# The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales (B1 edition)

*Edgar Allan Poe*

## The Purloined Letter

Nil sapientiæ odiosius acumine nimio.—*Seneca*.

It was Paris, just after dark, on a windy evening in the autumn of 18-. I was enjoying two pleasures at once: quiet thought and a meerschaum pipe. I was with my friend C. Auguste Dupin in his little back library, or book-closet. It was *au troisième*, at No. 33, *Rue Dunôt, Faubourg St. Germain*. For at least one hour we had sat in deep silence. Anyone who saw us might have thought we were only watching the curling clouds of smoke. The smoke hung heavy in the air of the room. But in my mind I was thinking about certain things we had talked about earlier that evening. I mean the affair of the Rue Morgue, and the mystery of the murder of Marie Rogêt. So it seemed a kind of coincidence when the door of our rooms was thrown open. In came our old acquaintance, Monsieur G——, the Prefect of the Paris police.

We gave him a warm welcome. There was something amusing about the man, though there was twice as much in him to look down on. And we had not seen him for several years. We had been sitting in the dark. Dupin now got up to light a lamp. But he sat down again without lighting it, because G. said he had come to ask for our advice. Or rather, he wanted my friend's opinion. It was about some official business that had caused him a great deal of trouble.

“If it needs careful thought,” said Dupin, leaving the lamp unlit, “we shall examine it better in the dark.”

“That is another of your odd ideas,” said the Prefect. He had a habit of calling everything “odd” if he did not understand it. So he lived among a whole army of “oddities.”

“Very true,” said Dupin. He gave his visitor a pipe and rolled a comfortable chair towards him.

“And what is the problem now?” I asked. “Nothing more in the murder line, I hope?”

“Oh no, nothing of that kind. The fact is, the business is very simple indeed. I have no doubt that we can manage it well enough ourselves. But then I thought Dupin would like to hear the details, because it is so very odd.”

“Simple and odd,” said Dupin.

“Why, yes. And not exactly that, either. The fact is, we have all been very puzzled. The affair is so simple, and yet it defeats us completely.”

“Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing that leads you wrong,” said my friend.

“What nonsense you talk!” replied the Prefect, laughing loudly.

“Perhaps the mystery is a little too plain,” said Dupin.

“Oh, good heavens! Who ever heard of such an idea?”

“A little too self-evident.”

“Ha! ha! ha—ha! ha! ha!—ho! ho! ho!” roared our visitor, greatly amused. “Oh, Dupin, you will be the death of me yet!”

“And what, after all, is the matter?” I asked.

“Why, I will tell you,” replied the Prefect. He took a long, slow, thoughtful puff and settled himself in his chair. “I will tell you in a few words. But before I begin, let me warn you. This affair demands the greatest secrecy. I would most probably lose my position if people knew I had told anyone.”

“Go on,” I said.

“Or not,” said Dupin.

“Well, then. I have received personal information from a very high place. A certain document of the greatest importance has been purloined from the royal apartments. We know who took it. There is no doubt about this, because he was seen taking it. We also know that he still has it.”

“How is this known?” asked Dupin.

“We can see it clearly,” replied the Prefect, “from the nature of the document. If it left the robber's hands, certain results would appear at once. That would happen if he used it, as he must plan to use it in the end. These results have not appeared.”

“Be a little clearer,” I said.

“Well, I may go so far as to say this. The paper gives its holder a certain power in a certain place. And in that place such power is very valuable.” The Prefect loved the empty language of diplomats.

“I still do not quite understand,” said Dupin.

“No? Well. Suppose the document were shown to a third person, who shall not be named. Then the honor of a person of very high rank would be in question. This fact gives the holder of the document power over that great person. That person's honor and peace are now in danger.”

“But this power,” I said, “would depend on the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber. Who would dare—”

“The thief,” said G., “is the Minister D——. He dares all things, those that are fitting for a man and those that are not. The way he stole it was as clever as it was bold. The document—a letter, to be honest—had been received by the royal lady who was robbed. She was alone in the royal boudoir at the time. While she was reading it, someone suddenly came in. It was the other great personage, the one from whom she most wanted to hide it. In a hurry she tried to push it into a drawer, but she could not. So she had to put it on a table, open as it was. But the address was on top, and the contents were hidden. So nobody noticed the letter. At this moment the Minister D—— comes in. His sharp eye sees the paper at once. He recognizes the handwriting of the address. He notices the lady's confusion, and he guesses her secret. He deals quickly with some business, in his usual way. Then he takes out a letter that looks rather like the other one. He opens it and pretends to read it. Then he puts it down close beside the other. Again he talks, for about fifteen minutes, about public affairs. At last, as he leaves, he also takes from the table the letter that is not his. The rightful owner saw this. But of course she did not dare to say anything. The third personage was standing right at her elbow. The Minister went away quickly. He left his own letter—one of no importance—on the table.”

“Here, then,” said Dupin to me, “you have exactly what you asked for to make the power complete. You have the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber.”

“Yes,” replied the Prefect. “And for some months now, the power he gained has been used for political purposes. It has been used to a very dangerous degree. Every day the lady who was robbed feels more sure that she must get her letter back. But of course this cannot be done openly. In the end, in despair, she has given the matter to me.”

“No wiser agent than you,” said Dupin, in a perfect whirlwind of smoke, “could be wished for, I suppose. Or even imagined.”

“You flatter me,” replied the Prefect. “But it is possible that some such opinion may have been held.”

“It is clear,” I said, “as you say, that the Minister still has the letter. It is having the letter, not using it, that gives the power. Once he uses it, the power is gone.”

“True,” said G. “And I acted on this belief. My first care was to search the Minister's hotel thoroughly. My chief difficulty was that I had to search without his knowledge. Above all, I have been warned of one danger. He must have no reason to suspect our plan.”

“But,” I said, “you are quite *au fait* in these investigations. The Paris police have done this kind of thing often before.”

“Oh yes, and for this reason I did not despair. The Minister's habits also gave me a great advantage. He is often away from home all night. He does not have many servants. They sleep far from their master's rooms. And they are mostly Neapolitans, so they are easily made drunk. I have keys, as you know, that can open any room or cabinet in Paris. For three months, not one night has passed without a search. I myself have spent the greater part of every night searching the D—— Hotel. My honor is involved. And, to tell you a great secret, the reward is enormous. So I did not give up the search until I was fully satisfied of one thing. The thief is a cleverer man than I am. I believe I have searched every corner of the house where the paper could possibly be hidden.”

“The Minister certainly has the letter,” I suggested. “But is it not possible that he has hidden it somewhere outside his own house?”

“That is barely possible,” said Dupin. “Think of the present strange state of affairs at court. Think especially of the plots that D—— is known to be part of. Because of these, he must be able to use the document at once. It must be ready to be produced at a moment's notice. That is nearly as important as having it.”

“Ready to be produced?” I said.

“That is to say, ready to be destroyed,” said Dupin.

“True,” I said. “So the paper is clearly in the house. As for his carrying it on his person, we can forget that.”

“Completely,” said the Prefect. “He has been stopped twice in the street, as if by footpads. His person has been carefully searched while I watched.”

“You could have saved yourself the trouble,” said Dupin. “D——, I suppose, is not completely a fool. And if he is not, he must have expected these attacks, as a matter of course.”

“Not completely a fool,” said G., “but then he is a poet. And a poet, I think, is only one step away from a fool.”

“True,” said Dupin, after a long and thoughtful puff on his meerschaum. “But I have been guilty of some doggerel myself.”

“Why don't you tell us the details of your search?” I said.

“Why, the fact is, we took our time, and we searched *everywhere*. I have had long experience in these affairs. I took the whole building, room by room. I gave the nights of a whole week to each room. First we examined the furniture of each room. We opened every possible drawer. And I suppose you know that, to a well-trained police agent, a secret drawer is impossible. Any man who lets a ‘secret’ drawer escape him in a search like this is a fool. The thing is so plain. In every cabinet there is a certain amount of space to account for. And we have exact rules. Not even the fiftieth part of a line could escape us. After the cabinets we took the chairs. We probed the cushions with the fine long needles you have seen me use. From the tables we removed the tops.”

“Why so?”

“Sometimes a person who wants to hide something removes the top of a table, or of something similar. Then he hollows out the leg and puts the thing inside the hole. Then he puts the top back. The tops and bottoms of bedposts are used in the same way.”

“But couldn't you find the hollow by knocking on the wood and listening?” I asked.

“Not at all, if enough cotton is packed around the thing when it is put in. Besides, in our case we had to work without noise.”

“But you could not have removed—you could not take apart every piece of furniture that could hide something. A letter can be pressed into a thin spiral roll. In shape and size it would not be very different from a large knitting-needle. In this form it could be pushed into the rung of a chair, for example. You did not take all the chairs apart?”

“Certainly not. But we did better. We examined the rungs of every chair in the hotel with a very powerful microscope. In fact, we examined the joints of every kind of furniture. If there had been any signs of recent disturbance, we would have seen them at once. A single grain of gimlet-dust, for example, would have been as obvious as an apple. Any disorder in the glue, any unusual gap in the joints, would have been enough to show us.”

“I suppose you looked at the mirrors, between the boards and the glass. And you probed the beds and the bedclothes, and the curtains and carpets too.”

“Of course. And when we had finished every bit of the furniture in this way, we examined the house itself. We divided its whole surface into sections. We numbered them, so that none could be missed. Then we examined every single square inch of the property with the microscope, as before. We included the two houses right next door.”

“The two houses next door!” I cried. “You must have had a great deal of trouble.”

“We had. But the reward is huge!”

“Did you include the grounds around the houses?”

“All the grounds are paved with brick. They gave us fairly little trouble. We examined the moss between the bricks and found it undisturbed.”

“You looked among D——'s papers, of course, and into the books of the library?”

“Certainly. We opened every package and parcel. We not only opened every book. We turned over every page in each volume. We did not just give them a shake, as some of our police officers do. We also measured the thickness of every book-cover very exactly. And we looked at each one most closely with the microscope. If anyone had recently touched any of the bindings, we would certainly have noticed. Five or six volumes had just come back from the bookbinder. We carefully probed them along their length with the needles.”

“You explored the floors under the carpets?”

“Without doubt. We removed every carpet and examined the boards with the microscope.”

“And the paper on the walls?”

“Yes.”

“You looked into the cellars?”

“We did.”

“Then,” I said, “you have made a mistake in your calculation. The letter is not in the house, as you suppose.”

“I fear you are right there,” said the Prefect. “And now, Dupin, what would you advise me to do?”

“To make a thorough re-search of the house.”

“That is completely unnecessary,” replied G——. “I am as sure that the letter is not at the Hotel as I am that I breathe.”

“I have no better advice to give you,” said Dupin. “Of course you have an exact description of the letter?”

“Oh yes!” And here the Prefect took out a notebook. He read aloud a detailed account of how the missing document looked inside, and especially outside. Soon after he finished reading it, he left. I had never seen the good gentleman so completely depressed.

About a month later he visited us again. He found us doing very nearly the same thing as before. He took a pipe and a chair and began some ordinary conversation. At last I said:

“Well, but G——, what about the purloined letter? I suppose you have finally decided that nobody can outwit the Minister?”

“Confound him, I say! Yes. I did the re-examination, though, as Dupin suggested. But it was all wasted work, as I knew it would be.”

“How much was the reward, did you say?” asked Dupin.

“Why, a very great deal. A very generous reward. I don't like to say exactly how much. But I will say one thing. I wouldn't mind giving my own cheque for fifty thousand francs to anyone who could get me that letter. The fact is, it is becoming more and more important every day. And the reward has lately been doubled. But even if it were tripled, I could do no more than I have done.”

“Why, yes,” said Dupin slowly, between puffs on his meerschaum. “I really—think, G——, you have not tried—your very hardest in this matter. You might—do a little more, I think, eh?”

“How? In what way?”

“Why—puff, puff—you might—puff, puff—take advice in the matter, eh?—puff, puff, puff. Do you remember the story they tell about Abernethy?”

“No. Hang Abernethy!”

“Certainly! Hang him and welcome. But once upon a time, a certain rich miser had a plan. He wanted to get a medical opinion from this Abernethy for free. So he started an ordinary conversation with him at a private party. And he described his own case to the doctor as if it were the case of an imaginary person.

“‘Let us suppose,’ said the miser, ‘that his symptoms are such and such. Now, doctor, what would you have told him to take?’

“‘Take!’ said Abernethy. ‘Why, take advice, of course.’”

“But,” said the Prefect, a little upset, “I am perfectly willing to take advice, and to pay for it. I really would give fifty thousand francs to anyone who helped me in the matter.”

Dupin opened a drawer and took out a cheque-book. “In that case,” he replied, “you may as well write me a cheque for that amount. When you have signed it, I will hand you the letter.”

I was astonished. The Prefect seemed completely thunderstruck. For some minutes he could not speak or move. He looked at my friend in disbelief, with his mouth open. His eyes seemed to be jumping out of his head. Then he seemed to recover a little. He took a pen. He paused several times and stared blankly. At last he filled in and signed a cheque for fifty thousand francs. He handed it across the table to Dupin. Dupin examined it carefully and put it in his pocket-book. Then he unlocked an escritoire, took out a letter and gave it to the Prefect. The Prefect seized it in a perfect agony of joy. He opened it with a trembling hand and glanced quickly at what it said. Then he scrambled and struggled to the door. At last he rushed out of the room and out of the house without any politeness. He had not said a single word since Dupin had asked him to fill in the cheque.

When he had gone, my friend gave me some explanations.

“The Paris police,” he said, “are very able in their own way. They are patient, clever and cunning. And they know very well all the things their duties seem to demand. So when G—— described how he searched the house at the Hotel D——, I felt fully sure of one thing. He had made a satisfactory search—as far as his work went.”

“As far as his work went?” I said.

“Yes,” said Dupin. “The methods they used were the best of their kind. And they were carried out perfectly. If the letter had been put anywhere within the range of their search, these men would certainly have found it.”

I only laughed. But he seemed quite serious in all he said.

“So the methods,” he went on, “were good of their kind, and well carried out. Their fault was that they did not fit the case, or the man. The Prefect has a set of very clever methods. For him they are a kind of Procrustean bed. He forces all his plans to fit them. But he always makes mistakes, because he is too deep or too shallow for the matter in hand. Many a schoolboy reasons better than he does. I knew one boy about eight years old. Everyone admired his success at guessing in the game of ‘even and odd.’ This game is simple, and it is played with marbles. One player holds a number of marbles in his hand. He asks another player whether that number is even or odd. If the guess is right, the guesser wins one marble. If it is wrong, he loses one. The boy I mean won all the marbles in the school. Of course he had some rule for guessing. His rule was simply to watch his opponents and measure how clever they were. For example, his opponent is a complete fool. The fool holds up his closed hand and asks, ‘Are they even or odd?’ Our schoolboy answers, ‘Odd,’ and loses. But the second time he wins. This is because he says to himself: ‘The fool had them even the first time. He is just clever enough to have them odd the second time. So I will guess odd.’ He guesses odd, and wins. Now take a fool who is one step cleverer than the first. With him the boy would have reasoned like this: ‘This fellow sees that the first time I guessed odd. For the second time, his first idea will be a simple change from even to odd, like the first fool. But then a second thought will tell him that this change is too simple. So in the end he will decide to have them even, as before. So I will guess even.’ He guesses even, and wins. The other boys called this schoolboy ‘lucky.’ But this way of reasoning—what, in the end, is it really?”

“It is simply,” I said, “an identification of the reasoner's mind with the mind of his opponent.”

“It is,” said Dupin. “I asked the boy how he managed this complete identification, which was the secret of his success. He gave me this answer: ‘Sometimes I want to find out how wise or how stupid someone is. Or I want to know how good or how wicked he is, or what he is thinking at the moment. Then I shape the expression of my face as exactly as possible to match his. After that I wait to see what thoughts or feelings come into my mind or heart. They seem to match the expression.’ People have seen a false depth in Rochefoucault, La Bougive, Machiavelli and Campanella. This answer of the schoolboy lies at the bottom of all of it.”

“And this identification of the reasoner's mind with his opponent's,” I said, “depends, if I understand you rightly, on one thing. It depends on how exactly he measures his opponent's mind.”

“For its practical value it depends on this,” replied Dupin. “And the Prefect and his men fail so often for two reasons. First, they do not make this identification. Second, they measure badly the mind they are dealing with. Or rather, they do not measure it at all. They think only of their own ideas of cleverness. When they search for anything hidden, they think only of the ways in which they would have hidden it. They are right in this much: their own cleverness fairly represents the cleverness of the masses. But sometimes a single criminal's cunning is different in kind from their own. Then, of course, the criminal defeats them. This always happens when his cunning is above theirs. It very often happens when it is below. They never change their principle in their searches. At best, an unusual emergency may push them on, or some extraordinary reward. Then they extend or exaggerate their old methods, but they do not touch their principles. In this case of D——, for example, what has been done to change the principle of action? Think of all this boring, and probing, and sounding, and looking through the microscope. Think of dividing the surface of the building into numbered square inches. What is it all but an exaggeration? It is the same one principle of searching, or set of principles, applied more widely. And these principles are based on one set of ideas about human cleverness. The Prefect has got used to them in the long routine of his work. Do you not see what he has taken for granted? He thinks that all men hide a letter in some out-of-the-way hole or corner. Perhaps not exactly in a gimlet-hole bored in a chair-leg. But at least in a place suggested by the same kind of thinking. It is the thinking that makes a man hide a letter in a gimlet-hole in a chair-leg. And do you not see something else? Such *recherché* hiding places suit only ordinary occasions. Only ordinary minds would choose them. In all cases of hiding, people expect from the very first that the thing is hidden in this *recherché* way. So finding it does not depend at all on intelligence. It depends only on the care, patience and determination of the searchers. And these qualities have never been known to fail when the case is important. In political eyes, that is the same as when the reward is large. Now you will understand what I meant earlier. Suppose the purloined letter had been hidden anywhere within the limits of the Prefect's search. In other words, suppose its hiding place had fitted the Prefect's principles. Then its discovery would have been completely certain. But this official has been thoroughly fooled. The deep cause of his defeat lies in one idea. He supposes that the Minister is a fool, because he has become famous as a poet. All fools are poets. The Prefect feels this. And from it he concludes that all poets are fools. In this he is only guilty of a *non distributio medii*.”

“But is this really the poet?” I asked. “There are two brothers, I know. Both have become well known as writers. The Minister, I believe, has written learned works on the Differential Calculus. He is a mathematician, and no poet.”

“You are mistaken. I know him well. He is both. As poet and mathematician, he would reason well. As a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all. Then he would have been at the mercy of the Prefect.”

“You surprise me with these opinions,” I said. “The voice of the world says the opposite. Surely you do not mean to throw away an idea that men have thought about for centuries. Mathematical reason has long been seen as the best reason of all.”

“‘Il y a à parièr,’” replied Dupin, quoting from Chamfort, “‘que toute idée publique, toute convention reçue est une sottise, car elle a convenue au plus grand nombre.’ The mathematicians, I agree, have done their best to spread the popular error you mean. But it is still an error, even when it is spread as truth. For example, they have cleverly brought the word ‘analysis’ into use for algebra. They did it with an art that deserved a better cause. The French started this particular trick. But words matter, and their value comes from how well they fit. And ‘analysis’ means ‘algebra’ about as much as the Latin ‘*ambitus*’ means ‘ambition.’ Or as much as ‘*religio*’ means ‘religion,’ or ‘*homines honesti*’ means a set of *honorable* men.”

“You have a quarrel, I see,” I said, “with some of the algebraists of Paris. But go on.”

“I question the usefulness, and so the value, of any reason trained in a special form other than pure, abstract logic. In particular, I question the reason that comes from studying mathematics. Mathematics is the science of form and quantity. Mathematical reasoning is only logic applied to observing form and quantity. The great error is to suppose that even the truths of pure algebra are abstract or general truths. And this error is so huge that I am amazed that everyone accepts it. Mathematical axioms are not axioms of general truth. What is true of relation, of form and quantity, is often completely false in morals, for example. In morals it is very often untrue that the parts added together are equal to the whole. In chemistry, too, the axiom fails. It fails when we think about motives. Two motives may each have a certain value. But together they do not always have a value equal to the sum of their separate values. There are many other mathematical truths that are true only within the limits of relation. But the mathematician argues from his limited truths out of habit. He argues as if they were true everywhere, as the world indeed imagines them to be. In his very learned ‘Mythology,’ Bryant mentions a similar source of error. He says: ‘The Pagan fables are not believed. Yet we forget ourselves all the time, and draw conclusions from them as if they were real.’ But the algebraists are Pagans themselves. With them, the ‘Pagan fables’ *are* believed. And they draw conclusions from them. This is not so much because they forget. It comes from some strange confusion in their brains. In short, I have never yet met a mere mathematician who could be trusted outside equal roots. Nor have I met one who did not secretly hold one belief as part of his faith. He believes that x+px is absolutely and always equal to q. Try an experiment, if you like. Say to one of these gentlemen that x+px may sometimes not be quite equal to q. Make him understand what you mean. Then get out of his reach as fast as you can. He will certainly try to knock you down.

“I mean to say this,” Dupin went on, while I only laughed at his last remarks. “Suppose the Minister had been no more than a mathematician. Then the Prefect would not have needed to give me this cheque. But I know him as both mathematician and poet. And I suited my methods to his ability, and to the circumstances around him. I knew him as a courtier, too, and as a bold *intriguant*. Such a man, I thought, must know the ordinary methods of the police. He must have expected the attacks in the street—and events have proved that he did expect them. He must have foreseen, I thought, the secret searches of his house. He was often away from home at night. The Prefect welcomed this as a certain help to his success. I saw it only as a trick. It gave the police the chance to search thoroughly. And so they would sooner become convinced that the letter was not in the house. G—— did in fact come to believe this in the end. I felt, too, that the Minister's mind would surely follow the train of thought I explained just now. I mean my ideas about the fixed principle of the police in searching for hidden things. This train of thought would force him to despise all the ordinary hiding places. He could not be so weak, I thought, as not to see one thing. The most complicated and distant corner of his hotel would be as open as his commonest cupboards. It would be open to the eyes, the probes, the gimlets and the microscopes of the Prefect. In short, I saw that he would be driven to simplicity, as a matter of course. Or he might even choose it on purpose. You will remember, perhaps, how wildly the Prefect laughed at our first meeting. I suggested that this mystery perhaps troubled him so much because it was so very self-evident.”

“Yes,” I said, “I remember his laughter well. I really thought he would fall into fits.”

“The material world,” Dupin went on, “is full of very close likenesses to the world of the mind. So there is some truth in an old rule of speech-making. It says that a metaphor or comparison can make an argument stronger, as well as make a description more beautiful. The principle of the *vis inertiæ*, for example, seems the same in physics and in the mind. In physics, a large body is harder to set moving than a small one. And its later momentum matches this difficulty. In the mind, it is just as true that greater minds are slower to start. They are more forceful, more steady and more eventful in their movements than lesser minds. Yet they move less readily. And they are more uncertain and hesitating in their first few steps. Again: have you ever noticed which street signs over the shop doors attract the most attention?”

“I have never thought about it,” I said.

“There is a puzzle game,” he went on, “that is played on a map. One player asks another to find a certain word. It may be the name of a town, river, state or empire. It may be any word at all on the crowded, confusing surface of the map. A beginner at the game usually tries to puzzle his opponents with the names in the tiniest letters. But the expert chooses words that stretch in large letters from one end of the map to the other. These, like street signs and posters with very large letters, are not noticed because they are too obvious. And here the eye's oversight is exactly like a failure of the mind. The mind lets things pass unnoticed when they are too plainly and too clearly self-evident. But this point, it seems, is somewhat above or below the understanding of the Prefect. He never once thought it likely, or even possible, that the Minister had done one thing. He had put the letter right under the nose of the whole world. That was the best way to stop anyone in the world from seeing it.

“But I thought more and more about the daring, dashing and careful cleverness of D——. I thought about the fact that the document must always be at hand, if he meant to use it well. And I thought about the Prefect's clear proof that it was not hidden within the limits of his ordinary search. The more I thought about these things, the surer I became of one thing. To hide this letter, the Minister had used a wide and wise plan. He had not tried to hide it at all.

“Full of these ideas, I got myself a pair of green spectacles. One fine morning I called at the Minister's hotel, quite by accident. I found D—— at home, yawning, lounging and wasting time, as usual. He was pretending to be bored to death. He is perhaps the most truly energetic human being now alive—but only when nobody sees him.

“To match him, I complained of my weak eyes. I said how sad it was that I needed spectacles. Behind them I carefully and thoroughly looked over the whole room. All the while I seemed to be paying attention only to my host's conversation.

“I paid special attention to a large writing-table near where he sat. On it lay a confused mix of letters and other papers. There were also one or two musical instruments and a few books. I looked at it long and very carefully. But I saw nothing there that was especially suspicious.

“At last my eyes went round the room and fell on a cheap filigree card-rack of pasteboard. It hung by a dirty blue ribbon from a little brass knob, just below the middle of the mantelpiece. The rack had three or four compartments. In it were five or six visiting cards and a single letter. This letter was very dirty and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two, across the middle. It looked as if someone had first meant to tear it up as worthless, and then changed his mind. It had a large black seal with the D—— cipher, *very* easy to see. It was addressed in a tiny female hand to D——, the Minister, himself. It had been pushed carelessly, even, it seemed, contemptuously, into one of the top compartments of the rack.

“As soon as I glanced at this letter, I decided that it was the one I was looking for. Of course, it looked completely different from the one the Prefect had described to us in such detail. Here the seal was large and black, with the D—— cipher. There it was small and red, with the ducal arms of the S—— family. Here the address, to the Minister, was tiny and feminine. There the address, to a certain royal personage, was very bold and firm. Only the size matched. But then, the differences were so extreme—too extreme. And there was the dirt. The paper was soiled and torn, which did not fit D——'s true, orderly habits. It suggested a plan to trick anyone who saw it into thinking it was worthless. And the letter was placed where every visitor could see it, very much in the open. This fitted exactly the conclusions I had reached before. All these things strongly supported my suspicion—for someone who had come intending to suspect.

“I made my visit last as long as possible. I kept up a very lively discussion with the Minister. I chose a subject that I knew had always interested and excited him. But really my attention was fixed on the letter. As I examined it, I memorized how it looked from the outside and how it sat in the rack. And at last I made a discovery that ended any small doubt I might have had. Looking closely at the edges of the paper, I saw they were more rubbed than seemed necessary. They had the broken look of stiff paper that has been folded the wrong way. It had been folded once and pressed flat. Then it had been folded again in the opposite direction, along the same creases. This discovery was enough. It was clear to me that the letter had been turned inside out, like a glove. Then it had been addressed again and sealed again. I said good morning to the Minister and left at once. I left a gold snuff-box on the table.

“The next morning I called for the snuff-box. We eagerly started the conversation of the day before again. But while we were talking, there was a loud bang, like a pistol shot. It came from right under the windows of the hotel. It was followed by a series of terrible screams and the shouting of a frightened crowd. D—— rushed to a window, threw it open and looked out. Meanwhile I stepped to the card-rack, took the letter and put it in my pocket. In its place I put a facsimile, at least of the outside. I had carefully prepared it at my lodgings. I had copied the D—— cipher very easily, with a seal made of bread.

“The disturbance in the street was caused by the wild behavior of a man with a musket. He had fired it among a crowd of women and children. But it turned out that there was no ball in it. So the fellow was allowed to go on his way as a madman or a drunkard. When he had gone, D—— came away from the window. I had followed him there as soon as I had the letter safe. Soon afterwards I said goodbye to him. The pretend madman was a man I had paid.”

“But why did you replace the letter with a facsimile?” I asked. “Wouldn't it have been better to seize it openly at the first visit, and leave?”

“D——,” replied Dupin, “is a desperate man, and a man of nerve. And in his hotel there are servants who are loyal to him. If I had made the wild attempt you suggest, I might never have left the Minister's presence alive. The good people of Paris might have heard of me no more. But I had another purpose besides these. You know my political sympathies. In this matter I act as a supporter of the lady concerned. For eighteen months the Minister has had her in his power. Now she has him in hers. He does not know that the letter is no longer in his hands. So he will go on with his demands as if it were. In this way he will certainly bring about his own political destruction at once. And his fall will be as awkward as it is fast. It is all very well to talk about the *facilis descensus Averni*. But as Catalani said of singing, in all kinds of climbing it is far easier to get up than down. In this case I have no sympathy—at least no pity—for the one who comes down. He is that *monstrum horrendum*, a man of genius without principles. One day she will defy him—the lady the Prefect calls ‘a certain personage.’ Then he will be forced to open the letter I left for him in the card-rack. I confess I would very much like to know exactly what he thinks at that moment.”

“What? Did you put anything special in it?”

“Why—it did not seem quite right to leave the inside blank. That would have been insulting. Once, at Vienna, D—— did me an evil turn. I told him, quite good-humoredly, that I would remember it. I knew he would feel some curiosity about who had been too clever for him. So I thought it a pity not to give him a clue. He knows my handwriting well. So in the middle of the blank sheet I just copied the words—

“‘— — Un dessein si funeste, S’il n’est digne d’Atrée, est digne de Thyeste.

They are to be found in Crébillon's ‘Atrée.’”

### Glossary

- **purloined**: stolen.
- **Prefect**: the head of the police in a city.
- **meerschaum**: a kind of white tobacco pipe.
- **au troisième**: (French) on the third floor.
- **boudoir**: a lady's private room.
- **personage**: an important person.
- **hotel** (here)**: a large, grand private house in a city, not a hotel for travelers.
- **au fait**: (French) expert; knowing all about something.
- **footpads**: robbers who attack people in the street.
- **doggerel**: bad, silly poetry.
- **line** (here)**: a very small old measure of length, about two millimeters.
- **gimlet**: a small tool for making holes in wood.
- **rung**: one of the bars between the legs of a chair.
- **escritoire**: a writing desk with drawers.
- **Procrustean bed**: a fixed method into which everything is forced, even if it does not fit.
- **recherché**: (French) very carefully chosen and unusual; too clever.
- **non distributio medii**: (Latin) a mistake in logic: “all fools are poets” does not mean “all poets are fools.”
- **Pagan fables**: old stories about the gods of ancient Greece and Rome.
- **axiom**: a rule that people accept as true without proof.
- **courtier**: a person who spends time at the court of a king or queen.
- **intriguant**: (French) a person who makes secret plans to gain power.
- **vis inertiæ**: (Latin) the force that keeps a still thing still and a moving thing moving.
- **filigree**: fine, lace-like decoration.
- **card-rack**: a holder on a wall for visiting cards and letters.
- **cipher**: a person's sign or initials, pressed into the wax seal of a letter.
- **ducal arms**: the special family sign of a duke.
- **facsimile**: an exact copy.
- **facilis descensus Averni**: (Latin) the way down to hell is easy.
- **monstrum horrendum**: (Latin) a terrible monster.
- **Un dessein si funeste…**: (French) “So deadly a plan, if it is not worthy of Atreus, is worthy of Thyestes.” It is a line about a terrible revenge between two brothers in an old Greek story.

## The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

Of course I do not find it surprising that the strange case of M. Valdemar has caused so much discussion. It would have been a miracle if it had not—especially in these circumstances. All of us who were involved wanted to keep the affair from the public. We wanted this at least for the present, or until we had more chances to investigate. But while we were trying to do this, a confused and exaggerated account got out. It spread through society. It became the cause of many unpleasant false stories. And, quite naturally, it caused a great deal of disbelief.

So now I must give the facts—as far as I understand them myself. In short, they are these.

For the last three years my attention had often been drawn to the subject of Mesmerism. About nine months ago, a thought came to me quite suddenly. In all the experiments made so far, something very remarkable had been left out. Nobody could explain why. No person had yet been mesmerized *in articulo mortis*. There were three questions to answer. First, could a patient in that condition be affected by the magnetic influence at all? Second, if so, would his condition make the influence weaker or stronger? Third, how far, or for how long, could the process hold back the coming of Death? There were other points to find out. But these three made me most curious. The last one interested me most of all, because its results could be so hugely important.

I looked around me for someone on whom I could test these things. And I thought of my friend, M. Ernest Valdemar. He was well known as the compiler of the “Bibliotheca Forensica.” Under the pen name of Issachar Marx, he had also written the Polish versions of “Wallenstein” and “Gargantua.” M. Valdemar has lived mainly at Harlem, N.Y., since the year 1839. He is (or was) very noticeable because he was extremely thin. His legs were very like those of John Randolph. People also noticed his whiskers, which were very white. They were in violent contrast to his hair, which was very black. Because of this, most people thought his hair was a wig. He had a very nervous temperament, and this made him a good subject for mesmeric experiments. Two or three times I had put him to sleep without much difficulty. But I was disappointed in other results. His unusual nature had led me to expect them, but they did not come. His will was never fully under my control. And with clairvoyance, I could do nothing with him that could be trusted. I always believed my failure in these things was due to his poor health. Some months before I met him, his doctors had declared that he had phthisis, and that it was certain. Indeed, he often spoke calmly of his coming death. He spoke of it as something that could not be avoided, and that he did not regret.

When these ideas first came to me, it was very natural that I thought of M. Valdemar. I knew the man's steady philosophy too well to fear any objections from him. And he had no relatives in America who might interfere. I spoke to him openly about the subject. To my surprise, he seemed very interested. I say “to my surprise” for a reason. He had always let me experiment on him freely. But he had never before shown any sympathy with what I did. His disease was of a kind that allowed an exact calculation of when he would die. In the end we agreed on a plan. He would send for me about twenty-four hours before the time his doctors gave for his death.

It is now rather more than seven months since I received this note from M. Valdemar himself:

> MY DEAR P——,
>
> You may as well come now. D—— and F—— are agreed that I cannot hold out beyond tomorrow midnight. And I think they have hit the time very nearly.
>
> VALDEMAR

I received this note within half an hour after it was written. Fifteen minutes later I was in the dying man's room. I had not seen him for ten days. I was shocked by the terrible change that this short time had made in him. His face was the gray color of lead. His eyes had no shine at all. He was so terribly thin that his cheek-bones had broken through the skin. He was coughing up a great deal. His pulse could hardly be felt. And yet, in a very remarkable way, he still had his mental powers and some physical strength. He spoke clearly. He took some medicines for his pain without help. When I came into the room, he was writing notes in pencil in a pocket-book. Pillows held him up in the bed. Doctors D—— and F—— were with him.

I pressed Valdemar's hand. Then I took these gentlemen aside, and they gave me a detailed account of the patient's condition. For eighteen months the left lung had been half turned to bone, or to something like gristle. So of course it was completely useless for keeping him alive. In its upper part, the right lung was also partly, perhaps fully, turned to bone. The lower part was just a mass of tubercles full of pus, running into each other. There were several large holes. And at one point the lung had grown firmly onto the ribs. These changes in the right lung were fairly recent. The lung had turned to bone unusually fast. There had been no sign of it a month before. And the joining to the ribs had only been seen in the last three days. Besides the phthisis, the doctors thought the patient had an aneurism of the aorta. But the bone symptoms made an exact diagnosis of this impossible. Both doctors believed that M. Valdemar would die about midnight the next day, Sunday. It was then seven o'clock on Saturday evening.

The doctors left the sick man's bedside to talk to me. They had already said a last goodbye to him. They had not planned to come back. But at my request, they agreed to look in on the patient about ten o'clock the next night.

When they had gone, I spoke openly with M. Valdemar about his coming death. Above all, I spoke about the experiment I had in mind. He said he was still quite willing to have it done. He was even eager. He urged me to begin at once. A male nurse and a female nurse were there. But I did not feel quite free to begin a task of this kind with only these people as witnesses. In case of a sudden accident, they might not be reliable enough. So I put off the work until about eight o'clock the next night. Then a medical student arrived whom I knew a little, Mr. Theodore L—l. His arrival ended my difficulty. At first I had meant to wait for the doctors. But two things made me go ahead. First, M. Valdemar begged me urgently. Second, I was sure that I had not a moment to lose. He was clearly sinking fast.

Mr. L—l was kind enough to agree to my wish. He would take notes of everything that happened. What I now have to tell comes mostly from his notes. Some of it is shortened, and some is copied word for word.

It was about five minutes before eight. I took the patient's hand. I asked him to say to Mr. L—l, as clearly as he could, whether he was fully willing. Did he, M. Valdemar, want me to make the experiment of mesmerizing him in his present state?

He answered weakly, but we could hear him quite well. “Yes, I wish to be. I fear you have mesmerized”—and then he added at once, “I fear you have put it off too long.”

While he was speaking, I began the passes. I had already found these the best way to bring him under my power. The first sideways stroke of my hand across his forehead clearly had an effect on him. I used all my powers. But nothing more could be seen until some minutes after ten o'clock. Then Doctors D—— and F—— arrived, as we had arranged. I explained in a few words what I planned to do. They did not object. They said that the patient was already in the agony of death. So I went on without delay. But I changed the sideways passes for downward ones. And I looked steadily into the sufferer's right eye.

By this time his pulse could not be felt. His breathing was a loud snore, and it came only every half a minute.

His condition stayed almost the same for a quarter of an hour. At the end of this time, the dying man gave a natural but very deep sigh. The snoring sound of his breathing stopped. That is, the snoring could no longer be heard, but the breaths still came only every half a minute. The patient's hands and feet were as cold as ice.

At five minutes before eleven I saw clear signs of the mesmeric influence. The glassy roll of the eye changed. In its place came a look of uneasy, inward examination. This look is never seen except in cases of sleep-waking, and it is quite impossible to mistake. With a few quick sideways passes I made the eyelids tremble, as they do when sleep begins. With a few more I closed them completely. But I was not satisfied with this. I went on with the passes strongly, with the full force of my will. I had first put his arms and legs in a position that seemed comfortable. Then I went on until they were completely stiff. The legs were stretched out at full length. The arms were nearly straight too. They rested on the bed, a little way from his hips. The head was raised very slightly.

When I had done this, it was fully midnight. I asked the gentlemen present to examine M. Valdemar's condition. They made a few tests. Then they agreed that he was in an unusually perfect mesmeric trance. Both doctors were very curious. Dr. D—— decided at once to stay with the patient all night. Dr. F—— left, but he promised to return at daybreak. Mr. L—l and the nurses stayed.

We left M. Valdemar completely undisturbed until about three o'clock in the morning. Then I went up to him. I found him in exactly the same condition as when Dr. F—— went away. He lay in the same position. His pulse could not be felt. His breathing was gentle. We could hardly notice it, unless we held a mirror to his lips. His eyes were closed naturally. His arms and legs were as stiff and as cold as marble. Still, he certainly did not look dead.

As I came near M. Valdemar, I made a kind of half attempt to control his right arm. I moved my own arm gently to and fro above his body. I wanted his arm to follow mine. I had never fully succeeded in such experiments with this patient before. And I certainly did not think I would succeed now. But to my astonishment, his arm followed every movement of mine. It moved weakly, but very readily. I decided to try a few words of conversation.

“M. Valdemar,” I said, “are you asleep?”

He did not answer. But I saw his lips tremble, so I asked the question again and again. When I asked it the third time, his whole body shook with a very slight shiver. The eyelids opened far enough to show a white line of the eyeball. The lips moved slowly. And from between them came these words, in a whisper we could hardly hear:

“Yes;—asleep now. Do not wake me!—let me die so!”

I felt his arms and legs, and they were as stiff as ever. The right arm still obeyed the movement of my hand, as before. I questioned the sleep-waker again:

“Do you still feel pain in the breast, M. Valdemar?”

This time the answer came at once, but it was even harder to hear than before:

“No pain—I am dying.”

I did not think it wise to disturb him any more just then. Nothing more was said or done until Dr. F—— arrived. He came a little before sunrise. He was amazed to find the patient still alive. He felt the pulse and held a mirror to the lips. Then he asked me to speak to the sleep-waker again. I did so. I said:

“M. Valdemar, do you still sleep?”

As before, some minutes passed before he answered. During this time the dying man seemed to be gathering his strength to speak. When I asked the question for the fourth time, he said very weakly, so that we could hardly hear:

“Yes; still asleep—dying.”

The doctors now gave their opinion, or rather their wish. M. Valdemar should be left undisturbed in his present, apparently peaceful state, until death came. And everyone agreed that this must now happen within a few minutes. But I decided to speak to him once more. I simply repeated my last question.

While I was speaking, a great change came over the sleep-waker's face. The eyes rolled slowly open. The pupils disappeared upwards. The skin everywhere turned the color of a corpse. It was not so much like old parchment as like white paper. Until then there had been round red fever spots in the center of each cheek, very clear and sharp. Now they went out at once. I say “went out” for a reason. They disappeared so suddenly that they made me think of a candle blown out by a breath. At the same time, the upper lip twisted itself away from the teeth. Before, it had covered them completely. And the lower jaw dropped with a jerk that we could hear. It left the mouth wide open. We could see the whole tongue, swollen and black. I suppose everyone there was used to the horrors of a death-bed. But M. Valdemar looked so unimaginably terrible at that moment that we all shrank back from the bed.

I feel I have now reached a point in this story where every reader will be shocked into complete disbelief. But my business is simply to go on.

There was no longer the smallest sign of life in M. Valdemar. We decided that he was dead. We were handing him over to the care of the nurses. Then we saw a strong shaking movement in the tongue. This went on for perhaps a minute. At the end of that time, a voice came from the wide, motionless jaws. It would be madness for me to try to describe it. There are, it is true, two or three words that might partly fit it. I might say, for example, that the sound was harsh, and broken, and hollow. But the terrible whole cannot be described. The reason is simple. No sounds like it have ever struck the ears of mankind. And yet there were two things about the voice that I could fairly describe. I thought so then, and I still think so. They may give some idea of how strange and unearthly it was. First, the voice seemed to reach our ears—at least mine—from a great distance. Or it seemed to come from some deep cave inside the earth. Second, it affected me in a special way. I fear it will be impossible to make myself understood. It affected me as soft, sticky, jelly-like things affect the sense of touch.

I have spoken both of “sound” and of “voice.” I mean that the sound was made of clear syllables—wonderfully, thrillingly clear. M. Valdemar spoke. He was clearly answering the question I had asked him a few minutes before. I had asked him, you will remember, if he still slept. He now said:

“Yes;—no;—I have been sleeping—and now—now—I am dead.”

No one there even tried to deny or hide the terrible, shuddering horror of these few words. Said in that way, they were bound to fill us with horror. Mr. L—l, the student, fainted. The nurses left the room at once, and nothing could make them come back. I will not try to make my own feelings clear to the reader. For nearly an hour we worked in silence to bring Mr. L—l round. Nobody said a word. When he came to himself, we turned again to examining M. Valdemar's condition.

It was the same in every way as I have just described, with one difference. The mirror no longer showed any sign of breathing. We tried to draw blood from his arm, but we failed. I should mention, too, that the arm no longer obeyed my will. I tried in vain to make it follow the movement of my hand. In fact, the only real sign of the mesmeric influence was now in the tongue. It shook whenever I asked M. Valdemar a question. He seemed to be trying to answer, but he no longer had enough will to do it. When anyone other than me asked him a question, he seemed to feel nothing at all. I tried to put each person there in mesmeric *rapport* with him, but it did not help. I believe I have now told everything needed to understand the sleep-waker's state at this time. We found other nurses. And at ten o'clock I left the house with the two doctors and Mr. L—l.

In the afternoon we all came back to see the patient. His condition was exactly the same. We now discussed whether it would be right, and possible, to wake him. But we quickly agreed that it would do no good. Clearly, so far, death (or what is usually called death) had been stopped by the mesmeric process. We all felt sure of one thing. If we woke M. Valdemar, we would only make his death come at once, or at least very soon.

From that time until the end of last week—nearly seven months—we visited M. Valdemar's house every day. Now and then medical friends and other friends came with us. All this time the sleep-waker stayed *exactly* as I have just described him. The nurses cared for him all the time.

Last Friday we finally decided to make the experiment of waking him, or of trying to wake him. And it is the result of this last experiment that has caused so much discussion in private circles. The result was (perhaps) unfortunate. It has also caused, I cannot help thinking, a great deal of popular feeling that is not justified.

To bring M. Valdemar out of the mesmeric trance, I used the usual passes. For a time they did not work. The first sign of his waking was that the iris came partly down. We noticed something especially remarkable. As the pupil came down, a great flow of yellowish ichor came out from under the eyelids. It had a sharp and very unpleasant smell.

Someone now suggested that I should try to control the patient's arm, as before. I tried, and I failed. Then Dr. F—— said he would like me to ask a question. I did so. I asked:

“M. Valdemar, can you explain to us what are your feelings or wishes now?”

At once the round fever spots came back on the cheeks. The tongue shook, or rather rolled violently, in the mouth. But the jaws and lips stayed as stiff as before. And at last the same terrible voice that I have already described burst out:

“For God's sake!—quick!—quick!—put me to sleep—or, quick!—waken me!—quick!—I say to you that I am dead!”

I was completely shaken. For a moment I did not know what to do. First I tried to calm the patient back into sleep. But I failed, because his will was completely gone. So I turned back and struggled just as hard to wake him. I soon saw that I would succeed in this. Or at least I soon believed my success would be complete. And I am sure that everyone in the room was ready to see the patient wake.

But no human being could possibly have been ready for what really happened.

I made the mesmeric passes quickly. Cries of “dead! dead!” were bursting from the sufferer's tongue, not from his lips. And at once his whole body shrank—crumbled—completely rotted away under my hands. It all happened within a single minute, or even less. On the bed, in front of all of us, there lay a nearly liquid mass of disgusting—of horrible putrescence.

### Glossary

- **mesmerism / mesmerize**: an early form of hypnosis; to put someone into a kind of sleep in which they obey you.
- **in articulo mortis**: (Latin) at the moment of death.
- **passes**: slow movements of the hands over someone's body, used in mesmerism.
- **trance**: a state like sleep in which a person is not fully conscious.
- **sleep-waker**: a person in a mesmeric trance.
- **phthisis**: tuberculosis, a serious illness of the lungs.
- **pen name**: a false name used by a writer.
- **clairvoyance**: the power to see things that are far away or hidden, without using the eyes.
- **aneurism of the aorta**: a dangerous swelling of the body's main blood tube near the heart.
- **pulse**: the beat of the blood that you can feel at the wrist.
- **rapport**: (French) a close connection between the mesmerist and the person in the trance.
- **ichor**: a thin, bad-smelling liquid.
- **putrescence**: rotting matter.

## The Black Cat

I am about to write down a very wild story, and yet a very homely one. I do not expect anyone to believe it. I do not ask anyone to believe it. Mad indeed would I be to expect it. My own senses refuse to believe what they have seen. Yet mad am I not—and I am very surely not dreaming. But tomorrow I die, and today I want to free my soul of its weight. My purpose now is to tell the world about a series of simple household events. I will tell them plainly and briefly, without comment. These events have terrified me. They have tortured me. They have destroyed me. Yet I will not try to explain them. To me, they have brought little but horror. To many people they will seem less terrible than *barroques*. Later, perhaps, someone will make my nightmare seem ordinary. It will be a mind more calm and more logical than mine, and far less excitable. I describe these things with awe. But such a mind will see in them nothing more than an ordinary chain of very natural causes and effects.

From my early childhood I was known for my gentle and kind nature. My heart was so tender that my companions even made jokes about it. I was especially fond of animals. My parents let me have a great many different pets. I spent most of my time with them. I was never so happy as when I was feeding and stroking them. This part of my character grew as I grew. When I became a man, it was one of my chief sources of pleasure. Some people have loved a faithful and intelligent dog. I hardly need to explain to them how deep and how strong this pleasure can be. There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of an animal that goes straight to the heart. It touches the heart of a man who has often tested the cheap friendship and thin loyalty of mere *Man*.

I married early. I was happy to find that my wife had a nature much like my own. She saw how much I liked having pets in the house. So she never missed a chance to get the nicest kinds. We had birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and *a cat*.

The cat was a remarkably large and beautiful animal. He was black all over, and astonishingly intelligent. My wife was, at heart, more than a little superstitious. When she spoke of his intelligence, she often mentioned an old popular belief. People used to think that all black cats were witches in disguise. Not that she was ever *serious* about this. I only mention it because I happen to remember it just now.

Pluto—this was the cat's name—was my favorite pet and playmate. I alone fed him. He went with me wherever I went in the house. I even found it hard to stop him from following me through the streets.

Our friendship went on like this for several years. But during this time my temper and character changed completely for the worse. The cause was the Fiend Intemperance. I blush to confess it. Day by day I grew more moody and more irritable. I cared less and less about the feelings of others. I allowed myself to use violent language to my wife. In the end I even used physical violence against her. My pets, of course, felt the change in me. I not only neglected them, I treated them badly. But I still cared enough for Pluto not to hurt him. I had no such feeling about hurting the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog. I hurt them when they came near me, by accident or out of love. But my disease grew worse—for what disease is like Alcohol! And at last even Pluto began to feel my bad temper. He was getting old now, and so he was a little bad-tempered too.

One night I came home very drunk from one of my usual places in town. I imagined that the cat was avoiding me. I seized him. He was frightened by my violence, and he gave my hand a small bite with his teeth. At once the fury of a demon took hold of me. I no longer knew myself. My true soul seemed to fly out of my body all at once. In its place came an evil worse than a devil's, fed by gin. It thrilled through every part of my body. I took a pen-knife from my waistcoat pocket and opened it. I grabbed the poor animal by the throat. And quite on purpose, I cut one of its eyes out of its head! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I write down this terrible crime.

Reason came back with the morning, when I had slept off the night's drinking. I felt a feeling that was half horror and half regret for the crime I had committed. But at best it was a weak and uncertain feeling. My soul was not touched. Again I threw myself into heavy drinking. Soon I had drowned all memory of the deed in wine.

Meanwhile the cat slowly got better. The empty hole where his eye had been looked frightful, it is true. But he no longer seemed to be in any pain. He went about the house as usual. But, as you might expect, he ran away in great terror whenever I came near. There was enough of my old heart left in me to make me sad at first. This creature had once loved me so much, and now he clearly disliked me. But this feeling soon turned into irritation. And then came the spirit of PERVERSENESS. It came as if to bring about my final ruin, with no way back. Philosophy pays no attention to this spirit. Yet I am as sure that perverseness exists as I am that my soul lives. It is one of the most basic impulses of the human heart. It is one of the first feelings that shape the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, done something wicked or silly just because he knows he should not? Don't we always want to break the *Law*, against our better judgment, just because we know it is the Law? This spirit of perverseness, I say, brought my final ruin. My soul had a deep, strange longing *to hurt itself*. It wanted to do violence to its own nature, to do wrong only because it was wrong. This longing made me go on hurting the innocent animal. It made me finish what I had begun. One morning, in cold blood, I put a noose around its neck. I hanged it from the branch of a tree. I hanged it with tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest regret in my heart. I hanged it *because* I knew it had loved me. I hanged it *because* I felt it had given me no reason to be angry. I hanged it *because* I knew that I was committing a sin by doing it. It was a deadly sin. It would put my immortal soul in such danger that it might be lost forever. It might even be beyond the endless mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God. That is, if such a thing were possible.

On the night of the day of this cruel deed, I was woken from sleep by the cry of “Fire!” The curtains of my bed were in flames. The whole house was burning. My wife, a servant and I escaped from the fire with great difficulty. The destruction was complete. All my wealth in the world was gone. From then on, I gave myself up to despair.

I am above the weakness of trying to find cause and effect between the disaster and my crime. But I am describing a chain of facts, and I do not want to leave out even one possible link. On the day after the fire, I visited the ruins. All the walls except one had fallen in. This one was an inside wall, not very thick, which stood about the middle of the house. The head of my bed had stood against it. Here the plaster had mostly resisted the fire. I thought this was because it had been spread only recently. A thick crowd had gathered around this wall. Many people seemed to be examining one part of it very closely and eagerly. I heard the words “Strange!” “Very odd!” and other words like them. They made me curious. I came closer. On the white surface I saw the figure of a huge *cat*. It looked as if it had been carved in *bas relief*. It was drawn with truly marvelous accuracy. There was a rope around the animal's neck.

When I first saw this ghost—I could hardly think of it as less—my wonder and terror were extreme. But at last careful thought came to help me. I remembered that the cat had been hanged in a garden next to the house. When people heard the alarm of fire, the crowd had filled this garden at once. One of them must have cut the animal down from the tree. Then he must have thrown it through an open window into my room. He had probably done this to wake me up. Then other walls had fallen. They had pressed the victim of my cruelty into the fresh, soft plaster. The lime in the plaster, the flames, and the *ammonia* from the dead body had then made the picture as I saw it.

So I easily explained this startling fact to my reason, if not completely to my conscience. But it still made a deep impression on my imagination. For months I could not get rid of the ghostly image of the cat. During this time a half-feeling came back into my spirit. It seemed like regret, but it was not. I even began to be sorry that I had lost the animal. I now went regularly to low, wicked places. There I looked for another pet of the same kind and of a rather similar appearance, to take its place.

One night I was sitting, half stupid with drink, in a drinking den that was worse than shameful. Suddenly my attention was drawn to a black object. It was resting on top of one of the huge hogsheads of gin, or of rum. These were the main furniture of the room. I had been looking steadily at the top of this hogshead for some minutes. Now I was surprised that I had not seen the object on it sooner. I went up to it and touched it with my hand. It was a black cat—a very large one. It was fully as large as Pluto. It was very like him in every way but one. Pluto did not have a single white hair on any part of his body. But this cat had a large white patch, though its shape was unclear. It covered nearly the whole of his breast. When I touched him, he got up at once. He purred loudly and rubbed against my hand. He seemed delighted that I had noticed him. This, then, was the very creature I had been looking for. At once I offered to buy it from the landlord. But he said it was not his. He knew nothing about it. He had never seen it before.

I went on stroking the cat. When I got ready to go home, the animal seemed to want to come with me. I let it come. Now and then, as I walked, I bent down and patted it. When it reached the house, it made itself at home at once. It quickly became a great favorite with my wife.

As for me, I soon felt a dislike for it growing inside me. This was the opposite of what I had expected. I do not know how or why it was. But its clear fondness for me rather disgusted and annoyed me. Slowly these feelings of disgust and annoyance grew into bitter hatred. I avoided the creature. A certain sense of shame, and the memory of my earlier cruelty, stopped me from hurting it. For some weeks I did not hit it or treat it violently in any other way. But slowly—very slowly—I came to look at it with a disgust I cannot describe. I fled from its hated presence in silence, as if from the breath of a plague.

One thing, no doubt, added to my hatred of the animal. On the morning after I brought it home, I discovered something. Like Pluto, it too had lost one of its eyes. But this only made my wife love it more. As I have said, she had much of that kindness of feeling which had once been my chief quality. It had once been the source of many of my simplest and purest pleasures.

But as my dislike for this cat grew, its love for me seemed to grow too. It followed me everywhere I went. I can hardly make the reader understand how stubbornly it did this. Whenever I sat down, it would crouch under my chair. Or it would jump onto my knees and cover me with its disgusting caresses. If I got up to walk, it would get between my feet and nearly trip me up. Or it would dig its long, sharp claws into my clothes and climb up to my breast. At such times I longed to kill it with one blow. But something held me back. Partly it was the memory of my earlier crime. But mainly—let me confess it at once—it was pure dread of the animal.

This dread was not exactly a fear of physical harm. And yet I would not know how else to describe it. I am almost ashamed to admit it—yes, even in this felon's cell, I am almost ashamed to admit it. My terror and horror of the animal had been made worse by one of the silliest fancies you could imagine. More than once my wife had pointed out to me the shape of the white mark I have spoken of. This mark was the only visible difference between the strange animal and the one I had killed. The reader will remember that this mark was large, but at first its shape was very unclear. But slowly it changed, so slowly that I could hardly see it happen. For a long time my reason struggled to reject it as only my imagination. But at last the mark had taken on a sharp, clear outline. It was now the picture of something I shudder to name. And above all because of this, I hated and feared the monster. I would have got rid of it—*had I dared*. It was now, I say, the image of a terrible thing—of a dreadful thing—of the GALLOWS! Oh, sad and terrible machine of Horror and of Crime—of Agony and of Death!

And now I was truly miserable, more miserable than any human being. And *a dumb animal*—whose fellow I had killed with contempt—*a dumb animal* was causing all this unbearable pain! It was causing it for *me*—for me, a man, made in the image of the High God! Oh! I no longer knew the blessing of rest, either by day or by night! During the day the creature never left me alone for a moment. And at night I woke every hour from dreams of fear too great for words. I found the hot breath of *the thing* on my face. And I felt its huge weight lying forever on my *heart!* It was a living nightmare, and I had no power to shake it off.

Under the weight of torments like these, the weak remains of the good in me gave way. Evil thoughts became my only close friends—the darkest and most evil of thoughts. My usual moodiness grew into a hatred of all things and of all mankind. I now gave myself up blindly to sudden, frequent outbursts of fury that I could not control. And my wife, who never complained, was most often the one who suffered from them. She suffered more patiently than anyone.

One day she came with me into the cellar on some household errand. It was the cellar of the old building where we had to live because we were so poor. The cat followed me down the steep stairs. It nearly made me fall down them head first, and this drove me mad with anger. I raised an axe. In my rage I forgot the childish dread that had held back my hand until now. I aimed a blow at the animal. If it had come down as I wished, of course, it would have killed the cat at once. But my wife's hand stopped the blow. Her interference drove me into a rage worse than a demon's. I pulled my arm out of her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead on the spot, without a groan.

When this terrible murder was done, I set to work at once to hide the body. I did it with complete calm and care. I knew that I could not take it out of the house without the risk of the neighbors seeing me. This was true by day or by night. Many plans came into my mind. At one time I thought of cutting the body into tiny pieces and burning them. At another, I decided to dig a grave for it in the floor of the cellar. Then I thought about throwing it into the well in the yard. I also thought about packing it in a box, as if it were goods for sale. I would make the usual arrangements and get a porter to take it from the house. At last I found what I thought was a far better plan than any of these. I decided to wall it up in the cellar. The monks of the Middle Ages, it is said, walled up their victims in this way.

The cellar was well suited to a plan like this. Its walls were loosely built. Lately they had been plastered all over with a rough plaster. The damp air had stopped it from getting hard. Also, in one of the walls there was a part that stuck out. It was a false chimney, or fireplace, that had been filled in. It had been made to look like the rest of the cellar. I had no doubt that I could easily take out the bricks at this point. I could put the body inside and wall it all up as before. Then no eye would see anything suspicious. And in this I was not wrong. With a crow-bar I easily moved the bricks. I carefully placed the body against the inner wall. I propped it up in that position. Then, with little trouble, I built the whole wall again as it had stood before. I got mortar, sand and hair. With every possible care, I made a plaster that looked exactly like the old one. With this I very carefully covered the new brickwork. When I had finished, I felt satisfied that all was right. The wall did not look as if it had been touched at all. I picked up the rubbish on the floor with the greatest care. I looked around in triumph and said to myself: “Here at least, then, my labor has not been in vain.”

My next step was to look for the animal that had caused so much misery. For by now I had firmly decided to kill it. If I had found it at that moment, there could have been no doubt about its fate. But it seemed that the clever animal had been frightened by the violence of my anger. It did not show itself while I was in this mood. The hated creature was gone. I cannot describe, or even imagine, the deep, blissful relief this gave me. It did not appear during the night. And so, for one night at least since it came into the house, I slept soundly and peacefully. Yes, I slept, even with the weight of murder on my soul!

The second day passed, and the third, and still my tormentor did not come. Once again I breathed like a free man. The monster had run away from the house in terror, forever! I would never see it again! My happiness was complete! The guilt of my dark deed troubled me only a little. A few questions had been asked, but I had answered them easily. There had even been a search—but of course nothing was found. I believed that my future happiness was safe.

On the fourth day after the murder, a group of police officers came into the house, very unexpectedly. Once again they began to search the place thoroughly. But I felt no worry at all. I was sure that no one could ever find my hiding place. The officers told me to come with them in their search. They left no corner unexplored. At last, for the third or fourth time, they went down into the cellar. Not a single muscle of mine trembled. My heart beat as calmly as the heart of someone sleeping in innocence. I walked through the cellar from end to end. I folded my arms across my chest and strolled easily up and down. The police were completely satisfied and got ready to leave. The joy in my heart was too strong to hold back. I was burning to say just one word, as a sign of triumph. I wanted to make them doubly sure that I was innocent.

“Gentlemen,” I said at last, as the group went up the steps, “I am delighted to have calmed your suspicions. I wish you all good health, and a little more politeness. By the way, gentlemen, this—this is a very well-built house.” (In my wild wish to say something easy and natural, I hardly knew what I was saying.) “I may say an *excellently* well-built house. These walls—are you going, gentlemen?—these walls are solidly put together.” And here, out of pure wild bravado, I knocked heavily with a cane I held in my hand. I knocked on that very part of the brickwork. Behind it stood the dead body of my own dear wife.

But may God protect me and save me from the teeth of the Arch-Fiend! As soon as the echo of my blows had died into silence, a voice answered me from inside the tomb! It was a cry. At first it was muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child. Then it quickly grew into one long, loud, unbroken scream. It was completely unnatural and inhuman. It was a howl—a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph. Such a sound could only have come up out of hell. It was as if it came from the throats of the damned in their agony. And it was as if it came from the demons who rejoice in their damnation, too.

It is foolish to speak of my own thoughts. Fainting, I staggered back to the opposite wall. For one moment the men on the stairs stood still, in the greatest terror and awe. The next moment, a dozen strong arms were working at the wall. It fell all at once. The body, already badly rotted and covered with dried blood, stood upright in front of them all. On its head sat the terrible animal, with its red mouth wide open and its single eye of fire. Its cunning had led me into murder. Its voice had given me away and sent me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up inside the tomb!

### Glossary

- **barroques**: (French) strange and odd, rather than frightening.
- **the Fiend Intemperance**: the devil of drinking too much alcohol.
- **pen-knife**: a small folding knife.
- **perverseness**: the wish to do something wrong just because it is wrong.
- **noose**: a loop of rope that tightens when pulled, used for hanging.
- **bas relief**: (French) a carving that stands out a little from a flat surface.
- **hogshead**: a very large barrel.
- **gallows**: a wooden frame used to hang criminals.
- **felon's cell**: a prison room for a person guilty of a serious crime.
- **mortar**: a mix of sand, lime and water used to hold bricks together.
- **crow-bar**: a heavy iron bar used to lift or move things.
- **bravado**: a show of courage or confidence, to impress others.
- **Arch-Fiend**: the Devil.

## The Fall of the House of Usher

Son cœur est un luth suspendu; Sitôt qu’on le touche il résonne..

—*De Béranger*.

It was autumn. The whole day had been dull, dark and silent, and the clouds hung heavy and low in the sky. All day I had been riding alone on horseback through a strangely dreary part of the country. At last, as the evening shadows came on, I saw the melancholy House of Usher in front of me. I do not know how it was. But with my first look at the building, a feeling of unbearable gloom filled my spirit. I say unbearable, because nothing softened the feeling. Usually even the wildest and saddest scenes of nature give us a half-pleasant feeling, because they seem poetic. Here there was nothing of that.

I looked at the scene in front of me. I looked at the house itself and at the simple features of the land around it. I looked at the bleak walls and at the empty windows, which were like eyes. I looked at a few rough sedges and at a few white trunks of dead trees. I felt a complete depression of the soul. I can compare it to only one feeling on earth. It is the feeling of a person who takes opium, when he wakes up after his dream. It is the bitter fall back into everyday life, when the beautiful veil drops away and leaves only ugliness. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart. My thoughts were hopelessly dreary. No effort of the imagination could turn them into anything grand or noble.

What was it? I stopped to think. What was it that made me so nervous when I looked at the House of Usher? It was a mystery that I could not solve. Strange, shadowy thoughts crowded into my mind as I wondered, and I could not hold on to them. In the end I had to accept an answer that did not satisfy me. Without doubt, there *are* groups of very simple natural things which can affect us in this way. But the reason for their power is too deep for us to understand. Perhaps, I thought, a different arrangement of the parts of the scene would be enough. A different order of the details of the picture might weaken its sad effect, or even destroy it. So I acted on this idea. I rode my horse to the steep edge of a black, gloomy tarn. It lay beside the house, smooth and shining. I looked down into it. But I shuddered even more strongly than before. In the water I saw the same things again, upside down. There were the gray sedges, the ghastly tree trunks and the empty, eye-like windows.

And yet I planned to stay in this house of gloom for some weeks. Its owner, Roderick Usher, had been one of my closest friends when we were boys. But many years had passed since our last meeting. Not long ago, however, a letter had reached me in a distant part of the country. It was a letter from him. It was so wild and so urgent that only a personal visit could answer it. The handwriting showed that he was nervous and upset. He wrote of a sharp bodily illness. He wrote of a disorder of the mind that weighed on him. And he wrote of his deep wish to see me. I was his best friend, he said, and in fact his only real friend. He hoped that my cheerful company might ease his illness a little. It was the way he said all this, and much more. It was the clear *heart* in his request. This left me no room to hesitate. So I obeyed at once, although I still thought it a very strange invitation.

As boys we had been very close. Yet I really knew little about my friend. He had always been extremely reserved; it was his habit. But I did know some things about his very old family. For as long as anyone could remember, they had been known for a special sensitivity of character. Through long ages this had shown itself in many works of great art. In recent times it had shown itself in many acts of generous but quiet charity. It also showed in a passionate love of music. They loved its difficult, complex side, perhaps even more than its usual, easy beauties.

I had learned another very remarkable fact. The Usher family tree, old and honored as it was, had never put out any lasting side branch. In other words, the whole family had always come down in one direct line, from father to son. There had been only very small and very short exceptions. I thought about how well the character of the house matched the known character of the people. I wondered how, over long centuries, the one might have influenced the other. And I thought that this lack of side branches was perhaps the reason for something else. The property had always passed, with the name, from father to son, with no change. In the end this had joined the two so closely that the estate lost its original name. People called it by the strange double name of the “House of Usher.” For the peasants who used this name, it seemed to mean both the family and the family’s mansion.

I have said that my rather childish experiment of looking into the tarn had only one effect. It made my first strange impression deeper. I knew that my superstition was growing fast. Why should I not call it that? And there is no doubt that knowing this made it grow even faster. I have long known that this is the strange law of all feelings based on terror. Perhaps this was the only reason for what happened next. I raised my eyes again from the picture in the pool to the house itself. Then a strange fancy grew in my mind. It was so silly that I mention it only to show how strong my feelings were. I had worked on my imagination so much that I really believed something. I believed that the whole mansion and its grounds had an atmosphere of their own. It hung only around them and the places close by. It had nothing to do with the air of heaven. It had risen, like a bad smell, from the dead trees, the gray wall and the silent tarn. It was a poisonous and mysterious vapor. It was dull and slow-moving, hard to see, and the color of lead.

I shook off what *must* have been a dream. Then I looked more closely at the real appearance of the building. Its main feature seemed to be its very great age. The years had badly discolored it. Tiny fungi covered the whole outside. They hung down from the edges of the roof like a fine, tangled web. Yet the house was not in any extraordinary state of ruin. No part of the stonework had fallen. There seemed to be a wild contrast here. All the parts still fitted together perfectly, but the single stones were crumbling. This reminded me of old woodwork that has rotted for many years in some forgotten vault. No outside air has ever touched it, so it still looks whole, but it is not. Apart from this sign of wide decay, the building showed little sign of weakness. Perhaps a careful observer might have found a fissure that could hardly be seen. It ran from the roof at the front of the building down the wall in a zigzag line. At last it disappeared in the sullen waters of the tarn.

I noticed these things as I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant was waiting and took my horse. I went in under the Gothic arch of the hall. From there a valet with quiet, secret steps led me without a word to his master’s *studio*. We went through many dark and winding passages. Much of what I saw on the way made my vague feelings stronger, I do not know how. There were the carvings on the ceilings and the dark tapestries on the walls. There were the floors, as black as ebony. There were the ghostly trophies of arms and family signs, which rattled as I walked past. I had known things like these since I was a small child. I did not hesitate to admit how familiar it all was. Still, I was surprised at the unfamiliar fancies that these ordinary things stirred up in me. On one of the staircases I met the family’s physician. I thought his face showed a mixture of low cunning and perplexity. He greeted me nervously and went on his way. The valet now threw open a door and led me in to his master.

The room I was now in was very large and high. The windows were long, narrow and pointed. They were so far above the black oak floor that no one could reach them from inside. Weak, reddish light came in through the panes, which were set in a pattern of crossed bars. It was enough to show the larger objects in the room clearly. But my eyes tried in vain to see the far corners of the room. They could not reach into the high, arched and decorated ceiling either. Dark curtains hung on the walls. There was a lot of furniture, but it was uncomfortable, old and worn. Many books and musical instruments lay about, but they did not bring any life to the scene. I felt that I was breathing an air of sorrow. A hard, deep and hopeless gloom hung over everything and filled it all.

When I came in, Usher rose from a sofa, where he had been lying at full length. He greeted me with lively warmth. At first I thought there was too much friendliness in it. It seemed like the forced effort of the *ennuyé* man of the world. But one look at his face showed me that he was completely sincere. We sat down. For some moments he did not speak. I looked at him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely no man had ever changed so terribly in so short a time as Roderick Usher! I found it hard to accept that this pale creature was the companion of my early boyhood.

Yet his face had always been remarkable. His skin was as pale as a dead man’s. His eyes were large, liquid and shining beyond comparison. His lips were rather thin and very pale, but beautifully curved. His nose was delicate and of a Hebrew shape, but the nostrils were unusually wide. His chin was finely shaped, but it did not stand out much. This seemed to show a lack of moral energy. His hair was softer and finer than a spider’s web. Above the temples his forehead was unusually broad. Together these features made a face that was not easy to forget. And now these features and their usual expression were simply exaggerated. But this alone changed him so much that I was not sure whom I was speaking to. Above all, the deathly whiteness of his skin and the wonderful shine of his eyes startled me. They even filled me with awe. He had also let his silky hair grow without any care. It was wild and fine as a cobweb, and it floated around his face rather than fell. Even when I tried, I could not connect its strange, *Arabesque* look with any idea of a simple human being.

In my friend’s manner I noticed at once something confused and changeable. Soon I saw why. He was making a series of weak and useless efforts to control a constant trembling, a very strong nervous agitation. I had in fact been prepared for something of this kind. His letter had prepared me. So had memories of some of his habits as a boy. So had what I knew of his unusual body and temperament. His actions were lively one moment and sullen the next. His voice changed quickly. Sometimes, when his spirits seemed to have left him completely, it was trembling and uncertain. Then it suddenly became short and full of energy. Each word came out sharp, heavy, slow and hollow. The voice was leaden, steady and perfectly controlled, and it came from deep in the throat. You can hear this kind of voice from a hopeless drunkard. You can hear it from an opium-eater who cannot be saved. It comes at the moments when he is most excited.

This was how he spoke of the reason for my visit. He spoke of his deep wish to see me, and of the comfort he expected from me. He talked for some time about what he believed was the nature of his illness. It was, he said, a family evil that he was born with. He had no hope of finding a cure for it. Then he added at once that it was only a nervous illness. Without doubt, it would soon pass. It showed itself in a great number of unnatural feelings. As he described some of them, they interested and confused me. Perhaps the words he used and his way of telling it had an effect too. He suffered greatly from a sick sharpness of the senses. He could only bear food with almost no taste. He could only wear clothes of certain materials. The smell of every flower was too heavy for him. Even a weak light hurt his eyes. Only certain sounds did not fill him with horror, and these came from stringed instruments.

I found that he was a helpless slave to a strange kind of terror.

“I shall die,” he said. “I must die of this miserable foolishness. In this way, this way and no other, I shall be lost. I fear the events of the future. I do not fear them in themselves, but I fear their results. I shudder at the thought of any event, even the smallest one. It might act on this unbearable agitation of my soul. I do not really hate danger, except for its final effect, which is terror. I am so weak and nervous now, in such a pitiful state. I feel that sooner or later the time will come when I must give up life and reason together. It will happen in some struggle with that grim ghost, FEAR.”

I also learned something else strange about his state of mind. I learned it bit by bit, through broken and unclear hints. He was chained by certain superstitious ideas about the house he lived in. For many years he had never once left it. These ideas were about an influence that the house had on him. He described its power in words too shadowy for me to repeat here. Some features of the mere shape and material of his family’s mansion had gained this power over his spirit. This had happened, he said, through long suffering. It was an effect of the gray walls and towers on him. The dim tarn that they all looked down into had the same effect. In the end, these physical things had changed the spirit of his whole existence.

But he admitted, with hesitation, that much of his strange gloom had a more natural cause. It was a much more obvious one. His dearly loved sister had been very ill for a long time. In fact, she was clearly near death. She had been his only companion for many years. She was his last and only relative on earth. He spoke with a bitterness that I can never forget.

“Her death,” he said, “would leave him (him the hopeless and the weak) the last of the Ushers’ ancient race.”

While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for that was her name) passed slowly through a distant part of the room. She did not notice that I was there, and she disappeared. I looked at her with complete astonishment, mixed with dread. And yet I could not explain these feelings. A kind of numbness came over me as my eyes followed her steps away from us. At last a door closed behind her. At once, without thinking, I looked eagerly at her brother’s face. But he had buried his face in his hands. I could only see that his thin fingers had become much paler than usual. Many passionate tears were running down between them.

The lady Madeline’s illness had long puzzled the skill of her doctors. She showed a fixed lack of interest in everything. Her body was slowly wasting away. And she had frequent, though short, attacks of a partly cataleptic kind. That was the unusual diagnosis. Until then she had bravely fought against her illness and had not finally gone to bed. But on the evening of my arrival, as night came on, she gave in to the crushing power of the destroyer. Her brother told me this that night, with terrible agitation. So I learned that my short look at her would probably be my last. I would see the lady no more, at least while she was alive.

For several days after this, neither Usher nor I spoke her name. During this time I tried hard to lighten my friend’s melancholy. We painted and read together. Or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild music he made up on his speaking guitar. And so I grew closer and closer to him. He let me further into the secret places of his spirit. But the closer I came, the more bitterly I saw that all my efforts were useless. I could not cheer a mind like his. Darkness poured out of it onto everything in the world, in both mind and nature. It was as if darkness were a real, natural part of him. It poured out in one endless ray of gloom.

I will always carry the memory of those many solemn hours. I spent them alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I could not describe the exact nature of our studies. I could not describe the activities he drew me into, or led me in. An excited and very sick imagination threw a hellish, sulphur-colored light over everything. His long dirges, which he made up as he played, will ring forever in my ears. Among other things, I painfully remember a strange, twisted, longer version of Von Weber’s wild last waltz.

Then there were his paintings. His rich fancy brooded over them, and they grew, touch by touch, into vague shapes. I shuddered at them all the more strongly because I did not know why I shuddered. These paintings are as clear before me now as they were then. But I could put only a small part of them into mere written words. He caught and overpowered the attention by their complete simplicity and nakedness. If any man ever painted an idea, that man was Roderick Usher. At least, it was so for me, in the situation I was in then. The hypochondriac threw pure, abstract ideas onto his canvas. And from them came a feeling of unbearable awe. I had never felt even a shadow of that awe before the paintings of Fuseli. His dreams are certainly glowing, but they are too solid and real.

One of my friend’s ghostly ideas was not quite so abstract. It can be described in words, though only weakly. It was a small picture. It showed the inside of a very long, rectangular vault or tunnel. Its walls were low, smooth and white, with no break or decoration. Some smaller details of the picture made it clear that this tunnel lay very deep below the earth. There was no way out anywhere in its whole great length. No torch or other light could be seen. Yet a flood of strong light rolled through it. It bathed the whole place in a ghastly and unfitting brightness.

I have just spoken of the sick state of his hearing. Because of it, he could not bear any music, except for certain effects of stringed instruments. Perhaps he kept himself within these narrow limits on the guitar. And perhaps this, to a great extent, gave his playing its fantastic character. But it could not explain the burning ease with which he made up music on the spot. This music came in notes and in the words of his wild fantasies. He often sang rhyming verses that he made up as he played. They must have come, and did come, from deep concentration of the mind. I have mentioned this before. It could be seen only at certain moments of the highest artificial excitement.

I have easily remembered the words of one of these wild songs. Perhaps it made a stronger impression on me because of a hidden meaning under its surface. I thought I could see, for the first time, that Usher fully knew something. He knew that his high reason was shaking on its throne. The verses were called “The Haunted Palace.” They went very nearly, if not exactly, like this:

I.  
In the greenest of our valleys,  
Where good angels made their home,  
Once a fair and stately palace—  
Shining palace—raised its head.  
In the land of the great king Thought—  
There it stood!  
Never did an angel spread a wing  
Over a building half so fair.

II.  
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,  
On its roof would float and flow;  
(This—all this—was in the olden  
Time, long ago.)  
And every gentle breeze that played,  
In that sweet day,  
Along the pale and feathered walls,  
Carried a winged perfume away.

III.  
Wanderers in that happy valley  
Through two bright windows saw  
Spirits moving to sweet music,  
To a well-tuned lute’s law.  
Round about a throne, where, sitting  
(Porphyrogene!)  
In the glory that well fitted him,  
The ruler of the land was seen.

IV.  
And all with pearl and ruby glowing  
Was the fair palace door.  
Through it came, flowing, flowing, flowing,  
And sparkling evermore,  
A crowd of Echoes. Their sweet duty  
Was only to sing,  
In voices of the greatest beauty,  
The wit and wisdom of their king.

V.  
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,  
Attacked the monarch’s high estate.  
(Ah, let us mourn, for no tomorrow  
Shall dawn on him, alone and lost!)  
And round his home, the glory  
That blushed and bloomed  
Is now a half-remembered story  
Of the old time, long buried.

VI.  
And travelers now in that valley,  
Through the red-lit windows, see  
Huge shapes that move fantastically  
To music out of tune.  
While, like a fast and ghastly river,  
Through the pale door  
A hideous crowd rush out forever,  
And laugh—but smile no more.

I remember well that ideas from this ballad led us into a line of thought. In it, an opinion of Usher’s became clear. I mention it not because it was new, for other men\\* have thought the same. I mention it because of how stubbornly he held on to it. In its general form, this opinion was that all plants have sentience. But in his disordered fancy, the idea had become bolder. Under certain conditions, it went into the kingdom of things that are not alive at all. I lack the words to express how far he believed it, or how passionately he gave himself up to it.

The belief, as I have hinted before, was connected with the gray stones of his ancestors’ home. Here, he imagined, the conditions for sentience had been met. They were met in the way these stones were placed together. They were met in the order of the stones, and in the order of the many *fungi* that covered them. They were met in the dead trees that stood around. Above all, they were met in the long, undisturbed lasting of this arrangement. And they were met in its double picture in the still waters of the tarn. The proof of this sentience, he said, could be seen. (And here I started as he spoke.) It was the slow but certain gathering of an atmosphere of their own around the waters and the walls. The result could be found, he added, in a silent but terrible influence. It never let the family go. For centuries it had shaped the destiny of his family. It had made *him* what I now saw—what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will make none.

\\* Watson, Dr. Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop of Landaff.—See “Chemical Essays,” vol v.

Our books matched this ghostly character closely, as you might expect. For years they had formed a large part of the sick man’s mental life. Together we studied such works as the *Ververt et Chartreuse* of Gresset and the *Belphegor* of Machiavelli. We read the *Heaven and Hell* of Swedenborg and the *Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm* by Holberg. We read the *Chiromancy* of Robert Flud, of Jean D’Indaginé, and of De la Chambre. And we read the *Journey into the Blue Distance* of Tieck and the *City of the Sun* of Campanella. One favorite book was a small octavo edition of the *Directorium Inquisitorium*, by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne. There were also passages in Pomponius Mela about the old African Satyrs and OEgipans. Usher would sit dreaming over them for hours. But his chief delight was in reading a very rare and curious book. It was a large old volume printed in Gothic letters. It was the handbook of a forgotten church: the *Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae*.

I could not help thinking of the wild rituals in this book, and of their probable influence on the hypochondriac. This was because of what happened one evening. Usher told me suddenly that the lady Madeline was no more. He said that he planned to keep her body for a fortnight before the final burial. It would lie in one of the many vaults inside the main walls of the building. He gave a practical reason for this unusual plan, and I did not feel free to argue with it. He had made his decision, he told me, for three reasons. Her illness had been very unusual. Her doctors had asked certain eager questions that pushed too far. And the family’s burial ground was far away and unprotected. I will not deny something. I remembered the sinister face of the man I met on the staircase on the day I arrived. So I had no wish to oppose what I saw as, at best, a harmless and quite natural precaution.

At Usher’s request, I helped him myself with the plans for this temporary burial. The body was put into a coffin, and the two of us alone carried it to its rest. We placed it in a vault that had been closed for a very long time. Its heavy air half put out our torches. So we could not see much of it. It was small and damp, and there was no way for any light to come in. It lay very deep, right under the part of the building where my own bedroom was. In far-off feudal times, it seems, it had been a dungeon, used for the worst purposes. In later days it had been a store for gunpowder, or for some other substance that burns very easily. Part of its floor was carefully covered with copper. So was the whole inside of a long archway that led to it. The door, of massive iron, had been covered in the same way. Because of its huge weight, it made an unusually sharp grating sound as it moved on its hinges.

We set our sad load down on trestles in this place of horror. The lid of the coffin was not yet screwed down, and we turned it partly aside. We looked at the face of the dead woman inside. For the first time, I noticed a striking likeness between brother and sister. Usher perhaps guessed my thoughts. He murmured a few words, and I learned that he and the dead woman had been twins. A strange bond of feeling, hard to understand, had always existed between them. But we did not look at the dead for long. We could not look at her without awe. Her illness had put the lady in her tomb in the full bloom of her youth. This often happens with truly cataleptic illnesses. It had left a mocking, faint blush on her breast and face. And it had left on her lips that suspicious, lingering smile which is so terrible in death. We put the lid back and screwed it down. We locked the iron door. Then, with great effort, we made our way back to the upper rooms of the house. They were hardly less gloomy.

Some days of bitter grief passed. Then a clear change came over my friend’s mental illness. His usual manner had disappeared. He forgot his usual activities or did not care about them. He wandered from room to room with hurried, uneven steps, without any purpose. His face had become, if possible, even more deathly pale. But the light in his eyes had gone out completely. The roughness that I had sometimes heard in his voice was gone. Instead, a trembling shake, as if of extreme terror, was always in his speech. There were times when I thought his restless mind was struggling with some heavy secret. He seemed to be trying to find the courage to tell it. At other times I had to see it all as the strange acts of madness, with no reason behind them. For I saw him staring at nothing for long hours. He sat in an attitude of the deepest attention, as if he were listening to some imaginary sound. It is no wonder that his condition terrified me. It infected me too. I felt his wild superstitions creeping over me, slowly but surely. They were fantastic, yet they had a strong effect.

It was the seventh or eighth night after we had placed the lady Madeline in the vault. I went to bed late, and that night I felt the full power of these feelings. Sleep did not come near my bed, while the hours slowly passed away. I struggled to reason away the nervousness that ruled me. I tried to believe that the gloomy furniture of the room was confusing me. Perhaps that was the cause of much, if not all, of what I felt. There were dark, torn curtains on the walls. The breath of a rising storm moved them about, and they swayed unevenly to and fro. They rustled nervously around the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were useless. A trembling that I could not stop slowly spread through my body. At last an incubus of fear, with no cause at all, seemed to sit on my very heart. I shook it off with a gasp and a struggle. I raised myself up on the pillows and looked hard into the deep darkness of the room. I listened. I do not know why, except that some instinct made me do it. I listened to certain low, unclear sounds. They came through the pauses in the storm, at long intervals, and I did not know from where. A strong feeling of horror overpowered me. I could not explain it, yet I could not bear it. I quickly threw on my clothes, because I felt that I would not sleep again that night. Then I tried to bring myself out of this pitiful state by walking quickly up and down the room.

I had walked up and down only a few times when I heard a light step on a staircase nearby. Soon I recognized it as Usher’s step. A moment later he knocked gently at my door and came in, carrying a lamp. His face was, as usual, as pale as a corpse. But there was also a kind of mad cheerfulness in his eyes. In his whole manner there was a *hysteria* that he was clearly holding back. The way he looked shocked me. But anything was better than the loneliness I had suffered for so long. I even welcomed him as a relief.

“And you have not seen it?” he said suddenly, after staring around him in silence for some moments. “You have not seen it, then?—but wait! You shall.”

As he said this, he carefully shaded his lamp. He hurried to one of the casements and threw it wide open to the storm.

The wild force of the wind that rushed in nearly lifted us off our feet. It was indeed a stormy night, but it was also sternly beautiful. It was wildly strange, both in its terror and in its beauty. A whirlwind seemed to have gathered its force near us. The wind kept changing its direction often and violently. The clouds were very thick and hung so low that they pressed on the towers of the house. Still, we could see how fast they flew, as if they were alive. They raced from every direction against each other, but they never moved away into the distance. I say that even their great thickness did not stop us from seeing this. Yet we could not see the moon or the stars. And there was no flash of lightning. But the undersides of the huge masses of moving cloud were glowing. So was everything on the ground right around us. They glowed in the unnatural light of a gas. It was faintly bright and clearly visible, and it hung about the mansion and wrapped it like a shroud.

“You must not—you shall not look at this!” I said to Usher, trembling. Gently but firmly, I led him away from the window to a seat. “These sights that confuse you are only electrical events, and they are not uncommon. Or perhaps they have their ghastly cause in the foul, poisonous air of the tarn. Let us close this casement;—the air is cold and dangerous for your body. Here is one of your favorite romances. I will read, and you shall listen;—and so we will pass this terrible night together.”

The old book I had picked up was the “Mad Trist” of Sir Launcelot Canning. But I had called it one of Usher’s favorites more as a sad joke than seriously. In truth, there is little in its rough, unimaginative wordiness that could interest my friend’s high and spiritual mind. It was, however, the only book close at hand. And I had a vague hope that the excitement which now troubled the hypochondriac might find relief. Perhaps it could find relief even in the extreme foolishness of what I was going to read. The history of mental illness is full of strange cases like this. He listened, or seemed to listen, to the words of the tale with a wild, over-strained liveliness. If I could have judged by that, I might well have congratulated myself on my success.

I had reached the well-known part of the story about Ethelred, the hero of the Trist. He has tried in vain to enter the hermit’s home peacefully. Now he decides to get in by force. Here, you will remember, the words of the story go like this:

“And Ethelred had a brave heart by nature. And now he was strong as well, because of the power of the wine he had drunk. So he waited no longer to talk with the hermit, who was in truth stubborn and full of malice. He felt the rain on his shoulders and feared the rising of the storm. So he lifted up his mace. With his blows he quickly made a hole in the planks of the door. It was big enough for his hand in its iron glove. And now he pulled hard with it. He cracked, and ripped, and tore it all apart. The noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood rang out and echoed through the forest.”

At the end of this sentence I started, and for a moment I stopped. It seemed to me that a sound came faintly to my ears from some very distant part of the mansion. (But I decided at once that my excited fancy had tricked me.) It was exactly like the cracking and ripping sound that Sir Launcelot had described so carefully. It might have been an echo of it, though a weak and dull one. Without doubt, it was only the coincidence that caught my attention. The window frames were rattling, and there were all the usual mixed noises of the growing storm. Among them, the sound itself surely had nothing that should have interested or disturbed me. I went on with the story:

“But the good champion Ethelred now came in through the door. He was very angry and amazed, because he saw no sign of the wicked hermit. Instead, he saw a dragon, scaly and huge, with a fiery tongue. It sat on guard in front of a palace of gold, with a floor of silver. And on the wall there hung a shield of shining brass, with these words written on it—

Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;  
Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;

“And Ethelred lifted his mace and struck the dragon on the head. It fell down before him and gave up its poisonous breath. Its shriek was horrible, harsh and piercing. Ethelred had to cover his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise. No one had ever heard anything like it before.”

Here again I stopped suddenly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement. This time there could be no doubt at all. I really did hear a sound, although I could not say which direction it came from. It was low and seemed far away, but it was harsh, long and very unusual. It was a screaming or grating sound. It was exactly like the dragon’s unnatural shriek, as I had already pictured it from the writer’s words.

This second and most extraordinary coincidence filled me with a thousand mixed feelings. Wonder and extreme terror were the strongest of them. But I still had enough presence of mind to say nothing. I did not want to excite my companion’s sensitive nerves. I was not at all sure that he had noticed the sounds. But certainly a strange change had come over his manner during the last few minutes. He had been sitting facing me. But slowly he had turned his chair around. Now he sat with his face to the door of the room. So I could see his features only partly. But I saw that his lips were trembling, as if he were murmuring something I could not hear. His head had dropped onto his breast. Yet I knew he was not asleep, because I caught a side view of his eye. It was wide and stiffly open. The movement of his body did not fit with sleep either. He was rocking from side to side with a gentle, steady and even sway. I quickly noticed all this. Then I went on with Sir Launcelot’s story, which continued like this:

“And now the champion had escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon. He thought of the brass shield, and of breaking the magic spell that was on it. So he moved the dead body of the dragon out of his way. He walked bravely over the silver floor of the castle to where the shield hung on the wall. But in truth the shield did not wait for him to come all the way. It fell down at his feet on the silver floor, with a mighty, great and terrible ringing sound.”

These words had hardly left my lips when I heard a sound. It was as if a shield of brass had really fallen heavily onto a silver floor at that moment. It was a clear, hollow, metallic and clanging echo, but it seemed muffled. I was completely shaken, and I jumped to my feet. But Usher’s steady rocking did not stop. I rushed to the chair where he sat. His eyes were staring fixedly in front of him, and his whole face was as stiff as stone. But when I put my hand on his shoulder, a strong shudder ran through his whole body. A sickly smile trembled on his lips. He was speaking in a low, hurried, meaningless murmur, as if he did not know I was there. I bent down close over him. At last I understood the hideous meaning of his words.

“Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and I *have* heard it. Long—long—long—many minutes, many hours, many days, I have heard it. Yet I did not dare—oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! I did not dare—I *did not dare* speak! *We have put her living in the tomb!* Did I not say that my senses were sharp? I *now* tell you that I heard her first weak movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them—many, many days ago—yet I did not dare—*I did not dare speak!* And now—tonight—Ethelred—ha! ha! The breaking of the hermit’s door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clang of the shield! Say, rather, the tearing open of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison! And her struggles inside the copper-covered archway of the vault! Oh, where shall I run? Will she not be here soon? Is she not hurrying to blame me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stairs? Can I not hear that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!”—here he jumped furiously to his feet. He shrieked out the words, as if he were giving up his soul with the effort—“*Madman! I tell you that she now stands outside the door!*”

It was as if his words had the power of a spell, because of their superhuman energy. At that very moment, the huge old panels that he pointed at slowly opened their heavy ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing wind. But outside those doors there *did* stand the tall, shrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood on her white robes. Every part of her thin, wasted body showed signs of some bitter struggle. For a moment she stood trembling and swaying to and fro on the threshold. Then, with a low moaning cry, she fell heavily inward onto her brother. In her violent and now final death-agonies, she carried him with her to the floor. He was a corpse, a victim of the terrors he had expected.

I ran from that room and from that mansion in horror. The storm was still raging in all its fury as I crossed the old causeway. Suddenly a wild light shot along the path. I turned to see where such an unusual light could come from. Behind me there was only the huge house and its shadows. The light came from the full, setting, blood-red moon. It was now shining brightly through that crack which had once been so hard to see. I have spoken of it before. It ran from the roof of the building, in a zigzag line, down to the base. While I watched, this crack quickly grew wider. Then a fierce breath of the whirlwind came. The whole disc of the moon burst into my sight at once. My brain spun as I saw the mighty walls rushing apart. There was a long, wild, shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters. And the deep, damp tarn at my feet closed darkly and silently over the pieces of the “*House of Usher*.”

### Glossary

- **Son cœur est un luth suspendu; Sitôt qu’on le touche il résonne**: French lines by the poet De Béranger: “His heart is a hanging lute; as soon as someone touches it, it makes a sound.”
- **tarn**: a small, dark mountain lake.
- **sedges**: plants like tall, rough grass that grow in wet ground.
- **fissure**: a long, narrow crack.
- **causeway**: a raised path over wet ground or water.
- **valet**: a man’s personal servant.
- **perplexity**: the feeling of being puzzled and not knowing what to think.
- **ennuyé**: (French) bored and tired of everything.
- **cataleptic**: having an illness in which the body suddenly becomes stiff and seems dead.
- **dirges**: sad songs for the dead.
- **hypochondriac**: a person who thinks all the time about his own illness.
- **Porphyrogene**: a person born into a royal family.
- **sentience**: the ability to feel.
- **fungi**: plants like mushrooms and mold.
- **fortnight**: two weeks.
- **vault**: an underground room, often for the dead.
- **trestles**: wooden supports used like a table.
- **twins**: two children born to the same mother at the same time.
- **incubus**: a heavy, frightening weight that seems to sit on you in a bad dream.
- **casement**: a window that opens like a door.
- **romances**: old stories of knights, adventures and magic.
- **hermit**: a man who lives alone, far from other people.
- **mace**: a heavy club used as a weapon.
- **Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin**: old English: “Whoever comes in here has won a fight.”

## The Masque of the Red Death

The “Red Death” had long destroyed the country. No plague had ever been so deadly, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and the head suddenly began to spin. Then there was heavy bleeding from the pores of the skin, and death. There were scarlet stains on the body, and especially on the face of the victim. These stains were the mark of the plague. They shut the victim off from the help and the sympathy of other people. And the whole disease, from the first attack to the end, took only half an hour.

But Prince Prospero was happy and fearless and wise. When half the people in his lands had died, he called a thousand friends to him. They were healthy and light-hearted, and he chose them from among the knights and ladies of his court. With them he went to one of his abbeys, which was built like a castle. There they lived shut away from the world. It was a large and magnificent building. The prince had designed it himself, in his own strange but noble taste. A strong, high wall went all around it. This wall had gates of iron. When the courtiers had entered, they brought furnaces and heavy hammers and fixed the bolts shut with fire. They decided to leave no way in and no way out. Nobody inside could leave in a sudden moment of despair or madness. The abbey had plenty of food and supplies. With such precautions, the courtiers could laugh at the infection. The world outside could take care of itself. In the meantime, it was foolish to be sad, or to think. The prince had provided everything needed for pleasure. There were clowns, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these, and safety, were inside. Outside was the “Red Death.”

It was near the end of the fifth or sixth month since they had shut themselves away. Outside, the plague was raging more furiously than ever. Then Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.

It was a scene of rich pleasure for the senses, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms where it was held. There were seven of them—a suite fit for an emperor. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long, straight view. The folding doors slide back almost to the walls on each side. So you can see the whole length of the suite with almost nothing in the way. Here it was very different, as you might expect from the prince’s love of the bizarre. The rooms were placed so irregularly that you could see little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn there was a new effect. To the right and left, in the middle of each wall, there was a tall, narrow Gothic window. It looked out onto a closed corridor, which followed the turns of the suite. These windows were made of stained glass. Their color changed to match the main color of the decorations in each room.

The room at the eastern end, for example, was hung in blue, and its windows were a bright blue. The second room had purple ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was green all over, and so were the windows. The fourth was furnished and lit with orange, the fifth with white, and the sixth with violet. The seventh room was closely covered in black velvet tapestries. They hung all over the ceiling and down the walls. They fell in heavy folds onto a carpet of the same material and color. But in this room only, the color of the windows did not match the decorations. The panes here were scarlet—a deep blood color.

Now in none of the seven rooms was there any lamp or candlestick. There were many golden ornaments lying about or hanging from the ceiling, but no lights among them. No light of any kind came from lamp or candle inside the rooms. But in the corridors that followed the suite, a heavy tripod stood opposite each window. Each tripod held a brazier of fire. Its rays shone through the colored glass and lit the room brightly. In this way a great number of bright, fantastic effects were produced. But in the western, black room, the effect was ghastly in the extreme. Here the firelight streamed onto the dark hangings through the blood-colored panes. It gave a very wild look to the faces of those who entered. So few of the guests were bold enough to step into the room at all.

In this room, too, a gigantic clock of ebony stood against the western wall. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, unchanging clang. The minute-hand went round the face of the clock, and then the hour had to strike. At that moment a sound came from the brass lungs of the clock. It was clear and loud and deep and very musical. But its note and emphasis were so strange that the musicians had to stop playing every hour. They paused for a moment to listen to the sound. So the waltzers had to stop their turning and dancing. For a short time the whole gay company was upset. While the chimes of the clock still rang, people noticed that the wildest dancers grew pale. And the older and calmer ones passed their hands over their foreheads. They seemed lost in confused dreams or deep thought. But when the echoes had died away completely, light laughter at once spread through the crowd. The musicians looked at each other and smiled, as if at their own nervousness and foolishness. They whispered promises to each other that the next chiming would not affect them like this. And then, after sixty minutes had passed, there came another chiming of the clock. (Sixty minutes contain three thousand six hundred seconds of the Time that flies.) And then came the same confusion and trembling and thoughtfulness as before.

But in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent party. The prince had unusual tastes. He had a fine eye for colors and effects. He did not care about the rules of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his ideas glowed with a wild, barbaric splendor. Some people would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. You had to hear him, see him and touch him to be sure that he was not.

For this great festival, he himself had directed most of the moveable decorations of the seven rooms. And it was his own taste that had given the masked guests their character. You can be sure that they were grotesque. There was much glare and glitter, much that was sharp and exciting, and much that was dreamlike. There was much of what has since been seen in “Hernani.” There were arabesque figures with arms, legs and other parts that did not suit them. There were wild fancies, such as a madman creates. There was much that was beautiful, much that was shameless, and much that was bizarre. There was something of the terrible, and not a little that might have caused disgust. In fact, a crowd of dreams walked proudly to and fro in the seven rooms. And these dreams twisted in and about. They took their colors from the rooms. And they made the wild music of the orchestra seem like the echo of their steps.

And soon the ebony clock in the velvet room strikes. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent except the voice of the clock. The dreams are frozen stiff as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away—they have lasted only a moment. A light, half-hidden laughter floats after them as they go. And now again the music swells, and the dreams live. They twist to and fro more happily than ever. They take their colors from the many-colored windows, through which the rays from the tripods stream. But now none of the maskers dare to go into the room that lies farthest to the west. For the night is passing away. And a redder light flows through the blood-colored panes. And the blackness of the dark curtains fills people with horror. And to anyone whose foot falls on the black carpet, a muffled sound comes from the nearby ebony clock. It is more solemn and powerful than any sound that reaches the ears of the others. They are enjoying themselves in the farther rooms, far away from it.

But these other rooms were full of people, and in them the heart of life beat feverishly. And the party went wildly on, until at last the clock began to strike midnight. And then the music stopped, as I have told. The waltzers became still, and there was an uneasy pause of all things, as before. But now the bell of the clock had to strike twelve times. So perhaps, with more time, more thought crept into the minds of the thoughtful among the guests. And so, perhaps, something else happened before the last echoes of the last stroke had died away. Many people in the crowd had time to notice a masked figure. No single person had noticed it before. The rumor of this new guest spread around in whispers. At last a buzz, or murmur, rose from the whole company. At first it showed disapproval and surprise—then, finally, terror, horror and disgust.

In a crowd of fantastic figures such as I have painted, no ordinary costume could have caused such excitement. In truth, the masquerade allowed almost unlimited freedom that night. But this figure had out-Heroded Herod. It had gone beyond the limits of even the prince’s loose sense of what was proper. Even the most reckless people have strings in their hearts that cannot be touched without emotion. There are some people who are completely lost, and life and death are both jokes to them. Even for them, some things cannot be joked about. The whole company now seemed to feel deeply that the stranger’s costume and manner had no wit and no decency. The figure was tall and very thin. It was wrapped from head to foot in the clothes of the grave. The mask that hid its face looked very much like the face of a stiff corpse. Even a close look would hardly discover the trick. And yet the mad guests around might have put up with all this, even if they did not like it. But the mummer had gone so far as to dress as the Red Death. His clothes were splashed with blood. His broad forehead and all the features of his face were spotted with the scarlet horror.

Then the eyes of Prince Prospero fell on this ghostly figure. It was walking slowly and solemnly to and fro among the waltzers, as if to play its part more fully. At first the prince was seen to shake with a strong shudder, either of terror or of disgust. But the next moment his face grew red with rage.

“Who dares?” he demanded of the courtiers who stood near him, in a rough voice. “Who dares to insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and take off his mask! Then we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise, from the battlements!”

Prince Prospero was standing in the eastern, or blue, room as he said these words. They rang through all seven rooms loudly and clearly. For the prince was a bold and strong man, and the music had stopped at the wave of his hand.

The prince stood in the blue room, with a group of pale courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke, this group made a slight rush toward the intruder. He was close by at that moment. And now, with slow and stately steps, he came even closer to the speaker. But the mummer’s mad costume had filled the whole party with a certain nameless awe. So nobody put out a hand to seize him. Nothing stopped him, and he passed within a yard of the prince. The huge crowd, as if with one feeling, shrank back from the centers of the rooms to the walls. And he walked on without a pause. He kept the same solemn and measured step that had marked him from the start. He went through the blue room to the purple—through the purple to the green. Then he went through the green to the orange—through this again to the white. And even from there he went on to the violet. Only then did anyone make a firm move to stop him.

It was then that Prince Prospero rushed through the six rooms. He was mad with rage and with shame at his own moment of cowardice. Nobody followed him, because a deadly terror had seized them all. He held a drawn dagger high in the air. In his fast, wild rush, he came within three or four feet of the figure, which was moving away. But the figure had now reached the far end of the velvet room. It turned suddenly and faced the man who was chasing it. There was a sharp cry—and the dagger fell, shining, onto the black carpet. Right afterwards, Prince Prospero fell onto the carpet, dead. Then a crowd of the revelers found the wild courage of despair. They threw themselves at once into the black room and seized the mummer. His tall figure stood straight and still in the shadow of the ebony clock. They handled the grave-clothes and the corpse-like mask very roughly. Then they gasped in unspeakable horror. There was nothing inside them—no body of any kind that they could touch.

And now they recognized the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one the revelers dropped in the blood-wet halls of their party. And each one died in the despairing position in which he fell. And the life of the ebony clock went out with the life of the last of the merry guests. And the flames of the tripods died. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held unlimited power over all.

### Glossary

- **masque / masquerade / masked ball**: a party where people wear masks and costumes.
- **Avatar**: the visible form or sign of something.
- **plague**: a terrible disease that spreads and kills many people.
- **improvisatori**: (Italian) poets who make up verses on the spot.
- **suite**: a set of rooms that lead into each other.
- **tripod / brazier**: a stand with three legs; a metal container that holds burning coals.
- **ebony**: a very dark, hard wood.
- **pendulum**: a weight that swings from side to side inside a tall clock.
- **Hernani**: a wild, colorful play by Victor Hugo.
- **arabesque**: full of strange, twisting shapes and patterns.
- **out-Heroded Herod**: went even further than the most extreme; in old plays, King Herod was a wild, raging tyrant.
- **mummer**: a person in a mask and costume.
- **battlements**: the top of a castle wall, with gaps for shooting through.
- **like a thief in the night**: suddenly and secretly, without warning (words from the Bible).

## The Cask of Amontillado

I had suffered the thousand injuries of Fortunato as well as I could. But when he dared to insult me, I swore revenge. You, who know the nature of my soul so well, will not think that I spoke a threat out loud. *In the end* I would have my revenge. This was a settled point. But because I had decided it so firmly, I could take no risk. I must not only punish him, but punish him with impunity. A wrong is not put right if the punishment falls back on the one who punishes. It is also not put right if the avenger does not make the wrongdoer feel who is punishing him.

You must understand that I had given Fortunato no cause to doubt my good will, by word or by act. I went on smiling in his face, as I always did. And he did not see that my smile *now* came from the thought of destroying him.

He had one weak point, this Fortunato. In other ways he was a man to be respected and even feared. He was proud of being an expert in wine. Few Italians have the true spirit of an expert. Mostly their enthusiasm is put on to suit the time and the chance. They use it to cheat the British and Austrian *millionaires*. In painting and in jewels, Fortunato was a quack, like his countrymen. But in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this I was not very different from him. I was skilled in Italian wines myself, and I bought large amounts whenever I could.

It was about dusk one evening, during the wildest madness of the carnival season, when I met my friend. He greeted me with too much warmth, because he had been drinking a lot. The man wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting dress with stripes of different colors. On his head was the cone-shaped cap with bells. I was so pleased to see him that I thought I would never stop shaking his hand.

I said to him, “My dear Fortunato, how lucky to meet you. You are looking remarkably well today! But I have received a pipe of what people call Amontillado, and I have my doubts.”

“How?” he said. “Amontillado? A pipe? Impossible! And in the middle of the carnival!”

“I have my doubts,” I replied. “And I was silly enough to pay the full Amontillado price without asking you about it. I could not find you, and I was afraid of losing a bargain.”

“Amontillado!”

“I have my doubts.”

“Amontillado!”

“And I must settle them.”

“Amontillado!”

“As you are busy, I am on my way to Luchesi. If anyone has a good critical taste, it is he. He will tell me—”

“Luchesi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry.”

“And yet some fools say that his taste is as good as your own.”

“Come, let us go.”

“Where?”

“To your vaults.”

“My friend, no. I will not take advantage of your good nature. I see you have an appointment. Luchesi—”

“I have no appointment;—come.”

“My friend, no. It is not the appointment. It is the bad cold that I see you are suffering from. The vaults are terribly damp. They are covered with nitre.”

“Let us go, all the same. The cold is nothing at all. Amontillado! You have been cheated. And as for Luchesi, he cannot tell Sherry from Amontillado.”

As he spoke, Fortunato took hold of my arm. I put on a mask of black silk and pulled a *roquelaire* close around me. Then I let him hurry me to my palazzo.

There were no servants at home. They had run away to celebrate the carnival. I had told them that I would not return until the morning. And I had given them clear orders not to leave the house. I knew well that these orders were enough. They would all disappear at once, as soon as my back was turned.

I took two flambeaux from their holders on the wall. I gave one to Fortunato. Bowing, I led him through several sets of rooms to the archway that led into the vaults. I went down a long and winding staircase and asked him to be careful as he followed. At last we came to the bottom of the stairs. We stood together on the damp ground of the catacombs of the Montresors.

My friend walked unsteadily, and the bells on his cap jingled as he went.

“The pipe,” he said.

“It is farther on,” I said. “But look at the white web-work that shines on these cave walls.”

He turned toward me and looked into my eyes with two cloudy eyes, wet and watery from drink.

“Nitre?” he asked at last.

“Nitre,” I replied. “How long have you had that cough?”

“Ugh! ugh! ugh!—ugh! ugh! ugh!—ugh! ugh! ugh!—ugh! ugh! ugh!—ugh! ugh! ugh!”

My poor friend could not answer for many minutes.

“It is nothing,” he said at last.

“Come,” I said firmly, “we will go back. Your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, loved. You are happy, as I once was. You are a man people would miss. For me it does not matter. We will go back. You will get ill, and I cannot be responsible. Besides, there is Luchesi—”

“Enough,” he said. “The cough is nothing at all. It will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough.”

“True—true,” I replied. “And, indeed, I did not mean to frighten you without need. But you should take every proper care. A drink of this Medoc will protect us from the damp.”

Then I knocked off the neck of a bottle. I took it from a long row of bottles that lay on the mold.

“Drink,” I said, and I handed him the wine.

He raised it to his lips with a sly, ugly smile. He paused and nodded to me in a friendly way, while his bells jingled.

“I drink,” he said, “to the buried that rest around us.”

“And I to your long life.”

He took my arm again, and we went on.

“These vaults,” he said, “are very large.”

“The Montresors,” I replied, “were a great and large family.”

“I forget your coat of arms.”

“A huge human foot d’or, in a field azure. The foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are buried in the heel.”

“And the motto?”

“*Nemo me impune lacessit*.”

“Good!” he said.

The wine sparkled in his eyes, and the bells jingled. My own imagination grew warm with the Medoc. We had passed through walls of piled bones, with big and small barrels among them. Now we were in the deepest parts of the catacombs. I stopped again, and this time I boldly took Fortunato by the arm, above the elbow.

“The nitre!” I said. “See, there is more of it. It hangs like moss on the vaults. We are below the river’s bed. The drops of water trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back before it is too late. Your cough—”

“It is nothing,” he said. “Let us go on. But first, another drink of the Medoc.”

I broke open a flagon of De Grâve and handed it to him. He emptied it in one breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the bottle upward with a gesture I did not understand.

I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement—a grotesque one.

“You do not understand?” he said.

“Not I,” I replied.

“Then you are not of the brotherhood.”

“How?”

“You are not one of the masons.”

“Yes, yes,” I said, “yes, yes.”

“You? Impossible! A mason?”

“A mason,” I replied.

“A sign,” he said.

“It is this,” I answered. And I took a trowel out from under the folds of my *roquelaire*.

“You are joking,” he cried, stepping back a few paces. “But let us go on to the Amontillado.”

“So be it,” I said. I put the tool back under my cloak and offered him my arm again. He leaned on it heavily. We went on our way in search of the Amontillado. We passed through a row of low arches. We went down, walked on, and went down again. At last we came to a deep crypt. Here the air was so bad that our flambeaux glowed rather than burned with a flame.

At the far end of the crypt there was another, smaller one. Its walls had been lined with human bones, piled up to the ceiling, like the great catacombs of Paris. Three sides of this inner crypt were still decorated in this way. From the fourth side the bones had been thrown down. They lay in disorder on the ground and formed a fairly large pile at one point. Taking the bones away had uncovered the wall behind. In it we saw another, still deeper recess. It was about four feet deep, three feet wide, and six or seven feet high. It did not seem to have been built for any special use. It was simply the space between two of the huge pillars that held up the roof of the catacombs. At its back was one of the outer walls of the catacombs, of solid granite.

Fortunato raised his dull torch and tried to look into the depths of the recess. But it was no use. The weak light did not let us see where it ended.

“Go on,” I said. “The Amontillado is in here. As for Luchesi—”

“He is an ignorant fool,” my friend interrupted. He stepped unsteadily forward, and I followed close at his heels. In a moment he had reached the end of the niche. The rock stopped him, and he stood there, stupid and confused. A moment later I had chained him to the granite. In its surface there were two iron staples, about two feet apart, side by side. From one of them hung a short chain, and from the other a padlock. I threw the chain around his waist. It took only a few seconds to lock it. He was too astonished to fight back. I pulled out the key and stepped back from the recess.

“Pass your hand over the wall,” I said. “You cannot help feeling the nitre. Indeed, it is *very* damp. Once more let me *beg* you to go back. No? Then I really must leave you. But first I must give you all the little attentions I can.”

“The Amontillado!” cried my friend. He had not yet got over his astonishment.

“True,” I replied, “the Amontillado.”

As I said these words, I busied myself with the pile of bones that I have spoken of before. I threw them aside and soon uncovered a supply of building stone and mortar. I took these materials and my trowel. With them I began, with energy, to wall up the entrance of the niche.

I had hardly laid the first tier of my stonework when I found that Fortunato was no longer very drunk. The first sign of this was a low, moaning cry from deep inside the recess. It was *not* the cry of a drunken man. Then there was a long and stubborn silence. I laid the second tier, and the third, and the fourth. Then I heard the furious shaking of the chain. The noise lasted for several minutes. During this time I stopped my work and sat down on the bones. I wanted to listen to it with more satisfaction. When at last the clanking stopped, I took up the trowel again. I finished the fifth, the sixth and the seventh tier without a break. The wall was now nearly as high as my chest. I paused again. I held the flambeaux over the stonework and threw a few weak rays on the figure inside.

A series of loud, high screams burst suddenly from the throat of the chained figure. They seemed to push me violently back. For a short moment I hesitated—I trembled. I drew my rapier and began to feel about the recess with it. But a moment’s thought calmed me. I put my hand on the solid stone of the catacombs, and I felt satisfied. I came back to the wall. I answered the yells of the man who was screaming. I echoed them—I helped them—I was louder and stronger than they were. I did this, and the screamer grew quiet.

It was now midnight, and my task was coming to an end. I had finished the eighth, the ninth and the tenth tier. I had finished part of the last, the eleventh. Only a single stone was left to be fitted and plastered in. I struggled with its weight. I placed it partly in its position. But now a low laugh came out of the niche, and it made the hair stand up on my head. It was followed by a sad voice. I found it hard to recognize it as the voice of the noble Fortunato. The voice said—

“Ha! ha! ha!—he! he!—a very good joke indeed—an excellent joke. We will have many a good laugh about it at the palazzo—he! he! he!—over our wine—he! he! he!”

“The Amontillado!” I said.

“He! he! he!—he! he! he!—yes, the Amontillado. But is it not getting late? Will they not be waiting for us at the palazzo, the Lady Fortunato and the rest? Let us go.”

“Yes,” I said, “let us go.”

“*For the love of God, Montresor!*”

“Yes,” I said, “for the love of God!”

But I listened in vain for an answer to these words. I grew impatient. I called aloud—

“Fortunato!”

No answer. I called again—

“Fortunato!”

Still no answer. I pushed a torch through the opening that was left and let it fall inside. The only answer that came back was a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick—on account of the dampness of the catacombs. I hurried to finish my work. I forced the last stone into its place, and I plastered it up. Against the new stonework I built up the old wall of bones again. For half a century no human being has disturbed them. *In pace requiescat!*

### Glossary

- **cask / pipe**: a wooden barrel for wine; a pipe is a very large barrel.
- **Amontillado**: a kind of expensive Spanish sherry (wine).
- **with impunity**: without being punished.
- **motley**: a jester’s (clown’s) costume of many colors.
- **roquelaire**: a knee-length cloak.
- **flambeaux**: torches.
- **catacombs**: underground tunnels where the dead are buried.
- **nitre**: a white salt crust that grows on damp walls.
- **a huge human foot d’or, in a field azure; a serpent rampant**: words used for coats of arms: a golden foot on a blue background; a snake rising up to attack.
- **Nemo me impune lacessit**: (Latin) “No one attacks me without being punished.”
- **mason / trowel**: a mason is (1) a member of the Freemasons, a secret brotherhood, or (2) a builder who works with stone; a trowel is a builder’s small flat tool for spreading mortar. Fortunato means (1); Montresor jokes with (2).
- **In pace requiescat**: (Latin) “May he rest in peace.”

## The Pit and the Pendulum

Impia tortorum longos hic turba furores Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit. Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro, Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent.

\[*Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be erected upon the site of the Jacobin Club House at Paris*.\]

I was sick—sick to death after that long agony. At last they untied me and let me sit down. Then I felt my senses leaving me. The sentence—the terrible sentence of death—was the last clear sound that reached my ears. After that, the voices of the judges seemed to melt into one dreamy, unclear hum. It gave my soul the idea of *revolution*, of something turning round and round. Perhaps my mind connected it with the noise of a mill wheel. This lasted only a short time, and soon I heard nothing more. But for a while I could still see. And how terribly everything was exaggerated! I saw the lips of the judges in their black robes. They looked white to me—whiter than the paper on which I write these words. They were thin, so thin that they looked strange and ugly. They were thin with firmness, with a decision that nothing could change, with cold scorn for human pain. I saw that the orders of my Fate were still coming from those lips. I saw them twist as they spoke a deadly word. I saw them form the sounds of my name. And I shuddered, because no sound came. For a few moments of wild horror, I also saw the black curtains that covered the walls of the room. They were moving softly, so softly that I could hardly see it. And then my eyes fell on the seven tall candles on the table. At first they seemed kind. They looked like white, slender angels who would save me. But then, all at once, a deadly sickness came over my spirit. Every nerve in my body shook, as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery. The angel shapes became meaningless ghosts with heads of flame. I saw that they would give me no help. And then a thought crept softly into my mind, like a rich musical note. It was the thought of how sweet the rest in the grave must be. The thought came gently and secretly. It seemed a long time before I fully understood it. But just as my spirit began to feel it and hold it, the judges vanished, as if by magic. The tall candles sank into nothing. Their flames went out completely. The blackness of darkness came down. All my feelings seemed swallowed up in a mad, rushing fall, like the fall of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and night were the whole universe.

I had swooned. But I will not say that I lost all consciousness. I will not try to say what was left of it, or even to describe it. Yet not everything was lost. In the deepest sleep—no! In the wild dreams of fever—no! In a swoon—no! In death—no! Even in the grave, not everything is lost. Otherwise there is no life after death for man. When we wake from the deepest sleep, we break the thin web of some dream. Yet a second later we do not remember that we dreamed, because the web was so weak. When we come back to life from a swoon, there are two stages. First comes the feeling that our mind or spirit exists. Second comes the feeling that our body exists. Suppose that, at the second stage, we could remember the feelings of the first. Then, probably, those feelings would speak clearly of the deep gulf beyond. And that gulf is—what? How, at least, can we tell its shadows apart from the shadows of the tomb? Perhaps we cannot call back the feelings of the first stage when we want to. But after a long time, do they not come back by themselves? And do we not wonder where they come from? He who has never swooned is not the one who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in glowing coals. He is not the one who sees sad visions floating in the air, which most people cannot see. He is not the one who thinks for a long time about the perfume of some new flower. He is not the one whose mind is puzzled by the meaning of some music that he never noticed before.

I have often tried hard to remember. I have struggled to find again some sign of that state of seeming nothingness. My soul had fallen into it. There have been moments when I dreamed that I had succeeded. There have been short, very short times when I called up memories. My clear reason today tells me that they can only belong to that state of seeming unconsciousness. These shadows of memory tell me, unclearly, of tall figures. They lifted me and carried me in silence down—down—still down. At last a terrible dizziness came over me at the mere idea of that endless fall. The memories also tell of a vague horror in my heart, because my heart was so unnaturally still. Then comes a feeling that everything suddenly stopped moving. It was as if those who carried me (a ghastly group!) had gone past the limits of the limitless. It was as if they had stopped to rest from their tiring work. After this I remember flatness and dampness. And then all is madness—the madness of a memory that busies itself among forbidden things.

Very suddenly, motion and sound came back to my soul. There was the wild motion of my heart, and in my ears the sound of its beating. Then came a pause in which everything is blank. Then again sound, and motion, and touch—a tingling feeling that spread through my body. Then simply the knowledge that I existed, without any thought. This state lasted a long time. Then, very suddenly, came thought, and shuddering terror, and a serious effort to understand my real state. Then a strong wish to sink back into unconsciousness. Then a rush of new life in my soul, and a successful effort to move. And now I fully remembered the trial, the judges, the black curtains, the sentence, the sickness, the swoon. Then I forgot completely all that followed. A later day and much hard effort have let me remember a little of it, but only vaguely.

So far, I had not opened my eyes. I felt that I was lying on my back, and that I was not tied. I reached out my hand, and it fell heavily on something damp and hard. I let it stay there for many minutes. Meanwhile I tried to imagine where I was and what had happened to me. I wanted to use my eyes, but I did not dare. I was afraid of the first look at the things around me. It was not that I was afraid to see horrible things. I was terrified that there would be nothing to see. At last, with wild despair in my heart, I quickly opened my eyes. So my worst thoughts were true. The blackness of endless night was all around me. I struggled to breathe. The darkness was so deep that it seemed to press on me and choke me. The air was unbearably heavy and close. I still lay quietly, and I tried to use my reason. I remembered the trial, and from that point I tried to work out my real situation. The sentence had been passed. And it seemed to me that a very long time had gone by since then. Yet I did not believe for a moment that I was really dead. Stories sometimes tell of such things. But such an idea does not fit real life at all. But where was I, and in what state? I knew that people condemned to death usually died at the autos-da-fé. One of these had been held on the very night of my trial. Had they sent me back to my dungeon to wait for the next one? That would not happen for many months. I saw at once that this could not be true. Victims were needed at once. Also, my dungeon had a stone floor, like all the cells for the condemned at Toledo. And light was not completely shut out there.

Suddenly a terrible idea came to me. It drove the blood in floods to my heart, and for a short time I fainted again. When I came to, I jumped to my feet at once. Every nerve in my body was shaking. I threw my arms wildly above me and around me, in all directions. I felt nothing. Yet I was afraid to take a step. I feared that the walls of a tomb would stop me. Sweat broke out from every pore and stood in big, cold drops on my forehead. At last the agony of not knowing became unbearable. I moved carefully forward with my arms stretched out. My eyes were straining from their sockets. I hoped to catch some faint ray of light. I went on for many paces, but still everything was blackness and emptiness. I breathed more freely. It seemed clear that my fate was not, at least, the most terrible of all.

I still went carefully forward. And now a thousand vague rumors of the horrors of Toledo came crowding into my memory. People had told strange things about the dungeons there. I had always thought they were only fables. But they were strange, and too ghastly to repeat except in a whisper. Was I left here to starve to death in this dark world under the ground? Or was some fate, perhaps even more terrible, waiting for me? I knew my judges too well to doubt that the end would be death. And it would be a death more bitter than usual. The only things that filled my mind were the way I would die and the hour.

At last my outstretched hands touched something solid. It was a wall. It seemed to be made of stone, and it was very smooth, slimy and cold. I followed it. I stepped with all the careful distrust that certain old stories had taught me. But in this way I could not find out the size of my dungeon. I might go all the way round and come back to my starting point without knowing it. The wall seemed exactly the same everywhere. So I looked for the knife that had been in my pocket when they led me into the trial room. But it was gone. My clothes had been changed for a robe of rough serge. I had thought of pushing the blade into some tiny crack in the stone. In that way I could mark my starting point. But the problem was really a small one. Only the confusion of my mind made it seem impossible at first. I tore a piece from the hem of the robe. I laid it on the ground at full length, at a right angle to the wall. As I felt my way round the prison, I would surely find this rag when I completed the circle. So, at least, I thought. But I had not thought about the size of the dungeon, or about my own weakness. The ground was wet and slippery. I staggered on for some time. Then I tripped and fell. I was so tired that I stayed lying there. And soon sleep came over me as I lay.

When I woke, I stretched out an arm. I found beside me a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water. I was too tired to think about this, but I ate and drank greedily. Soon afterward I started my walk around the prison again. With much effort I came at last to the piece of serge. Up to the moment when I fell, I had counted fifty-two paces. When I started walking again, I counted forty-eight more before I reached the rag. So there were a hundred paces in all. I took two paces to be one yard. So I guessed that the dungeon was fifty yards around. But I had felt many angles in the wall. So I could not guess the shape of the vault. And I could not help thinking that it was a vault.

I had little purpose in these searches, and certainly no hope. But a vague curiosity made me continue. I left the wall and decided to walk across the space inside. At first I went forward very carefully. The floor seemed to be solid, but it was dangerous with slime. At last, however, I found courage. I stepped firmly and tried to cross in as straight a line as possible. I had gone some ten or twelve paces in this way. Then the rest of the torn hem of my robe caught between my legs. I stepped on it and fell violently on my face.

I was confused by my fall, so I did not notice something rather startling at once. But a few seconds later, while I was still lying there, it caught my attention. It was this. My chin was resting on the floor of the prison. But my lips and the upper part of my head touched nothing, although they seemed lower than my chin. At the same time my forehead seemed bathed in a cold, damp vapor. The strange smell of rotten fungus rose to my nose. I put my arm forward. I shuddered to find that I had fallen at the very edge of a round pit. Of course, I had no way of knowing how big it was at that moment. I felt about the stone just below the edge. I managed to break off a small piece, and I let it fall into the abyss. For many seconds I listened to it. It made echoes as it hit the sides of the deep hole on its way down. At last there was a dull splash into water, followed by loud echoes. At the same moment I heard a sound above me. It was like a door opening quickly and closing just as quickly. And a faint gleam of light flashed suddenly through the darkness and quickly faded away.

I saw clearly the doom that had been prepared for me. I was glad of the lucky accident that had saved me just in time. One more step before my fall, and the world would never have seen me again. And the death I had just escaped was exactly the kind I had called silly and untrue. I had heard of it in the stories about the Inquisition. Its victims had a choice of two deaths. One brought the worst pains of the body. The other brought the most terrible horrors of the mind. I had been kept for the second. My long suffering had ruined my nerves. I now trembled at the sound of my own voice. In every way I had become a fitting victim for the kind of torture that was waiting for me.

Shaking in every limb, I felt my way back to the wall. I decided to die there rather than risk the terrors of the wells. My imagination now pictured many of them in different places around the dungeon. In another state of mind I might have had the courage to end my misery at once. I could have jumped into one of these deep pits. But now I was the worst of cowards. Also, I could not forget what I had read about these pits. A quick death was no part of their most horrible plan.

My mind was so upset that I stayed awake for many long hours. But at last I fell asleep again. When I woke, I found beside me, as before, a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water. A burning thirst filled me, and I emptied the pitcher in one drink. The water must have been drugged. I had hardly drunk it when I became so sleepy that I could not fight it. A deep sleep fell on me—a sleep like death. Of course, I do not know how long it lasted. But when I opened my eyes again, I could see the things around me. There was a wild, sulfurous light, and at first I could not tell where it came from. But by this light I could see the size and the look of the prison.

I had been very wrong about its size. The whole distance around its walls was no more than twenty-five yards. For some minutes this fact troubled me greatly. But it was useless trouble! Indeed, what could matter less in my terrible situation than the size of my dungeon? But my soul took a wild interest in small things. So I busied myself trying to explain the mistake in my measurement. At last the truth came to me in a flash. On my first walk I had counted fifty-two paces up to the moment when I fell. At that point I must have been only a pace or two from the piece of serge. In fact, I had nearly gone all the way round the vault. Then I slept. And when I woke, I must have turned and gone back the way I came. So I thought the distance around was nearly twice as long as it really was. My mind was so confused that I did not notice something. I began my walk with the wall on my left, and I ended it with the wall on my right.

I had been wrong about the shape of the place, too. As I felt my way, I had found many angles. So I had imagined that its shape was very irregular. Total darkness has such a powerful effect on someone who is waking from sleep or from a heavy, dull state! The angles were only a few small hollows, or niches, at different places along the wall. The prison was square. What I had taken for stone now seemed to be iron, or some other metal. It was in huge plates, and the joints between the plates made the hollows. The whole metal surface was roughly painted with ugly, disgusting pictures. They were the kind that the monks' dark beliefs about death and dead bodies have produced. Figures of devils in threatening poses, with the shapes of skeletons, covered the walls and spoiled them. There were other pictures too, which were even more frightening. I noticed that the outlines of these monsters were clear enough. But the colors seemed faded and blurred, as if the damp air had spoiled them. Now I noticed the floor, too, which was made of stone. In the center was the round pit, wide open like a mouth. I had escaped from its jaws. But it was the only pit in the dungeon.

I saw all this unclearly and with much effort, because my own situation had changed greatly while I slept. I was now lying on my back, at full length, on a kind of low wooden frame. I was tightly tied to it by a long strap, like a surcingle. It went round and round my arms, legs and body many times. Only my head was free, and my left arm. I could move that arm just enough to reach the food in a clay dish on the floor beside me. But it took a great effort. I saw, to my horror, that the pitcher had been taken away. I say “to my horror,” because I was burning with an unbearable thirst. It seemed that my tormentors wanted to make this thirst worse. The food in the dish was meat with a lot of strong, hot spices.

Looking up, I studied the ceiling of my prison. It was some thirty or forty feet above me, and it was built much like the side walls. In one of its panels there was a very strange figure, and it held all my attention. It was the painted figure of Time, as he is usually shown. But instead of a scythe, he held something else. At a quick look, I thought it was the picture of a huge pendulum, like those we see on old clocks. But something about this machine made me look at it more closely. I was looking straight up at it, because it was directly above me. Then I thought I saw it move. A moment later I was sure of it. Its swing was short, and of course slow. I watched it for some minutes, a little in fear, but more in wonder. At last I grew tired of watching its dull movement. I turned my eyes to the other things in the cell.

A slight noise caught my attention. I looked at the floor and saw several enormous rats running across it. They had come up out of the well, which I could just see on my right. Even while I watched, they came up in crowds. They came quickly, with hungry eyes, drawn by the smell of the meat. It took much effort and attention to scare them away.

Perhaps half an hour passed, perhaps even an hour, before I looked up again. I could not keep good track of time. What I then saw confused and amazed me. The swing of the pendulum had grown longer by nearly a yard. Because of this, its speed was also much greater. But what worried me most was the idea that it had clearly come lower. I now saw—I do not need to say with what horror—that its lower end was a crescent of shining steel. It was about a foot long from one horn to the other. The horns pointed upward, and the lower edge was clearly as sharp as a razor. Like a razor, it also seemed solid and heavy. Above the edge it grew wider into a broad, solid shape. It hung from a heavy rod of brass. And the whole thing hissed as it swung through the air.

I could no longer doubt the death that the monks had so cleverly prepared for me. The agents of the Inquisition had found out that I knew about the pit. *The pit*—its horrors had been meant for a bold recusant like me. The pit was a picture of hell. Rumor called it the Ultima Thule of all their punishments. I had escaped falling into it only by the smallest of accidents. I knew that surprise was an important part of all the strange cruelty of these dungeon deaths. So was trapping a person into torment. I had not fallen. So their devilish plan was not to throw me into the abyss. And so, since there was no other way, a different and milder death was waiting for me. Milder! In my agony I half smiled when I thought of using such a word.

What use is it to tell of the long, long hours of more than human horror? During those hours I counted the rushing swings of the steel! Inch by inch—line by line—down and still down it came! I could see it come lower only after times that seemed like ages. Days passed—perhaps many days passed. Then at last it swept so close that it fanned me with its sharp breath. The smell of the sharp steel forced itself into my nose. I prayed. I tired heaven with my prayers that it would come down faster. I grew wildly mad, and I struggled to push myself up against the swing of the terrible scimitar. And then I suddenly became calm. I lay there smiling at the shining death, like a child at some rare toy.

Then I fainted again, and I knew nothing. It was only for a short time. When I came back to life, the pendulum had not come any lower that I could see. But perhaps I had been unconscious for a long time. I knew there were demons who watched my faint. They could have stopped the swing whenever they wanted. When I came to, I also felt very—oh, more than I can say—sick and weak. I felt as if I had eaten nothing for a long time. Even in the agony of that time, human nature wanted food. With painful effort I stretched out my left arm as far as the straps allowed. I took the small piece of food that the rats had left me. As I put some of it between my lips, a half-formed thought rushed into my mind. It was a thought of joy—of hope. Yet what business did *I* have with hope? It was, as I say, a half-formed thought. Man has many such thoughts, which are never finished. I felt that it was a thought of joy—of hope. But I also felt that it had died while it was forming. I tried in vain to finish it—to get it back. My long suffering had nearly destroyed all the normal powers of my mind. I was a fool—an idiot.

The pendulum swung at right angles to my body. I saw that the crescent was meant to cross the area of my heart. It would rub and tear the serge of my robe. It would come back and do it again—and again—and again. Its swing was terribly wide, some thirty feet or more. It came down with a hissing force that was strong enough to cut through these iron walls. Still, for several minutes, it would only tear my robe. And at this thought I stopped. I did not dare to think further than this. I held on to this thought stubbornly. It was as if this could stop the steel at this point. I made myself think about the sound the crescent would make as it passed across the cloth. I thought of the strange, thrilling feeling that rubbing cloth gives to the nerves. I thought about all this nonsense until my teeth were on edge.

Down—steadily down it crept. I took a wild pleasure in comparing its speed downward with its speed from side to side. To the right—to the left—far and wide—with the scream of a damned spirit! Toward my heart with the silent, secret step of the tiger! I laughed and howled in turns, as first one idea and then the other grew stronger.

Down—certainly, without mercy, down! It swung within three inches of my chest! I struggled violently, furiously, to free my left arm. It was free only from the elbow to the hand. With great effort I could move my hand from the dish beside me to my mouth, but no further. If I could have broken the straps above the elbow, I would have seized the pendulum. I would have tried to stop it. I might as well have tried to stop an avalanche!

Down—still without stopping—still, with no escape, down! I gasped and struggled at each swing. My body jerked back at every sweep. My eyes followed it as it whirled outward or upward. They followed it with the eagerness of the most meaningless despair. They shut tight by themselves each time it came down. And yet death would have been a relief—oh, how great a relief! Still every nerve in me shook when I thought of it. The machine had to sink only a little. Then that sharp, shining axe would fall on my chest. It was hope that made my nerves shake and my body shrink back. It was hope—the hope that wins even on the rack. It is the hope that whispers to men condemned to death, even in the dungeons of the Inquisition.

I saw that some ten or twelve more swings would bring the steel against my robe. With this thought, all the sharp, steady calm of despair suddenly came over my spirit. For the first time in many hours—or perhaps days—I thought. Now I realized something about the bandage, or surcingle, that was wrapped around me. It was unique. I was not tied with separate ropes. The first stroke of the razor-sharp crescent across any part of the band would cut it. Then I could unwind it from my body with my left hand. But how terribly close the steel would be in that case! The smallest struggle would be deadly! And was it likely that the torturer's servants had not foreseen this? Would they not have prepared for it? Was it likely that the bandage crossed my chest in the path of the pendulum? I was afraid that my faint hope, which seemed my last hope, would fail. Still, I raised my head enough to see my chest clearly. The surcingle was wrapped tightly round my arms, legs and body in all directions. It covered me everywhere—except in the path of the deadly crescent.

I had hardly dropped my head back into its place when something flashed into my mind. I can only describe it as the missing half of that idea of escape. I spoke of it before. Only half of it had floated unclearly through my brain when I raised food to my burning lips. Now the whole thought was there. It was weak, hardly sane, hardly clear—but it was complete. At once, with the nervous energy of despair, I began to carry it out.

For many hours, the area right around the low frame where I lay had been full of rats. It was truly swarming with them. They were wild, bold and hungry. Their red eyes glared at me. It was as if they were only waiting for me to lie still. Then I would be their prey. “What food,” I thought, “have they been used to in the well?”

In spite of all my efforts to stop them, they had eaten everything in the dish except a small piece. I had fallen into the habit of moving my hand to and fro over the dish. But in time the movement became so regular and unconscious that it no longer scared them. In their greed, the rats often sank their sharp teeth into my fingers. I took the bits of oily, spicy meat that were left. I rubbed them thoroughly over the bandage, everywhere I could reach. Then I lifted my hand from the floor and lay still, hardly breathing.

At first the hungry animals were startled and frightened by the change—by the sudden end of all movement. They pulled back in alarm, and many ran back to the well. But this lasted only a moment. I had been right to count on their greed. They saw that I did not move. Then one or two of the boldest jumped up onto the frame and smelled the surcingle. This seemed to be the signal for a general rush. Fresh crowds of them hurried up out of the well. They held on to the wood—they ran all over it—and hundreds of them jumped onto my body. The steady movement of the pendulum did not disturb them at all. They kept out of its way and worked busily at the greased bandage. They pressed on me—they swarmed over me in bigger and bigger heaps. They wriggled on my throat. Their cold lips searched for my own. I was half choked by their crowding weight. A disgust for which the world has no name filled my chest. It chilled my heart with a heavy, cold dampness. One more minute, I felt, and the struggle would be over. I could clearly feel the bandage getting looser. I knew that it must already be cut in more than one place. With more than human will, I lay still.

I had not been wrong in my plan, and I had not suffered for nothing. At last I felt that I was free. The surcingle hung in ribbons from my body. But the stroke of the pendulum already pressed on my chest. It had cut through the serge of the robe. It had cut through the linen underneath. Twice more it swung, and a sharp pain shot through every nerve. But the moment of escape had come. I waved my hand, and my rescuers rushed away in a crowd. I moved steadily—carefully, sideways, shrinking and slowly. I slid out of the bandage and beyond the reach of the scimitar. For the moment, at least, I was free.

Free!—and in the hands of the Inquisition! I had hardly stepped from my wooden bed of horror onto the stone floor when the hellish machine stopped. I saw it pulled up through the ceiling by some invisible force. In my despair I took this lesson deeply to heart. Without doubt, my every movement was watched. Free!—I had only escaped death in one painful form. Now I would be handed over to something worse than death in some other form. With that thought, I looked nervously around at the iron walls that shut me in. Something unusual had clearly happened in the room. There was some change, but at first I could not see it clearly. For many minutes I was lost in a dreamy, trembling daze. I made useless guesses that had no connection with each other. During this time I noticed, for the first time, where the sulfurous light in the cell came from. It came from a crack about half an inch wide. This crack ran all the way around the prison at the bottom of the walls. So the walls seemed to be completely separate from the floor, and they really were. I tried, of course in vain, to look through the opening.

As I got up from trying, I suddenly understood the change in the room. I have said that the outlines of the figures on the walls were clear enough. But the colors had seemed blurred and unclear. Now these colors had become startlingly and very intensely bright, and they grew brighter every moment. They gave the ghostly, devilish pictures a look that might have shaken even stronger nerves than mine. Demon eyes, wild and terribly alive, glared at me from a thousand places. Before, no eyes had been visible there. They shone with the fierce, red light of a fire. I could not make my imagination believe that this fire was unreal.

*Unreal!*—Even as I breathed, the smell of hot iron came to my nose! A choking smell filled the prison! A deeper glow settled every moment in the eyes that glared at my agony! A richer red spread over the painted pictures of blood. I panted! I gasped for breath! There could be no doubt about the plan of my tormentors—oh, most merciless! oh, most devilish of men! I pulled back from the glowing metal to the center of the cell. I thought of the fiery death that was coming. Then the idea of the coolness of the well came over my soul like a healing balm. I rushed to its deadly edge. I strained my eyes to look down. The glare from the burning roof lit up its deepest corners. Yet for a wild moment my spirit refused to understand what I saw. At last the meaning forced its way into my soul. It fought its way in. It burned itself into my shuddering mind. Oh! for a voice to speak!—oh! horror!—oh! any horror but this! With a scream I rushed back from the edge. I buried my face in my hands and wept bitterly.

The heat increased quickly. Once again I looked up, shuddering as if with a fever. There had been a second change in the cell—and now the change was clearly in its shape. As before, I tried at first in vain to understand what was happening. But I was not left in doubt for long. My double escape had made the Inquisition hurry its revenge. There would be no more playing games with the King of Terrors. The room had been square. Now I saw that two of its iron corners were sharp, narrow angles. So the other two were wide angles. The terrible difference grew quickly, with a low rumbling or moaning sound. In an instant the room had changed its shape into a lozenge. But the change did not stop there. I did not hope or wish it to stop. I could have pressed the red walls to my chest like a robe of eternal peace. “Death,” I said, “any death but the death of the pit!” Fool! Should I not have known what the burning iron was for? Its purpose was to drive me into the pit. Could I resist its glow? Or even if I could, could I resist its pressure? And now the lozenge grew flatter and flatter. It happened so fast that I had no time to think. Its center, and of course its widest part, came just over the open pit. I shrank back—but the closing walls pushed me forward, and I could not resist them. At last there was not one inch of firm floor left for my burned and twisting body. I struggled no more. But the agony of my soul burst out in one loud, long, final scream of despair. I felt that I was swaying on the edge—I turned my eyes away—

There was a harsh, confused noise of human voices! There was a loud blast, as of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating, as of a thousand thunders! The fiery walls rushed back! An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell, fainting, into the abyss. It was the arm of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.

### Glossary

- **Impia tortorum longos hic turba furores…**: Latin lines. They mean: here the wicked crowd of torturers, never satisfied, fed their long anger on innocent blood; now the homeland is safe, the cave of death is broken, and where cruel death was, life and health appear.
- **galvanic battery**: an early electric battery; touching its wire gives you a shock.
- **Hades**: in old Greek stories, the world of the dead under the earth.
- **swoon / swooned**: a faint; to faint and lose consciousness.
- **autos-da-fé**: public ceremonies at which the Inquisition punished or burned its prisoners.
- **Inquisition**: a church court in Spain that judged, tortured and killed people it called heretics.
- **dungeon**: a dark prison under the ground.
- **serge**: rough woollen cloth.
- **hem**: the folded bottom edge of a piece of clothing.
- **pitcher**: a jug for water.
- **abyss**: a very deep hole.
- **surcingle**: a long strap, like the one tied round a horse's body.
- **scythe**: a tool with a long curved blade, used to cut grass; Time is often painted holding one.
- **pendulum**: a weight that swings from side to side.
- **crescent**: a curved shape like a new moon.
- **recusant**: someone who refuses to obey the authority of the church.
- **Ultima Thule**: the furthest point; the most extreme limit.
- **scimitar**: a curved sword; here, the curved blade of the pendulum.
- **on edge**: with an unpleasant, nervous feeling, like when you hear a scratching sound.
- **the rack**: an old torture machine that stretches a person's body.
- **balm**: a soft oil that eases pain.
- **the King of Terrors**: Death.
- **lozenge**: a diamond shape.

## William Wilson

What say of it? what say of CONSCIENCE grim, That spectre in my path? —*Chamberlayne’s Pharronida.*

Let me call myself, for now, William Wilson. This clean page in front of me does not need to be dirtied with my real name. That name has already been too much an object of scorn—of horror—of hatred for my family. Have the angry winds not carried its shame to the furthest corners of the globe? No shame has ever been like it. Oh, outcast, most lost of all outcasts! Are you not dead forever to the earth? Dead to its honors, to its flowers, to its golden hopes? And does a thick, dark, endless cloud not hang forever between your hopes and heaven?

I would not, even if I could, write here today the story of my later years. They were years of misery that no words can describe, and of crime that cannot be forgiven. In this period—in these later years—my wickedness suddenly rose very high. My purpose now is only to tell where it came from. Men usually become evil little by little. But from me all goodness dropped away in a moment, like a cloak. From fairly small wickedness I passed, with a giant's step, into worse crimes than those of an Elah-Gabalus. What chance—what one event—brought this evil about? Be patient with me while I tell it. Death is coming near. The shadow that goes before him has softened my spirit. As I pass through the dark valley, I long for the sympathy of my fellow men. I had almost said their pity. I would like them to believe that I have been, in some way, the slave of things beyond human control. I would like them to look in my story for some little oasis of fate in a desert of error. I would like them to admit something they cannot help admitting. Temptation may have been as great before. But man was never tempted like this before—and certainly never fell like this. And has he therefore never suffered like this? Have I not really been living in a dream? Am I not now dying a victim of the horror and mystery of the wildest of all visions on earth?

I come from a family that has always been remarkable for its strong imagination and its easily excited nature. In my earliest childhood I showed that I had fully inherited this family character. As I grew older, it grew stronger. For many reasons it became a cause of serious worry to my friends, and of real harm to me. I became self-willed and full of the wildest whims. I was a victim of passions that I could not control. My parents were weak-minded, and they had health problems like my own. So they could do little to stop my bad habits. They made some weak and badly planned efforts, but these failed completely. Of course, this meant total victory for me. From then on my voice was the law of the house. At an age when most children are still led by the hand, I was left to follow my own will. In all but name, I became the master of my own actions.

My earliest memories of school life are connected with a large, rambling Elizabethan house. It stood in a misty-looking village in England. There were a great many huge, twisted old trees there, and all the houses were extremely old. In truth, that old town was a dreamy place that calmed the spirit. Even now, in my imagination, I feel the fresh coolness of its deeply shaded avenues. I smell the sweet scent of its thousand bushes. And I feel again a strange delight at the deep, hollow note of the church bell. Each hour it broke with a sudden, heavy roar into the stillness of the dusky air. In that air the decorated Gothic steeple lay deep and asleep.

I like to think about small memories of the school and its affairs. Perhaps it gives me as much pleasure as I can feel now. I am drowning in misery—misery that, alas, is only too real. So I will be forgiven for looking for some relief, however small and short, in a few rambling details. These details are completely unimportant, even silly, in themselves. But in my mind they become important. They belong to a time and a place where I see the first unclear warnings of my fate. Later that fate covered my whole life with its shadow. Let me then remember.

The house, as I have said, was old and irregular. The grounds were large. A high, solid brick wall surrounded them all. On top of it was a layer of mortar and broken glass. This prison-like wall was the limit of our world. We saw beyond it only three times a week. Once was every Saturday afternoon. Then, with two ushers, we were allowed to take short walks as a group through some of the nearby fields. The other two times were on Sunday. Then we were marched in the same formal way to the morning and evening service in the village's only church. The principal of our school was the pastor of this church. With what deep wonder and confusion I used to watch him from our far-away seat in the gallery! He climbed into the pulpit with slow, solemn steps. This holy man had such a gentle, modest face. His robes were so shiny and flowed so much like a priest's. His wig was so carefully powdered, so stiff and so huge. Could this be the same man who, a little earlier, had enforced the harsh laws of the academy? Then he had a sour face and clothes stained with snuff, and a ferule in his hand. Oh, it was a gigantic paradox, too monstrous to solve!

At one corner of the heavy wall stood an even heavier gate, and it seemed to frown. It was covered with iron rivets and bolts, and on top were jagged iron spikes. What deep awe it made us feel! It was never opened except for the three regular trips out and back that I have mentioned. Then, in every creak of its mighty hinges, we found a great deal of mystery. We found a world of things for serious remarks, or for even more serious thoughts.

The large space inside the wall had an irregular shape, with many large recesses. Three or four of the largest formed the playground. It was flat and covered with fine, hard gravel. I remember well that it had no trees, no benches, nothing like that. Of course it was behind the house. In front was a small formal garden, planted with box and other bushes. But we went through this special area only on very rare occasions. We passed through it when we first came to school, or when we finally left. Or perhaps a parent or friend had come for us. Then we were happily going home for the Christmas or Midsummer holidays.

But the house!—what a strange old building it was! To me it was truly a palace of magic. There was really no end to its windings, to its divisions that no one could understand. At any moment it was hard to say for sure which of its two floors you were on. Between any two rooms there were always three or four steps, either up or down. Then the side passages were countless—you could not imagine how many. They turned back on themselves again and again. So our clearest ideas of the whole house were not very different from our thoughts about infinity. I lived there for five years. In all that time I could never find out exactly where my little bedroom was. I shared it with some eighteen or twenty other boys.

The schoolroom was the largest room in the house. I could not help thinking it was the largest in the world. It was very long, narrow and gloomily low, with pointed Gothic windows and an oak ceiling. In a far, frightening corner was a square box of eight or ten feet. This was the private room, “during hours,” of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. It was a solid structure with a heavy door. When the “Dominie” was away, none of us would open that door. We would all rather have died by the *peine forte et dure*. In other corners were two other boxes like it. We respected them much less, but they still filled us with awe. One was the pulpit of the “classical” usher. The other was the pulpit of the “English and mathematical” usher. All over the room, crossing and recrossing in endless disorder, stood countless benches and desks. They were black, ancient and worn by time. Much-used books were piled high on them. They were covered with carved initials, full names, strange figures and many other works of the knife. So they had completely lost what little shape they had once had, long ago. A huge bucket of water stood at one end of the room. At the other end stood a clock of enormous size.

Inside the heavy walls of this old academy I spent the years of the third lustrum of my life. But I was not bored or disgusted. A child's busy brain needs no events from the outside world to keep it busy or amused. School life seemed dull and the same every day. Yet it was more exciting than the luxury of my later youth, or the crime of my manhood. Still, I must believe my early mental growth had much that was unusual in it—even much that was *outré*. For most people, the events of very early life leave no clear mark when they are grown up. Everything is gray shadow. There is only a weak, irregular memory, an unclear gathering of small pleasures and dreamlike pains. With me it is not so. As a child I must have felt things with the energy of a man. Now I find them stamped on my memory. The lines are as clear, deep and lasting as the *exergues* of Carthaginian medals.

And yet in fact—in the eyes of the world—how little there was to remember! Waking in the morning, and being called to bed at night. Learning lessons by heart, and saying them aloud. The regular half-holidays and walks. The playground, with its fights, its games, its secret plans. By a magic of the mind that I have long forgotten, these things held a wilderness of feeling. They held a world of rich events, a universe of different emotions, of the most passionate and stirring excitement. “*Oh, le bon temps, que ce siècle de fer!*”

In truth, my eager, enthusiastic and commanding nature soon made me stand out among my schoolmates. Slowly but naturally, I gained power over all the boys who were not much older than me. Over all, with one exception. This exception was a boy who had the same first name and the same surname as me. But he was no relation. In fact, this was not very remarkable. My family was noble, but mine was one of those everyday names. Such names seem to have always belonged, by some old right, to the common crowd. So in this story I have called myself William Wilson. It is a false name, but not very different from the real one. Of all the boys in what we called “our set,” only my namesake dared to compete with me. He competed with me in class studies, and in the sports and fights of the playground. He refused to believe everything I said, and he refused to obey my will. In fact, he dared to interfere with my orders in every way. If there is any complete and absolute tyranny on earth, it is this. It is the tyranny of a strong-minded boy over the weaker spirits of his companions.

Wilson's rebellion caused me the greatest embarrassment. In public I always made a point of treating him and his claims with bold scorn. But secretly I felt that I feared him. He kept himself equal with me so easily. I could not help thinking that this proved he was really better than me. Not to be beaten cost me a constant struggle. Yet no one except me saw that he was better—or even equal. Our companions, by some strange blindness, did not even suspect it. Indeed, he competed with me, resisted me, and above all interfered with my plans rudely and stubbornly. But all this was as private as it was sharp. He seemed to lack the ambition that drove me. He also seemed to lack the passionate energy of mind that helped me succeed. His rivalry seemed to come only from a strange wish to block me, surprise me or humiliate me. But sometimes I could not help noticing something else. It filled me with wonder, shame and annoyance. He mixed his injuries, his insults and his contradictions with a certain affection of manner. It was most unsuitable, and certainly most unwelcome. I could only explain this strange behavior in one way. I thought it came from his enormous conceit. His conceit took on the common airs of a patron and protector.

Perhaps it was this last habit of Wilson's that started a rumor among the senior classes. There was also our same name. And there was the simple accident that we came to the school on the same day. Together, these things started the idea that we were brothers. The older boys do not usually look very closely into the affairs of the younger ones. I have said before, or I should have said, that Wilson was not connected with my family in any way. But surely, if we had been brothers, we must have been twins. After I left Dr. Bransby's, I happened to learn that my namesake was born on the nineteenth of January, 1813. This is a rather remarkable coincidence. That day is exactly the day of my own birth.

It may seem strange, but I could not make myself hate him completely. This was in spite of the constant worry that his rivalry caused me, and his unbearable habit of contradicting me. It is true that we quarreled nearly every day. In public he let me win. Yet in some way he managed to make me feel that he was the one who deserved to win. But I had my pride, and he had a real dignity. So we always stayed on what are called “speaking terms.” In many ways our tempers were very much alike. This woke in me a feeling that might have grown into friendship. Perhaps only our position stopped it. It is hard, indeed, to define or even describe my real feelings toward him. They were a strange, mixed jumble. There was some irritable hostility, which was not yet hatred. There was some esteem, more respect, much fear, and a world of uneasy curiosity. To a moralist I do not need to add that Wilson and I were the most inseparable of companions.

No doubt this strange situation between us shaped all my attacks on him. There were many, some open and some hidden. But they all took the form of teasing or practical jokes, which gave pain but seemed to be only fun. They did not become serious, determined hostility. But my efforts did not always succeed, even when my plans were very clever. My namesake had a quiet, modest kind of seriousness in his character. He enjoyed the sharpness of his own jokes. But he had no Achilles' heel, and he absolutely refused to be laughed at. Indeed, I could find only one weak point. It was a physical peculiarity, perhaps caused by some disease he was born with. Any enemy less desperate than me would have left it alone. My rival had a weakness in his throat. Because of it, he could never raise his voice above a very low whisper. I did not fail to take whatever poor advantage of this defect I could.

Wilson paid me back in the same way many times. And there was one form of his practical jokes that upset me terribly. I could never understand how his cleverness first found out that such a small thing would annoy me. But once he had found it out, he used it again and again. I had always disliked my ungraceful surname and my very common, even vulgar, first name. The words were poison in my ears. On the day I arrived, a second William Wilson also came to the academy. I felt angry with him for having the name. And I was doubly disgusted with the name, because a stranger had it. He would cause it to be said twice. He would always be near me. In the daily routine of school, his affairs would often be mixed up with mine. That would happen because of this hateful coincidence.

This annoyance grew stronger with everything that showed a likeness between my rival and me, in mind or in body. At that time I had not yet discovered the remarkable fact that we were the same age. But I saw that we were the same height. And I noticed that we were even strangely alike in the general shape of our bodies and our faces. The rumor that we were related, which was going around the upper classes, also hurt me. In short, nothing could upset me more than any mention of a likeness between us. It could be a likeness of mind, of body or of situation. I carefully hid how much it upset me. But in truth I had no reason to believe that our schoolmates had ever talked about this likeness. I do not think they had even noticed it. The only exceptions were the rumor about our being related, and Wilson himself. It was clear that he noticed it in every way, just as closely as I did. And he found in it a rich field for annoying me. As I said before, only his unusual sharpness of mind can explain this.

His plan was to make a perfect imitation of me, in both words and actions. And he played his part wonderfully well. It was easy to copy my clothes. He took over my walk and my general manner without difficulty. In spite of the defect he was born with, even my voice did not escape him. Of course he did not try my louder tones. But the key—it was exactly the same. *And his singular whisper, it grew the very echo of my own.*

I will not try now to describe how much this perfect portrait upset me. It could not fairly be called a caricature. I had only one comfort. It seemed that I alone noticed the imitation. I had to bear only the knowing and strangely sarcastic smiles of my namesake himself. He was satisfied that he had produced the effect he wanted in my heart. He seemed to laugh in secret at the sting he had given me. As usual, he did not care about the public praise that his clever efforts could easily have won. For many anxious months it was a riddle I could not solve. Why did the school not notice his plan, see how well it worked, and join in his mockery? Perhaps he copied me so gradually that it was not easy to see. Or, more probably, I owed my safety to the copyist's masterly skill. He did not bother with the outward details. (In a painting, dull people see only those.) He gave only the full spirit of the original. And he gave it for me alone to look at and be hurt by.

I have already spoken more than once of the disgusting air of patronage that he took toward me. I have spoken of his frequent, unwanted interference with my will. This interference often took the unpleasant form of advice. It was not advice given openly, but hinted or suggested. I received it with a disgust that grew stronger as I grew older. Yet now, so long afterward, let me be fair to him. I must admit that I cannot remember a single time when my rival's suggestions supported errors or follies. Such errors are usual at his young age and with his seeming lack of experience. His moral sense, at least, was far sharper than mine, even if his general talents and worldly wisdom were not. I might be a better man today, and so a happier one. I would be, if I had less often rejected the advice in those meaningful whispers. At that time I hated them far too warmly and despised them far too bitterly.

As it was, I finally grew extremely restless under his unpleasant watchfulness. Every day I showed more openly my anger at what I thought was his unbearable arrogance. I have said that my feelings toward him might easily have become friendship. That was in our first years at school together. But in my last months at the academy, things changed. His usual intrusions had certainly become somewhat less. Yet my feelings, almost in the same degree, became very much like real hatred. Once he saw this, I think. After that he avoided me, or pretended to avoid me.

It was about the same time, if I remember correctly, that we had a violent quarrel. In it he was more off his guard than usual. He spoke and acted with an openness that was not natural to him. And I discovered, or I imagined I discovered, something in his accent, his manner and his general appearance. At first it startled me, and then it deeply interested me. It brought back dim visions of my earliest childhood. They were wild, confused, crowding memories of a time when memory itself was not yet born. I can best describe the feeling that weighed on me in this way. I could hardly shake off the belief that I had known this being before. I had known him at some time very long ago—at some point in the past, endlessly far away. But this false idea faded as quickly as it came. I mention it only to mark the day of my last conversation there with my strange namesake.

The huge old house, with its countless divisions, had several large rooms that opened into each other. Most of the students slept there. But there were also many little nooks and recesses, the odds and ends of the building. This must happen in a building planned so badly. Dr. Bransby was careful with money, and he cleverly made these into bedrooms too. But they were mere closets, and each one could hold only one person. Wilson had one of these small rooms.

One night, near the end of my fifth year at the school, everyone was fast asleep. It was right after the quarrel I have just described. I got out of bed, and with a lamp in my hand I crept to my rival's room. I went through a wilderness of narrow passages. For a long time I had been planning one of those spiteful practical jokes against him. Until now, all my jokes of this kind had failed. Now I meant to carry out my plan. I was determined to make him feel the full force of the malice that filled me. I reached his little room and went in without a sound. I left the lamp outside, with a shade over it. I stepped forward and listened to the sound of his calm breathing. When I was sure he was asleep, I went back and took the lamp. With it, I came up to the bed again. There were close curtains around it. As part of my plan, I slowly and quietly drew them back. Then the bright light fell clearly on the sleeper, and at the same moment my eyes fell on his face. I looked—and at once a numbness, an iciness, spread through my whole body. My chest heaved. My knees shook. My whole spirit was filled with a horror that had no cause, yet I could not bear it. Gasping for breath, I brought the lamp still closer to the face. Were these—these the features of William Wilson? I saw, indeed, that they were his. But I shook as if with a fever when I imagined they were not. What was there about them that confused me so? I stared, while my brain spun with a crowd of confused thoughts. He did not look like this—surely not like this—when he was awake and lively. The same name! The same shape of body! The same day of arrival at the academy! And then his stubborn, meaningless imitation of my walk, my voice, my habits and my manner! Was it really within human possibility? Could what I now saw be only the result of his daily practice of this sarcastic imitation? Struck with awe, and with a creeping shudder, I put out the lamp. I passed silently out of the room. And at once I left the halls of that old academy, never to enter them again.

After some months at home, doing nothing at all, I became a student at Eton. This short time had been enough to weaken my memory of the events at Dr. Bransby's. Or at least it had greatly changed the feelings with which I remembered them. The truth—the tragedy—of the drama was gone. Now I could find room to doubt what my senses had told me. I rarely thought of the matter at all. When I did, I wondered how easily people believe things. And I smiled at the strong imagination that I had inherited from my family. The kind of life I led at Eton did not make this doubt any smaller. I threw myself at once, and very recklessly, into a whirlpool of thoughtless folly. It washed away everything of my past except the foam. It swallowed at once every solid or serious impression. It left in my memory only the most trivial things of my earlier life.

But I do not wish to describe here the course of my miserable, wild living. It broke the rules of the school, but it escaped the watchful eyes of the masters. Three years of folly passed without any profit. They only gave me deep habits of vice. They also made me grow taller than is usual. Then came a week of soulless pleasure-seeking. After it, I invited a small group of the wildest students to a secret party in my rooms. We met late at night, because we meant to keep our wild party going until morning. The wine flowed freely. And there were other temptations too, perhaps more dangerous ones. The gray dawn had already appeared faintly in the east, while our mad excess was at its height. I was wildly red in the face from cards and drink. I was insisting on a toast that was more shocking and ungodly than usual. Suddenly my attention was drawn away. The door of the room was pushed violently, partly open. I heard the eager voice of a servant outside. He said that someone wanted to speak with me in the hall. The person seemed to be in a great hurry.

I was wildly excited with wine, so the surprise interruption delighted me more than it surprised me. I staggered forward at once. A few steps brought me to the entrance hall of the building. No lamp hung in this low, small room. And now no light came in at all, except the very weak dawn through the half-round window. As I stepped over the threshold, I noticed the figure of a youth. He was about my own height. He wore a white kerseymere morning frock, cut in the new fashion of the one I was wearing myself. The faint light let me see this. But I could not make out the features of his face. As I came in, he strode quickly up to me. He seized me by the arm with an impatient, irritated gesture. And he whispered the words “William Wilson!” in my ear.

I became completely sober in an instant.

There was something in the stranger's manner that filled me with complete amazement. There was something, too, in the trembling shake of his raised finger. He held it up between my eyes and the light. But this was not what had moved me so violently. It was the solemn warning that filled his strange, low, hissing voice. And above all, it was the character, the tone, the key of those few simple, familiar, whispered syllables. They came with a thousand crowding memories of past days. They struck my soul like the shock of a galvanic battery. Before I could get back the use of my senses, he was gone.

This event had a strong effect on my disordered imagination. But the effect passed as quickly as it came. For some weeks, it is true, I busied myself with serious inquiries. Or I was lost in a cloud of dark, unhealthy thoughts. I did not pretend to myself that I did not know who this strange person was. He kept on interfering with my affairs, and he troubled me with his hinted advice. But who and what was this Wilson? Where did he come from? And what were his purposes? I could not find an answer to any of these questions. I learned only one thing about him. A sudden accident in his family had made him leave Dr. Bransby's academy. He left on the afternoon of the same day that I myself ran away. But after a short time I stopped thinking about the matter. All my attention was taken up by my coming departure for Oxford. I soon went there. My parents' thoughtless vanity gave me a fine outfit and a large yearly income. With these I could enjoy all the luxury that was already so dear to my heart. I could compete in spending with the proudest heirs of the richest earldoms in Great Britain.

With such encouragement to vice, my natural temper broke out with twice the energy. In the mad passion of my wild parties, I threw away even the common rules of decency. But it would be silly to stop and describe my excesses in detail. It is enough to say this. Among the spendthrifts, I out-Heroded Herod. I invented a great number of new follies and gave them names. So I added a long appendix to the long list of vices. These were the vices then usual at the most dissolute university in Europe.

Even so, people will hardly believe how low I had fallen. I had fallen so far from a gentleman's position that I studied the vilest tricks of the professional gambler. I became an expert in his disgusting science. And I used it regularly to increase my already enormous income. I did it at the cost of the weak-minded among my fellow students. But that was the truth. And this crime against all manly and honorable feeling was very great. Its very size was the main reason I got away with it. Perhaps it was the only reason. Even my most wicked companions would rather have doubted the clearest proof of their senses. They would never have suspected such things of the gay, frank, generous William Wilson. He was the noblest and most generous commoner at Oxford. His follies, said those who flattered him, were only the follies of youth and of a wild imagination. His errors were only charming whims that no one could copy. His darkest vice was only a careless and dashing extravagance.

I had been busy in this way, with success, for two years. Then a young nobleman, Glendinning, came to the university. He was a parvenu. People said he was as rich as Herodes Atticus, and that his riches had come just as easily. I soon found that he was weak-minded. So of course I marked him as a good victim for my skill. I often played cards with him. With the gambler's usual art, I managed to let him win large sums. In this way I could trap him more completely in my nets. At last my plans were ready. I met him in the rooms of a fellow-commoner, Mr. Preston. I meant this meeting to be final and decisive. Mr. Preston was a close friend of both of us. But to be fair to him, he did not have the slightest suspicion of my plan. To make it all look better, I had arranged a party of some eight or ten people. I was very careful that the cards should seem to appear by accident. I wanted the idea to come from my intended dupe himself. I will be brief about this vile subject. I left out none of the low tricks that are so usual on such occasions. It is a real wonder that anyone is still foolish enough to fall victim to them.

We sat on far into the night. At last I managed to get Glendinning as my only opponent. And the game was my favorite, *écarté!* The rest of the company were interested in how much we were playing for. They had left their own cards and stood around us, watching. Earlier in the evening, my tricks had led the parvenu to drink deeply. Now he shuffled, dealt and played with a wild nervousness. I thought that his drunkenness could partly explain it, but not completely. In a very short time he owed me a large amount. Then he took a long drink of port. And he did exactly what I had been coolly expecting. He suggested that we should double our already extravagant stakes. I pretended very well to be unwilling. I refused again and again, until he said some angry words to me. So when I finally agreed, it looked as if I did it only from wounded pride. The result, of course, only proved how completely the victim was in my trap. In less than an hour his debt was four times as large. For some time his face had been losing the red color that the wine had given it. But now, to my astonishment, I saw that it had turned a truly fearful white. I say to my astonishment. I had eagerly asked about Glendinning, and I had been told he was immensely wealthy. The sums he had lost so far were huge in themselves. But I supposed they could not seriously trouble him, much less upset him so violently. The idea that first came to me was that the wine he had just drunk had overcome him. I was about to insist firmly that we stop playing. I did this more to protect my own reputation among my companions than for any better reason. But then I heard some remarks from the people beside me. And Glendinning gave a cry of complete despair. From this I understood that I had ruined him totally. And I had ruined him in a situation that made everyone pity him. That alone should have protected him from harm, even from a devil.

It is hard to say what I would have done then. The pitiful state of my dupe had thrown a gloomy embarrassment over everyone. For some moments there was deep silence. During it, I could not help feeling my cheeks burn. Many burning looks of scorn or blame fell on me from the less wicked members of the party. I will even admit something. For a brief moment, an unbearable weight of anxiety was lifted from my heart. This happened because of the sudden and extraordinary interruption that followed. The wide, heavy folding doors of the room were all at once thrown fully open. They opened with such strong, rushing force that every candle in the room went out, as if by magic. As their light died, we could just see that a stranger had come in. He was about my own height, and he was wrapped closely in a cloak. But now the darkness was total. We could only feel that he was standing among us. All of us were extremely astonished by this rude entrance. Before any of us could recover, we heard the stranger's voice.

“Gentlemen,” he said. His whisper was low and clear, and I will never forget it. It thrilled me to the very marrow of my bones. “Gentlemen, I make no apology for this behavior. In behaving like this, I am only doing my duty. Without doubt, you do not know the true character of a certain person. Tonight he has won a large sum of money at *écarté* from Lord Glendinning. So I will give you a quick and certain way to get this very necessary information. Please examine, when you like, the inside lining of the cuff of his left sleeve. Also examine the several little packets that you may find in the rather large pockets of his embroidered morning wrapper.”

While he spoke, the room was so still that one could have heard a pin drop on the floor. When he stopped, he left at once, as suddenly as he had come. Can I—shall I describe my feelings? Must I say that I felt all the horrors of the damned? I certainly had little time to think. Many hands seized me roughly where I stood. Lights were brought again at once. A search followed. In the lining of my sleeve they found all the court cards that matter in *écarté*. In the pockets of my wrapper they found several packs of cards. They were exact copies of the cards we used in our games, except for one thing. Mine were of the kind called *arrondées*. The honors were slightly curved at the ends, and the lower cards were slightly curved at the sides. The dupe cuts the pack along its length, as people usually do. Because of the curves, he will always cut a high card for his opponent. But the gambler cuts the pack across its width. So he will certainly cut nothing for his victim that counts in the game.

They received this discovery with silent contempt or sarcastic calm. Any burst of anger would have hurt me less.

“Mr. Wilson,” said our host. He bent down and picked up a very luxurious cloak of rare furs from under his feet. “Mr. Wilson, this is your property.” (The weather was cold. When I left my own room, I had thrown a cloak over my dressing wrapper. I had taken it off when I reached the card table.) “I suppose there is no need to look here for any more proof of your skill.” He looked at the folds of the cloak with a bitter smile. “Indeed, we have had enough. I hope you will see that you must leave Oxford. In any case, you must leave my rooms at once.”

I was humbled to the dust at that moment. Probably I would have answered these bitter words with immediate violence. But just then my whole attention was caught by a most startling fact. The cloak I had worn was made of a rare kind of fur. I will not say how rare, or how extremely expensive it was. Its design, too, was my own fantastic invention. In such silly matters I was fussy to an absurd degree, like a vain dandy. Mr. Preston handed me the cloak he had picked up from the floor, near the folding doors of the room. Then, with an astonishment that was close to terror, I saw that my own cloak was already hanging on my arm. No doubt I had put it there without knowing. And the one he gave me was its exact copy in every detail, even the very smallest. I remembered that the strange being who had exposed me so terribly had been wrapped in a cloak. And no one in our party had worn a cloak at all, except me. I kept some presence of mind. I took the cloak that Preston offered me. I placed it over my own without anyone noticing. I left the room with a determined, defiant scowl. And the next morning, before dawn, I began a hurried journey from Oxford to the continent. I was in a complete agony of horror and shame.

I fled in vain. My evil fate followed me as if it rejoiced. It proved that its mysterious power over me had only just begun. I had hardly set foot in Paris when I had fresh proof of this Wilson's hateful interest in my affairs. Years passed, and I found no relief. Villain!—at Rome, how he stepped in between me and my ambition! He came at the worst moment, and he came like a ghost to interfere. At Vienna, too—at Berlin—and at Moscow! Where, in truth, did I not have bitter reason to curse him in my heart? At last I fled in panic from his mysterious tyranny, as if from a plague. And to the very ends of the earth I fled in vain.

Again and again, in secret talks with my own spirit, I asked myself the same questions. “Who is he?—where did he come from?—and what are his purposes?” But I found no answer. Then I studied very closely the forms, the methods and the main features of his rude watchfulness over me. But even here there was very little on which to base a guess. One thing was clear, indeed. In all the many times he had lately crossed my path, he had done it for one reason only. He did it to stop plans or actions that, if fully carried out, might have done bitter harm. This was a poor excuse, in truth, for an authority he had taken so proudly! It was poor payment for my natural right to run my own life! He denied me that right so stubbornly and so insultingly!

I had also been forced to notice something else. For a very long time, my tormentor had kept up his whim of dressing exactly like me. He did it carefully, and with amazing skill. But in all his different interferences with my will, he had arranged things so that I never saw his face. Whatever Wilson might be, this at least was the purest affectation, or folly. Could he really suppose, even for a moment, that I would fail to recognize him? He was my warner at Eton. He was the destroyer of my honor at Oxford. He had blocked my ambition at Rome, my revenge at Paris, my passionate love at Naples. In Egypt he had blocked what he falsely called my avarice. Could I fail to see in this arch-enemy and evil genius the William Wilson of my schooldays? He was my namesake, my companion, my rival—the hated and feared rival at Dr. Bransby's! Impossible!—But let me hurry to the last great scene of the drama.

Until now I had given in to his proud power without fighting back. I always felt a deep awe of Wilson. I was in awe of his high character and his majestic wisdom. He seemed to be everywhere, and he seemed all-powerful. Certain other features of his nature and his claims also filled me with a kind of terror. Together, these feelings had made me believe in my own complete weakness and helplessness. They had led me to obey his will without question, though very bitterly and unwillingly. But lately I had given myself up entirely to wine. Its maddening effect on the temper I had inherited made me less and less willing to be controlled. I began to complain—to hesitate—to resist. And was it only my imagination? I seemed to see that as my own firmness grew, my tormentor's firmness grew less. However that may be, I now began to feel a burning hope. At last, in my secret thoughts, I formed a hard and desperate decision. I would not let him enslave me any longer.

It was at Rome, during the Carnival of 18—. I went to a masquerade in the palazzo of the Neapolitan Duke Di Broglio. I had drunk more freely than usual at the wine table. And now the stifling air of the crowded rooms irritated me beyond what I could bear. It was also hard to force my way through the maze of guests, and this made my temper worse. I was anxiously looking for the young, gay, beautiful wife of the old, doting Di Broglio. Let me not say with what unworthy purpose. With too careless a trust, she had told me earlier the secret of the costume she would wear. Now I had caught sight of her, and I was hurrying to reach her. At this moment I felt a light hand on my shoulder. And I heard in my ear that low, damnable *whisper*, which I will always remember.

In an absolute frenzy of anger, I turned at once on the man who had stopped me. I seized him violently by the collar. As I had expected, he was dressed in a costume exactly like my own. He wore a Spanish cloak of blue velvet. Around his waist was a crimson belt, and from it hung a rapier. A mask of black silk covered his whole face.

“Scoundrel!” I said, in a voice hoarse with rage. Every word I spoke seemed to add new fuel to my fury. “Scoundrel! impostor! cursed villain! You shall not—you shall not hound me to death! Follow me, or I will stab you where you stand!” And I broke out of the ballroom into a small ante-chamber next to it. I dragged him with me as I went, and he did not resist.

When we were inside, I pushed him furiously away from me. He staggered against the wall. I shut the door with a curse and ordered him to draw his sword. He hesitated for only an instant. Then, with a slight sigh, he drew his sword in silence and stood ready to defend himself.

The fight was very short indeed. I was wild with every kind of excitement. I felt in my one arm the energy and power of a whole crowd. In a few seconds I forced him by pure strength against the wooden panels of the wall. Now he was at my mercy. With the fury of a beast, I plunged my sword again and again through his breast.

At that moment someone tried the latch of the door. I hurried to stop anyone from coming in. Then at once I returned to my dying opponent. But what human language can truly describe the astonishment and horror that filled me at what I saw? I had looked away for only a moment. But that moment seemed to have been enough for a real change at the far end of the room. A large mirror—so at first it seemed to me in my confusion—now stood where none had been before. In extreme terror, I stepped up to it. And my own image came forward to meet me with a weak and tottering walk. But its face was all pale and splashed with blood.

So it seemed, I say, but it was not so. It was my opponent—it was Wilson. He stood before me in the agony of death. His mask and cloak lay on the floor where he had thrown them. There was not a thread in all his clothes that was not mine. There was not a line in all the marked and unusual features of his face that was not mine. They were, in the most absolute sameness, my own!

It was Wilson. But he no longer spoke in a whisper. And I could have imagined that I myself was speaking while he said:

*“You have conquered, and I yield. Yet from now on you are also dead—dead to the World, to Heaven and to Hope! You existed in me. And now, in my death, see by this image, which is your own, how completely you have murdered yourself.”*

### Glossary

- **Elah-Gabalus**: a Roman emperor who was famous for his wickedness.
- **oasis**: a place with water and trees in a desert; here, a small good thing in the middle of bad things.
- **usher**: in this story, an assistant teacher.
- **ferule**: a ruler that teachers used to hit pupils.
- **paradox**: something that seems impossible because it has two opposite sides.
- **Dominie**: an old word for a schoolmaster.
- **peine forte et dure**: an old torture in which heavy weights were piled on a person.
- **lustrum**: a period of five years; the third lustrum of his life is from about age ten to fifteen.
- **outré**: very strange and unusual.
- **exergues**: words or pictures stamped on coins and medals.
- **Oh, le bon temps, que ce siècle de fer!**: French: “Oh, what good times, that age of iron!”
- **Achilles' heel**: the one weak point of a person who is otherwise strong.
- **kerseymere**: a fine, soft woollen cloth.
- **morning frock**: a kind of coat that gentlemen wore during the day.
- **out-Heroded Herod**: went even further than the worst; in old plays, King Herod was a wild, raging tyrant.
- **parvenu**: a person who has only recently become rich.
- **Herodes Atticus**: a very rich man in ancient Greece.
- **fellow-commoner**: a student of a higher, richer class at Oxford who was not a nobleman.
- **dupe**: a person who is tricked.
- **écarté**: a card game for two players.
- **stakes**: the money that players bet in a game.
- **arrondées**: cheating cards with slightly curved edges.
- **avarice**: a strong wish to get and keep money; greed.
- **ante-chamber**: a small room next to a larger one.

## The Tell-Tale Heart

True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The illness had made my senses sharper. It had not destroyed them—it had not made them dull. Above all, my sense of hearing was very sharp. I heard all things in heaven and on earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Listen! And see how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

It is impossible to say how the idea first came into my brain. But once it was there, it haunted me day and night. There was no reason for it. There was no strong feeling behind it. I loved the old man. He had never done me wrong. He had never insulted me. I did not want his gold. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it looked at me, my blood ran cold. And so, little by little—very slowly—I made up my mind. I would take the old man’s life, and so free myself of the eye forever.

Now this is the point. You think I am mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I went to work—how carefully—how I planned ahead! And how well I hid my true feelings! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it—oh, so gently! And then, when I had made an opening big enough for my head, I put in a dark lantern. It was all closed, closed, so that no light shone out. And then I pushed in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cleverly I pushed it in! I moved it slowly—very, very slowly, so that I would not wake the old man. It took me an hour to put my whole head inside the opening. Only then could I see him as he lay on his bed. Ha!—would a madman have been so wise as this? Then, when my head was well in the room, I opened the lantern. I did it carefully—oh, so carefully—carefully (for the hinges creaked). I opened it just so much that a single thin ray fell on the vulture eye. And I did this for seven long nights—every night just at midnight. But I found the eye always closed. So it was impossible to do the work. For it was not the old man who troubled me, but his Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day came, I went boldly into his room. I spoke to him bravely, calling him by name in a warm, friendly voice. I asked him how he had slept that night. So you see, he would have been a very clever old man indeed to suspect the truth. And the truth was this: every night, just at twelve, I looked in on him while he slept.

On the eighth night I was even more careful than usual in opening the door. The minute hand of a watch moves more quickly than my hand did. Before that night I had never felt how great my powers were—how clever I was. I could hardly hide my feelings of triumph. Just think! There I was, opening the door, little by little. And he did not even dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I really chuckled at the idea. And perhaps he heard me, because he suddenly moved on the bed, as if something had frightened him. Now you may think that I drew back—but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness. (The shutters were tightly closed, because he was afraid of robbers.) So I knew that he could not see the door opening. And I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.

I had my head in, and I was about to open the lantern. Then my thumb slipped on the tin fastening. The old man sprang up in bed, crying out—“Who’s there?”

I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle. And in all that time I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed, listening. I have done just the same, night after night, listening to the death watches in the wall.

Soon I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of deadly terror. It was not a groan of pain or of sadness—oh, no! It was the low, choked sound that rises from the bottom of the soul. It comes when the soul is too full of fear. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has risen from my own breast. With its dreadful echo, it made the terrors that tormented me even deeper. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and I pitied him, although I chuckled in my heart. I knew he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been growing ever since. He had been trying to tell himself that there was no reason for them. But he could not. He had been saying to himself—“It is nothing but the wind in the chimney.” Or—“It is only a mouse crossing the floor.” Or—“It is only a cricket which has made a single chirp.” Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these ideas. But it was all in vain. All in vain, because Death was coming near him. Death had walked toward him with his black shadow in front of him. And the shadow had wrapped itself around the victim. It was the sad power of this unseen shadow that worked on him. It made him feel—although he neither saw nor heard—it made him feel my head inside the room.

I waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down. Then I decided to open a little—a very, very little crack in the lantern. So I opened it—you cannot imagine how softly, softly. At last a single dim ray, like the thread of a spider, shot out from the crack. It fell straight on the vulture eye.

It was open—wide, wide open—and I grew furious as I looked at it. I saw it perfectly clearly—all a dull blue, with a horrible veil over it. It chilled the very marrow in my bones. But I could see nothing else of the old man’s face or body. For I had pointed the ray, as if by instinct, exactly on the damned spot.

And have I not told you that what you think is madness is only over-sharpness of the senses? Now, I say, I heard a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when wrapped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart. It made my fury greater, as the beating of a drum makes a soldier brave.

But even then I held back and kept still. I hardly breathed. I held the lantern without moving it. I tried to see how steadily I could keep the ray on the eye. Meanwhile the hellish drumming of the heart grew stronger. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every moment. The old man’s terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment!—are you listening to me carefully? I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now it was the dead hour of the night, in the dreadful silence of that old house. So strange a noise as this filled me with a terror I could not control. Yet for some minutes longer I held back and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new worry seized me—a neighbor would hear the sound! The old man’s hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and jumped into the room. He shrieked once—once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. Then I smiled happily to see the deed done so far. But for many minutes the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not trouble me; it would not be heard through the wall. At last it stopped. The old man was dead. I moved the bed away and examined the body. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand on the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no beat. He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.

If you still think I am mad, you will think so no longer. Let me describe the wise care I took to hide the body. The night was ending, and I worked quickly, but in silence. First of all I cut the body into pieces. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.

Then I took up three planks from the floor of the room. I placed everything between the beams under them. I replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye—not even his—could have seen anything wrong. There was nothing to wash out—no stain of any kind—no blood-spot at all. I had been too careful for that. A tub had caught it all—ha! ha!

When I had finished this work, it was four o’clock—still as dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, someone knocked at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart—for what did I have to fear now? Three men came in. They introduced themselves, very politely, as officers of the police. A neighbor had heard a shriek during the night. There was suspicion of foul play. Someone had reported it at the police office. And they, the officers, had been sent to search the house.

I smiled—for what did I have to fear? I welcomed the gentlemen. The shriek, I said, was my own, in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was away in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I told them to search—search well. At last I led them to his room. I showed them his treasures, safe and untouched. I felt so sure of myself that I brought chairs into the room. I asked them to rest there from their tiring work. And I myself was wild and bold in my perfect triumph. I put my own chair on the very spot under which the victim’s body lay.

The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was strangely calm and relaxed. They sat, and while I answered cheerfully, they chatted about everyday things. But before long, I felt myself growing pale, and I wished they would go. My head ached, and I seemed to hear a ringing in my ears. But still they sat and still they chatted. The ringing became clearer:—it continued and became clearer. I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling. But it continued and became more definite—until, at last, I found that the noise was not inside my ears.

No doubt I now grew *very* pale;—but I talked more easily, and in a louder voice. Yet the sound grew—and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when wrapped in cotton. I gasped for breath—and yet the officers did not hear it. I talked more quickly—more wildly; but the noise steadily increased. I stood up and argued about little things. I spoke in a high voice and waved my arms wildly; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not go? I walked up and down the floor with heavy steps. I acted as if the men’s remarks had made me furious—but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed at the mouth—I raved—I swore! I swung the chair I had been sitting on, and scraped it over the boards. But the noise rose above everything and kept on increasing. It grew louder—louder—louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they did not hear? Almighty God!—no, no! They heard!—they suspected!—they knew!—they were laughing at my horror!—this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was easier to bear than this mockery! I could not bear those false smiles any longer! I felt that I must scream or die! And now—again!—listen! louder! louder! louder! *louder!*

“Villains!” I shrieked, “stop pretending! I admit the deed!—tear up the planks!—here, here!—It is the beating of his hideous heart!”

### Glossary

- **vulture**: a large bird that eats dead animals
- **film**: a thin, cloudy layer over the eye
- **latch**: a small bar that keeps a door closed
- **dark lantern**: a lamp you can carry, with a metal cover that can hide its light
- **chuckled**: laughed quietly to yourself
- **as black as pitch**: completely dark (pitch is a thick black substance)
- **death watches**: small insects in old wood that make a ticking sound; people believed the sound meant someone would die
- **marrow**: the soft part inside your bones; "chilled the marrow in my bones" means it frightened me very much
- **muffled**: quiet and unclear, because something covers it
- **beams**: thick pieces of wood under a floor that hold up the boards
- **foul play**: a crime, usually murder
- **villains**: very bad people; here he shouts it at the officers in anger