 CHAPTER XII. THE IMP of the Perverse In the consideration of the faculties and impulses of the primimobilia of the human soul, the phrenologists have failed to make room for a propensity which, although obviously existing as a radical, primitive, irreducible sentiment, has been equally overlooked by all the moralists who have preceded them. In the pure arrogance of the reason, we have all overlooked it. We have suffered its existence to escape our senses solely through want of belief, of faith, whether it be faith in Revelation or faith in the Kabbalah. The idea of it has never occurred to us simply because of its super-erogation. We saw no need of the impulse for the propensity. We could not perceive its necessity. We could not understand, that is to say, we could not have understood, had the notion of this primimobilia ever obtruded itself. We could not have understood in what manner it might be made to further the objects of humanity, either temporal or eternal. It cannot be denied that phrenology and, in great measure, all metaphysicianism have been concocted a priori. The intellectual or logical man, rather than the understanding or observant man, set himself to imagine designs, to dictate purposes to God. Having thus fathomed to his satisfaction the intentions of Jehovah, out of these intentions he built his innumerable systems of mind. In the matter of phrenology, for example, we first determined, naturally enough, that it was a design of the deity that man should eat. We then assigned to man an organ of elementiveness, and this organ is the scourge with which the deity compels man, will-i, nil-i, into eating. Secondly, having settled it to be God's will that man should continue his species, we discovered an organ of omitiveness, forthwith, and so with combativeness, with ideality, with causality, with constructiveness, so in short with every organ, whether representing a propensity, a moral sentiment, or a faculty of the pure intellect. And in these arrangements of the Principia of Human Action, the Spursimites, whether right or wrong, in part, or upon the whole, have but followed in principle the footsteps of their predecessors, deducing and establishing everything from the preconceived destiny of man and upon the ground of the objects of his creator. It would have been wiser, it would have been safer to classify, if classify we must, upon the basis of what man usually or occasionally did, and was always occasionally doing, rather than upon the basis of what we took it for granted the deity intended him to do. If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts that call the works into being? If we cannot understand him in his objective creatures, how then in his substantive moods and phases of creation? Induction, a posteriori, would have brought phrenology to admit as an innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical something, which we may call perverseness, for want of a more characteristic term. In the sense I intend, it is, in fact, a mobile without motive, a motive not motive-vert. Through its promptings we act without comprehensible object, or if this shall be understood as a contradiction in terms, we may so far modify the proposition as to say that through its promptings we act for the reason that we should not. In theory no reason can be more unreasonable, but in fact there is none more strong. With certain minds under certain conditions it becomes absolutely irresistible. I am not more certain than I breathe than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often the one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone impels us to its prosecution. Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong's sake admit of analysis or resolution into ulterior elements. It is a radical, a primitive impulse, elementary. It will be said, I am aware, that when we persist in acts because we feel we should not persist in them, our conduct is but a modification of that which ordinarily springs from the combativeness of phrenology. But a glance will show the fallacy of this idea. The phrenological combativeness has for its essence the necessity of self-defense. It is our safeguard against injury. Its principle regards our well-being, and thus the desire to be well is excited simultaneously with its development. It follows that the desire to be well must be excited simultaneously with any principle which shall be merely a modification of combativeness, but in the case of that something which I term perverseness, the desire to be well is not only not aroused, but a strongly antagonistical sentiment exists. An appeal to one's own heart is, after all, the best reply to the sophistry just noticed. No one who trustingly consults and thoroughly questions his own soul will be disposed to deny the entire radicalness of the propensity in question. It is not more incomprehensible than distinctive. There lives no man who at some period has not been tormented, for example, by an earnest desire to tantalize a listener by circumlocution. The speaker is aware that he displeases. He has every intention to please. He is usually curt, precise, and clear. The most volcanic and luminous language is struggling for utterance upon his tongue. It is only with difficulty that he restrains himself from giving it flow. He dreads and deprecates the anger of him whom he addresses, yet the thought strikes him that by certain involutions and parentheses this anger may be engendered. That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing to the deeper dread and mortification of the speaker and in defiance of all consequences is indulged. We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls trumpet-tongued for immediate energy and action. We glow. We are consumed with eagerness to commence the work with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must. It shall be undertaken today, and yet we put it off until tomorrow. And why? There is no answer except that we feel perverse, using the word with no comprehension of the principle. Tomorrow arrives, and with it a more impatient anxiety to do our duty. But with this very increase of anxiety arrives also a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable craving for delay. This craving gathers strength as the moments fly. The last hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of the conflict within us, of the definite with the indefinite, of the substance with the shadow. But if the contest have proceeded thus far it is the shadow which prevails. We struggle in vain. The clock strikes and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time it is the shanticleer, note to the ghost that is so long overawed us. It flies. It disappears. We are free. The old energy returns. We will labor now. Alas, it is too late. We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss. We grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of unnameable feeling. By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor from the bottle out of which arose the genius in the Arabian Nights. But out of this, our cloud upon the precipice's edge there grows into palpability, a shape far more terrible than any genius or any demon of a tale. And yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height. And this fall, this rushing annihilation, for the very reason that it involves the one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imagination. For this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it. And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore do we the most impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniically impatient as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge. To indulge for a moment in any attempt at thought is to be inevitably lost, for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed. Examine these similar actions as we will, we shall find them resulting solely from the spirit of the perverse. We perpetrate them because we feel that we should not. Beyond or behind this there is no intelligible principle, and we might indeed deem this perverseness a direct instigation of the archfiend, where it not occasionally known to operate in furtherance of good. I have said thus much that in some measure I may answer your question, that I may explain to you why I am here, that I may assign to you something that shall have at least the faint aspect of a cause for my wearing these fetters, and for my tenenting miscell of the condemned. Had I not been thus prolix you might either have misunderstood me altogether, or with the rabble have fancied me mad, as it is you will easily perceive that I am one of the many uncounted victims of the imp of the perverse. It is impossible that any deed could have been wrought with a more thorough deliberation. For weeks, for months, I pondered upon the means of the murder. I rejected a thousand schemes because their accomplishment involved a chance of detection. At length, in reading some French memoirs, I found an account of a nearly fatal illness that occurred to Madame Pillow through the agency of a candle accidentally poisoned. The idea struck my fancy at once. I knew my victim's habit of reading in bed. I knew, too, that his apartment was narrow and ill-ventilated. But I need not vex you with impertinent details. I need not describe the easy artifices by which I substituted in his bedroom candle stand a wax light of my own making for the one which I there found. The next morning he was discovered dead in his bed, and the coroner's verdict was death by the visitation of God. Having inherited his estate all went well with me for years. The idea of detection never once entered my brain. Of the remains of the fatal taper I had myself carefully disposed. I had left no shadow of a clue by which it would be possible to convict or even to suspect me of the crime. It is inconceivable how rich a sentiment of satisfaction arose in my bosom as I reflected upon my absolute security. For a very long period of time I was accustomed to revel in this sentiment. It afforded me more real delight than all the mere worldly advantages accruing from my sin. But there arrived at length an epoch from which the pleasurable feeling grew by scarcely perceptible gradations into a haunting and harassing thought. It harassed because it haunted. I could scarcely get rid of it for an instant. It is quite a common thing to be thus annoyed with the ringing in our ears or rather in our memories of the burden of some ordinary song or some unimpressive snatches from an opera. Nor will we be the less tormented if the song in itself be good or the opera ere meritorious. In this manner at last I would perpetually catch myself pondering upon my security and repeating in a low undertone the phrase, I am safe. One day whilst sauntering along the streets I rested myself in the act of murmuring, half allowed these customary syllables, in a fit of petulance I remodeled them thus. I am safe, I am safe, yes, if I be not fool enough to make open confession. No sooner had I spoken these words than I felt an icy chill creep to my heart. I had had some experience in these fits of perversity whose nature I have been at some trouble to explain and I remembered well that in no instance I had successfully resisted their attacks. And now my own casual self-suggestion that I might possibly be fool enough to confess the murder of which I had been guilty confronted me as if the very ghost of him whom I had murdered and beckoned me on to death. At first I made an effort to shake off this nightmare of the soul. I walked vigorously, faster, still faster, at length I ran. I felt a maddening desire to shriek aloud. Every succeeding wave of thought overwhelmed me with new terror, for, alas, I well too well understood that to think in my situation was to be lost. I still quickened my pace. I bounded like a madman through the crowded thoroughfares. At length the populace took the alarm and pursued me. I felt then the consummation of my fate. Could I have torn out my tongue I would have done it, but a rough voice resounded in my ears. A rougher grasp seized me by the shoulder. I turned, I gasped for breath. For a moment I experienced all the pangs of suffocation. I became blind and deaf and giddy, and then some invisible fiend I thought struck me with his broad palm upon the back. The long imprisoned secret burst forth from my soul. I say that I spoke with a distinct enunciation, but with marked emphasis and passionate hurry, as if in dread of interruption before concluding the brief but pregnant sentences that consigned me to the hangman and to hell. Having related all that was necessary for the fullest judicial conviction I fell prostrate in a swoon. But why shall I say more? Today I wear these chains and am here. Tomorrow I shall be federalist. But where? End of THE IMP OF THE PREVERSE CHAPTER XIII OF THE COLLECTED WORKS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE, RAVEN EDITION, VOLUME II NALLUS ENEMLOCUS SINE GENIOS EST, SERVIOUS La music, says Marmontel in those contes moro, footnote, moro is here derived from morer, and its meaning is fashionable or more strictly of manners and footnote, which in all our translations we have insisted upon calling moral tales as if in mockery of their spirit, la music elle est sous des talents qui jouissent d'eux les mêmes, tous les auteurs veulent des témoins. Here he confounds the pleasure derivable from sweet sounds with the capacity for creating them. No more than any other talent is that for music susceptible of complete enjoyment where there is no second party to appreciate its exercise. And it is only in common with other talents that it produces effects which may be fully enjoyed in solitude. The idea which the raconteur has either failed to entertain clearly or has sacrificed in its expression to his national love of point is doubtless the very tenable one that the higher order of music is the most thoroughly estimated when we are exclusively alone. The proposition in this form will be admitted at once by those who love the lyre for its own sake and for its spiritual uses. But there is one pleasure still within the reach of fallen mortality and perhaps only one which owes even more than does music to the accessory sentiment of seclusion. I mean the happiness experienced in the contemplation of natural scenery. In truth the man who would behold a right the glory of God upon earth must in solitude behold that glory. To me at least the presence not of human life only but of life in any other form than that of the green things which grow upon the soil and are voiceless is a stain upon the landscape is at war with the genius of the scene. I love indeed to regard the dark valleys and the grey rocks and the waters that silently smile and the forests that sigh in uneasy slumbers and the proud watchful mountains that look down upon all. I love to regard these as themselves but the colossal members of one vast animate and sentient whole a whole whose form that of the sphere is the most perfect and most inclusive of all whose path is among associate planets whose meek handmaiden is the moon whose mediate sovereign is the sun whose life is eternity whose thought is that of a God whose enjoyment is knowledge whose destinies are lost in immensity whose cognizance of ourselves is akin with our own cognizance of the anamelculae which infest the brain a being which we in consequence regard as purely inanimate and material much in the same manner as these anamelculae must thus regard us. Our telescopes and our mathematical investigations assure us on every hand notwithstanding the cant of the more ignorant of the priesthood that space and therefore that bulk is an important consideration in the eyes of the Almighty. The cycles in which the stars move are those best adapted for the evolution without collision of the greatest possible number of bodies. The forms of those bodies are accurately such as within a given surface to include the greatest possible amount of matter while the surfaces themselves are so disposed as to accommodate a denser population than could be accommodated on the same surfaces otherwise arranged. Nor is it any argument against bulk being an object with God that space itself is infinite for there may be an infinity of matter to fill it. And since we see clearly that the endowment of matter with vitality is a principle indeed as far as our judgments extend the leading principle in the operations of deity it is scarcely logical to imagine it confined to the regions of the minute where we daily trace it and not extending to those of the August. As we find cycle within cycle without end yet all revolving around one far distant center which is the Godhead may we not analogically suppose in the same manner life within life the less within the greater and all within the spirit divine. In short we are madly airing through self-esteem in believing man in either his temporal or future destinies to be of more moment in the universe than that vast clod of the valley which he tills and contems and to which he denies a soul for no more profound reason than that he does not behold it in operation. Footnote Speaking of the tides, Pomponius Mela in his treatise De Situ Orbis says either the world is a great mammal or etc. End footnote These fancies and such as these have always given to my meditations among the mountains and the forests by the rivers and the ocean a tinge of what the everyday world would not fail to term fantastic. My wanderings amid such scenes have been many and far searching and often solitary and the interest with which I have strayed through many a dim deep valley or gazed into the reflected heaven of many a bright lake has been an interest greatly deepened by the thought that I have strayed and gazed alone. What flippant Frenchman was it who said in allusion to the well-known work of Zimmerman that La solitude est une belle chose. May il folk alcune pour vous die que la solitude est une belle chose? Footnote Balzac in substance I do not remember the words End footnote The epigram cannot be gainsaid but the necessity is a thing that does not exist. It was during one of my lonely journeyings amid a far distant region of mountain locked within mountain and sad rivers and melancholy tarn writhing or sleeping within all that I chanced upon a certain rivulet and island. I came upon them suddenly in the leafy June and threw myself upon the turf beneath the branches of an unknown odorous shrub that I might doze as I contemplated the scene. I felt that thus only should I look upon it, such was the character of phantasm which it wore. On all sides, save to the west where the sun was about sinking, arose the verdant walls of the forest. The little river which turned sharply in its course and was thus immediately lost to sight seemed to have no exit from its prison but to be absorbed by the deep green foliage of the trees to the east, while in the opposite quarter so it appeared to me as I lay at length and gazed upward, there poured down noiselessly and continuously into the valley a rich golden and crimson waterfall from the sunset fountains of the sky. About midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in, one small circular island profusely verduered reposed upon the bosom of the stream. So blended bank and shadow there that each seemed pendulous in air, so mirror-like was the glassy water that it was scarcely possible to say at what point upon the slope of the emerald turf its crystal dominion began. My position enabled me to include in a single view both the eastern and western extremities of the islet, and I observed a singularly marked difference in their aspects. The latter was all one radiant harem of garden beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the sunlight and fairly laughed with flowers. The grass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and asphodel interspersed. The trees were lithe, mirthful, erect, bright, slender, and graceful of eastern figure and foliage with bark smooth, glossy, and party-colored. There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all, and although no airs blew from out the heavens, yet everything was gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable butterflies that might have been mistaken for tulips with wings. Footnote, Florum Putares Nari Purliquidum Athera, Pecomi, and footnote. The other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the blackest shade. A somber yet beautiful and peaceful gloom here pervaded all things. The trees were dark in color and attitude, breathing themselves into sad, solemn, and spectral shapes that conveyed ideas of mortal sorrow and untimely death. The grass wore the deep tint of the cypress, and the heads of its blades hung droopingly, and hither and thither among it were many small, unsightly hillocks, low and narrow, and not very long, that had the aspect of graves but were not. Although over and all about them, the trees were clambered. The shade of the trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury itself therein in pregnating the depths of the element with darkness. I fancied that each shadow as the sun descended lower and lower separated itself sullenly from the trunk that gave it birth and thus became absorbed by the stream, while other shadows issued moment from the trees taking the place of their life. This idea, having once seized upon my fancy, greatly excited it, and I lost myself forthwith in reverie. If ever island were enchanted, said I to myself, this is it. This is the haunt of the few gentle face who remain from the wreck of the race. Are these green tombs theirs? Or do they yield up their sweet lives as mankind yield up their own? In dying do they not rather waste away mournfully rendering unto God little by little their existence, as these trees render up shadow after shadow, exhausting their substance unto dissolution? What the wasting tree is to the water that imbibes its shade, growing thus blacker by what it preys upon, may not the life of the fae be to the death which engulfs it? As I thus mused with half-shut eyes while the sun sank rapidly to rest, and eddy incurrence reared round and round the island, bearing upon their bosom large dazzling white flakes of the bark of the sycamore flakes, which in their multi-form positions upon the water a quick imagination might have converted into anything it pleased. While I thus mused, it appeared to me that the form of one of those very face about whom I had been pondering made its way slowly into the darkness from out the light at the western end of the island. She stood similarly fragile canoe and urged it with the mere phantom of an oar. While within the influence of the lingering sunbeams, her attitude seemed indicative of joy, but sorrow deformed it as she passed within the shade. Slowly she glided along, and at length rounded the islet and re-entered the region of light. The revolution which has just been made by the fae, continued I musingly, is the cycle of the brief year of her life. She has floated through her winter and through her summer. She is a year nearer unto death, for I did not fail to see that as she came into the shade, her shadow fell from her and was swallowed up in the dark water, making its blackness more black. And again the boat appeared and the fae, but about the attitude of the latter there was more of care and uncertainty and less of elastic joy. And again from out the light and into the gloom which deepened momently, and again her shadow fell from her into the ebony water and became absorbed into its blackness. And again and again she made the circuit of the island, while the sun rushed down to his slumbers, and at each issuing into the light there was more sorrow about her person, while it grew feebler and far fainter and more indistinct, and at each time her shadow fell from her a darker shade which became wellmed in a shadow more black. But at length when the sun had utterly departed the fae, now the mere ghost of her former self, went disconsolately with her boat into the region of the ebony flood, and that she issued dense at all I cannot say, for darkness fell over all things and I beheld her magical figure no more. RECORDING BY TRISHA G Chapter 14 of The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Raven Edition Volume 2 This is the LibriVox Recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Maria Tafidis The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Raven Edition Volume 2 The Assignation Stay for me there I will not fail to meet thee in that hollow veil Execue on the death of his wife by Harry King Bishop of Chichester ill-fated and mysterious man Bewildered in the brilliancy of thine own imagination Fallen in the flames of thy own youth Again in fancy, I behold thee Once more, thy form has risen before me Not, oh, not as thou art In the cold valley and shadow But as thou shoulds be Squonering away life's magnificent meditation In that city of dim visions of thy own Venice Which is a star-beloved Elysium of the sea And the wide windows Whose palladium palaces look down With a deep and bitter meaning Upon the secrets of a silent water Yes, I repeat it as thou shoulds be They are surely other worldliness Of the thoughts Than the thoughts of the multitude Of the speculations Of the surfaced Who then shall call thy conduct Into question Who blame thee for thy visionary Ours, or denounce Those occupations as a wasting Way of life, which were By the over-flowings Of thy never-lasting energies It was at Venice Beneath the covered archway The air-cold, the ponte di sospirii That I met for the third or fourth time The person of whom I speak It is with a confused recollection That I bring to mind The circumstances of that meeting Yet I remember Ah, how should I forget The deep midnight The British size The beauty of woman And the genius of romance That stoked Up and down the narrow canal It was night Of unusual gloom The great clock of the Piazza Had sounded the fifth hour Of the Italian evening The square of the campanile Lay silent and deserted And the lights in the old Ducal palace were dying Fast away I was returning home from the Piazzetta By way of the grand canal But as my gondola arrived Opposite the mouth of the canal San Marco, a female voice From its recesses broke Suddenly upon the night In one while He hysterical And long continued shriek Statulent As the sound was primed upon my feet While the gondola Letting slip his single oar Lost it In a pitch darkness Beyond all the chains of recovery And we were consequently left To the guidance of the current That sets from the greater Into the smaller channel Like some huge and sable feathered Condor We were slowly drifting down Towards the bridge of size When a thousand flambeaux Flashing from the windows And down the staircase of the Ducal palace Turned all at once That deep gloom into a livid And put to natural day A child sleeping From the arms of its own mother Into the deep and dim canal The quiet waters Had closed placidly over their victim And although My own gondola was the only one Inside, many a stout swimmer Already in the stream Was seeking in vain Upon surface The treasure it was to be found Alas, only within the abyss Upon the brood Black marble flax tones At the entrance of the palace There are a few steps above the water Stood a figure which None who then saw Can have ever since forgotten It was the Marcesa Aphrodite The adoration of all Venice The Gayest of Gay The most lovely Where all were beautiful But still the young wife Of the old and intriguing Mentoni and the mother The young, her first and the only one Who now deep beneath the murky water Was thinking in bitterness of heart Upon her sweet caresses And exhausting its little life In struggles to call upon a name She stood alone Her small, bare And silvery feet glimmed In the black mirror of marble beneath her A hair Not as yet more than half Loosened for the night from its small room array Clustered amid a shower of diamonds Round and round her classical head In curls like those of the young hyacinth A snowy white and gaze-like drapery Seem to be nearly the soul Covering to her delicate form But the midsummer and midnight air Was hot, solid and still And no emotion in the stage Like foam itself Stirred even the folds Of that raiment of very vapor Which hung around it As the heavy marble hangs around the newbie It's strange to say Her large lustrous eyes Were not turned downwards upon that grave Were in her brightest whole play Buried But riveted in a widely different Direction The prison of the old republic Is, I think, the steadliest Building in old Venice But how could that lady gaze so fixedly Upon it Her lace tifling her only child Young dark gloomy niche too Young right opposite her chamber window But then could there be In its shadows In its architecture In its ivory-reeled and solemn cornices That the marches I demand Tony Had not wandered at a thousand Times before Nonsense Who does not remember that at such a time Is this, the eye, like a shattered mirror Multiplies the images of its sorrow And sees innumerable far-off places The woe which is closed at hand Many steps above the marchesa And, within the arch Of the water gate Stood in full dress The satya-like figure of Mantoni himself He was occasionally occupied In the tramingo guitar And seemed only to the very death And as intervals he gave directions For the recovery of his child Stupified and aghast I had myself no power to move From the upright position I had assumed Upon first hearing the shriek And must have presented to the eyes Of the agitating group A spectral and ominous appearance As with pale countenance And rigid limbs I floated down Among them that fuel-real gondola All efforts proved in vain Many of the most energetic In the search Were relaxing their exertions Yielding to a gloomy sorrow There seemed, by little hope For the child How much less than for the mother But now, from the interior You're of a dark niche which has been already Mentioned as forming a part Of the old republican prison And as fronting glattis of the marchesa A figure muffled in a cloak Stepped out within reach of the light And posing a moment upon the verge Of the giddily descent Plunged headlong into the canon As in an instant afterwards He stood with a still-living and breathing child Within his grasp Upon the marble flagstones By the side of the marchesa His cloak, heavy with a drenching water Became unfastened And falling in fold About his feet, discovered To the wondrous chicken spectators A graceful person of a very young man With the sound of whose name The greater part of Europe Was then ringing No word spoke the deliverer But the marchesa She will now receive her child She will press it to her heart She will cling to its little form And smother it with her caresses Alas Another's arms have taken it from the stranger Another's arms have taken it away And borne it far off And noticed into the palace And the marchesa Her lip, a beautiful lip trembles Tears are gathering in her eyes Those eyes, which like plenty's Acanthus Are soft And almost liquid Yes, tears are Gathering in those eyes And see The entire womb And thrills throughout the soul And the stage you have started into life The pallor of the marble cancels The swelling of the marble bosom The very purity of the marble feet We behold, suddenly flushed over With the tide of ungovernable crimson And a slight shudder quivers About her delicate frame As a gentle air at Napoli By the rich silver lilies in the grass Why should that lady blush? To this demand there is no answer Except that having left In the eager haste and terror Of the mother's heart The privacy of her own boudoir She had neglected to enthrall Her tiny feet in their slippers And utterly forgotten To throw over Venetian's shoulders That drapery which is there due What other possible reason Could there have been for her so blushing For the glance of those wild Appealing eyes For the unusual tumult of throbbing bosom For the convulsive pressure Of the trembling hand That hand which fell As men turned into the palace Accidentally upon the hand of the stranger What a reason could there have been For the low The singularly low tone Of those unmeaning words Which the lady uttered heredly In bidding him adieu Thou hast conquered She said, all the memories Of the water deceived me Thou hast conquered When hour after sunrise We shall meet So let it be The tumult had subsided The lights had died away within a palace And the stranger who were now recognized Stood alone upon the flag He shook with inconceivable agitation And his eye glanced around In search of a gondola I could not do less than offer him The service of my own And he accepted the civility Having obtained an ore at the water gate We proceeded together to his residence While he rapidly recovered His self possession and spoke Of our foremost slight acquaintance In terms of great apparently cordiality There are some subjects upon which I take pleasure in being minute The person of the stranger Let me call him by this title Who to all the world was still stranger The person of the stranger Is one of these subjects In height He might have been below Rather than above the medium size Although there were moments Of intense passion When his frame actually expanded And belied the assertion The light almost slender Symmetry of his figure Promised more of that ready Activity which he evinced At the bridge of size And the recurrent strength Which has been known to wield without an effort Upon occasions of more dangerous emergency With the mouth and chin Of a deity Singular, wild Fool Liquid-eye Whose shadows varied from pure Hazel To intense and brilliant Debt And profusion of curling Black hair From each forehead of unusual breath Lean forth at intervals All light and ivory His were features Than which have none more Classically regular Except perhaps the marble ones Of the Emperor Commodus Yet his countenance was nevertheless One of those which all men Have seen at some period of their lives And have never afterwards Seen again It had no peculiar It had no settled Predominant expression to be fastened Upon the memory A countenance seen and instantly forgotten But forgotten Will a vague and never-seizing desire Recalling it to mind Not that a spur of each rapid passion Failed at any time To throw its own distinct Image upon the mirror That face But that a mirror, mirror-like Retained no vestige of the passion When the passion had departed While leaving him Of the night of our adventure He solicited me In what I thought An urgent manner To call upon him the very early next morning Shortly after sunrise I found myself calling at his palazzo One of his huge structures of gloomy And fantastic pomp Which tower above the waters Of the Grand Canal in the vicinity Of the Rialto I was shown up a broad winding staircase Of mosaics into an apartment Whose unparalleled splendor Burst through the opening door With an actual glare Making me bland and dizzy With luxuriousness I knew my acquaintance to be wealthy Report had spoken of his possessions In terms which I had even ventured To call terms of ridiculous exaggeration But as a gazed about me I could not bring myself To believe that the wealth Of any subject in Europe Could have supplied The princely magnificence Which burned and blazed around Although, as I say The sun had risen Yet the room Was still brilliantly lighted up A judge from this circumstance As well as from a narrow exhaustion In the countenance of my friend That he had not retired to bed During the whole of a preceding night In the architecture and embellishments Of the chamber, the evident design Had been to dazzle and astound When little attention had been paid To the decoror what is technically Called keeping Or to the proprietors of nationality The eye Wounded from object to object And rested upon none Neither the grotesque of the Greek painters Nor sculptured at best Italian days Nor the huge carvings Of untutored Egypt Rich draperies in every part of the room Trembled to the vibration of low, Melancholy music Whose origin was not to be discovered The censors Were oppressed by mingled And conflicting perfumes Reaking up from strange convoluted Censors together with multitudinous Flaring and flickering tongues Of emerald and violet fire The rays of the newly risen Upon the whole, through windows Formed each of a single pane Of crimson tinted glass Glancing to and fro In a thousand reflections From curtains which rolled From their coins like cataracts Of molten silver The beams of natural glory Mingled at length Fitfully with the artificial light And lay weltering in subdued masses Upon a cup of rich liquid-looking Gold Laughed the proprietor Motioning me to a seat As I entered the room And throwing himself back at full length Upon an ottoman I see, said he Perceiving that I could not Immediately reconcile myself To the bien-sens of so singular welcome I see you are astonished At my apartment At my statues At my pictures My originality Of conception in architecture And upholstery Absolutely drunk, eh? With my magnificence But pardon me, my dear sir Here, his tone of voice Dropped to the very spirit of cordiality Pardon me for my own charitable laughter You appeared so utterly astonished Besides something that's so completely ludicrous That a man must Laugh Or die To die laughing Must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths Sir Thomas Moore A very fine man was Sir Thomas Moore Sir Thomas Moore died laughing, you remember Also, in the absurdities of Ravish's text-top There is a long list of characters Who came to the same magnificent end Do you know, however Continue amusingly The Radspartha Which is now paliochry Aspartha, I say To the west of the citadel Among the chaos of scarcely visible Rules Is a kind of sock Upon which are still legible The letters Lasma They are undoubtedly Part of the lasma Now At Sparta were a thousand temples And shrines Two thousand different definities How exceedingly strange That the altar of laughter Should have survived All the others But in the present instance He resumed with a singular alteration Of voice and manner I have no right to be married at your expense You might well have been amazed Europe cannot produce anything so fine With this, my little regal cabinet My other apartments are by no means Of the same order Mere alters of fashionable Incipility This is better than fashion Is it not? This has but to be seen To become the rage That is, with those who could afford it At the cost of their entire patch-money I have guarded, however Against any such profanation With one exception You are the only human being Besides myself In my valley Who has been admitted within a mystery Of these imperial precincts Since they have been bedisen, as you see I bowed in acknowledgement For the overpowering sense Of splendor and perfume And music, together with the Unexpected eccentricity of his address And manner, prevented me from expressing In words my appreciation of what I might have construed into a compliment Here, he resumed Rising and leaning on my arm As he sauntered around the apartment Here are paintings From the Greeks to Kimabui And from Kimabui to the present hour Many are chosen, as you see With little difference to the opinions of Virtu They are all, however Feeding tapestry for chambers such as this Here, too, are some Shedove of the unknown great And here Unfinished designs by men Celebrating their day Whose very names the perspicacity Of the academies has left to silence And me What think you? said he Turning abruptly as he spoke What think you? of this madonna De la pieta? It is Gido's own Said with all the enthusiasm of my nature While I had been pouring intensely Over its surpassing loveliness It is Gido's own Could you have a She's undoubtedly in painting What the Venus is in its culture Ah Said he thought to me The Venus The beautiful Venus The Venus of the medicine Seeing in the diminutive head Then the gilded hair Part of the left arm Here his voice dropped as so as to be heard With difficulty And all right Our restoration And in the cockatria That right arm Lies I think the quintessence Of all affectation Give me the canova The apollo, too, is a copy There can be no doubt of it Blind fool that I am Who cannot behold the boosted Inspiration of the apollo I cannot help Pity me I cannot help preferring the antinois Was it not Socrates Who said that a statuary Found his statue In the block of marble Then Michelangelo Was by no one's original His couplet It has been Or should be remarked That in the model of the true gentleman We are always aware Of a difference From the bearing of the vulgar Without being at once Precisely able to determine What such difference Consists Allowing the remark To have applied in its full force To the outward demeanour Of my acquaintance I felt it on that evenful morning Still more fully applicable To his moral temperament And character Nor can I better define The spirit which seemed to place him So essentially apart From all other human beings Than by calling it a habit Of intense and continual thought Prevading even his most trivial actions Intruding upon his moments of dalliance And interweaving itself With his very flashes of merriment Like others which should writhe From all the eyes of the greening masks In the cornices around the temples Of Persepolis I could not help however Repeatedly observing through the mingled tone Of levity and solemnity With which he rapidly discounted Upon matters of little importance A certain air Of chapidation A degree of nervous action In action and in speech An unquiet excitability Of mana Which appeared to me at all times Unaccountable And upon some occasions even filled me Frequently too Pausing in the middle of a sentence Whose commencement he had apparently forgotten He seemed to be listening In the deepest attention As if either in momentary expectation Of a visitor Or to sounds which must have had Existence in his imagination alone It was during one of these Reveries of pauses of parent obstruction That in turning over a page Of the poetence caught up Polition's beautiful tragedy The Orfeu The first native Italian tragedy Which lay near me upon an automan And discovered a passage Underlined in pencil It was a passage towards The end of the third act A passage of the most Hot stirring excitement A passage which Although tainted with impurity No man shall read Without a thrill of novel emotion No woman without a sigh The whole page was Blutted with fresh tears And upon the opposite interleave Were the following English lines Written in their hands so very different From the peculiar characters of my acquaintance That I had some difficulty In recognizing it as his own There was to that all to me Love for which my soul did pine A green isle in the sea Love a fountain and a shrine All reeds with fairy fruits and flowers And all the flowers were mine Ah, dream too bright to last Ah, starry hope That leads to rise but to be overcast A voice from out of the future cries Onward But over the past Deep golf My spirit hovering lies Mute Motionless Aghast For a lass, lass With me the light of life is over No more, no more, no more Such language holds the solemn scene To the sounds upon the shore Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree All the stricken eagle soar Now all my hours are transient And all my nightly dreams Are the dark eyed lances And where thy footsteps cling In what ethereal dances By what eternal streams A lass, for that cursed time That bore thee over the billow From love to titillating crime And in a holy pillow From me, from my mystic line Where weeps the silver wheeler For these lines were written in English A language with which I had not believed their author acquainted A foolishly little matter for surprise And I was too well aware of the extent of his requirements Another single pleasure he took in concealing them from observation To be astonished at any similar discovery The place of the date I must confess Occasionally no little amazement It had been originally written London, and afterwards, carefully overscored Not however so effectively as to conceal a word From a scrutinizing eye I say, this occasioned me no little amazement For I well remember that in a formal conversation With a friend I particularly inquired If he had at any time met in London The Marquesa di Mentoni Who for some years proved to her marriage Had resided in that city Well, his answer, if I'm mistaken, Gave me to understand that he had never visited The Metropolis of Great Britain I might as well here mention That I have more than once heard Without, of course, giving credit to a report Involving so many improbabilities That the person of whom I speak Was not only by birth, but in education And Englishman There is one painting, said he Without being aware of my notice of the tragedy There is still one painting which you have not seen And throwing aside a drapery He discovered a full-length portrait Of the Marquesa Aphrodite Human art could have done no more In the delineation of a super-shun beauty The same ethereal figure Which stood before me the preceding night Upon the steps of the Ducal Palace Stood before me once again But in the expression of a countenance Which was beaming all over with a smile There is still lurked Incomprehensible anomaly The fitful stain of melancholy Which will ever be found inseparable From the perfection of the beautiful Her right arm lay forward over her bosom With her left, she pointed downward To a curiously fashioned vase One small, fairy food Alone visible Barely touched the earth And scarcely discernible In the brilliant atmosphere Which seemed to encircle and enshrine her loveliness Floated a pair of the most delicately imagined wings My glance fell From the painting to the figure of my friend And the vigorous words of Tapman's Bussis d'Ambois Quiven instinctively upon my lips He is up there like a Roman stature He will stand till death have made him marble Come, he said, a length Turning through the table of richly Imameled and massive silver Upon which were a few goblets fantastically stained Together with two large trusted conveys Fashioned in the same extraordinary model As does in the foreground of the portrait And filled with what I supposed to be Johannes Burger Come, he said abruptly Let us drink It is early, but let us drink It is indeed early He continued, musingly As a cheer up with a heavy golden hammer Made the apartment ring With the first hour after sunrise It is indeed early But what matters it? Let us drink Let's pour out an offering To yarn solemn sun Which these good lamps and sensors Are so eager to subdue And having made me pledge him in a bumper He swallowed in rapid succession Several goblets of the wine To dream He continued, resuming the tone Of a desultory conversation As he held up to the rich light of a sensor One of the magnificent vases To dream has been the business of my life I have therefore framed for myself As you see, a bower of dreams In the heart of Venice Could I have erected a better? You behold, around you it is true A medley of architectural embellishments The chastity of Ionia Is offended by anti-delucian devices And the species of Egypt Are all stretched upon caps of gold Yet the effect is incongruous To the timid alone Proprietures of place, especially of time Motherbug bears which terrify my incant From the contemplation of the magnificent Once, I was myself a decorist But the sublimation of folly has polled upon my soul All this is now the fit of my purpose Like these arabesque sensors My spirit is writhing in fire And the delirium at this scene Is fashioning me for the wild visions Of that land of real dreams Whether I am now rapidly departing He opposed abruptly Bend his head to his bosom Seemed to listen to a sound Which I could not hear Length erecting his frame He looked upwards And ejaculated the lines of the bishop of Chichester Stay for me there I will not fail to meet thee in that hollow veil In the next instant Confessing the power of the wine He threw himself at full length upon notomand A quick step was now heard upon the staircase And a loud knock at the door rapidly succeeded I was hastening to anticipate a second disturbance When a page of Mincton's household burst into the room And faltered out In a voice choking with emotion The incoherent words My mistress, my mistress Poisoned, poisoned Oh, beautiful, oh, beautiful Aphrodite Bewildered, I flew to the ottoman And endeavored to arouse the sleeper to a sense Of this tattling intelligence But his limbs were rigid His lips were livid His lately beaming eyes were riveted in death I stagged back to the table My hand fell upon a cracked and blackened goblet The consciousness of the entire and terrible truth Flashed suddenly over my soul End of the Asignation Recording by Maya Defides I was sick, sick unto death with that long agony And when they had length unbound me and I was permitted to sit I felt that my senses were leaving me The sentence, the dread sentence of death Was the last of distinct accentuation Which reached my ear After that the sound of the inquisitional voices Being merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum It conveyed to my soul the idea of revolution Perhaps from its association and fancy with the blur of a millwheel This only for a brief period for presently I heard no more Yet for a while I saw, but with how terrible an exaggeration I saw the lips of the black rope judges They appeared to me white Wider than the sheet upon which I traced these words And then even to grotesqueness Then with the intensity of their expression of firmness Of immovable resolution of stern contempt of human torture I saw that the degrees of what to me was fate Were still issuing from those lips I saw them writhe with a deadly locution I saw them fashion the syllables of my name And I shuddered because no sound succeeded I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror They'd soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies Which unwrapped the walls of the apartment And then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles Upon the table At first they wore the aspect of charity And seemed white and slender angels would save me But then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit And I felt every fiber in my frame thrill As if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery While the angel forms became me-less spectres With heads of flame And I saw that from them there would be no help And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note The thought of that sweet rest there must be in the grave The thought came gently and stealthily And it seemed long before detainful appreciation But just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it The figures of the judges vanished, as if magically from before me The tall candles sank into nothingness Their flames went out utterly, the blackness of darkness The supreme being All sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing descent As of the soul into Hades Then silence, stillness, night for the universe As swooned, but still will not say that all of consciousness was lost What of it there remained I will not attempt to define or even to describe Yet all was not lost In the deepest slumber, no, in delirium, no, in a swoon, no, in death, no Even in the grave all is not lost Else there is no immortality for man Arousing from the most profound of slumbers we break the gossamer web of some dream Yet in the second afterward so frail may that web have been We remember not that existence it seems probable that upon reaching the second stage We could recall the impressions of the first We should find these impressions eloquent in memories of the gulf beyond And that gulf is what? How at least shall we distinguish its shadows from those of the tomb But if the impressions of what I have termed the first stage are not It will recall yet after long interval do they not come unbidden while we marvel once they came He who has never swooned Is not he who finds strange places and wildly familiar faces and coals that glow Is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad visions that the many may not view Is not he who ponders over the perfume of some novel flower Is not he whose brain grows bewildered with the meaning of some musical cadence Which has never before arrested his attention Amid frequent and thoughtful endeavors to remember amid earnest struggles to run together Some token of the state of seeming nothingless into which my soul had lapsed There have been moments when I have dreamed of success There have been brief, very brief periods when I have conjured up remembrances Which the lucid reason of a later epoch assures me could have had reference only to that condition of seeming unconsciousness These shadows of memory tell indistinctly of tall figures that lifted and bore me in silence down Still down till I hideous dizziness oppressed me at the mere idea of the interminableness of the descent They tell also of a vague horror at my heart on account of that heart's unnatural stillness Then comes a sense of sudden motionless throughout all things as if those who bore me A ghastly train had outrun in their descent the limits of the limitless And paused from the worrisomeness of their toil After this I call to mind flatness and dampness and then all its madness, this madness of a memory which this is itself among forbidden things Very suddenly there came back to my soul motion and sound the tumultuous motion of the heart And in my ears the sound of its beating Then a pause in which all is blank then again sound and motion and touch A tingling sensation pervading my frame Then the mere consciousness of existence without thought, a condition which lasted long Then very suddenly thought and shuddering terror of the earnest endeavor to comprehend my true state Then a strong desire to lapse into insensibility Then a rushing revival of soul and a successful effort to move And now a full memory of the trial of the judges of the sable draperies of the sentence of the sickness of the swoon Then entire forgetfulness of all that followed, of all that a later day and much earnestness of endeavor have enabled me vaguely to recall So far I had not opened my eyes. I felt that I lay upon my back, unbound. I reached out my hand and it fell heavily upon something damp and hard There I suffered it to remain for many minutes while I strove to imagine where and what it could be I longed yet dared not to employ my vision. I dreaded the first glance at objects around me It was not that I feared to look upon things horrible but that I grew aghast least there should be nothing to see At length, with a wild desperation at heart I quickly unclosed my eyes My worst thoughts then were confirmed. The blackness of eternal night encompassed me I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me The atmosphere was intolerably close. I still lay quietly and made effort to exercise my reason I brought to mind the inquisitional proceedings and attempted from that point to deduce my real condition The sentence had passed and it appeared to me that a very long interval of time had since elapsed Yet not for a moment did I suppose myself actually dead Such a supposition notwithstanding what we read in fiction is altogether inconsistent with real existence But where and in what state was I? The condemned to death I knew perished usually at the Autodiffé And one of these had been held on the very night of the day of my trial Had I been remanded to my dungeon to await the next sacrifice which would not take place for many months This I had once saw it could not be. Victims had been in immediate demand Moreover my dungeon as well as all the condemned cells at Toledo had stone floors and light was not altogether excluded A fearful idea now suddenly drove the blood and torrents upon my heart And for a brief period I once more relapsed into insensibility Upon recovering I had once started to my feet trembling convulsively in every fiber and thrust my arms widely above and around me in all directions I felt nothing yet dreaded to move a step least I should be impeded by the walls of a tomb Perspiration burst from my every pore and stood in cold big beads upon my forehead The agony of suspense grew at length intolerable and I cautiously moved forward with my arms extended in my eyes straining from their sockets In the hope of catching some faint ray of light I proceeded for many paces but still all was blackness and vacancy I breathed more freely it seemed evident that mine was not at least the most hideous of fates And now as I still continued to step cautiously onward there came thronging upon my recollection a thousand vague rumors of the horrors of Toledo Of the dungeons there had been strange things narrated fables I had always deemed them but yet strange and too ghastly to repeat save in a whisper Was I left a perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness or what fate perhaps even more fearful awaited me That the result would be death and a death of more than customary bitterness I knew too well the character of my judges to doubt the mode and the hour where all that occupied or distracted me My outstretched hands at length encountered some solid obstruction It was a wall seemingly of stone masonry very smooth slimy and cold I followed it up stepping with all the careful distrust with which certain antique narratives had inspired me This process however afforded me no means of ascertaining the dimensions of my dungeon As I might make it circuit and return to the point once I set out without being aware of the fact so perfectly uniform seemed the wall I therefore sought the knife which had been in my pocket when led into the inquisitional chamber But it was gone my clothes had been exchanged for a wrapper of coarse serge I had thought of forcing the blade in some minute crevice of the masonry so as to identify my point of departure The difficulty nevertheless was but trivial although in the disorder of my fancy it seemed at first insufferable I tore apart of the hem from the robe and placed the fragment at full length and at right angles to the wall Engroping my way around the prison I could not fail to encounter this rag upon completing the circuit So at least I thought but I had not counted upon the extent of the dungeon or upon my own weakness The ground was moist and slippery I staggered onward for some time then I stumbled and fell My excessive fatigue induced me to remain prostrate and sleep soon overtook me as I lay Upon awakening and stretching forth an arm I found beside me a loaf and a pitcher with water I was too much exhausted to reflect upon this circumstance but ate and drank with avidily Shortly afterward I resumed my tour around the prison and with much toil came at last upon the fragment of the surge Up to the period when I fell I had counted 52 paces and upon resuming my walk I had counted 48 more When I arrived at the rag there were in all then a hundred paces And admitting two paces to the yard I presumed the dungeon to be fifty yards in circuit I had met however with many angles in the wall and thus I could form no guess as to the shape of the vault For a vault I could not help supposing it to be I had little object certainly no hope the resources but a vague curiosity prompted me to continue them Quitting the wall I resolved to cross the area of the enclosure At first I proceeded with extreme caution for the floor although seemingly of solid material was treacherous with slime At length however I took courage and did not hesitate to step firmly Endeavouring to cross in as a direct line as possible I had advanced some ten or twelve paces in this manner When the remnant of the torn hem of my robe became entangled between my legs I stepped on it and fell violently on my face In the confusion attending my fall I did not immediately apprehend a somewhat startling circumstance Which yet in a few seconds afterwards and while I still lay prostrate arrested my attention it was this My chin rested upon the floor of the prison But my lips in the upper portion of my head although seemingly at a less elevation than the chin touched nothing At the same time my forehead seemed bathed in a clammy vapor and the peculiar smell of decayed fungus arose to my nostrils I put forward my arm and shuttered to find that I had fallen at the very brink of a circular pit Whose extent of course I had no means of ascertaining at the moment Groping about the masonry just below the margin I succeeded in dislodging a small fragment and let it fall into the abyss For many seconds I hearkened two or three vibrations as it dashed against the size of the chasm in its descent At length there was a sullen plunge into water succeeded by loud echoes At the same moment there came a sound resembling the quick opening as a rapid closing of a door overhead While a faint gleam of light flashed suddenly through the gloom and a suddenly faded away I saw clearly the doom which had been prepared for me and congratulated myself upon the timely accident by which I had escaped Another step forward before my fall in the world had seen me no more And the death just avoided was of that very character which I had regarded as fabulous and frivolous Natale's respecting the inquisition. To the victims of its tyranny there was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies or death with its most hideous moral horrors I had been reserved for the latter. By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung until I trembled at the sound of my own voice And had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me Shaking in every limb I grilt my way back to the wall, resolving there to perish rather than risk a terror of the wells Of which my imagination now pictured many in various positions about the dungeon In other conditions of mind I might have had courage to end my misery at once by a plunge into one of these abysses But now I was the various of cowards. Neither could I forget that I had read of these pits That the sudden extinction of life formed no part of their most horrible plan Agitation of spirit kept me awake for many long hours but at length I again slumbered Upon arousing I found by my side as before a loaf in a pitcher of water A burning thirst consumed me and I emptied a vessel in a draught It must have been drugged for scarcely had I drunk before I became irresistibly drowsy A deep sleep fell upon me, a sleep like that of death How long it lasted, of course, I know not, but when once again I enclosed my eyes the objects around me were visible By a wild sulfurous luster, the origin of which I could not at first determine I was unable to see the extent and aspect of the prison In its size I had been greatly mistaken the whole circuit of its walls did not exceed twenty-five yards For some minutes this fact occasioned me a world of vain trouble, vain indeed For what could be of less importance under the terrible circumstances which environ me than the mere dimensions of my dungeon But my soul took a wild interest in its trifles and I busied myself in endeavors to account for the error I had committed in my measurement The truth at length flashed upon me. In my first attempt at exploration I had counted fifty-two paces up to the period when I fell I must have been within a pace or two of the fragment of surge, in fact I had nearly performed the circuit of the vault When I slept it upon awakening I must have returned upon my steps, thus supposing the circus nearly double what it actually was My confusion of mind prevented me from observing that I began my tour with the wall to the left and ended it with the wall to the right I had been deceived, too, in respect to the shape of the enclosure Feeling my way I had found many angles and thus deduced an area of great irregularity So potent is the effect of total darkness upon one arousing from large thargy of sleep The angles were simply those of a few slight depressions or niches at odd intervals The general shape of the prison was square What I had taken for masonry seemed now to be iron or some other metal in huge plates The sutures or joints occasioned a depression The entire surface of this metallic enclosure was rudely dogged in all the hideous and repulsive devices to which the charnel's superstition of the monks has given rise The figures of fiends and aspects of manists with skeleton forms and other more really fearful images overspread and disfigured the walls I observed that the outlines of these monstrosities were sufficiently distinct But that the colours seemed faded and blurred as if from the effects of a damp atmosphere I now noticed the floor, too, which was of stone in the centre yon the circular pit from whose jaws I had escaped But it was the only one in the dungeon All this I saw indistinctly and by much effort, for my personal condition had been greatly changed during slumber I now lay upon my back and at full length on a species of low framework of wood To this I was securely bound by a long strap resembling a surgical It passed in many convolutions about my limbs and body, leaving at liberty only my head I left arm to such extent that I could by dint of much exertion supply myself with food from an earthen dish which lay by my side on the floor I saw to my horror that the picture had been removed I say to my horror, for I was consumed with intolerable thirst This thirst had appeared to be the design of my persecutors to stimulate For the food in the dish was meat pungently seasoned Looking upward I surveyed the ceiling of my prison It was some thirty or forty feet overhead and constructed much as the side walls In one of its panels a very singular figure riveted my whole attention It was the painted figure of time as he is commonly represented save that in lieu of a sigh He held what at a casual glance I suppose to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum Such as we see on antique clocks There was something however in the appearance of this machine which caused me to regard it more attentively While I gazed directly upward at it, for its position was immediately over my own I fancied that I saw it in motion In an instant afterward the fancy was confirmed Its sweep was brief and of course slow I watched it for some minutes somewhat in fear But more in wonder we read at length with observing its dull movement I turned my eyes upon the other object in the cell A slight noise attracted my notice Looking to the floor I saw several enormous rats traversing it They had issued from the well which lay within a view to my right Even then while I gazed they came up in troops hurriedly With ravenous eyes allured by the scent of the meat From this it required much effort and attention to scare them away It might have been half an hour or perhaps even an hour For I could take but imperfect note of time before I again cast my eyes upward What I then saw confounded and amazed me The sweep of the pendulum had increased in extent by nearly a yard As a natural consequence its velocity also much greater But what mainly disturbed me was the idea that had perceptedly descended I now observed with what horror in is needless to say That its neither extremity was formed of a crescent Glittering steel about a foot in length from horn to horn The horns upward and the under edge evidently as keen as that of a razor Like a razor also it seemed massy and heavy Tapering from the edge into a solid and broad structure above It was appended to a witty rod of brass and the whole hissed as it swung through the air I could no longer doubt the doom prepared for me by monkey's ingenuity and torture My cognizance of the pit had become known to the inquisitial agents The pit whose horrors had been destined for so bold a resident as myself The pit typical of hell and regarded by rumor as the ultimate thule Of all their punishments The plunge into this pit I had avoided by the mirrors of accidents I knew that surprise or entrapment into torment Formed an important portion of all the grotesquery of this dungeon death Having failed to fall it was no part of the demon plan to hurl me into the abyss And thus there being no alternative A different and a milder destruction awaited me Milder I have smiled in my agony as I thought of such application of such a term What boots it to tell of the long, long hours of horror more than mortal During which I counted the rushing vibrations of the steel Inch by inch, line by line With the descent only appreciable at intervals that seemed ages Down and still down it came Days past it might have been that many days past there it swept so closely over me As to fan me with its acrid breath The odor of the sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils I prayed I wearied heaven with my prayer for its more speedy descent I was frantically mad and struggled to force myself upward against the sweep of the fearful skenter And then I fell suddenly calm and lay smiling at the glittering death As a child at some rare bubble There was another interval of utter insensibility it was brief For upon again lapsing into life there had been no perceptible descent in the pendulum But it might have been long for I knew there were demons who took note of my swoon And who could have rested the vibration at pleasure Upon my recovery too I felt very, oh, inexpressibly sick and weak As if through long in a nation Even amid the agonies of that period the human nature caraved food With painful effort I outstretched my left arm as far as my bones permitted And took possession of a small remnant which had been spared me by the rats As I put a portion of it in within my lips There rushed to my mind a half-formed thought of joy, of hope Yet what business had I with hope? It was, as I say, a half-formed thought Man has many such which are never completed I felt that it was of joy, of hope But felt also that it had perished in its formation In vain I struggled to perfect, to regain it Long suffering had nearly annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind I was an imbecile, an idiot The vibration of the pendulum was at right angles to my length I saw that the crescent was designed to cross the region of my heart It would fray the surge of my robe, it would return and repeat its operations again and again Notwithstanding terrifically wide-sweep some thirty feet or more And the its hissing figure of its descent Sufficient to sunder these very walls of iron Still the fraying of my robe would not be all that for several minutes it would accomplish And at this thought I paused, I dared not go further than this reflection I dwelt upon it with the pernacity of attention As if in so dwelling I could arrest here the descent of the steel I forced myself to ponder upon the sound of the crescent as it should pass across the garment Upon the peculiar thrilling sensation which the friction of cloth produces on the nerves I pondered upon all this frifferly until my teeth were on edge Down, steadily down a crept I took a frenzied pleasure in contrasting its downward with its lateral velocity To the right, to the left, far and wide With the shriek of a damned spirit to my heart with the stealthy pace of the tiger I alternately laughed and howled as the one or the other idea grew predominant Down, certainly relentlessly down It vibrated within three inches of my bosom I struggled violently, furiously, to free my left arm This was free only from the elbow to the hand I could reach the letter From the platter beside me to my mouth with great effort but no farther Could I have broken the fastening above the elbow? I would have seized and attempted to arrest a pendulum I might as well have attempted to arrest an avalanche Down, still unceasingly, still inevitably down I grasped and struggled at each vibration I shrunk convulsively at every sweep My eyes followed its outward or upward whirls with the eagerness of the most unseeming despair They closed themselves spasmatically at the descent Although death would have been a relief, oh, how unspeakable Still I quivered in every nerve to think how slight a sinking of the machinery would precipitate that keen glistening axe upon my bosom It was hope that prompted the nerve to quiver The frame to shrink, it was hope The hope that triumphs on the rack That whispers to the death condemned even in the dungeons of the Inquisition I saw that some ten or twelve vibrations would bring the steel and actual contact with my robe And with this observation there suddenly came over my spirit all the keen, collected calmness of despair For the first time during many hours or perhaps days I thought, it now occurred to me that the bandage, or surgical, which enveloped me was unique I was tied by no separate cord, the first stroke of the razor-light crescent, a thwart any portion of the band Would so detach it that it might be unwound for my person by means of my left hand But how fearful in that case the proximity of the steel The result of the slightest struggle, how deadly, was it to pendulum Dreading to find my faint and as it seemed in last hope frustrated I so far elevated my head as to obtain a distinct view of my breast The surgical enveloped my limbs and body close in all directions Saved in the path of the destroying crescent Scarcely had I dropped my head back into its original position When there flashed upon my mind what I could not better describe than as the Unformed half of that idea of deliverance to which I had previously eluded And of which variety only floated interminably through my brain when I raised food To my burning lips, though whole thought was now present, feeble Scarcely sane, scarcely definite, but still in tire I proceeded at once with the nervous energy of despair to attempt its execution For many hours the immediate vicinity of the low framework upon which I lay Had been literally swarming with rats They were wild, bold, ravenous or red eyes glaring upon me as if they waited But for emotionless, on my part, to make me their prey To what food, I thought, have they been accustomed in the well They had devoured in spite of all my efforts to prevent them all but a small Remnant of the contents of the dish I had fallen into an habitual seesaw Or wave of the hand about the platter And at length the unconscious uniformity of the movement deprived it of effect In the veracity of the Berman frequently fastened their sharp fangs on my fingers With their pestercles of the oily and spicy veid which now remained I thoroughly rubbed the bandage wherever I could reach it And then raising my hand from the floor I flayed breathlessly still At first the ravenous animals were startled and terrified at the change But the cessation of movement they shrank alarming back Many sought the well But this was only for a moment I had not counted in vain upon the veracity Observing that I remained without motion one or two of the boldest Leaped upon the framework and smelt of the surgical This seemed the signal for a general rush Fourth from the well they hurried their fresh troops Clung to the wood they overran it and lipped in hundreds upon my person The measured movement of the pemberlin disturbed them not at all Avoiding its stroke they busied themselves with their anointed bandage They pressed, they swarmed upon me in ever accumulating heaps They whirred upon my throat their cold lips sought my own I was half stifled by their thronging pressure Disgust for which the world has no name Swelled my bosom and chilled with heavy clamor this my heart Yet one minute and I felt that the struggle would be over Plainly I perceived the loosening of the bandage I knew that in more than one place it must already be severed With a more than human resolution I lay still Nor had I ear to my calculations Nor had I endured in vain At length I felt that I was free My surgical hung and ribbons from my body But the stroke of the pendulum already pressed upon my bosom It had divided the surge of the robe It had cut through the linen beneath Twice again it swung and a sharp sense of pain Shot through every nerve But the moment of escape had arrived At a wave of my hand my deliverers hurried Turmerless away with steady movement Causes side-long shrinking and slow I slid from the embrace of the bandage And beyond the reach of the shimmer For the moment, at least, I was free Free And in the grasp of the inquisition I had scarcely stepped from my wooden bed of horror Upon the stone floor of the prison When the motion of the hellish machine ceased And I beheld it drawn up By some invisible force to the ceiling This was a lesson in which I took desperately to heart My every motion was undoubtedly watched Free I had but escaped death in one form of agony To be delivered into worse than death in some other With that thought I rolled my eyes nervously around the barriers of iron That hemmed me in Something unusual, some change which at first I could not appreciate distinctly, it was obvious Had taken place in the apartment For many minutes of a dreamy and trembling abstraction I busied myself in vain Unconnected conjecture During this period I became aware For the first time of the origin of the sulfurous light Which illuminated the cell It proceeded from a fissure about half an inch in width Extended entirely around the prison At the base of the walls Which thus appeared and were completely separated From the floor I endeavored, but of course in vain To look through the aperture As I arose from the attempt The mystery of the alteration of the chamber Broke it once upon my understanding I had observed that Although the outlines of the figures upon the walls Were sufficiently distinct Yet the colors seemed blurred and indefinite These colors had now assumed and were Momentarily assuming a starling And most intense brilliancy That gave to the spectral and fingish portraitures The aspect that might have thrilled even The firmer nerves than my own Demon eyes of a wild and ghastly vivacity Glared upon me in a thousand directions Where none had been visible before And gleamed with a lurid lustre of a fire That I could not force my imagination to regard As unreal Unreal, even while I breathed There came to my nostrils The breath of the vapor of heated iron A suffocating order pervaded the prison A deeper glow settled each moment in the eyes That glared at my angities A richer tint of chrysm Confused itself over the pictured horrors of blood I panted, I gasped for breath There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors Most unrelenting, almost demonic of men I shrank from the glowing metal To the center of the cell Amid the thought of the fiery destruction that impended The idea of the coolness of the well over my soul like bomb I rushed to its deadly brink I threw my straining vision below The glare from the incandled roof illuminated its innermost recesses Yet for a wild moment did my spirit refuse To comprehend the meaning of what I saw At length it forced It wrestled its way into my soul It burned itself upon my shuddering reason Oh, for a voice to speak, oh horror! Oh, any horror but this with a shriek I rushed from the margin and buried my face in my hands Weeping bitterly The heat rapidly increased And once again I looked up, shuddering as if with a fit of the hug There seemed to be a second change in the cell And now the change was obviously in the form Before it was in vain that I had first endeavored to appreciate To understand what was taking place But not long was I left in doubt The inquisitional vengeance had been hurried by my twofold escape And there was to be no more dallying with the king of terrors The room had been square, I saw That the two of this iron angles were now acute Two consequently obtuse The fearful difference quickly increased With the low rumbling or moaning sound In an instant the apartment had shifted its form Into that of a laugence But the alterations stopped not here I neither hoped nor desired it to stop I could have collapsed the red walls to my bosom As a garment of eternal peace Death, I said any death But that of the pit Fool, might I have not known That into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me Could I resist its glow? Or if even that Could I withstand its pressure and now Flatter and flatter Glued the large orange With a rapidity that left me no time for contemplation Its center, and of course its greatest width Came just over the yawning gulf I shrank back, but the closing walls Pressed me resistlessly onward At length for my seared and writhing body There was no longer an inch of foothold On the firm floor of the prison I struggled no more But the agony my soul found fit In one loud, long and final scream of despair I felt that I tottered upon the brink I averted my eyes There was a discordant hum of human voices There was a loud blast of mini-trumpet There was a harsh grating of a thousand thunders The firing walls rushed back And outstretched arm caught my own As I fell feigning into the abyss It was that a general assail The French army had entered Toledo The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies End of the pit and the pendulum Recording by Mike Vendetti, Canyon City, Colorado MikeVendetti.com