plans were the most wittily concocted for my namesake had much about him in character of that unassuming and quiet austerity which while enjoying the poignancy of its own jokes has no heal of Achilles in itself and absolutely refuses to be laughed at. I could find indeed but one vulnerable point and that lying in a personal peculiarity arising perhaps from constitutional disease would have been spared by any antagonist less at his wits end than myself. My rival had a weakness in the focal or guttural organs which precluded him from raising his voice at any time above a very low whisper. Of this defect I did not fail to take what poor advantage lay in my power. Wilson's retaliations in kind were many and there was one form of his practical witt that disturbed me beyond measure. How is sagacity first discovered at all that so petty a thing would vex me is a question I could never solve. But having discovered he habitually practiced the annoyance. I had always felt a version to my uncourtly patronymic and it's very common if not for me to be in preenomen. The words were venom in my ears and when upon the day of my arrival a second William Wilson came also to the academy I felt angry with him for bearing the name and doubly disgusted with the name because a stranger bore it who would be the cause of its two fold repetition who would constantly be in my presence and whose concerns in the ordinary routine of the school business must be on account of the detestable coincidence be often confounded with my own. The feeling of vexation thus engendered grew stronger with every circumstance tending to show resemblance moral or physical between my rival and myself. I had not then discovered the remarkable fact that we were of the same age but I saw that we were of the same height and I perceived that we were even singularly alike in general contour of person and outline of feature. I was galled too by the rumor touching a relationship which had grown current in the upper forms in a word nothing could more seriously disturb me although I scrupulously concealed such disturbance that any allusion to a similarity of mind person or condition existing between us but in truth I had no reason to believe that with the exception of the matter of relationship and in the case of Wilson himself this similarity had ever been made a subject of comment or even observed at all by our school fellows that he observed it in all its bearings and as fixedly as I was apparent but that he could discover in such circumstances so fruitful a field of annoyance can only be attributed as I said before to his more than ordinary penetration his cue which was to perfect an imitation of myself they both in words and in actions and most admirably did he play his part my dress it was an easy matter to copy my dress it was an easy matter to copy my gate in general manner were without difficulty appropriated in spite of his constitutional defect even my voice did not escape him my louder tones were of course unattempted but then the key it was identical and his singular whisper it grew the very echo of my own how greatly this most exquisite portraiture harassed me for it could not justly be termed a caricature I will not now venture to describe I had but one consolation in the fact that the imitation apparently was noticed by myself alone and that I had to endure only the knowing and strangely sarcastic smiles of my namesake himself satisfied with having produced in my bosom the intended effect he seemed to chuckle in secret over the sting he had inflicted and was characteristically disregardful of the public applause which the success of his woody endeavors might have so easily elicited that the school indeed did not feel his design perceive its accomplishment and participate in his sneer was for many anxious months a riddle I could not resolve perhaps the gradation of his copy rendered it not so readily perceptible or more possibly I owed my security to the master air of the copyist who disdaining the letter which in a painting is all the obtuse can see gave but the full spirit of his original for my individual contemplation and chagrin I have already more than once spoken of the disgusting air of patronage which he assumed toward me and of his frequent officious interference with my will this interference often took the ungracious character of advice advice not openly given but hinted or insinuated I received it with a repugnance which gained strength as I grew in years yet at this distant day let me do him the simple justice to acknowledge that I can recall no occasion when the suggestions of my rifle were on the side of those errors or follies so usual to his immature age and seeming inexperience not his moral sense at least if not his general talents and worldly wisdom was far keener than my own and that I might today have been a better and thus a happier man had I less frequently rejected the councils embodied in those meaning whispers which I then but too cordially hated and too bitterly despised as it was I at length grew restive in the extreme under his tasteful supervision and daily resented more and more openly what I considered his intolerable arrogance I have said that in the first years of our connection as schoolmates my feelings in regard to him might have easily ripened into friendship but in the latter months of my residency of the Academy although the intrusion of his ordinary manner had beyond doubt in some measure abated my sentiments in nearly similar proportion part took very much a positive hatred upon one occasion he saw this I think and afterwards avoided or made a show of avoiding me it was about the same period if I remember a right that in an altercation of violence with him in which he was more than usually thrown off his guard and spoke and acted with an openness of demeanor rather foreign to his nature I discovered or fancied I discovered in his accent his air and the general appearance of something which first startled and then deeply interested me by bringing to mind dim visions of my earliest infancy wild confused and thronging memories of a time when memory herself was yet unborn I cannot better describe the sensation which oppressed me then by saying that I could with difficulty shake off the belief of my having been acquainted with the being who stood before me long ago some point in the past even infinitely remote the delusion however faded rapidly as it came and I mention it at all but to define the day of the last conversation I there held with my singular namesake the huge old house with its countless subdivisions had several large chambers communicating with each other where slept the greater number of the students there were however as must necessarily happen in a building so awkwardly planned many little nooks or recesses the odds and ends of the structure and these the economic ingenuity of Dr. Bransby had also fitted up as dormitories although being the nearest closets they were capable of accommodating but a single individual one of these small apartments was occupied by Wilson one night about the close of my fifth year at the school and immediately after the altercation just mentioned finding everyone wrapped in sleep I arose from bed and lamp in hand stole through a wilderness of narrow passages from my own bedroom to that of my rival I had long been plotting one of those ill-natured pieces of practical wit at his expense in which I hithered to had been so uniformly unsuccessful it was my intention now to put my scheme in operation and I resolved to make him feel the whole extent of the malice with which I was imbued having reached his closet I noiselessly entered leaving the lamp with the shade over it on the outside I advanced a step and listened to the sound of his tranquil breathing assured of his being asleep I returned took the light and with it again approached the bed close curtains were around it which in the prosecution of my plan I slowly and quietly withdrew when the bright rays fell vividly upon the sleeper and my eyes the same moment upon his countenance I looked and a numbness and iciness of feeling instantly pervaded my frame my breast heaved my knees tottered my whole spirit became possessed with an objectless yet intolerable horror gasping for breath I lowered the lamp in still nearer proximity to the face were these these the lineaments of William Wilson I saw indeed that they were his but I shook as if with a fit of the Agu in fancying they were not what was there about them to confound me in this manner I gazed while my brain reeled with a multitude of incoherent thoughts not thus he appeared assuredly not thus in the vivacity of his waking hours the same name the same contour a person the same day of arrival at the academy and then his dogged and meaningless imitation of my gate my habits and my manner was it in truth within the bounds of human possibility that what I now saw was the result merely of the habitual practice of this sarcastic imitation awe-stricken and with a creeping shutter I extinguished the lamp past silently from the chamber and left at once the halls of that old academy never to enter them again after a lapse of some months spent at home in mere loneliness I found myself a student at Eaton the brief interval had been sufficient to enfeeble my remembrance of the events of Dr. Bransby's or at least to effect a material change in the nature of the feelings with which I remembered them the truth the tragedy of the drama was no more I could now find room to doubt the evidence of my senses and seldom called up the subject at all but with wonder at extent of human credulity and a smile at the vivid force of the imagination which I hereditarily possessed neither was this species of skepticism likely to be diminished by the character of the life I led at Eaton the vortex of thoughtless folly into which I there so immediately and so recklessly plunged washed away all but the froth of my past hours engulfed at once every solid or serious impression and left to memory only the various levities of a former existence I do not wish however to trace the course of my miserable profligacy here a profligacy which set at defiance the laws while it eluded the vigilance of the institution three years of folly passed without profit had but given me rooted habits of vice and added in a somewhat unusual degree to my bodily stature when after a week of soulless dissipation I invited a small party of the most disillusioned students to secret a vessel in my chambers we met at a late hour of the night for our debaucheries were to be faithfully protracted until morning the wine flowed freely and there were not wanting other and perhaps more dangerous seductions so that the grade dawn had already faintly appeared in the east while our delirious extravagance was at its height madly flushed with cards and intoxication I was in the act of insisting upon a toast of more than wanted profanity my attention was suddenly diverted by the violent though partial unclosing of the door of the apartment and by the eager voice of a servant from without he said that some person apparently in great haste demanded to speak with me in the hall wildly excited with wine the unexpected interruption rather delighted than surprised me I staggered forward at once and a few steps brought me to the vestibule of the building in this low and small room there hung no lamp and now no light at all was admitted save that of the exceedingly feeble dawn which made its way through the semi-circular window as I put my foot over the threshold I became aware of the figure of a youth of about my own height and habited in a white cursey mere morning frock cut in the novel fashion of the one I myself wore at the moment this the faint light enabled me to perceive but the features of his face I could not distinguish upon my entering he strode hurriedly up to me and seizing me by the arm with a gesture of petulant impatience whispered the words William Welleson in my ear I grew perfectly sober in an instant there was that in the manner of the stranger and in the tremulous shake of his uplifted finger as he held it between my eyes and the light which filled me with unqualified amazement but it was not this which had so violently moved me it was the pregnancy of solemn admonition in the singular low hissing utterance and above all it was the character the tone the key of these few simple and familiar yet whispered syllables which came with a thousand thronging memories of bygone days and struck upon my soul with the shock of a galvanic battery ere I could recover the use of my senses he was gone although this event failed not of a vivid effect upon my disordered imagination yet it was evanescent as vivid for some weeks indeed I busied myself in earnest inquiry or was wrapped in a cloud of morbid speculation I did not pretend to disguise from my perception the identity of the singular individual who thus perseveringly interfered with my affairs and harassed me with his insinuated council but who and what was this Wilson and whence came me and what were his purposes upon neither of these points could I be satisfied merely ascertaining in regard to him that a sudden accident in his family had caused his removal from Dr. Bransby's Academy on the afternoon of the day in which I myself had eloped but in a brief period I ceased to think upon the subject my attention being all absorbed in a contemplated departure for Oxford thither I soon went the uncalculating vanity of my parents furnishing me with an outfit and annual establishment which would enable me to indulge and will in the luxury already so dear to my heart to vie in profuseness of expenditure with the haughtiest heirs of the wealthiest earldoms in Great Britain excited by such appliances device my constitutional temperament broke forth with redoubled ardor and I spurned even the common restraints of decency in the mad infatuation of my revels but it were absurd to pause in the detail of my extravagance let it suffice that among spendthrifts I outherited Herod and that giving name to a multitude of novel follies I added no brief appendix to the long catalog of vices than usual in the most dissolute University of Europe it could hardly be credited however that I had even here so utterly fallen from the gentlemanly estate as to seek acquaintance with the vilest arts of the gambler by profession and having become an adept in his despicable science to practice it habitually as a means of increasing my already enormous income at the expense of the weak-minded among my fellow collegians such nevertheless was the fact and the very enormity of this offense against all manly and honorable sentiment provided beyond doubt the main if not the sole reason of the impunity with which I was committed who indeed among my most abandoned associates would not rather have disputed the clearest evidence of his senses than have suspected of such courses the gay the Frank the generous William Wilson the noblest and most commoner at Oxford him whose follies said his parasites were but the follies of youth and unbridled fancy whose errors but inimitable whim whose darkest vice but a careless and dashing extravagance I had been now two years successfully busied in this way when there came to the university a young parvenu nobleman Glen dinning rich said report as Herodotus Atticus his riches too as easily acquired I soon found him of weak intellect and of course marked him as a fitting subject for my skill I frequently engaged him in play and contrived with the gambler's usual art to let him win considerable sums the more effect you will lay to entangle him in my snares at length my schemes being ripe I met him with the full intention that this meeting should be final and decisive at the chambers of a fellow commoner Mr. Preston equally intimate with both but who to do him justice entertained not an even remote suspicion of my design to give this a better coloring I had contrived to have assembled a party of some eight or ten implicitly careful that the introduction of cards should appear accidental and originate in the purpose of my contemplated dupe himself to be brief upon a vile topic none of the low finesse was omitted so customary upon similar occasions that it is a just matter for wonder how any are still found so besotted as to fall its victim we had protracted are sitting far into the night and I had at length affected the over of getting glindening as my soul antagonist the game to is my favorite a card the rest of the company interested in the extent of our play had abandoned their own cards and were standing around us as spectators the parva knew who had been induced by my artifice is in the early part of the evening to drink deeply now shuffled dealt or played with a wild nervousness of manner for which his intoxication I thought might partially but could not altogether account in a very short period he had become my debtor to a large amount when having taken a long draft of port he did precisely what I had been coolly anticipating he proposed to double our already extravagant stakes with a well-famed show of reluctance and not until after my repeated refusal had seduced him into some angry words which gave a color of peak to my compliance did I finally comply the result of course did but prove how entirely the prey was in my toils in less than an hour he had quadrupled his debt for some time his countenance had been losing the florid tinge lented by the wine but now to my astonishment I perceived that it had grown to a pallor truly fearful I say to my astonishment glindening had been represented to my eager inquiries as immeasurably wealthy and the sums which he had as yet lost although in themselves vast could not I supposed very seriously annoy much less so violently affect him that he was overcome by the wine just swallowed was the idea which most readily presented itself and rather with a view to the preservation of my own character in the eyes of my associates then from any less interested motive I was about to insist peremptorily upon a discontinuance of the play when some expressions at my elbow from among the company and an ejaculation evincing utter despair on the part of glindening gave me to understand that I had affected his total ruin under circumstances which rendering him an object for the pity of all should have protected him from the ill offices even of a fiend what now might have been my conduct it is difficult to say the pitiable condition of my dupe had thrown an era of embarrassed gloom over all and for some moments a profound silence was maintained during which I could not help feeling my cheeks tingle with the many burning glances of scorn or reproach cast upon me by the less abandoned of the party I will even own that an intolerable weight of anxiety was for a brief instant lifted my bosom by the sudden and extraordinary interruption which ensued the wide heavy folding doors of the apartment were all at once thrown open to their full extent with a vigorous and rushing impetuosity that extinguished as if by magic every candle in the room their light in dying enabled us just to perceive that a stranger had entered about my own height and closely muffled in a cloak the darkness however was now total and we could only feel that he was standing in our midst before any of us could recover from the extreme astonishment into which this rudeness had thrown all we heard the voice of the intruder gentlemen he said in a low distinct and never to be forgotten whisper which thrilled to the very marrow of my bones gentlemen I make no apology for this behavior because in thus behaving fulfilling a duty you are beyond doubt uninformed of the true character of the person who has tonight one at a cart a large sum of money from Lord Glendening I will therefore put you upon an expeditious and decisive plan of obtaining this very necessary information pleased to examine at your leisure the inner linings of the cuff of his left sleeve and the several little packages which may be found in the somewhat capacious pockets of his embroidered morning wrapper while he spoke so profound was the stillness that one might have heard a pin drop upon the floor in ceasing he departed at once and as abruptly as he had entered can I shall I describe my sensations must I say that I felt all the horrors of the dam most assuredly I had a little time given for reflection many hands roughly seized me upon the spot and lights were immediately reprocured a search ensued in the lining of my sleeve were found all the court cards essential in a cart and in the pockets of my wrapper a number of packs facsimiles of those used at our sittings with the single exception that mine were of the species called technically our on days the honors of being slightly convex at the ends the lower cards slightly convex at the sides in this disposition the dupe who cuts as customary at the length of the pack will invariably find that he cuts his antagonist an honor while the gambler cutting at the breadth will as certainly cut nothing for his victim which may count in the records of the game any burst of indignation upon this discovery would have affected me less than the silent contempt or the sarcastic composure with which it was received Mr. Wilson said our host stooping to remove from beneath his feet and exceedingly luxurious cloak of rare furs Mr. Wilson this is your property the weather was cold and upon quitting my own room I had thrown a cloak over my dressing wrapper putting it off upon reaching the scene of play I presume it is super erogatory to seek here eyeing the folds of the garment with a bitter smile for any farther evidence of your skill indeed we have had enough you will see the necessity I hope of quitting Oxford at all events of quitting instantly my chambers abased humbled to the dust as I then was it is probable that I should have resented this galling language by immediate personal violence had done my whole attention been at the moment arrested by a fact of the most startling character the cloak which I had worn was of a rare description of fur how rare how extravagantly costly I shall not venture to say its fashion too was of my own fantastic invention for I was fastidious to an absurd degree of cox comery in matters of this frivolous nature when therefore Mr. Preston reached me that which he had picked up upon the floor and near the folding doors of the apartment it was within an astonishment nearly bordering upon terror that I perceived my own already hanging on my arm where I had no doubt unwittingly placed it and that the one presented me was but its exact counterpart in every and even the minutest possible particular the singular being who had so disastrously exposed me had been muffled I remembered in a cloak and none had been worn at all by any of the members of our party with the exception of myself retaining some presence of mind I took the one offered me by Preston placed it unnoticed over my own left the apartment with a resolute scowl of defiance and next morning aired dawn of day commenced a hurried journey from Oxford to the continent in a perfect agony of horror and of shame I fled in vain my evil destiny pursued me as if in exultation and proved indeed that the exercise of its mysterious dominion had as yet only begun scarcely had I set foot in Paris or I had fresh evidence of the detestable interest taken by this Wilson in my concerns years flew while I experienced no relief villain at Rome with how untimely yet with how spectral and officiousness stepped he in between me and my ambition at Vienna to at Berlin and at Moscow where in truth had I not better cause to curse him within my heart from his inscrutable tyranny did I at length flee panic stricken as from a pestilence and to the very ends of the earth I fled in vain and again and again in secret communion with my own spirit would I demand the questions who is he whence came he and what are his objects but no answer was there found and then I scrutinized with a minute scrutiny the forms and the methods and the leading traits of his impertinent supervision but even here there was very little upon which to base a conjecture it was noticeable indeed that in no one of the multiplied instances in which he had of late crossed my path had he so crossed it except to frustrate those schemes or to disturb those actions which if fully carried out might have resulted in bitter mischief poor justification this in truth for an authority so imperiously assumed poor indemnity for natural rights of self agency so pertinaciously so insultingly denied I had also been forced to notice that my tormentor for a very long period of time while miraculously and with miraculous dexterity maintaining his whim of an identity of apparel with myself had so contrived it in the execution of his varied interference with my will that I saw not at any moment the features of his face be Wilson what he might this at least was but the various of affectation or a folly could he for an instant have supposed that in my admonisher at Eaton in the destroyer of my honor at Oxford in him who thwarted my ambition at Rome my revenge at Paris my passionate love at Naples or what he falsely termed my avarice in Egypt that in this my arch enemy and evil genius could fail to recognize the William Wilson of my schoolboy days the namesake the companion the rival the hated and dreaded rival of Dr. Bransby's impossible but let me hasten to the last eventful scene of the drama thus far I had succumbed supinely to this imperious domination the sentiment of deep awe with which I habitually regarded the elevated character the majestic wisdom the apparent omnipresence and omnipotence of Wilson added to a feeling of even terror with which certain other traits in his nature and assumptions inspired me had operated hitherto to impress me with an idea of my own utter weakness and helplessness and to suggest an implicit although bitterly reluctant submission to his arbitrary will but of late days I had given myself up entirely to wine and its maddening influence upon my hereditary temper rendered me more and more impatient of control I began to murmur to hesitate to resist and was it only fancy which induced me to believe that with the increase of my own firmness that of my tormentor underwent a proportional diminution be this as it may I now began to feel the inspiration of a burning hope and at length nurtured in my secret thoughts a stern and desperate resolution that I would submit no longer to be enslaved it was at Rome during the Carnival of 18 dot dot that I attended a masquerade in the Palazzo of the Neapolitan Duke de Broglie I had indulged more freely than usual in the excesses of the wine table and now the suffocating atmosphere of the crowded rooms irritated me beyond endurance the difficulty to a forcing my way through the mazes of company contributed not a little to the ruffling of my temper for I was anxiously seeking let me not say with what unworthy motive the young the gay the beautiful wife of the aged and doting de Broglie with a too unscrupulous confidence she had previously communicated to me the secret of the costume in which she would be habited and now having caught a glimpse of her person I was hurrying to make my way into her presence at this moment I felt a light hand placed upon my shoulder and that ever remembered low damnable whisper within my ear in an absolute frenzy of wrath I turned at once upon him who had thus interrupted me and seized him violently by the collar he was a tired as I had expected in a costume altogether similar to my own wearing a Spanish cloak of blue velvet begirt about the waist with the crimson belt sustaining a rapier a mask of black silk entirely covered his face scoundrel I said in a voice husky with rage while every syllable I uttered seemed as new fuel to my fury scoundrel imposter a cursed villain you shall not you shall not dog me unto death follow me or I stab you where you stand and I broke my way from the ballroom into a small antechamber adjoining dragging him unresistingly with me as I went upon entering I thrust him furiously from me he staggered against the wall while I closed the door with an oath and commanded him to draw he hesitated but for an instant then with a slight sigh drew in silence and put himself upon his defense the contest was brief indeed I was frantic with every species of wild excitement and felt within my single arm the energy and power of a multitude in a few seconds I forced him by sheer strength against the wind scouting and thus getting him at mercy plunged my sword with brute ferocity repeatedly through and through his bosom at that instant some person tried the latch of the door I hastened to prevent an intrusion and then immediately returned to my dying antagonist but what human language can adequately portray that astonishment that horror which possessed me at the spectacle then presented to view the brief moment in which I averted by eyes had been sufficient to produce apparently a material change in the arrangements at the upper or farther end of the room a large mirror so at first it seemed to me in my confusion now stood where none had been perceptible before and as I stepped up to it in extremity of terror my own image but with features all pale and dabbled in blood advanced to meet me with a feeble and tottering gate thus it appeared I say but was not it was my antagonist it was Wilson who then stood before me in the agonies of his dissolution his mask and cloak lay where he had thrown them upon the floor not a thread in all his raiment not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments of his face which was not even in the most absolute identity my known it was Wilson but he spoke no longer in a whisper and I could have fancied that I myself was speaking while he said you have conquered and I yield yet henceforth art thou also dead dead to the world to heaven and to hope in me didst thou exist and in my death see by this image which is thine own how utterly thou hast murdered thyself .