EDGAR ALLAN POE
Complete Tales and Poems
EDGAR ALLAN POE: COMPLETE TALES AND POEMS
Published by Maplewood Books
Published in 2013 by Maplewood Books with new Introduction, Film List, Reading List and Online
Resources.
All rights reserved.
All works by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849).
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editorial purposes only.
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Table of Contents
Copyright
Introduction
Works of Edgar Allen Poe:
Short Stories
Narrative of A. Gordon Pym
Poems
Essays
Fan Resources:
Poe Adaptations
Poe in Literature
Audio Recordings
Publisher's Note
INTRODUCTION
Once upon a midnight dreary, while you ponder weak and weary, take up this quaint and curious
volume of forgotten lore.
Included in Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems are over 100 short stories, poems and
essays by the incomparable Edgar Allan Poe. Each work has been elegantly formatted for ease of use
and enjoyment on your e-reader device.
Notable titles included:
Tales:
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Masque of the Red Death
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Premature Burial
The Purloined Letter
The Tell-Tale Heart
Poems:
Annabel Lee
The Bells
The City in the Sea
A Dream Within a Dream
To Helen
Lenore
The Raven
Ulalume
Other Works:
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket—Poe's only complete novel
Essays
For a full list of titles, please see the table of contents.
Each book has an individual Table of Contents that is easily accessible from the main Table of
Contents and drop-down menus. You are never more than two clicks away from any chapter of any
book.
Also included are special features for any Poe enthusiast, including:
A list of films and television series, both directly and indirectly inspired by the works of Edgar
Allan Poe.
A Reading Guide to fictional works that feature the historical Edgar Allan Poe as a character.
Links to free, full-length audio recordings of the major poems and short stories in this collection.
Gather your courage and prepare to go on a journey with Edgar Allan Poe, fearing, doubting,
dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
Also from Maplewood Books:
Oz: The Complete Collection (Illustrated Edition)
Grimm's Fairy Tales: Over 200 classic fairy tales with Color Illustrations
Anne: The Green Gables Collection
SHORT STORIES
THE UNPARALLELED ADVENTURES OF
ONE HANS PFAAL
THE GOLD-BUG
FOUR BEASTS IN ONE—
THE HOMO-CAMELEOPARD
THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE
THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET.
THE BALLOON-HOAX
MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE
THE OVAL PORTRAIT
THE PURLOINED LETTER
THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE
OF SCHEHERAZADE
A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTRÖM.
VON KEMPELEN AND HIS DISCOVERY
MESMERIC REVELATION
THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR
THE BLACK CAT.
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
SILENCE—A FABLE
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH.
THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO.
THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE
THE ISLAND OF THE FAY
THE ASSIGNATION
THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM
THE PREMATURE BURIAL
THE DOMAIN OF ARNHEIM
LANDOR'S COTTAGE
WILLIAM WILSON
THE TELL-TALE HEART.
BERENICE
ELEONORA
LIGEIA
MORELLA
A TALE OF THE RAGGED MOUNTAINS
THE SPECTACLES
KING PEST.
THREE SUNDAYS IN A WEEK
THE DEVIL IN THE BELFRY
LIONIZING
X-ING A PARAGRAPH
METZENGERSTEIN
THE SYSTEM OF DOCTOR TARR AND
PROFESSOR FETHER
HOW TO WRITE A BLACKWOOD ARTICLE.
A PREDICAMENT
MYSTIFICATION
DIDDLING
THE ANGEL OF THE ODD
MELLONTA TAUTA
THE DUC DE L'OMELETTE.
THE OBLONG BOX.
LOSS OF BREATH
THE MAN THAT WAS USED UP.
THE BUSINESS MAN
THE LANDSCAPE GARDEN
MAELZEL'S CHESS-PLAYER
THE POWER OF WORDS
THE COLLOQUY OF MONOS AND UNA
THE CONVERSATION OF EIROS AND CHARMION
SHADOW—A PARABLE
THE UNPARALLELED ADVENTURES OF ONE HANS PFAAL
BY late accounts from Rotterdam, that city seems to be in a high state of philosophical excitement.
Indeed, phenomena have there occurred of a nature so completely unexpected—so entirely novel—so
utterly at variance with preconceived opinions—as to leave no doubt on my mind that long ere this all
Europe is in an uproar, all physics in a ferment, all reason and astronomy together by the ears.
It appears that on the—— day of—— (I am not positive about the date), a vast crowd of people,
for purposes not specifically mentioned, were assembled in the great square of the Exchange in the
well-conditioned city of Rotterdam. The day was warm—unusually so for the season—there was
hardly a breath of air stirring; and the multitude were in no bad humor at being now and then
besprinkled with friendly showers of momentary duration, that fell from large white masses of cloud
which chequered in a fitful manner the blue vault of the firmament. Nevertheless, about noon, a slight
but remarkable agitation became apparent in the assembly: the clattering of ten thousand tongues
succeeded; and, in an instant afterward, ten thousand faces were upturned toward the heavens, ten
thousand pipes descended simultaneously from the corners of ten thousand mouths, and a shout, which
could be compared to nothing but the roaring of Niagara, resounded long, loudly, and furiously,
through all the environs of Rotterdam.
The origin of this hubbub soon became sufficiently evident. From behind the huge bulk of one of
those sharply-defined masses of cloud already mentioned, was seen slowly to emerge into an open
area of blue space, a queer, heterogeneous, but apparently solid substance, so oddly shaped, so
whimsically put together, as not to be in any manner comprehended, and never to be sufficiently
admired, by the host of sturdy burghers who stood open-mouthed below. What could it be? In the
name of all the vrows and devils in Rotterdam, what could it possibly portend? No one knew, no one
could imagine; no one—not even the burgomaster Mynheer Superbus Von Underduk—had the slightest
clew by which to unravel the mystery; so, as nothing more reasonable could be done, every one to a
man replaced his pipe carefully in the corner of his mouth, and cocking up his right eye towards the
phenomenon, puffed, paused, waddled about, and grunted significantly—then waddled back, grunted,
paused, and finally—puffed again.
In the meantime, however, lower and still lower toward the goodly city, came the object of so
much curiosity, and the cause of so much smoke. In a very few minutes it arrived near enough to be
accurately discerned. It appeared to be—yes! it was undoubtedly a species of balloon; but surely no
such balloon had ever been seen in Rotterdam before. For who, let me ask, ever heard of a balloon
manufactured entirely of dirty newspapers? No man in Holland certainly; yet here, under the very
noses of the people, or rather at some distance above their noses was the identical thing in question,
and composed, I have it on the best authority, of the precise material which no one had ever before
known to be used for a similar purpose. It was an egregious insult to the good sense of the burghers of
Rotterdam. As to the shape of the phenomenon, it was even still more reprehensible. Being little or
nothing better than a huge foolscap turned upside down. And this similitude was regarded as by no
means lessened when, upon nearer inspection, there was perceived a large tassel depending from its
apex, and, around the upper rim or base of the cone, a circle of little instruments, resembling sheepbells, which kept up a continual tinkling to the tune of Betty Martin. But still worse. Suspended by
blue ribbons to the end of this fantastic machine, there hung, by way of car, an enormous drab beaver
hat, with a brim superlatively broad, and a hemispherical crown with a black band and a silver
buckle. It is, however, somewhat remarkable that many citizens of Rotterdam swore to having seen
the same hat repeatedly before; and indeed the whole assembly seemed to regard it with eyes of
familiarity; while the vrow Grettel Pfaall, upon sight of it, uttered an exclamation of joyful surprise,
and declared it to be the identical hat of her good man himself. Now this was a circumstance the more
to be observed, as Pfaall, with three companions, had actually disappeared from Rotterdam about
five years before, in a very sudden and unaccountable manner, and up to the date of this narrative all
attempts had failed of obtaining any intelligence concerning them whatsoever. To be sure, some bones
which were thought to be human, mixed up with a quantity of odd-looking rubbish, had been lately
discovered in a retired situation to the east of Rotterdam, and some people went so far as to imagine
that in this spot a foul murder had been committed, and that the sufferers were in all probability Hans
Pfaall and his associates. But to return.
The balloon (for such no doubt it was) had now descended to within a hundred feet of the earth,
allowing the crowd below a sufficiently distinct view of the person of its occupant. This was in truth
a very droll little somebody. He could not have been more than two feet in height; but this altitude,
little as it was, would have been sufficient to destroy his equilibrium, and tilt him over the edge of his
tiny car, but for the intervention of a circular rim reaching as high as the breast, and rigged on to the
cords of the balloon. The body of the little man was more than proportionately broad, giving to his
entire figure a rotundity highly absurd. His feet, of course, could not be seen at all, although a horny
substance of suspicious nature was occasionally protruded through a rent in the bottom of the car, or
to speak more properly, in the top of the hat. His hands were enormously large. His hair was
extremely gray, and collected in a cue behind. His nose was prodigiously long, crooked, and
inflammatory; his eyes full, brilliant, and acute; his chin and cheeks, although wrinkled with age, were
broad, puffy, and double; but of ears of any kind or character there was not a semblance to be
discovered upon any portion of his head. This odd little gentleman was dressed in a loose surtout of
sky-blue satin, with tight breeches to match, fastened with silver buckles at the knees. His vest was of
some bright yellow material; a white taffety cap was set jauntily on one side of his head; and, to
complete his equipment, a blood-red silk handkerchief enveloped his throat, and fell down, in a
dainty manner, upon his bosom, in a fantastic bow-knot of super-eminent dimensions.
Having descended, as I said before, to about one hundred feet from the surface of the earth, the
little old gentleman was suddenly seized with a fit of trepidation, and appeared disinclined to make
any nearer approach to terra firma. Throwing out, therefore, a quantity of sand from a canvas bag,
which, he lifted with great difficulty, he became stationary in an instant. He then proceeded, in a
hurried and agitated manner, to extract from a side-pocket in his surtout a large morocco pocket-book.
This he poised suspiciously in his hand, then eyed it with an air of extreme surprise, and was
evidently astonished at its weight. He at length opened it, and drawing there from a huge letter sealed
with red sealing-wax and tied carefully with red tape, let it fall precisely at the feet of the
burgomaster, Superbus Von Underduk. His Excellency stooped to take it up. But the aeronaut, still
greatly discomposed, and having apparently no farther business to detain him in Rotterdam, began at
this moment to make busy preparations for departure; and it being necessary to discharge a portion of
ballast to enable him to reascend, the half dozen bags which he threw out, one after another, without
taking the trouble to empty their contents, tumbled, every one of them, most unfortunately upon the
back of the burgomaster, and rolled him over and over no less than one-and-twenty times, in the face
of every man in Rotterdam. It is not to be supposed, however, that the great Underduk suffered this
impertinence on the part of the little old man to pass off with impunity. It is said, on the contrary, that
during each and every one of his one-and twenty circumvolutions he emitted no less than one-andtwenty distinct and furious whiffs from his pipe, to which he held fast the whole time with all his
might, and to which he intends holding fast until the day of his death.
In the meantime the balloon arose like a lark, and, soaring far away above the city, at length
drifted quietly behind a cloud similar to that from which it had so oddly emerged, and was thus lost
forever to the wondering eyes of the good citizens of Rotterdam. All attention was now directed to the
letter, the descent of which, and the consequences attending thereupon, had proved so fatally
subversive of both person and personal dignity to his Excellency, the illustrious Burgomaster
Mynheer Superbus Von Underduk. That functionary, however, had not failed, during his
circumgyratory movements, to bestow a thought upon the important subject of securing the packet in
question, which was seen, upon inspection, to have fallen into the most proper hands, being actually
addressed to himself and Professor Rub-a-dub, in their official capacities of President and VicePresident of the Rotterdam College of Astronomy. It was accordingly opened by those dignitaries
upon the spot, and found to contain the following extraordinary, and indeed very serious,
communications.
To their Excellencies Von Underduk and Rub-a-dub, President and Vice-President of the States'
College of Astronomers, in the city of Rotterdam.
"Your Excellencies may perhaps be able to remember an humble artizan, by name Hans Pfaall,
and by occupation a mender of bellows, who, with three others, disappeared from Rotterdam, about
five years ago, in a manner which must have been considered by all parties at once sudden, and
extremely unaccountable. If, however, it so please your Excellencies, I, the writer of this
communication, am the identical Hans Pfaall himself. It is well known to most of my fellow citizens,
that for the period of forty years I continued to occupy the little square brick building, at the head of
the alley called Sauerkraut, in which I resided at the time of my disappearance. My ancestors have
also resided therein time out of mind—they, as well as myself, steadily following the respectable and
indeed lucrative profession of mending of bellows. For, to speak the truth, until of late years, that the
heads of all the people have been set agog with politics, no better business than my own could an
honest citizen of Rotterdam either desire or deserve. Credit was good, employment was never
wanting, and on all hands there was no lack of either money or good-will. But, as I was saying, we
soon began to feel the effects of liberty and long speeches, and radicalism, and all that sort of thing.
People who were formerly, the very best customers in the world, had now not a moment of time to
think of us at all. They had, so they said, as much as they could do to read about the revolutions, and
keep up with the march of intellect and the spirit of the age. If a fire wanted fanning, it could readily
be fanned with a newspaper, and as the government grew weaker, I have no doubt that leather and
iron acquired durability in proportion, for, in a very short time, there was not a pair of bellows in all
Rotterdam that ever stood in need of a stitch or required the assistance of a hammer. This was a state
of things not to be endured. I soon grew as poor as a rat, and, having a wife and children to provide
for, my burdens at length became intolerable, and I spent hour after hour in reflecting upon the most
convenient method of putting an end to my life. Duns, in the meantime, left me little leisure for
contemplation. My house was literally besieged from morning till night, so that I began to rave, and
foam, and fret like a caged tiger against the bars of his enclosure. There were three fellows in
particular who worried me beyond endurance, keeping watch continually about my door, and
threatening me with the law. Upon these three I internally vowed the bitterest revenge, if ever I should
be so happy as to get them within my clutches; and I believe nothing in the world but the pleasure of
this anticipation prevented me from putting my plan of suicide into immediate execution, by blowing
my brains out with a blunderbuss. I thought it best, however, to dissemble my wrath, and to treat them
with promises and fair words, until, by some good turn of fate, an opportunity of vengeance should be
afforded me.
"One day, having given my creditors the slip, and feeling more than usually dejected, I continued
for a long time to wander about the most obscure streets without object whatever, until at length I
chanced to stumble against the corner of a bookseller's stall. Seeing a chair close at hand, for the use
of customers, I threw myself doggedly into it, and, hardly knowing why, opened the pages of the first
volume which came within my reach. It proved to be a small pamphlet treatise on Speculative
Astronomy, written either by Professor Encke of Berlin or by a Frenchman of somewhat similar name.
I had some little tincture of information on matters of this nature, and soon became more and more
absorbed in the contents of the book, reading it actually through twice before I awoke to a
recollection of what was passing around me. By this time it began to grow dark, and I directed my
steps toward home. But the treatise had made an indelible impression on my mind, and, as I sauntered
along the dusky streets, I revolved carefully over in my memory the wild and sometimes unintelligible
reasonings of the writer. There are some particular passages which affected my imagination in a
powerful and extraordinary manner. The longer I meditated upon these the more intense grew the
interest which had been excited within me. The limited nature of my education in general, and more
especially my ignorance on subjects connected with natural philosophy, so far from rendering me
diffident of my own ability to comprehend what I had read, or inducing me to mistrust the many vague
notions which had arisen in consequence, merely served as a farther stimulus to imagination; and I
was vain enough, or perhaps reasonable enough, to doubt whether those crude ideas which, arising in
ill-regulated minds, have all the appearance, may not often in effect possess all the force, the reality,
and other inherent properties, of instinct or intuition; whether, to proceed a step farther, profundity
itself might not, in matters of a purely speculative nature, be detected as a legitimate source of falsity
and error. In other words, I believed, and still do believe, that truth, is frequently of its own essence,
superficial, and that, in many cases, the depth lies more in the abysses where we seek her, than in the
actual situations wherein she may be found. Nature herself seemed to afford me corroboration of
these ideas. In the contemplation of the heavenly bodies it struck me forcibly that I could not
distinguish a star with nearly as much precision, when I gazed on it with earnest, direct and
undeviating attention, as when I suffered my eye only to glance in its vicinity alone. I was not, of
course, at that time aware that this apparent paradox was occasioned by the center of the visual area
being less susceptible of feeble impressions of light than the exterior portions of the retina. This
knowledge, and some of another kind, came afterwards in the course of an eventful five years, during
which I have dropped the prejudices of my former humble situation in life, and forgotten the bellowsmender in far different occupations. But at the epoch of which I speak, the analogy which a casual
observation of a star offered to the conclusions I had already drawn, struck me with the force of
positive conformation, and I then finally made up my mind to the course which I afterwards pursued.
"It was late when I reached home, and I went immediately to bed. My mind, however, was too
much occupied to sleep, and I lay the whole night buried in meditation. Arising early in the morning,
and contriving again to escape the vigilance of my creditors, I repaired eagerly to the bookseller's
stall, and laid out what little ready money I possessed, in the purchase of some volumes of Mechanics
and Practical Astronomy. Having arrived at home safely with these, I devoted every spare moment to
their perusal, and soon made such proficiency in studies of this nature as I thought sufficient for the
execution of my plan. In the intervals of this period, I made every endeavor to conciliate the three
creditors who had given me so much annoyance. In this I finally succeeded—partly by selling enough
of my household furniture to satisfy a moiety of their claim, and partly by a promise of paying the
balance upon completion of a little project which I told them I had in view, and for assistance in
which I solicited their services. By these means—for they were ignorant men—I found little difficulty
in gaining them over to my purpose.
"Matters being thus arranged, I contrived, by the aid of my wife and with the greatest secrecy and
caution, to dispose of what property I had remaining, and to borrow, in small sums, under various
pretences, and without paying any attention to my future means of repayment, no inconsiderable
quantity of ready money. With the means thus accruing I proceeded to procure at intervals, cambric
muslin, very fine, in pieces of twelve yards each; twine; a lot of the varnish of caoutchouc; a large
and deep basket of wicker-work, made to order; and several other articles necessary in the
construction and equipment of a balloon of extraordinary dimensions. This I directed my wife to make
up as soon as possible, and gave her all requisite information as to the particular method of
proceeding. In the meantime I worked up the twine into a net-work of sufficient dimensions; rigged it
with a hoop and the necessary cords; bought a quadrant, a compass, a spy-glass, a common barometer
with some important modifications, and two astronomical instruments not so generally known. I then
took opportunities of conveying by night, to a retired situation east of Rotterdam, five iron-bound
casks, to contain about fifty gallons each, and one of a larger size; six tinned ware tubes, three inches
in diameter, properly shaped, and ten feet in length; a quantity of a particular metallic substance, or
semi-metal, which I shall not name, and a dozen demijohns of a very common acid. The gas to be
formed from these latter materials is a gas never yet generated by any other person than myself—or at
least never applied to any similar purpose. The secret I would make no difficulty in disclosing, but
that it of right belongs to a citizen of Nantz, in France, by whom it was conditionally communicated to
myself. The same individual submitted to me, without being at all aware of my intentions, a method of
constructing balloons from the membrane of a certain animal, through which substance any escape of
gas was nearly an impossibility. I found it, however, altogether too expensive, and was not sure, upon
the whole, whether cambric muslin with a coating of gum caoutchouc, was not equally as good. I
mention this circumstance, because I think it probable that hereafter the individual in question may
attempt a balloon ascension with the novel gas and material I have spoken of, and I do not wish to
deprive him of the honor of a very singular invention.
"On the spot which I intended each of the smaller casks to occupy respectively during the inflation
of the balloon, I privately dug a hole two feet deep; the holes forming in this manner a circle twentyfive feet in diameter. In the centre of this circle, being the station designed for the large cask, I also
dug a hole three feet in depth. In each of the five smaller holes, I deposited a canister containing fifty
pounds, and in the larger one a keg holding one hundred and fifty pounds, of cannon powder. These—
the keg and canisters—I connected in a proper manner with covered trains; and having let into one of
the canisters the end of about four feet of slow match, I covered up the hole, and placed the cask over
it, leaving the other end of the match protruding about an inch, and barely visible beyond the cask. I
then filled up the remaining holes, and placed the barrels over them in their destined situation.
"Besides the articles above enumerated, I conveyed to the depot, and there secreted, one of M.
Grimm's improvements upon the apparatus for condensation of the atmospheric air. I found this
machine, however, to require considerable alteration before it could be adapted to the purposes to
which I intended making it applicable. But, with severe labor and unremitting perseverance, I at
length met with entire success in all my preparations. My balloon was soon completed. It would
contain more than forty thousand cubic feet of gas; would take me up easily, I calculated, with all my
implements, and, if I managed rightly, with one hundred and seventy-five pounds of ballast into the
bargain. It had received three coats of varnish, and I found the cambric muslin to answer all the
purposes of silk itself, quite as strong and a good deal less expensive.
"Everything being now ready, I exacted from my wife an oath of secrecy in relation to all my
actions from the day of my first visit to the bookseller's stall; and promising, on my part, to return as
soon as circumstances would permit, I gave her what little money I had left, and bade her farewell.
Indeed I had no fear on her account. She was what people call a notable woman, and could manage
matters in the world without my assistance. I believe, to tell the truth, she always looked upon me as
an idle boy, a mere make-weight, good for nothing but building castles in the air, and was rather glad
to get rid of me. It was a dark night when I bade her good-bye, and taking with me, as aides-de-camp,
the three creditors who had given me so much trouble, we carried the balloon, with the car and
accoutrements, by a roundabout way, to the station where the other articles were deposited. We there
found them all unmolested, and I proceeded immediately to business.
"It was the first of April. The night, as I said before, was dark; there was not a star to be seen; and
a drizzling rain, falling at intervals, rendered us very uncomfortable. But my chief anxiety was
concerning the balloon, which, in spite of the varnish with which it was defended, began to grow
rather heavy with the moisture; the powder also was liable to damage. I therefore kept my three duns
working with great diligence, pounding down ice around the central cask, and stirring the acid in the
others. They did not cease, however, importuning me with questions as to what I intended to do with
all this apparatus, and expressed much dissatisfaction at the terrible labor I made them undergo. They
could not perceive, so they said, what good was likely to result from their getting wet to the skin,
merely to take a part in such horrible incantations. I began to get uneasy, and worked away with all
my might, for I verily believe the idiots supposed that I had entered into a compact with the devil, and
that, in short, what I was now doing was nothing better than it should be. I was, therefore, in great fear
of their leaving me altogether. I contrived, however, to pacify them by promises of payment of all
scores in full, as soon as I could bring the present business to a termination. To these speeches they
gave, of course, their own interpretation; fancying, no doubt, that at all events I should come into
possession of vast quantities of ready money; and provided I paid them all I owed, and a trifle more,
in consideration of their services, I dare say they cared very little what became of either my soul or
my carcass.
"In about four hours and a half I found the balloon sufficiently inflated. I attached the car,
therefore, and put all my implements in it—not forgetting the condensing apparatus, a copious supply
of water, and a large quantity of provisions, such as pemmican, in which much nutriment is contained
in comparatively little bulk. I also secured in the car a pair of pigeons and a cat. It was now nearly
daybreak, and I thought it high time to take my departure. Dropping a lighted cigar on the ground, as if
by accident, I took the opportunity, in stooping to pick it up, of igniting privately the piece of slow
match, whose end, as I said before, protruded a very little beyond the lower rim of one of the smaller
casks. This manoeuvre was totally unperceived on the part of the three duns; and, jumping into the car,
I immediately cut the single cord which held me to the earth, and was pleased to find that I shot
upward, carrying with all ease one hundred and seventy-five pounds of leaden ballast, and able to
have carried up as many more.
"Scarcely, however, had I attained the height of fifty yards, when, roaring and rumbling up after
me in the most horrible and tumultuous manner, came so dense a hurricane of fire, and smoke, and
sulphur, and legs and arms, and gravel, and burning wood, and blazing metal, that my very heart sunk
within me, and I fell down in the bottom of the car, trembling with unmitigated terror. Indeed, I now
perceived that I had entirely overdone the business, and that the main consequences of the shock were
yet to be experienced. Accordingly, in less than a second, I felt all the blood in my body rushing to my
temples, and immediately thereupon, a concussion, which I shall never forget, burst abruptly through
the night and seemed to rip the very firmament asunder. When I afterward had time for reflection, I
did not fail to attribute the extreme violence of the explosion, as regarded myself, to its proper cause
—my situation directly above it, and in the line of its greatest power. But at the time, I thought only of
preserving my life. The balloon at first collapsed, then furiously expanded, then whirled round and
round with horrible velocity, and finally, reeling and staggering like a drunken man, hurled me with
great force over the rim of the car, and left me dangling, at a terrific height, with my head downward,
and my face outwards, by a piece of slender cord about three feet in length, which hung accidentally
through a crevice near the bottom of the wicker-work, and in which, as I fell, my left foot became
most providentially entangled. It is impossible—utterly impossible—to form any adequate idea of the
horror of my situation. I gasped convulsively for breath—a shudder resembling a fit of the ague
agitated every nerve and muscle of my frame—I felt my eyes starting from their sockets—a horrible
nausea overwhelmed me—and at length I fainted away.
"How long I remained in this state it is impossible to say. It must, however, have been no
inconsiderable time, for when I partially recovered the sense of existence, I found the day breaking,
the balloon at a prodigious height over a wilderness of ocean, and not a trace of land to be
discovered far and wide within the limits of the vast horizon. My sensations, however, upon thus
recovering, were by no means so rife with agony as might have been anticipated. Indeed, there was
much of incipient madness in the calm survey which I began to take of my situation. I drew up to my
eyes each of my hands, one after the other, and wondered what occurrence could have given rise to
the swelling of the veins, and the horrible blackness of the fingernails. I afterward carefully examined
my head, shaking it repeatedly, and feeling it with minute attention, until I succeeded in satisfying
myself that it was not, as I had more than half suspected, larger than my balloon. Then, in a knowing
manner, I felt in both my breeches pockets, and, missing therefrom a set of tablets and a toothpick
case, endeavored to account for their disappearance, and not being able to do so, felt inexpressibly
chagrined. It now occurred to me that I suffered great uneasiness in the joint of my left ankle, and a
dim consciousness of my situation began to glimmer through my mind. But, strange to say! I was
neither astonished nor horror-stricken. If I felt any emotion at all, it was a kind of chuckling
satisfaction at the cleverness I was about to display in extricating myself from this dilemma; and I
never, for a moment, looked upon my ultimate safety as a question susceptible of doubt. For a few
minutes I remained wrapped in the profoundest meditation. I have a distinct recollection of frequently
compressing my lips, putting my forefinger to the side of my nose, and making use of other
gesticulations and grimaces common to men who, at ease in their arm-chairs, meditate upon matters of
intricacy or importance. Having, as I thought, sufficiently collected my ideas, I now, with great
caution and deliberation, put my hands behind my back, and unfastened the large iron buckle which
belonged to the waistband of my inexpressibles. This buckle had three teeth, which, being somewhat
rusty, turned with great difficulty on their axis. I brought them, however, after some trouble, at right
angles to the body of the buckle, and was glad to find them remain firm in that position. Holding the
instrument thus obtained within my teeth, I now proceeded to untie the knot of my cravat. I had to rest
several times before I could accomplish this manoeuvre, but it was at length accomplished. To one
end of the cravat I then made fast the buckle, and the other end I tied, for greater security, tightly
around my wrist. Drawing now my body upwards, with a prodigious exertion of muscular force, I
succeeded, at the very first trial, in throwing the buckle over the car, and entangling it, as I had
anticipated, in the circular rim of the wicker-work.
"My body was now inclined towards the side of the car, at an angle of about forty-five degrees;
but it must not be understood that I was therefore only forty-five degrees below the perpendicular. So
far from it, I still lay nearly level with the plane of the horizon; for the change of situation which I had
acquired, had forced the bottom of the car considerably outwards from my position, which was
accordingly one of the most imminent and deadly peril. It should be remembered, however, that when
I fell in the first instance, from the car, if I had fallen with my face turned toward the balloon, instead
of turned outwardly from it, as it actually was; or if, in the second place, the cord by which I was
suspended had chanced to hang over the upper edge, instead of through a crevice near the bottom of
the car,—I say it may be readily conceived that, in either of these supposed cases, I should have been
unable to accomplish even as much as I had now accomplished, and the wonderful adventures of
Hans Pfaall would have been utterly lost to posterity, I had therefore every reason to be grateful;
although, in point of fact, I was still too stupid to be anything at all, and hung for, perhaps, a quarter of
an hour in that extraordinary manner, without making the slightest farther exertion whatsoever, and in
a singularly tranquil state of idiotic enjoyment. But this feeling did not fail to die rapidly away, and
thereunto succeeded horror, and dismay, and a chilling sense of utter helplessness and ruin. In fact, the
blood so long accumulating in the vessels of my head and throat, and which had hitherto buoyed up
my spirits with madness and delirium, had now begun to retire within their proper channels, and the
distinctness which was thus added to my perception of the danger, merely served to deprive me of the
self-possession and courage to encounter it. But this weakness was, luckily for me, of no very long
duration. In good time came to my rescue the spirit of despair, and, with frantic cries and struggles, I
jerked my way bodily upwards, till at length, clutching with a vise-like grip the long-desired rim, I
writhed my person over it, and fell headlong and shuddering within the car.
"It was not until some time afterward that I recovered myself sufficiently to attend to the ordinary
cares of the balloon. I then, however, examined it with attention, and found it, to my great relief,
uninjured. My implements were all safe, and, fortunately, I had lost neither ballast nor provisions.
Indeed, I had so well secured them in their places, that such an accident was entirely out of the
question. Looking at my watch, I found it six o'clock. I was still rapidly ascending, and my barometer
gave a present altitude of three and three-quarter miles. Immediately beneath me in the ocean, lay a
small black object, slightly oblong in shape, seemingly about the size, and in every way bearing a
great resemblance to one of those childish toys called a domino. Bringing my telescope to bear upon
it, I plainly discerned it to be a British ninety four-gun ship, close-hauled, and pitching heavily in the
sea with her head to the W.S.W. Besides this ship, I saw nothing but the ocean and the sky, and the
sun, which had long arisen.
"It is now high time that I should explain to your Excellencies the object of my perilous voyage.
Your Excellencies will bear in mind that distressed circumstances in Rotterdam had at length driven
me to the resolution of committing suicide. It was not, however, that to life itself I had any, positive
disgust, but that I was harassed beyond endurance by the adventitious miseries attending my situation.
In this state of mind, wishing to live, yet wearied with life, the treatise at the stall of the bookseller
opened a resource to my imagination. I then finally made up my mind. I determined to depart, yet live
—to leave the world, yet continue to exist—in short, to drop enigmas, I resolved, let what would
ensue, to force a passage, if I could, to the moon. Now, lest I should be supposed more of a madman
than I actually am, I will detail, as well as I am able, the considerations which led me to believe that
an achievement of this nature, although without doubt difficult, and incontestably full of danger, was
not absolutely, to a bold spirit, beyond the confines of the possible.
"The moon's actual distance from the earth was the first thing to be attended to. Now, the mean or
average interval between the centres of the two planets is 59.9643 of the earth's equatorial radii, or
only about 237,000 miles. I say the mean or average interval. But it must be borne in mind that the
form of the moon's orbit being an ellipse of eccentricity amounting to no less than 0.05484 of the
major semi-axis of the ellipse itself, and the earth's centre being situated in its focus, if I could, in any
manner, contrive to meet the moon, as it were, in its perigee, the above mentioned distance would be
materially diminished. But, to say nothing at present of this possibility, it was very certain that, at all
events, from the 237,000 miles I would have to deduct the radius of the earth, say 4,000, and the
radius of the moon, say 1080, in all 5,080, leaving an actual interval to be traversed, under average
circumstances, of 231,920 miles. Now this, I reflected, was no very extraordinary distance.
Travelling on land has been repeatedly accomplished at the rate of thirty miles per hour, and indeed a
much greater speed may be anticipated. But even at this velocity, it would take me no more than 322
days to reach the surface of the moon. There were, however, many particulars inducing me to believe
that my average rate of travelling might possibly very much exceed that of thirty miles per hour, and,
as these considerations did not fail to make a deep impression upon my mind, I will mention them
more fully hereafter.
"The next point to be regarded was a matter of far greater importance. From indications afforded
by the barometer, we find that, in ascensions from the surface of the earth we have, at the height of
1,000 feet, left below us about one-thirtieth of the entire mass of atmospheric air, that at 10,600 we
have ascended through nearly one-third; and that at 18,000, which is not far from the elevation of
Cotopaxi, we have surmounted one-half the material, or, at all events, one-half the ponderable, body
of air incumbent upon our globe. It is also calculated that at an altitude not exceeding the hundredth
part of the earth's diameter—that is, not exceeding eighty miles—the rarefaction would be so
excessive that animal life could in no manner be sustained, and, moreover, that the most delicate
means we possess of ascertaining the presence of the atmosphere would be inadequate to assure us of
its existence. But I did not fail to perceive that these latter calculations are founded altogether on our
experimental knowledge of the properties of air, and the mechanical laws regulating its dilation and
compression, in what may be called, comparatively speaking, the immediate vicinity of the earth
itself; and, at the same time, it is taken for granted that animal life is and must be essentially incapable
of modification at any given unattainable distance from the surface. Now, all such reasoning and from
such data must, of course, be simply analogical. The greatest height ever reached by man was that of
25,000 feet, attained in the aeronautic expedition of Messieurs Gay-Lussac and Biot. This is a
moderate altitude, even when compared with the eighty miles in question; and I could not help
thinking that the subject admitted room for doubt and great latitude for speculation.
"But, in point of fact, an ascension being made to any given altitude, the ponderable quantity of air
surmounted in any farther ascension is by no means in proportion to the additional height ascended (as
may be plainly seen from what has been stated before), but in a ratio constantly decreasing. It is
therefore evident that, ascend as high as we may, we cannot, literally speaking, arrive at a limit
beyond which no atmosphere is to be found. It must exist, I argued; although it may exist in a state of
infinite rarefaction.
"On the other hand, I was aware that arguments have not been wanting to prove the existence of a
real and definite limit to the atmosphere, beyond which there is absolutely no air whatsoever. But a
circumstance which has been left out of view by those who contend for such a limit seemed to me,
although no positive refutation of their creed, still a point worthy very serious investigation. On
comparing the intervals between the successive arrivals of Encke's comet at its perihelion, after
giving credit, in the most exact manner, for all the disturbances due to the attractions of the planets, it
appears that the periods are gradually diminishing; that is to say, the major axis of the comet's ellipse
is growing shorter, in a slow but perfectly regular decrease. Now, this is precisely what ought to be
the case, if we suppose a resistance experienced from the comet from an extremely rare ethereal
medium pervading the regions of its orbit. For it is evident that such a medium must, in retarding the
comet's velocity, increase its centripetal, by weakening its centrifugal force. In other words, the sun's
attraction would be constantly attaining greater power, and the comet would be drawn nearer at every
revolution. Indeed, there is no other way of accounting for the variation in question. But again. The
real diameter of the same comet's nebulosity is observed to contract rapidly as it approaches the sun,
and dilate with equal rapidity in its departure towards its aphelion. Was I not justifiable in supposing
with M. Valz, that this apparent condensation of volume has its origin in the compression of the same
ethereal medium I have spoken of before, and which is only denser in proportion to its solar vicinity?
The lenticular-shaped phenomenon, also called the zodiacal light, was a matter worthy of attention.
This radiance, so apparent in the tropics, and which cannot be mistaken for any meteoric lustre,
extends from the horizon obliquely upward, and follows generally the direction of the sun's equator. It
appeared to me evidently in the nature of a rare atmosphere extending from the sun outward, beyond
the orbit of Venus at least, and I believed indefinitely farther. Indeed, this medium I could not suppose
confined to the path of the comet's ellipse, or to the immediate neighborhood of the sun. It was easy,
on the contrary, to imagine it pervading the entire regions of our planetary system, condensed into
what we call atmosphere at the planets themselves, and perhaps at some of them modified by
considerations, so to speak, purely geological.
"Having adopted this view of the subject, I had little further hesitation. Granting that on my
passage I should meet with atmosphere essentially the same as at the surface of the earth, I conceived
that, by means of the very ingenious apparatus of M. Grimm, I should readily be enabled to condense
it in sufficient quantity for the purposes of respiration. This would remove the chief obstacle in a
journey to the moon. I had indeed spent some money and great labor in adapting the apparatus to the
object intended, and confidently looked forward to its successful application, if I could manage to
complete the voyage within any reasonable period. This brings me back to the rate at which it might
be possible to travel.
"It is true that balloons, in the first stage of their ascensions from the earth, are known to rise with
a velocity comparatively moderate. Now, the power of elevation lies altogether in the superior
lightness of the gas in the balloon compared with the atmospheric air; and, at first sight, it does not
appear probable that, as the balloon acquires altitude, and consequently arrives successively in
atmospheric strata of densities rapidly diminishing—I say, it does not appear at all reasonable that, in
this its progress upwards, the original velocity should be accelerated. On the other hand, I was not
aware that, in any recorded ascension, a diminution was apparent in the absolute rate of ascent;
although such should have been the case, if on account of nothing else, on account of the escape of gas
through balloons ill-constructed, and varnished with no better material than the ordinary varnish. It
seemed, therefore, that the effect of such escape was only sufficient to counterbalance the effect of
some accelerating power. I now considered that, provided in my passage I found the medium I had
imagined, and provided that it should prove to be actually and essentially what we denominate
atmospheric air, it could make comparatively little difference at what extreme state of rarefaction I
should discover it—that is to say, in regard to my power of ascending—for the gas in the balloon
would not only be itself subject to rarefaction partially similar (in proportion to the occurrence of
which, I could suffer an escape of so much as would be requisite to prevent explosion), but, being
what it was, would, at all events, continue specifically lighter than any compound whatever of mere
nitrogen and oxygen. In the meantime, the force of gravitation would be constantly diminishing, in
proportion to the squares of the distances, and thus, with a velocity prodigiously accelerating, I
should at length arrive in those distant regions where the force of the earth's attraction would be
superseded by that of the moon. In accordance with these ideas, I did not think it worth while to
encumber myself with more provisions than would be sufficient for a period of forty days.
"There was still, however, another difficulty, which occasioned me some little disquietude. It has
been observed, that, in balloon ascensions to any considerable height, besides the pain attending
respiration, great uneasiness is experienced about the head and body, often accompanied with
bleeding at the nose, and other symptoms of an alarming kind, and growing more and more
inconvenient in proportion to the altitude attained. This was a reflection of a nature somewhat
startling. Was it not probable that these symptoms would increase indefinitely, or at least until
terminated by death itself? I finally thought not. Their origin was to be looked for in the progressive
removal of the customary atmospheric pressure upon the surface of the body, and consequent
distention of the superficial blood-vessels—not in any positive disorganization of the animal system,
as in the case of difficulty in breathing, where the atmospheric density is chemically insufficient for
the due renovation of blood in a ventricle of the heart. Unless for default of this renovation, I could
see no reason, therefore, why life could not be sustained even in a vacuum; for the expansion and
compression of chest, commonly called breathing, is action purely muscular, and the cause, not the
effect, of respiration. In a word, I conceived that, as the body should become habituated to the want of
atmospheric pressure, the sensations of pain would gradually diminish—and to endure them while
they continued, I relied with confidence upon the iron hardihood of my constitution.
"Thus, may it please your Excellencies, I have detailed some, though by no means all, the
considerations which led me to form the project of a lunar voyage. I shall now proceed to lay before
you the result of an attempt so apparently audacious in conception, and, at all events, so utterly
unparalleled in the annals of mankind.
"Having attained the altitude before mentioned, that is to say three miles and three-quarters, I
threw out from the car a quantity of feathers, and found that I still ascended with sufficient rapidity;
there was, therefore, no necessity for discharging any ballast. I was glad of this, for I wished to retain
with me as much weight as I could carry, for reasons which will be explained in the sequel. I as yet
suffered no bodily inconvenience, breathing with great freedom, and feeling no pain whatever in the
head. The cat was lying very demurely upon my coat, which I had taken off, and eyeing the pigeons
with an air of nonchalance. These latter being tied by the leg, to prevent their escape, were busily
employed in picking up some grains of rice scattered for them in the bottom of the car.
"At twenty minutes past six o'clock, the barometer showed an elevation of 26,400 feet, or five
miles to a fraction. The prospect seemed unbounded. Indeed, it is very easily calculated by means of
spherical geometry, what a great extent of the earth's area I beheld. The convex surface of any segment
of a sphere is, to the entire surface of the sphere itself, as the versed sine of the segment to the
diameter of the sphere. Now, in my case, the versed sine—that is to say, the thickness of the segment
beneath me—was about equal to my elevation, or the elevation of the point of sight above the surface.
'As five miles, then, to eight thousand,' would express the proportion of the earth's area seen by me. In
other words, I beheld as much as a sixteen-hundredth part of the whole surface of the globe. The sea
appeared unruffled as a mirror, although, by means of the spy-glass, I could perceive it to be in a state
of violent agitation. The ship was no longer visible, having drifted away, apparently to the eastward. I
now began to experience, at intervals, severe pain in the head, especially about the ears—still,
however, breathing with tolerable freedom. The cat and pigeons seemed to suffer no inconvenience
whatsoever.
"At twenty minutes before seven, the balloon entered a long series of dense cloud, which put me
to great trouble, by damaging my condensing apparatus and wetting me to the skin. This was, to be
sure, a singular recontre, for I had not believed it possible that a cloud of this nature could be
sustained at so great an elevation. I thought it best, however, to throw out two five-pound pieces of
ballast, reserving still a weight of one hundred and sixty-five pounds. Upon so doing, I soon rose
above the difficulty, and perceived immediately, that I had obtained a great increase in my rate of
ascent. In a few seconds after my leaving the cloud, a flash of vivid lightning shot from one end of it
to the other, and caused it to kindle up, throughout its vast extent, like a mass of ignited and glowing
charcoal. This, it must be remembered, was in the broad light of day. No fancy may picture the
sublimity which might have been exhibited by a similar phenomenon taking place amid the darkness
of the night. Hell itself might have been found a fitting image. Even as it was, my hair stood on end,
while I gazed afar down within the yawning abysses, letting imagination descend, as it were, and
stalk about in the strange vaulted halls, and ruddy gulfs, and red ghastly chasms of the hideous and
unfathomable fire. I had indeed made a narrow escape. Had the balloon remained a very short while
longer within the cloud—that is to say—had not the inconvenience of getting wet, determined me to
discharge the ballast, inevitable ruin would have been the consequence. Such perils, although little
considered, are perhaps the greatest which must be encountered in balloons. I had by this time,
however, attained too great an elevation to be any longer uneasy on this head.
"I was now rising rapidly, and by seven o'clock the barometer indicated an altitude of no less than
nine miles and a half. I began to find great difficulty in drawing my breath. My head, too, was
excessively painful; and, having felt for some time a moisture about my cheeks, I at length discovered
it to be blood, which was oozing quite fast from the drums of my ears. My eyes, also, gave me great
uneasiness. Upon passing the hand over them they seemed to have protruded from their sockets in no
inconsiderable degree; and all objects in the car, and even the balloon itself, appeared distorted to my
vision. These symptoms were more than I had expected, and occasioned me some alarm. At this
juncture, very imprudently, and without consideration, I threw out from the car three five-pound
pieces of ballast. The accelerated rate of ascent thus obtained, carried me too rapidly, and without
sufficient gradation, into a highly rarefied stratum of the atmosphere, and the result had nearly proved
fatal to my expedition and to myself. I was suddenly seized with a spasm which lasted for more than
five minutes, and even when this, in a measure, ceased, I could catch my breath only at long intervals,
and in a gasping manner—bleeding all the while copiously at the nose and ears, and even slightly at
the eyes. The pigeons appeared distressed in the extreme, and struggled to escape; while the cat
mewed piteously, and, with her tongue hanging out of her mouth, staggered to and fro in the car as if
under the influence of poison. I now too late discovered the great rashness of which I had been guilty
in discharging the ballast, and my agitation was excessive. I anticipated nothing less than death, and
death in a few minutes. The physical suffering I underwent contributed also to render me nearly
incapable of making any exertion for the preservation of my life. I had, indeed, little power of
reflection left, and the violence of the pain in my head seemed to be greatly on the increase. Thus I
found that my senses would shortly give way altogether, and I had already clutched one of the valve
ropes with the view of attempting a descent, when the recollection of the trick I had played the three
creditors, and the possible consequences to myself, should I return, operated to deter me for the
moment. I lay down in the bottom of the car, and endeavored to collect my faculties. In this I so far
succeeded as to determine upon the experiment of losing blood. Having no lancet, however, I was
constrained to perform the operation in the best manner I was able, and finally succeeded in opening a
vein in my right arm, with the blade of my penknife. The blood had hardly commenced flowing when I
experienced a sensible relief, and by the time I had lost about half a moderate basin full, most of the
worst symptoms had abandoned me entirely. I nevertheless did not think it expedient to attempt getting
on my feet immediately; but, having tied up my arm as well as I could, I lay still for about a quarter of
an hour. At the end of this time I arose, and found myself freer from absolute pain of any kind than I
had been during the last hour and a quarter of my ascension. The difficulty of breathing, however, was
diminished in a very slight degree, and I found that it would soon be positively necessary to make use
of my condenser. In the meantime, looking toward the cat, who was again snugly stowed away upon
my coat, I discovered to my infinite surprise, that she had taken the opportunity of my indisposition to
bring into light a litter of three little kittens. This was an addition to the number of passengers on my
part altogether unexpected; but I was pleased at the occurrence. It would afford me a chance of
bringing to a kind of test the truth of a surmise, which, more than anything else, had influenced me in
attempting this ascension. I had imagined that the habitual endurance of the atmospheric pressure at
the surface of the earth was the cause, or nearly so, of the pain attending animal existence at a
distance above the surface. Should the kittens be found to suffer uneasiness in an equal degree with
their mother, I must consider my theory in fault, but a failure to do so I should look upon as a strong
confirmation of my idea.
"By eight o'clock I had actually attained an elevation of seventeen miles above the surface of the
earth. Thus it seemed to me evident that my rate of ascent was not only on the increase, but that the
progression would have been apparent in a slight degree even had I not discharged the ballast which I
did. The pains in my head and ears returned, at intervals, with violence, and I still continued to bleed
occasionally at the nose; but, upon the whole, I suffered much less than might have been expected. I
breathed, however, at every moment, with more and more difficulty, and each inhalation was attended
with a troublesome spasmodic action of the chest. I now unpacked the condensing apparatus, and got
it ready for immediate use.
"The view of the earth, at this period of my ascension, was beautiful indeed. To the westward, the
northward, and the southward, as far as I could see, lay a boundless sheet of apparently unruffled
ocean, which every moment gained a deeper and a deeper tint of blue and began already to assume a
slight appearance of convexity. At a vast distance to the eastward, although perfectly discernible,
extended the islands of Great Britain, the entire Atlantic coasts of France and Spain, with a small
portion of the northern part of the continent of Africa. Of individual edifices not a trace could be
discovered, and the proudest cities of mankind had utterly faded away from the face of the earth.
From the rock of Gibraltar, now dwindled into a dim speck, the dark Mediterranean sea, dotted with
shining islands as the heaven is dotted with stars, spread itself out to the eastward as far as my vision
extended, until its entire mass of waters seemed at length to tumble headlong over the abyss of the
horizon, and I found myself listening on tiptoe for the echoes of the mighty cataract. Overhead, the sky
was of a jetty black, and the stars were brilliantly visible.
"The pigeons about this time seeming to undergo much suffering, I determined upon giving them
their liberty. I first untied one of them, a beautiful gray-mottled pigeon, and placed him upon the rim
of the wicker-work. He appeared extremely uneasy, looking anxiously around him, fluttering his
wings, and making a loud cooing noise, but could not be persuaded to trust himself from off the car. I
took him up at last, and threw him to about half a dozen yards from the balloon. He made, however,
no attempt to descend as I had expected, but struggled with great vehemence to get back, uttering at
the same time very shrill and piercing cries. He at length succeeded in regaining his former station on
the rim, but had hardly done so when his head dropped upon his breast, and he fell dead within the
car. The other one did not prove so unfortunate. To prevent his following the example of his
companion, and accomplishing a return, I threw him downward with all my force, and was pleased to
find him continue his descent, with great velocity, making use of his wings with ease, and in a
perfectly natural manner. In a very short time he was out of sight, and I have no doubt he reached
home in safety. Puss, who seemed in a great measure recovered from her illness, now made a hearty
meal of the dead bird and then went to sleep with much apparent satisfaction. Her kittens were quite
lively, and so far evinced not the slightest sign of any uneasiness whatever.
"At a quarter-past eight, being no longer able to draw breath without the most intolerable pain, I
proceeded forthwith to adjust around the car the apparatus belonging to the condenser. This apparatus
will require some little explanation, and your Excellencies will please to bear in mind that my object,
in the first place, was to surround myself and cat entirely with a barricade against the highly rarefied
atmosphere in which I was existing, with the intention of introducing within this barricade, by means
of my condenser, a quantity of this same atmosphere sufficiently condensed for the purposes of
respiration. With this object in view I had prepared a very strong perfectly air-tight, but flexible gumelastic bag. In this bag, which was of sufficient dimensions, the entire car was in a manner placed.
That is to say, it (the bag) was drawn over the whole bottom of the car, up its sides, and so on, along
the outside of the ropes, to the upper rim or hoop where the net-work is attached. Having pulled the
bag up in this way, and formed a complete enclosure on all sides, and at bottom, it was now
necessary to fasten up its top or mouth, by passing its material over the hoop of the net-work—in
other words, between the net-work and the hoop. But if the net-work were separated from the hoop to
admit this passage, what was to sustain the car in the meantime? Now the net-work was not
permanently fastened to the hoop, but attached by a series of running loops or nooses. I therefore
undid only a few of these loops at one time, leaving the car suspended by the remainder. Having thus
inserted a portion of the cloth forming the upper part of the bag, I refastened the loops—not to the
hoop, for that would have been impossible, since the cloth now intervened—but to a series of large
buttons, affixed to the cloth itself, about three feet below the mouth of the bag, the intervals between
the buttons having been made to correspond to the intervals between the loops. This done, a few more
of the loops were unfastened from the rim, a farther portion of the cloth introduced, and the
disengaged loops then connected with their proper buttons. In this way it was possible to insert the
whole upper part of the bag between the net-work and the hoop. It is evident that the hoop would now
drop down within the car, while the whole weight of the car itself, with all its contents, would be
held up merely by the strength of the buttons. This, at first sight, would seem an inadequate
dependence; but it was by no means so, for the buttons were not only very strong in themselves, but so
close together that a very slight portion of the whole weight was supported by any one of them.
Indeed, had the car and contents been three times heavier than they were, I should not have been at all
uneasy. I now raised up the hoop again within the covering of gum-elastic, and propped it at nearly its
former height by means of three light poles prepared for the occasion. This was done, of course, to
keep the bag distended at the top, and to preserve the lower part of the net-work in its proper
situation. All that now remained was to fasten up the mouth of the enclosure; and this was readily
accomplished by gathering the folds of the material together, and twisting them up very tightly on the
inside by means of a kind of stationary tourniquet.
"In the sides of the covering thus adjusted round the car, had been inserted three circular panes of
thick but clear glass, through which I could see without difficulty around me in every horizontal
direction. In that portion of the cloth forming the bottom, was likewise, a fourth window, of the same
kind, and corresponding with a small aperture in the floor of the car itself. This enabled me to see
perpendicularly down, but having found it impossible to place any similar contrivance overhead, on
account of the peculiar manner of closing up the opening there, and the consequent wrinkles in the
cloth, I could expect to see no objects situated directly in my zenith. This, of course, was a matter of
little consequence; for had I even been able to place a window at top, the balloon itself would have
prevented my making any use of it.
"About a foot below one of the side windows was a circular opening, eight inches in diameter,
and fitted with a brass rim adapted in its inner edge to the windings of a screw. In this rim was
screwed the large tube of the condenser, the body of the machine being, of course, within the chamber
of gum-elastic. Through this tube a quantity of the rare atmosphere circumjacent being drawn by
means of a vacuum created in the body of the machine, was thence discharged, in a state of
condensation, to mingle with the thin air already in the chamber. This operation being repeated
several times, at length filled the chamber with atmosphere proper for all the purposes of respiration.
But in so confined a space it would, in a short time, necessarily become foul, and unfit for use from
frequent contact with the lungs. It was then ejected by a small valve at the bottom of the car—the
dense air readily sinking into the thinner atmosphere below. To avoid the inconvenience of making a
total vacuum at any moment within the chamber, this purification was never accomplished all at once,
but in a gradual manner—the valve being opened only for a few seconds, then closed again, until one
or two strokes from the pump of the condenser had supplied the place of the atmosphere ejected. For
the sake of experiment I had put the cat and kittens in a small basket, and suspended it outside the car
to a button at the bottom, close by the valve, through which I could feed them at any moment when
necessary. I did this at some little risk, and before closing the mouth of the chamber, by reaching
under the car with one of the poles before mentioned to which a hook had been attached.
"By the time I had fully completed these arrangements and filled the chamber as explained, it
wanted only ten minutes of nine o'clock. During the whole period of my being thus employed, I
endured the most terrible distress from difficulty of respiration, and bitterly did I repent the
negligence or rather fool-hardiness, of which I had been guilty, of putting off to the last moment a
matter of so much importance. But having at length accomplished it, I soon began to reap the benefit
of my invention. Once again I breathed with perfect freedom and ease—and indeed why should I not?
I was also agreeably surprised to find myself, in a great measure, relieved from the violent pains
which had hitherto tormented me. A slight headache, accompanied with a sensation of fulness or
distention about the wrists, the ankles, and the throat, was nearly all of which I had now to complain.
Thus it seemed evident that a greater part of the uneasiness attending the removal of atmospheric
pressure had actually worn off, as I had expected, and that much of the pain endured for the last two
hours should have been attributed altogether to the effects of a deficient respiration.
"At twenty minutes before nine o'clock—that is to say, a short time prior to my closing up the
mouth of the chamber, the mercury attained its limit, or ran down, in the barometer, which, as I
mentioned before, was one of an extended construction. It then indicated an altitude on my part of
132,000 feet, or five-and-twenty miles, and I consequently surveyed at that time an extent of the
earth's area amounting to no less than the three hundred-and-twentieth part of its entire superficies. At
nine o'clock I had again lost sight of land to the eastward, but not before I became aware that the
balloon was drifting rapidly to the N. N. W. The convexity of the ocean beneath me was very evident
indeed, although my view was often interrupted by the masses of cloud which floated to and fro. I
observed now that even the lightest vapors never rose to more than ten miles above the level of the
sea.
"At half past nine I tried the experiment of throwing out a handful of feathers through the valve.
They did not float as I had expected; but dropped down perpendicularly, like a bullet, en masse, and
with the greatest velocity—being out of sight in a very few seconds. I did not at first know what to
make of this extraordinary phenomenon; not being able to believe that my rate of ascent had, of a
sudden, met with so prodigious an acceleration. But it soon occurred to me that the atmosphere was
now far too rare to sustain even the feathers; that they actually fell, as they appeared to do, with great
rapidity; and that I had been surprised by the united velocities of their descent and my own elevation.
"By ten o'clock I found that I had very little to occupy my immediate attention. Affairs went
swimmingly, and I believed the balloon to be going upward with a speed increasing momently
although I had no longer any means of ascertaining the progression of the increase. I suffered no pain
or uneasiness of any kind, and enjoyed better spirits than I had at any period since my departure from
Rotterdam, busying myself now in examining the state of my various apparatus, and now in
regenerating the atmosphere within the chamber. This latter point I determined to attend to at regular
intervals of forty minutes, more on account of the preservation of my health, than from so frequent a
renovation being absolutely necessary. In the meanwhile I could not help making anticipations. Fancy
revelled in the wild and dreamy regions of the moon. Imagination, feeling herself for once
unshackled, roamed at will among the ever-changing wonders of a shadowy and unstable land. Now
there were hoary and time-honored forests, and craggy precipices, and waterfalls tumbling with a
loud noise into abysses without a bottom. Then I came suddenly into still noonday solitudes, where no
wind of heaven ever intruded, and where vast meadows of poppies, and slender, lily-looking flowers
spread themselves out a weary distance, all silent and motionless forever. Then again I journeyed far
down away into another country where it was all one dim and vague lake, with a boundary line of
clouds. And out of this melancholy water arose a forest of tall eastern trees, like a wilderness of
dreams. And I have in mind that the shadows of the trees which fell upon the lake remained not on the
surface where they fell, but sunk slowly and steadily down, and commingled with the waves, while
from the trunks of the trees other shadows were continually coming out, and taking the place of their
brothers thus entombed. "This then," I said thoughtfully, "is the very reason why the waters of this lake
grow blacker with age, and more melancholy as the hours run on." But fancies such as these were not
the sole possessors of my brain. Horrors of a nature most stern and most appalling would too
frequently obtrude themselves upon my mind, and shake the innermost depths of my soul with the bare
supposition of their possibility. Yet I would not suffer my thoughts for any length of time to dwell
upon these latter speculations, rightly judging the real and palpable dangers of the voyage sufficient
for my undivided attention.
"At five o'clock, p.m., being engaged in regenerating the atmosphere within the chamber, I took
that opportunity of observing the cat and kittens through the valve. The cat herself appeared to suffer
again very much, and I had no hesitation in attributing her uneasiness chiefly to a difficulty in
breathing; but my experiment with the kittens had resulted very strangely. I had expected, of course, to
see them betray a sense of pain, although in a less degree than their mother, and this would have been
sufficient to confirm my opinion concerning the habitual endurance of atmospheric pressure. But I was
not prepared to find them, upon close examination, evidently enjoying a high degree of health,
breathing with the greatest ease and perfect regularity, and evincing not the slightest sign of any
uneasiness whatever. I could only account for all this by extending my theory, and supposing that the
highly rarefied atmosphere around might perhaps not be, as I had taken for granted, chemically
insufficient for the purposes of life, and that a person born in such a medium might, possibly, be
unaware of any inconvenience attending its inhalation, while, upon removal to the denser strata near
the earth, he might endure tortures of a similar nature to those I had so lately experienced. It has since
been to me a matter of deep regret that an awkward accident, at this time, occasioned me the loss of
my little family of cats, and deprived me of the insight into this matter which a continued experiment
might have afforded. In passing my hand through the valve, with a cup of water for the old puss, the
sleeves of my shirt became entangled in the loop which sustained the basket, and thus, in a moment,
loosened it from the bottom. Had the whole actually vanished into air, it could not have shot from my
sight in a more abrupt and instantaneous manner. Positively, there could not have intervened the tenth
part of a second between the disengagement of the basket and its absolute and total disappearance
with all that it contained. My good wishes followed it to the earth, but of course, I had no hope that
either cat or kittens would ever live to tell the tale of their misfortune.
"At six o'clock, I perceived a great portion of the earth's visible area to the eastward involved in
thick shadow, which continued to advance with great rapidity, until, at five minutes before seven, the
whole surface in view was enveloped in the darkness of night. It was not, however, until long after
this time that the rays of the setting sun ceased to illumine the balloon; and this circumstance, although
of course fully anticipated, did not fail to give me an infinite deal of pleasure. It was evident that, in
the morning, I should behold the rising luminary many hours at least before the citizens of Rotterdam,
in spite of their situation so much farther to the eastward, and thus, day after day, in proportion to the
height ascended, would I enjoy the light of the sun for a longer and a longer period. I now determined
to keep a journal of my passage, reckoning the days from one to twenty-four hours continuously,
without taking into consideration the intervals of darkness.
"At ten o'clock, feeling sleepy, I determined to lie down for the rest of the night; but here a
difficulty presented itself, which, obvious as it may appear, had escaped my attention up to the very
moment of which I am now speaking. If I went to sleep as I proposed, how could the atmosphere in
the chamber be regenerated in the interim? To breathe it for more than an hour, at the farthest, would
be a matter of impossibility, or, if even this term could be extended to an hour and a quarter, the most
ruinous consequences might ensue. The consideration of this dilemma gave me no little disquietude;
and it will hardly be believed, that, after the dangers I had undergone, I should look upon this
business in so serious a light, as to give up all hope of accomplishing my ultimate design, and finally
make up my mind to the necessity of a descent. But this hesitation was only momentary. I reflected that
man is the veriest slave of custom, and that many points in the routine of his existence are deemed
essentially important, which are only so at all by his having rendered them habitual. It was very
certain that I could not do without sleep; but I might easily bring myself to feel no inconvenience from
being awakened at intervals of an hour during the whole period of my repose. It would require but
five minutes at most to regenerate the atmosphere in the fullest manner, and the only real difficulty
was to contrive a method of arousing myself at the proper moment for so doing. But this was a
question which, I am willing to confess, occasioned me no little trouble in its solution. To be sure, I
had heard of the student who, to prevent his falling asleep over his books, held in one hand a ball of
copper, the din of whose descent into a basin of the same metal on the floor beside his chair, served
effectually to startle him up, if, at any moment, he should be overcome with drowsiness. My own
case, however, was very different indeed, and left me no room for any similar idea; for I did not wish
to keep awake, but to be aroused from slumber at regular intervals of time. I at length hit upon the
following expedient, which, simple as it may seem, was hailed by me, at the moment of discovery, as
an invention fully equal to that of the telescope, the steam-engine, or the art of printing itself.
"It is necessary to premise, that the balloon, at the elevation now attained, continued its course
upward with an even and undeviating ascent, and the car consequently followed with a steadiness so
perfect that it would have been impossible to detect in it the slightest vacillation whatever. This
circumstance favored me greatly in the project I now determined to adopt. My supply of water had
been put on board in kegs containing five gallons each, and ranged very securely around the interior
of the car. I unfastened one of these, and taking two ropes tied them tightly across the rim of the
wicker-work from one side to the other; placing them about a foot apart and parallel so as to form a
kind of shelf, upon which I placed the keg, and steadied it in a horizontal position. About eight inches
immediately below these ropes, and four feet from the bottom of the car I fastened another shelf—but
made of thin plank, being the only similar piece of wood I had. Upon this latter shelf, and exactly
beneath one of the rims of the keg, a small earthern pitcher was deposited. I now bored a hole in the
end of the keg over the pitcher, and fitted in a plug of soft wood, cut in a tapering or conical shape.
This plug I pushed in or pulled out, as might happen, until, after a few experiments, it arrived at that
exact degree of tightness, at which the water, oozing from the hole, and falling into the pitcher below,
would fill the latter to the brim in the period of sixty minutes. This, of course, was a matter briefly
and easily ascertained, by noticing the proportion of the pitcher filled in any given time. Having
arranged all this, the rest of the plan is obvious. My bed was so contrived upon the floor of the car, as
to bring my head, in lying down, immediately below the mouth of the pitcher. It was evident, that, at
the expiration of an hour, the pitcher, getting full, would be forced to run over, and to run over at the
mouth, which was somewhat lower than the rim. It was also evident, that the water thus falling from a
height of more than four feet, could not do otherwise than fall upon my face, and that the sure
consequences would be, to waken me up instantaneously, even from the soundest slumber in the
world.
"It was fully eleven by the time I had completed these arrangements, and I immediately betook
myself to bed, with full confidence in the efficiency of my invention. Nor in this matter was I
disappointed. Punctually every sixty minutes was I aroused by my trusty chronometer, when, having
emptied the pitcher into the bung-hole of the keg, and performed the duties of the condenser, I retired
again to bed. These regular interruptions to my slumber caused me even less discomfort than I had
anticipated; and when I finally arose for the day, it was seven o'clock, and the sun had attained many
degrees above the line of my horizon.
"April 3d. I found the balloon at an immense height indeed, and the earth's apparent convexity
increased in a material degree. Below me in the ocean lay a cluster of black specks, which
undoubtedly were islands. Far away to the northward I perceived a thin, white, and exceedingly
brilliant line, or streak, on the edge of the horizon, and I had no hesitation in supposing it to be the
southern disk of the ices of the Polar Sea. My curiosity was greatly excited, for I had hopes of passing
on much farther to the north, and might possibly, at some period, find myself placed directly above the
Pole itself. I now lamented that my great elevation would, in this case, prevent my taking as accurate
a survey as I could wish. Much, however, might be ascertained. Nothing else of an extraordinary
nature occurred during the day. My apparatus all continued in good order, and the balloon still
ascended without any perceptible vacillation. The cold was intense, and obliged me to wrap up
closely in an overcoat. When darkness came over the earth, I betook myself to bed, although it was
for many hours afterward broad daylight all around my immediate situation. The water-clock was
punctual in its duty, and I slept until next morning soundly, with the exception of the periodical
interruption.
"April 4th. Arose in good health and spirits, and was astonished at the singular change which had
taken place in the appearance of the sea. It had lost, in a great measure, the deep tint of blue it had
hitherto worn, being now of a grayish-white, and of a lustre dazzling to the eye. The islands were no
longer visible; whether they had passed down the horizon to the southeast, or whether my increasing
elevation had left them out of sight, it is impossible to say. I was inclined, however, to the latter
opinion. The rim of ice to the northward was growing more and more apparent. Cold by no means so
intense. Nothing of importance occurred, and I passed the day in reading, having taken care to supply
myself with books.
"April 5th. Beheld the singular phenomenon of the sun rising while nearly the whole visible
surface of the earth continued to be involved in darkness. In time, however, the light spread itself over
all, and I again saw the line of ice to the northward. It was now very distinct, and appeared of a much
darker hue than the waters of the ocean. I was evidently approaching it, and with great rapidity.
Fancied I could again distinguish a strip of land to the eastward, and one also to the westward, but
could not be certain. Weather moderate. Nothing of any consequence happened during the day. Went
early to bed.
"April 6th. Was surprised at finding the rim of ice at a very moderate distance, and an immense
field of the same material stretching away off to the horizon in the north. It was evident that if the
balloon held its present course, it would soon arrive above the Frozen Ocean, and I had now little
doubt of ultimately seeing the Pole. During the whole of the day I continued to near the ice. Toward
night the limits of my horizon very suddenly and materially increased, owing undoubtedly to the
earth's form being that of an oblate spheroid, and my arriving above the flattened regions in the
vicinity of the Arctic circle. When darkness at length overtook me, I went to bed in great anxiety,
fearing to pass over the object of so much curiosity when I should have no opportunity of observing it.
"April 7th. Arose early, and, to my great joy, at length beheld what there could be no hesitation in
supposing the northern Pole itself. It was there, beyond a doubt, and immediately beneath my feet; but,
alas! I had now ascended to so vast a distance, that nothing could with accuracy be discerned. Indeed,
to judge from the progression of the numbers indicating my various altitudes, respectively, at different
periods, between six A.M. on the second of April, and twenty minutes before nine A.M. of the same
day (at which time the barometer ran down), it might be fairly inferred that the balloon had now, at
four o'clock in the morning of April the seventh, reached a height of not less, certainly, than 7,254
miles above the surface of the sea. This elevation may appear immense, but the estimate upon which it
is calculated gave a result in all probability far inferior to the truth. At all events I undoubtedly
beheld the whole of the earth's major diameter; the entire northern hemisphere lay beneath me like a
chart orthographically projected: and the great circle of the equator itself formed the boundary line of
my horizon. Your Excellencies may, however, readily imagine that the confined regions hitherto
unexplored within the limits of the Arctic circle, although situated directly beneath me, and therefore
seen without any appearance of being foreshortened, were still, in themselves, comparatively too
diminutive, and at too great a distance from the point of sight, to admit of any very accurate
examination. Nevertheless, what could be seen was of a nature singular and exciting. Northwardly
from that huge rim before mentioned, and which, with slight qualification, may be called the limit of
human discovery in these regions, one unbroken, or nearly unbroken, sheet of ice continues to extend.
In the first few degrees of this its progress, its surface is very sensibly flattened, farther on depressed
into a plane, and finally, becoming not a little concave, it terminates, at the Pole itself, in a circular
centre, sharply defined, whose apparent diameter subtended at the balloon an angle of about sixty-five
seconds, and whose dusky hue, varying in intensity, was, at all times, darker than any other spot upon
the visible hemisphere, and occasionally deepened into the most absolute and impenetrable
blackness. Farther than this, little could be ascertained. By twelve o'clock the circular centre had
materially decreased in circumference, and by seven P.M. I lost sight of it entirely; the balloon
passing over the western limb of the ice, and floating away rapidly in the direction of the equator.
"April 8th. Found a sensible diminution in the earth's apparent diameter, besides a material
alteration in its general color and appearance. The whole visible area partook in different degrees of
a tint of pale yellow, and in some portions had acquired a brilliancy even painful to the eye. My view
downward was also considerably impeded by the dense atmosphere in the vicinity of the surface
being loaded with clouds, between whose masses I could only now and then obtain a glimpse of the
earth itself. This difficulty of direct vision had troubled me more or less for the last forty-eight hours;
but my present enormous elevation brought closer together, as it were, the floating bodies of vapor,
and the inconvenience became, of course, more and more palpable in proportion to my ascent.
Nevertheless, I could easily perceive that the balloon now hovered above the range of great lakes in
the continent of North America, and was holding a course, due south, which would bring me to the
tropics. This circumstance did not fail to give me the most heartful satisfaction, and I hailed it as a
happy omen of ultimate success. Indeed, the direction I had hitherto taken, had filled me with
uneasiness; for it was evident that, had I continued it much longer, there would have been no
possibility of my arriving at the moon at all, whose orbit is inclined to the ecliptic at only the small
angle of 5 degrees 8' 48".
"April 9th. To-day the earth's diameter was greatly diminished, and the color of the surface
assumed hourly a deeper tint of yellow. The balloon kept steadily on her course to the southward, and
arrived, at nine P.M., over the northern edge of the Mexican Gulf.
"April 10th. I was suddenly aroused from slumber, about five o'clock this morning, by a loud,
crackling, and terrific sound, for which I could in no manner account. It was of very brief duration,
but, while it lasted resembled nothing in the world of which I had any previous experience. It is
needless to say that I became excessively alarmed, having, in the first instance, attributed the noise to
the bursting of the balloon. I examined all my apparatus, however, with great attention, and could
discover nothing out of order. Spent a great part of the day in meditating upon an occurrence so
extraordinary, but could find no means whatever of accounting for it. Went to bed dissatisfied, and in
a state of great anxiety and agitation.
"April 11th. Found a startling diminution in the apparent diameter of the earth, and a considerable
increase, now observable for the first time, in that of the moon itself, which wanted only a few days
of being full. It now required long and excessive labor to condense within the chamber sufficient
atmospheric air for the sustenance of life.
"April 12th. A singular alteration took place in regard to the direction of the balloon, and although
fully anticipated, afforded me the most unequivocal delight. Having reached, in its former course,
about the twentieth parallel of southern latitude, it turned off suddenly, at an acute angle, to the
eastward, and thus proceeded throughout the day, keeping nearly, if not altogether, in the exact plane
of the lunar elipse. What was worthy of remark, a very perceptible vacillation in the car was a
consequence of this change of route—a vacillation which prevailed, in a more or less degree, for a
period of many hours.
"April 13th. Was again very much alarmed by a repetition of the loud, crackling noise which
terrified me on the tenth. Thought long upon the subject, but was unable to form any satisfactory
conclusion. Great decrease in the earth's apparent diameter, which now subtended from the balloon an
angle of very little more than twenty-five degrees. The moon could not be seen at all, being nearly in
my zenith. I still continued in the plane of the elipse, but made little progress to the eastward.
"April 14th. Extremely rapid decrease in the diameter of the earth. To-day I became strongly
impressed with the idea, that the balloon was now actually running up the line of apsides to the point
of perigee—in other words, holding the direct course which would bring it immediately to the moon
in that part of its orbit the nearest to the earth. The moon itself was directly overhead, and
consequently hidden from my view. Great and long-continued labor necessary for the condensation of
the atmosphere.
"April 15th. Not even the outlines of continents and seas could now be traced upon the earth with
anything approaching distinctness. About twelve o'clock I became aware, for the third time, of that
appalling sound which had so astonished me before. It now, however, continued for some moments,
and gathered intensity as it continued. At length, while, stupefied and terror-stricken, I stood in
expectation of I knew not what hideous destruction, the car vibrated with excessive violence, and a
gigantic and flaming mass of some material which I could not distinguish, came with a voice of a
thousand thunders, roaring and booming by the balloon. When my fears and astonishment had in some
degree subsided, I had little difficulty in supposing it to be some mighty volcanic fragment ejected
from that world to which I was so rapidly approaching, and, in all probability, one of that singular
class of substances occasionally picked up on the earth, and termed meteoric stones for want of a
better appellation.
"April 16th. To-day, looking upward as well as I could, through each of the side windows
alternately, I beheld, to my great delight, a very small portion of the moon's disk protruding, as it
were, on all sides beyond the huge circumference of the balloon. My agitation was extreme; for I had
now little doubt of soon reaching the end of my perilous voyage. Indeed, the labor now required by
the condenser had increased to a most oppressive degree, and allowed me scarcely any respite from
exertion. Sleep was a matter nearly out of the question. I became quite ill, and my frame trembled
with exhaustion. It was impossible that human nature could endure this state of intense suffering much
longer. During the now brief interval of darkness a meteoric stone again passed in my vicinity, and the
frequency of these phenomena began to occasion me much apprehension.
"April 17th. This morning proved an epoch in my voyage. It will be remembered that, on the
thirteenth, the earth subtended an angular breadth of twenty-five degrees. On the fourteenth this had
greatly diminished; on the fifteenth a still more remarkable decrease was observable; and, on retiring
on the night of the sixteenth, I had noticed an angle of no more than about seven degrees and fifteen
minutes. What, therefore, must have been my amazement, on awakening from a brief and disturbed
slumber, on the morning of this day, the seventeenth, at finding the surface beneath me so suddenly and
wonderfully augmented in volume, as to subtend no less than thirty-nine degrees in apparent angular
diameter! I was thunderstruck! No words can give any adequate idea of the extreme, the absolute
horror and astonishment, with which I was seized possessed, and altogether overwhelmed. My knees
tottered beneath me—my teeth chattered—my hair started up on end. "The balloon, then, had actually
burst!" These were the first tumultuous ideas that hurried through my mind: "The balloon had
positively burst!—I was falling—falling with the most impetuous, the most unparalleled velocity! To
judge by the immense distance already so quickly passed over, it could not be more than ten minutes,
at the farthest, before I should meet the surface of the earth, and be hurled into annihilation!" But at
length reflection came to my relief. I paused; I considered; and I began to doubt. The matter was
impossible. I could not in any reason have so rapidly come down. Besides, although I was evidently
approaching the surface below me, it was with a speed by no means commensurate with the velocity I
had at first so horribly conceived. This consideration served to calm the perturbation of my mind, and
I finally succeeded in regarding the phenomenon in its proper point of view. In fact, amazement must
have fairly deprived me of my senses, when I could not see the vast difference, in appearance,
between the surface below me, and the surface of my mother earth. The latter was indeed over my
head, and completely hidden by the balloon, while the moon—the moon itself in all its glory—lay
beneath me, and at my feet.
"The stupor and surprise produced in my mind by this extraordinary change in the posture of
affairs was perhaps, after all, that part of the adventure least susceptible of explanation. For the
bouleversement in itself was not only natural and inevitable, but had been long actually anticipated as
a circumstance to be expected whenever I should arrive at that exact point of my voyage where the
attraction of the planet should be superseded by the attraction of the satellite—or, more precisely,
where the gravitation of the balloon toward the earth should be less powerful than its gravitation
toward the moon. To be sure I arose from a sound slumber, with all my senses in confusion, to the
contemplation of a very startling phenomenon, and one which, although expected, was not expected at
the moment. The revolution itself must, of course, have taken place in an easy and gradual manner,
and it is by no means clear that, had I even been awake at the time of the occurrence, I should have
been made aware of it by any internal evidence of an inversion—that is to say, by any inconvenience
or disarrangement, either about my person or about my apparatus.
"It is almost needless to say that, upon coming to a due sense of my situation, and emerging from
the terror which had absorbed every faculty of my soul, my attention was, in the first place, wholly
directed to the contemplation of the general physical appearance of the moon. It lay beneath me like a
chart—and although I judged it to be still at no inconsiderable distance, the indentures of its surface
were defined to my vision with a most striking and altogether unaccountable distinctness. The entire
absence of ocean or sea, and indeed of any lake or river, or body of water whatsoever, struck me, at
first glance, as the most extraordinary feature in its geological condition. Yet, strange to say, I beheld
vast level regions of a character decidedly alluvial, although by far the greater portion of the
hemisphere in sight was covered with innumerable volcanic mountains, conical in shape, and having
more the appearance of artificial than of natural protuberance. The highest among them does not
exceed three and three-quarter miles in perpendicular elevation; but a map of the volcanic districts of
the Campi Phlegraei would afford to your Excellencies a better idea of their general surface than any
unworthy description I might think proper to attempt. The greater part of them were in a state of
evident eruption, and gave me fearfully to understand their fury and their power, by the repeated
thunders of the miscalled meteoric stones, which now rushed upward by the balloon with a frequency
more and more appalling.
"April 18th. To-day I found an enormous increase in the moon's apparent bulk—and the evidently
accelerated velocity of my descent began to fill me with alarm. It will be remembered, that, in the
earliest stage of my speculations upon the possibility of a passage to the moon, the existence, in its
vicinity, of an atmosphere, dense in proportion to the bulk of the planet, had entered largely into my
calculations; this too in spite of many theories to the contrary, and, it may be added, in spite of a
general disbelief in the existence of any lunar atmosphere at all. But, in addition to what I have
already urged in regard to Encke's comet and the zodiacal light, I had been strengthened in my opinion
by certain observations of Mr. Schroeter, of Lilienthal. He observed the moon when two days and a
half old, in the evening soon after sunset, before the dark part was visible, and continued to watch it
until it became visible. The two cusps appeared tapering in a very sharp faint prolongation, each
exhibiting its farthest extremity faintly illuminated by the solar rays, before any part of the dark
hemisphere was visible. Soon afterward, the whole dark limb became illuminated. This prolongation
of the cusps beyond the semicircle, I thought, must have arisen from the refraction of the sun's rays by
the moon's atmosphere. I computed, also, the height of the atmosphere (which could refract light
enough into its dark hemisphere to produce a twilight more luminous than the light reflected from the
earth when the moon is about 32 degrees from the new) to be 1,356 Paris feet; in this view, I
supposed the greatest height capable of refracting the solar ray, to be 5,376 feet. My ideas on this
topic had also received confirmation by a passage in the eighty-second volume of the Philosophical
Transactions, in which it is stated that at an occultation of Jupiter's satellites, the third disappeared
after having been about 1" or 2" of time indistinct, and the fourth became indiscernible near the limb.
"Cassini frequently observed Saturn, Jupiter, and the fixed stars, when approaching the moon to
occultation, to have their circular figure changed into an oval one; and, in other occultations, he found
no alteration of figure at all. Hence it might be supposed, that at some times and not at others, there is
a dense matter encompassing the moon wherein the rays of the stars are refracted.
"Upon the resistance or, more properly, upon the support of an atmosphere, existing in the state of
density imagined, I had, of course, entirely depended for the safety of my ultimate descent. Should I
then, after all, prove to have been mistaken, I had in consequence nothing better to expect, as a finale
to my adventure, than being dashed into atoms against the rugged surface of the satellite. And, indeed,
I had now every reason to be terrified. My distance from the moon was comparatively trifling, while
the labor required by the condenser was diminished not at all, and I could discover no indication
whatever of a decreasing rarity in the air.
"April 19th. This morning, to my great joy, about nine o'clock, the surface of the moon being
frightfully near, and my apprehensions excited to the utmost, the pump of my condenser at length gave
evident tokens of an alteration in the atmosphere. By ten, I had reason to believe its density
considerably increased. By eleven, very little labor was necessary at the apparatus; and at twelve
o'clock, with some hesitation, I ventured to unscrew the tourniquet, when, finding no inconvenience
from having done so, I finally threw open the gum-elastic chamber, and unrigged it from around the
car. As might have been expected, spasms and violent headache were the immediate consequences of
an experiment so precipitate and full of danger. But these and other difficulties attending respiration,
as they were by no means so great as to put me in peril of my life, I determined to endure as I best
could, in consideration of my leaving them behind me momently in my approach to the denser strata
near the moon. This approach, however, was still impetuous in the extreme; and it soon became
alarmingly certain that, although I had probably not been deceived in the expectation of an atmosphere
dense in proportion to the mass of the satellite, still I had been wrong in supposing this density, even
at the surface, at all adequate to the support of the great weight contained in the car of my balloon. Yet
this should have been the case, and in an equal degree as at the surface of the earth, the actual gravity
of bodies at either planet supposed in the ratio of the atmospheric condensation. That it was not the
case, however, my precipitous downfall gave testimony enough; why it was not so, can only be
explained by a reference to those possible geological disturbances to which I have formerly alluded.
At all events I was now close upon the planet, and coming down with the most terrible impetuosity. I
lost not a moment, accordingly, in throwing overboard first my ballast, then my water-kegs, then my
condensing apparatus and gum-elastic chamber, and finally every article within the car. But it was all
to no purpose. I still fell with horrible rapidity, and was now not more than half a mile from the
surface. As a last resource, therefore, having got rid of my coat, hat, and boots, I cut loose from the
balloon the car itself, which was of no inconsiderable weight, and thus, clinging with both hands to
the net-work, I had barely time to observe that the whole country, as far as the eye could reach, was
thickly interspersed with diminutive habitations, ere I tumbled headlong into the very heart of a
fantastical-looking city, and into the middle of a vast crowd of ugly little people, who none of them
uttered a single syllable, or gave themselves the least trouble to render me assistance, but stood, like
a parcel of idiots, grinning in a ludicrous manner, and eyeing me and my balloon askant, with their
arms set a-kimbo. I turned from them in contempt, and, gazing upward at the earth so lately left, and
left perhaps for ever, beheld it like a huge, dull, copper shield, about two degrees in diameter, fixed
immovably in the heavens overhead, and tipped on one of its edges with a crescent border of the most
brilliant gold. No traces of land or water could be discovered, and the whole was clouded with
variable spots, and belted with tropical and equatorial zones.
"Thus, may it please your Excellencies, after a series of great anxieties, unheard of dangers, and
unparalleled escapes, I had, at length, on the nineteenth day of my departure from Rotterdam, arrived
in safety at the conclusion of a voyage undoubtedly the most extraordinary, and the most momentous,
ever accomplished, undertaken, or conceived by any denizen of earth. But my adventures yet remain
to be related. And indeed your Excellencies may well imagine that, after a residence of five years
upon a planet not only deeply interesting in its own peculiar character, but rendered doubly so by its
intimate connection, in capacity of satellite, with the world inhabited by man, I may have intelligence
for the private ear of the States' College of Astronomers of far more importance than the details,
however wonderful, of the mere voyage which so happily concluded. This is, in fact, the case. I have
much—very much which it would give me the greatest pleasure to communicate. I have much to say of
the climate of the planet; of its wonderful alternations of heat and cold, of unmitigated and burning
sunshine for one fortnight, and more than polar frigidity for the next; of a constant transfer of moisture,
by distillation like that in vacuo, from the point beneath the sun to the point the farthest from it; of a
variable zone of running water, of the people themselves; of their manners, customs, and political
institutions; of their peculiar physical construction; of their ugliness; of their want of ears, those
useless appendages in an atmosphere so peculiarly modified; of their consequent ignorance of the use
and properties of speech; of their substitute for speech in a singular method of inter-communication;
of the incomprehensible connection between each particular individual in the moon with some
particular individual on the earth—a connection analogous with, and depending upon, that of the orbs
of the planet and the satellites, and by means of which the lives and destinies of the inhabitants of the
one are interwoven with the lives and destinies of the inhabitants of the other; and above all, if it so
please your Excellencies—above all, of those dark and hideous mysteries which lie in the outer
regions of the moon—regions which, owing to the almost miraculous accordance of the satellite's
rotation on its own axis with its sidereal revolution about the earth, have never yet been turned, and,
by God's mercy, never shall be turned, to the scrutiny of the telescopes of man. All this, and more—
much more—would I most willingly detail. But, to be brief, I must have my reward. I am pining for a
return to my family and to my home, and as the price of any farther communication on my part—in
consideration of the light which I have it in my power to throw upon many very important branches of
physical and metaphysical science—I must solicit, through the influence of your honorable body, a
pardon for the crime of which I have been guilty in the death of the creditors upon my departure from
Rotterdam. This, then, is the object of the present paper. Its bearer, an inhabitant of the moon, whom I
have prevailed upon, and properly instructed, to be my messenger to the earth, will await your
Excellencies' pleasure, and return to me with the pardon in question, if it can, in any manner, be
obtained.
"I have the honor to be, etc., your Excellencies' very humble servant,
"HANS PFAALL."
Upon finishing the perusal of this very extraordinary document, Professor Rub-a-dub, it is said,
dropped his pipe upon the ground in the extremity of his surprise, and Mynheer Superbus Von
Underduk having taken off his spectacles, wiped them, and deposited them in his pocket, so far forgot
both himself and his dignity, as to turn round three times upon his heel in the quintessence of
astonishment and admiration. There was no doubt about the matter—the pardon should be obtained.
So at least swore, with a round oath, Professor Rub-a-dub, and so finally thought the illustrious Von
Underduk, as he took the arm of his brother in science, and without saying a word, began to make the
best of his way home to deliberate upon the measures to be adopted. Having reached the door,
however, of the burgomaster's dwelling, the professor ventured to suggest that as the messenger had
thought proper to disappear—no doubt frightened to death by the savage appearance of the burghers
of Rotterdam—the pardon would be of little use, as no one but a man of the moon would undertake a
voyage to so vast a distance. To the truth of this observation the burgomaster assented, and the matter
was therefore at an end. Not so, however, rumors and speculations. The letter, having been published,
gave rise to a variety of gossip and opinion. Some of the over-wise even made themselves ridiculous
by decrying the whole business; as nothing better than a hoax. But hoax, with these sort of people, is, I
believe, a general term for all matters above their comprehension. For my part, I cannot conceive
upon what data they have founded such an accusation. Let us see what they say:
Imprimus. That certain wags in Rotterdam have certain especial antipathies to certain
burgomasters and astronomers.
Don't understand at all.
Secondly. That an odd little dwarf and bottle conjurer, both of whose ears, for some
misdemeanor, have been cut off close to his head, has been missing for several days from the
neighboring city of Bruges.
Well—what of that?
Thirdly. That the newspapers which were stuck all over the little balloon were newspapers of
Holland, and therefore could not have been made in the moon. They were dirty papers—very dirty—
and Gluck, the printer, would take his Bible oath to their having been printed in Rotterdam.
He was mistaken—undoubtedly—mistaken.
Fourthly, That Hans Pfaall himself, the drunken villain, and the three very idle gentlemen styled
his creditors, were all seen, no longer than two or three days ago, in a tippling house in the suburbs,
having just returned, with money in their pockets, from a trip beyond the sea.
Don't believe it—don't believe a word of it.
Lastly. That it is an opinion very generally received, or which ought to be generally received, that
the College of Astronomers in the city of Rotterdam, as well as other colleges in all other parts of the
world,—not to mention colleges and astronomers in general,—are, to say the least of the matter, not a
whit better, nor greater, nor wiser than they ought to be.
THE GOLD-BUG
What ho! what ho! this fellow is dancing mad!
He hath been bitten by the Tarantula.
—All in the Wrong.
MANY years ago, I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient
Huguenot family, and had once been wealthy; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want. To
avoid the mortification consequent upon his disasters, he left New Orleans, the city of his forefathers,
and took up his residence at Sullivan's Island, near Charleston, South Carolina. This Island is a very
singular one. It consists of little else than the sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its breadth at no
point exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the main land by a scarcely perceptible creek,
oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh hen. The
vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any magnitude are to be
seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands, and where are some miserable frame
buildings, tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found,
indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole island, with the exception of this western point, and a line
of hard, white beach on the seacoast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of the sweet myrtle, so
much prized by the horticulturists of England. The shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or
twenty feet, and forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with its fragrance.
In the inmost recesses of this coppice, not far from the eastern or more remote end of the island,
Legrand had built himself a small hut, which he occupied when I first, by mere accident, made his
acquaintance. This soon ripened into friendship—for there was much in the recluse to excite interest
and esteem. I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy,
and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy. He had with him many books,
but rarely employed them. His chief amusements were gunning and fishing, or sauntering along the
beach and through the myrtles, in quest of shells or entomological specimens;—his collection of the
latter might have been envied by a Swammerdamm. In these excursions he was usually accompanied
by an old negro, called Jupiter, who had been manumitted before the reverses of the family, but who
could be induced, neither by threats nor by promises, to abandon what he considered his right of
attendance upon the footsteps of his young "Massa Will." It is not improbable that the relatives of
Legrand, conceiving him to be somewhat unsettled in intellect, had contrived to instil this obstinacy
into Jupiter, with a view to the supervision and guardianship of the wanderer.
The winters in the latitude of Sullivan's Island are seldom very severe, and in the fall of the year
it is a rare event indeed when a fire is considered necessary. About the middle of October, 18-, there
occurred, however, a day of remarkable chilliness. Just before sunset I scrambled my way through the
evergreens to the hut of my friend, whom I had not visited for several weeks—my residence being, at
that time, in Charleston, a distance of nine miles from the Island, while the facilities of passage and
re-passage were very far behind those of the present day. Upon reaching the hut I rapped, as was my
custom, and getting no reply, sought for the key where I knew it was secreted, unlocked the door and
went in. A fine fire was blazing upon the hearth. It was a novelty, and by no means an ungrateful one. I
threw off an overcoat, took an arm-chair by the crackling logs, and awaited patiently the arrival of my
hosts.
Soon after dark they arrived, and gave me a most cordial welcome. Jupiter, grinning from ear to
ear, bustled about to prepare some marsh-hens for supper. Legrand was in one of his fits—how else
shall I term them?—of enthusiasm. He had found an unknown bivalve, forming a new genus, and,
more than this, he had hunted down and secured, with Jupiter's assistance, a scarabæus which he
believed to be totally new, but in respect to which he wished to have my opinion on the morrow.
"And why not to-night?" I asked, rubbing my hands over the blaze, and wishing the whole tribe of
scarabæi at the devil.
"Ah, if I had only known you were here!" said Legrand, "but it's so long since I saw you; and how
could I foresee that you would pay me a visit this very night of all others? As I was coming home I
met Lieutenant G—, from the fort, and, very foolishly, I lent him the bug; so it will be impossible for
you to see it until the morning. Stay here to-night, and I will send Jup down for it at sunrise. It is the
loveliest thing in creation!"
"What?—sunrise?"
"Nonsense! no!—the bug. It is of a brilliant gold color—about the size of a large hickory-nut—
with two jet black spots near one extremity of the back, and another, somewhat longer, at the other.
The antennæ are—"
"Dey aint no tin in him, Massa Will, I keep a tellin on you," here interrupted Jupiter; "de bug is a
goole bug, solid, ebery bit of him, inside and all, sep him wing—neber feel half so hebby a bug in my
life."
"Well, suppose it is, Jup," replied Legrand, somewhat more earnestly, it seemed to me, than the
case demanded, "is that any reason for your letting the birds burn? The color"—here he turned to me
—"is really almost enough to warrant Jupiter's idea. You never saw a more brilliant metallic lustre
than the scales emit—but of this you cannot judge till tomorrow. In the mean time I can give you some
idea of the shape." Saying this, he seated himself at a small table, on which were a pen and ink, but no
paper. He looked for some in a drawer, but found none.
"Never mind," said he at length, "this will answer;" and he drew from his waistcoat pocket a
scrap of what I took to be very dirty foolscap, and made upon it a rough drawing with the pen. While
he did this, I retained my seat by the fire, for I was still chilly. When the design was complete, he
handed it to me without rising. As I received it, a loud growl was heard, succeeded by a scratching at
the door. Jupiter opened it, and a large Newfoundland, belonging to Legrand, rushed in, leaped upon
my shoulders, and loaded me with caresses; for I had shown him much attention during previous
visits. When his gambols were over, I looked at the paper, and, to speak the truth, found myself not a
little puzzled at what my friend had depicted.
"Well!" I said, after contemplating it for some minutes, "this is a strange scarabæus, I must
confess: new to me: never saw anything like it before—unless it was a skull, or a death's-head—
which it more nearly resembles than anything else that has come under my observation."
"A death's-head!" echoed Legrand—"Oh—yes—well, it has something of that appearance upon
paper, no doubt. The two upper black spots look like eyes, eh? and the longer one at the bottom like a
mouth—and then the shape of the whole is oval."
"Perhaps so," said I; "but, Legrand, I fear you are no artist. I must wait until I see the beetle itself,
if I am to form any idea of its personal appearance."
"Well, I don't know," said he, a little nettled, "I draw tolerably—should do it at least—have had
good masters, and flatter myself that I am not quite a blockhead."
"But, my dear fellow, you are joking then," said I, "this is a very passable skull—indeed, I may
say that it is a very excellent skull, according to the vulgar notions about such specimens of
physiology—and your scarabæus must be the queerest scarabæus in the world if it resembles it. Why,
we may get up a very thrilling bit of superstition upon this hint. I presume you will call the bug
scarabæus caput hominis, or something of that kind—there are many similar titles in the Natural
Histories. But where are the antennæ you spoke of?"
"The antennæ!" said Legrand, who seemed to be getting unaccountably warm upon the subject; "I
am sure you must see the antennæ. I made them as distinct as they are in the original insect, and I
presume that is sufficient."
"Well, well," I said, "perhaps you have—still I don't see them;" and I handed him the paper
without additional remark, not wishing to ruffle his temper; but I was much surprised at the turn
affairs had taken; his ill humor puzzled me—and, as for the drawing of the beetle, there were
positively no antennæ visible, and the whole did bear a very close resemblance to the ordinary cuts
of a death's-head.
He received the paper very peevishly, and was about to crumple it, apparently to throw it in the
fire, when a casual glance at the design seemed suddenly to rivet his attention. In an instant his face
grew violently red—in another as excessively pale. For some minutes he continued to scrutinize the
drawing minutely where he sat. At length he arose, took a candle from the table, and proceeded to
seat himself upon a sea-chest in the farthest corner of the room. Here again he made an anxious
examination of the paper; turning it in all directions. He said nothing, however, and his conduct
greatly astonished me; yet I thought it prudent not to exacerbate the growing moodiness of his temper
by any comment. Presently he took from his coat pocket a wallet, placed the paper carefully in it, and
deposited both in a writing-desk, which he locked. He now grew more composed in his demeanor;
but his original air of enthusiasm had quite disappeared. Yet he seemed not so much sulky as
abstracted. As the evening wore away he became more and more absorbed in reverie, from which no
sallies of mine could arouse him. It had been my intention to pass the night at the hut, as I had
frequently done before, but, seeing my host in this mood, I deemed it proper to take leave. He did not
press me to remain, but, as I departed, he shook my hand with even more than his usual cordiality.
It was about a month after this (and during the interval I had seen nothing of Legrand) when I
received a visit, at Charleston, from his man, Jupiter. I had never seen the good old negro look so
dispirited, and I feared that some serious disaster had befallen my friend.
"Well, Jup," said I, "what is the matter now?—how is your master?"
"Why, to speak de troof, massa, him not so berry well as mought be."
"Not well! I am truly sorry to hear it. What does he complain of?"
"Dar! dat's it!—him neber plain of notin—but him berry sick for all dat."
"Very sick, Jupiter!—why didn't you say so at once? Is he confined to bed?"
"No, dat he aint!—he aint find nowhar—dat's just whar de shoe pinch—my mind is got to be
berry hebby bout poor Massa Will."
"Jupiter, I should like to understand what it is you are talking about. You say your master is sick.
Hasn't he told you what ails him?"
"Why, massa, taint worf while for to git mad about de matter—Massa Will say noffin at all aint de
matter wid him—but den what make him go about looking dis here way, wid he head down and he
soldiers up, and as white as a gose? And den he keep a syphon all de time—"
"Keeps a what, Jupiter?"
"Keeps a syphon wid de figgurs on de slate—de queerest figgurs I ebber did see. Ise gittin to be
skeered, I tell you. Hab for to keep mighty tight eye pon him noovers. Todder day he gib me slip fore
de sun up and was gone de whole ob de blessed day. I had a big stick ready cut for to gib him deuced
good beating when he did come—but Ise sich a fool dat I hadn't de heart arter all—he look so berry
poorly."
"Eh?—what?—ah yes!—upon the whole I think you had better not be too severe with the poor
fellow—don't flog him, Jupiter—he can't very well stand it—but can you form no idea of what has
occasioned this illness, or rather this change of conduct? Has anything unpleasant happened since I
saw you?"
"No, massa, dey aint bin noffin unpleasant since den—'twas fore den I'm feared—'twas de berry
day you was dare."
"How? what do you mean?"
"Why, massa, I mean de bug—dare now."
"The what?"
"De bug,—I'm berry sartain dat Massa Will bin bit somewhere bout de head by dat goole-bug."
"And what cause have you, Jupiter, for such a supposition?"
"Claws enuff, massa, and mouth too. I nebber did see sick a deuced bug—he kick and he bite
ebery ting what cum near him. Massa Will cotch him fuss, but had for to let him go gin mighty quick, I
tell you—den was de time he must ha got de bite. I did n't like de look oh de bug mouff, myself, no
how, so I would n't take hold ob him wid my finger, but I cotch him wid a piece ob paper dat I found.
I rap him up in de paper and stuff piece ob it in he mouff—dat was de way."
"And you think, then, that your master was really bitten by the beetle, and that the bite made him
sick?"
"I do n't tink noffin about it—I nose it. What make him dream bout de goole so much, if taint cause
he bit by de goole-bug? Ise heerd bout dem goole-bugs fore dis."
"But how do you know he dreams about gold?"
"How I know? why cause he talk about it in he sleep—dat's how I nose."
"Well, Jup, perhaps you are right; but to what fortunate circumstance am I to attribute the honor of
a visit from you to-day?"
"What de matter, massa?"
"Did you bring any message from Mr. Legrand?"
"No, massa, I bring dis here pissel;" and here Jupiter handed me a note which ran thus:
MY DEAR ——
Why have I not seen you for so long a time? I hope you have not been so foolish as to take offence
at any little brusquerie of mine; but no, that is improbable. Since I saw you I have had great cause for
anxiety. I have something to tell you, yet scarcely know how to tell it, or whether I should tell it at all.
I have not been quite well for some days past, and poor old Jup annoys me, almost beyond
endurance, by his well-meant attentions Would you believe it?—he had prepared a huge stick, the
other day, with which to chastise me for giving him the slip, and spending the day, solus, among the
hills on the main land. I verily believe that my ill looks alone saved me a flogging.
I have made no addition to my cabinet since we met.
If you can, in any way, make it convenient, come over with Jupiter. Do come. I wish to see you tonight, upon business of importance. I assure you that it is of the highest importance.
Ever yours,
WILLIAM LEGRAND.
There was something in the tone of this note which gave me great uneasiness. Its whole style
differed materially from that of Legrand. What could he be dreaming of? What new crotchet
possessed his excitable brain? What "business of the highest importance" could he possibly have to
transact? Jupiter's account of him boded no good. I dreaded lest the continued pressure of misfortune
had, at length, fairly unsettled the reason of my friend. Without a moment's hesitation, therefore, I
prepared to accompany the negro.
Upon reaching the wharf, I noticed a scythe and three spades, all apparently new, lying in the
bottom of the boat in which we were to embark.
"What is the meaning of all this, Jup?" I inquired.
"Him syfe, massa, and spade."
"Very true; but what are they doing here?"
"Him de syfe and de spade what Massa Will sis pon my buying for him in de town, and de debbils
own lot of money I had to gib for em."
"But what, in the name of all that is mysterious, is your 'Massa Will' going to do with scythes and
spades?"
"Dat's more dan I know, and debbil take me if I don't blieve 'tis more dan he know, too. But it's all
cum ob do bug."
Finding that no satisfaction was to be obtained of Jupiter, whose whole intellect seemed to be
absorbed by "de bug," I now stepped into the boat and made sail. With a fair and strong breeze we
soon ran into the little cove to the northward of Fort Moultrie, and a walk of some two miles brought
us to the hut. It was about three in the afternoon when we arrived. Legrand had been awaiting us in
eager expectation. He grasped my hand with a nervous empressement which alarmed me and
strengthened the suspicions already entertained. His countenance was pale even to ghastliness, and
his deep-set eyes glared with unnatural lustre. After some inquiries respecting his health, I asked him,
not knowing what better to say, if he had yet obtained the scarabæus from Lieutenant G ——.
"Oh, yes," he replied, coloring violently, "I got it from him the next morning. Nothing should tempt
me to part with that scarabæus. Do you know that Jupiter is quite right about it?"
"In what way?" I asked, with a sad foreboding at heart.
"In supposing it to be a bug of real gold." He said this with an air of profound seriousness, and I
felt inexpressibly shocked.
"This bug is to make my fortune," he continued, with a triumphant smile, "to reinstate me in my
family possessions. Is it any wonder, then, that I prize it? Since Fortune has thought fit to bestow it
upon me, I have only to use it properly and I shall arrive at the gold of which it is the index. Jupiter;
bring me that scarabæus!"
"What! de bug, massa? I'd rudder not go fer trubble dat bug—you mus git him for your own self."
Hereupon Legrand arose, with a grave and stately air, and brought me the beetle from a glass case in
which it was enclosed. It was a beautiful scarabæus, and, at that time, unknown to naturalists—of
course a great prize in a scientific point of view. There were two round, black spots near one
extremity of the back, and a long one near the other. The scales were exceedingly hard and glossy,
with all the appearance of burnished gold. The weight of the insect was very remarkable, and, taking
all things into consideration, I could hardly blame Jupiter for his opinion respecting it; but what to
make of Legrand's concordance with that opinion, I could not, for the life of me, tell.
"I sent for you," said he, in a grandiloquent tone, when I had completed my examination of the
beetle, "I sent for you, that I might have your counsel and assistance in furthering the views of Fate
and of the bug"—
"My dear Legrand," I cried, interrupting him, "you are certainly unwell, and had better use some
little precautions. You shall go to bed, and I will remain with you a few days, until you get over this.
You are feverish and"—
"Feel my pulse," said he.
I felt it, and, to say the truth, found not the slightest indication of fever.
"But you may be ill and yet have no fever. Allow me this once to prescribe for you. In the first
place, go to bed. In the next"—
"You are mistaken," he interposed, "I am as well as I can expect to be under the excitement which
I suffer. If you really wish me well, you will relieve this excitement."
"And how is this to be done?"
"Very easily. Jupiter and myself are going upon an expedition into the hills, upon the main land,
and, in this expedition we shall need the aid of some person in whom we can confide. You are the
only one we can trust. Whether we succeed or fail, the excitement which you now perceive in me will
be equally allayed."
"I am anxious to oblige you in any way," I replied; "but do you mean to say that this infernal beetle
has any connection with your expedition into the hills?"
"It has."
"Then, Legrand, I can become a party to no such absurd proceeding."
"I am sorry—very sorry—for we shall have to try it by ourselves."
"Try it by yourselves! The man is surely mad!—but stay!—how long do you propose to be
absent?"
"Probably all night. We shall start immediately, and be back, at all events, by sunrise."
"And will you promise me, upon your honor, that when this freak of yours is over, and the bug
business (good God!) settled to your satisfaction, you will then return home and follow my advice
implicitly, as that of your physician?"
"Yes; I promise; and now let us be off, for we have no time to lose."
With a heavy heart I accompanied my friend. We started about four o'clock—Legrand, Jupiter, the
dog, and myself. Jupiter had with him the scythe and spades—the whole of which he insisted upon
carrying—more through fear, it seemed to me, of trusting either of the implements within reach of his
master, than from any excess of industry or complaisance. His demeanor was dogged in the extreme,
and "dat deuced bug" were the sole words which escaped his lips during the journey. For my own
part, I had charge of a couple of dark lanterns, while Legrand contented himself with the scarabæus,
which he carried attached to the end of a bit of whip-cord; twirling it to and fro, with the air of a
conjuror, as he went. When I observed this last, plain evidence of my friend's aberration of mind, I
could scarcely refrain from tears. I thought it best, however, to humor his fancy, at least for the
present, or until I could adopt some more energetic measures with a chance of success. In the mean
time I endeavored, but all in vain, to sound him in regard to the object of the expedition. Having
succeeded in inducing me to accompany him, he seemed unwilling to hold conversation upon any
topic of minor importance, and to all my questions vouchsafed no other reply than "we shall see!"
We crossed the creek at the head of the island by means of a skiff; and, ascending the high grounds
on the shore of the main land, proceeded in a northwesterly direction, through a tract of country
excessively wild and desolate, where no trace of a human footstep was to be seen. Legrand led the
way with decision; pausing only for an instant, here and there, to consult what appeared to be certain
landmarks of his own contrivance upon a former occasion.
In this manner we journeyed for about two hours, and the sun was just setting when we entered a
region infinitely more dreary than any yet seen. It was a species of table land, near the summit of an
almost inaccessible hill, densely wooded from base to pinnacle, and interspersed with huge crags that
appeared to lie loosely upon the soil, and in many cases were prevented from precipitating
themselves into the valleys below, merely by the support of the trees against which they reclined.
Deep ravines, in various directions, gave an air of still sterner solemnity to the scene.
The natural platform to which we had clambered was thickly overgrown with brambles, through
which we soon discovered that it would have been impossible to force our way but for the scythe;
and Jupiter, by direction of his master, proceeded to clear for us a path to the foot of an enormously
tall tulip-tree, which stood, with some eight or ten oaks, upon the level, and far surpassed them all,
and all other trees which I had then ever seen, in the beauty of its foliage and form, in the wide spread
of its branches, and in the general majesty of its appearance. When we reached this tree, Legrand
turned to Jupiter, and asked him if he thought he could climb it. The old man seemed a little staggered
by the question, and for some moments made no reply. At length he approached the huge trunk, walked
slowly around it, and examined it with minute attention. When he had completed his scrutiny, he
merely said,
"Yes, massa, Jup climb any tree he ebber see in he life."
"Then up with you as soon as possible, for it will soon be too dark to see what we are about."
"How far mus go up, massa?" inquired Jupiter.
"Get up the main trunk first, and then I will tell you which way to go—and here—stop! take this
beetle with you."
"De bug, Massa Will!—de goole bug!" cried the negro, drawing back in dismay—"what for mus
tote de bug way up de tree?—d-n if I do!"
"If you are afraid, Jup, a great big negro like you, to take hold of a harmless little dead beetle,
why you can carry it up by this string—but, if you do not take it up with you in some way, I shall be
under the necessity of breaking your head with this shovel."
"What de matter now, massa?" said Jup, evidently shamed into compliance; "always want for to
raise fuss wid old nigger. Was only funnin any how. Me feered de bug! what I keer for de bug?" Here
he took cautiously hold of the extreme end of the string, and, maintaining the insect as far from his
person as circumstances would permit, prepared to ascend the tree.
In youth, the tulip-tree, or Liriodendron Tulipferum, the most magnificent of American foresters,
has a trunk peculiarly smooth, and often rises to a great height without lateral branches; but, in its
riper age, the bark becomes gnarled and uneven, while many short limbs make their appearance on the
stem. Thus the difficulty of ascension, in the present case, lay more in semblance than in reality.
Embracing the huge cylinder, as closely as possible, with his arms and knees, seizing with his hands
some projections, and resting his naked toes upon others, Jupiter, after one or two narrow escapes
from falling, at length wriggled himself into the first great fork, and seemed to consider the whole
business as virtually accomplished. The risk of the achievement was, in fact, now over, although the
climber was some sixty or seventy feet from the ground.
"Which way mus go now, Massa Will?" he asked.
"Keep up the largest branch—the one on this side," said Legrand. The negro obeyed him
promptly, and apparently with but little trouble; ascending higher and higher, until no glimpse of his
squat figure could be obtained through the dense foliage which enveloped it. Presently his voice was
heard in a sort of halloo.
"How much fudder is got for go?"
"How high up are you?" asked Legrand.
"Ebber so fur," replied the negro; "can see de sky fru de top ob de tree."
"Never mind the sky, but attend to what I say. Look down the trunk and count the limbs below you
on this side. How many limbs have you passed?"
"One, two, tree, four, fibe—I done pass fibe big limb, massa, pon dis side."
"Then go one limb higher."
In a few minutes the voice was heard again, announcing that the seventh limb was attained.
"Now, Jup," cried Legrand, evidently much excited, "I want you to work your way out upon that
limb as far as you can. If you see anything strange, let me know." By this time what little doubt I might
have entertained of my poor friend's insanity, was put finally at rest. I had no alternative but to
conclude him stricken with lunacy, and I became seriously anxious about getting him home. While I
was pondering upon what was best to be done, Jupiter's voice was again heard.
"Mos feerd for to ventur pon dis limb berry far—tis dead limb putty much all de way."
"Did you say it was a dead limb, Jupiter?" cried Legrand in a quavering voice.
"Yes, massa, him dead as de door-nail—done up for sartain—done departed dis here life."
"What in the name heaven shall I do?" asked Legrand, seemingly in the greatest distress. "Do!"
said I, glad of an opportunity to interpose a word, "why come home and go to bed. Come now!—that's
a fine fellow. It's getting late, and, besides, you remember your promise."
"Jupiter," cried he, without heeding me in the least, "do you hear me?"
"Yes, Massa Will, hear you ebber so plain."
"Try the wood well, then, with your knife, and see if you think it very rotten."
"Him rotten, massa, sure nuff," replied the negro in a few moments, "but not so berry rotten as
mought be. Mought ventur out leetle way pon de limb by myself, dat's true."
"By yourself!—what do you mean?"
"Why I mean de bug. 'Tis berry hebby bug. Spose I drop him down fuss, and den de limb won't
break wid just de weight ob one nigger."
"You infernal scoundrel!" cried Legrand, apparently much relieved, "what do you mean by telling
me such nonsense as that? As sure as you drop that beetle I'll break your neck. Look here, Jupiter, do
you hear me?"
"Yes, massa, needn't hollo at poor nigger dat style."
"Well! now listen!—if you will venture out on the limb as far as you think safe, and not let go the
beetle, I'll make you a present of a silver dollar as soon as you get down."
"I'm gwine, Massa Will—deed I is," replied the negro very promptly—"mos out to the eend now."
"Out to the end!" here fairly screamed Legrand, "do you say you are out to the end of that limb?"
"Soon be to de eend, massa,—o-o-o-o-oh! Lor-gol-a-marcy! what is dis here pon de tree?"
"Well!" cried Legrand, highly delighted, "what is it?"
"Why taint noffin but a skull—somebody bin lef him head up de tree, and de crows done gobble
ebery bit ob de meat off."
"A skull, you say!—very well!—how is it fastened to the limb?—what holds it on?"
"Sure nuff, massa; mus look. Why dis berry curous sarcumstance, pon my word—dare's a great
big nail in de skull, what fastens ob it on to de tree."
"Well now, Jupiter, do exactly as I tell you—do you hear?"
"Yes, massa."
"Pay attention, then!—find the left eye of the skull."
"Hum! hoo! dat's good! why dare aint no eye lef at all."
"Curse your stupidity! do you know your right hand from your left?"
"Yes, I nose dat—nose all bout dat—tis my lef hand what I chops de wood wid."
"To be sure! you are left-handed; and your left eye is on the same side as your left hand. Now, I
suppose, you can find the left eye of the skull, or the place where the left eye has been. Have you
found it?"
Here was a long pause. At length the negro asked,
"Is de lef eye of de skull pon de same side as de lef hand of de skull, too?—cause de skull aint got
not a bit ob a hand at all—nebber mind! I got de lef eye now—here de lef eye! what mus do wid it?"
"Let the beetle drop through it, as far as the string will reach—but be careful and not let go your
hold of the string."
"All dat done, Massa Will; mighty easy ting for to put de bug fru de hole—look out for him dare
below!"
During this colloquy no portion of Jupiter's person could be seen; but the beetle, which he had
suffered to descend, was now visible at the end of the string, and glistened, like a globe of burnished
gold, in the last rays of the setting sun, some of which still faintly illumined the eminence upon which
we stood. The scarabæus hung quite clear of any branches, and, if allowed to fall, would have fallen
at our feet. Legrand immediately took the scythe, and cleared with it a circular space, three or four
yards in diameter, just beneath the insect, and, having accomplished this, ordered Jupiter to let go the
string and come down from the tree.
Driving a peg, with great nicety, into the ground, at the precise spot where the beetle fell, my
friend now produced from his pocket a tape measure. Fastening one end of this at that point of the
trunk, of the tree which was nearest the peg, he unrolled it till it reached the peg, and thence farther
unrolled it, in the direction already established by the two points of the tree and the peg, for the
distance of fifty feet—Jupiter clearing away the brambles with the scythe. At the spot thus attained a
second peg was driven, and about this, as a centre, a rude circle, about four feet in diameter,
described. Taking now a spade himself, and giving one to Jupiter and one to me, Legrand begged us to
set about digging as quickly as possible.
To speak the truth, I had no especial relish for such amusement at any time, and, at that particular
moment, would most willingly have declined it; for the night was coming on, and I felt much fatigued
with the exercise already taken; but I saw no mode of escape, and was fearful of disturbing my poor
friend's equanimity by a refusal. Could I have depended, indeed, upon Jupiter's aid, I would have had
no hesitation in attempting to get the lunatic home by force; but I was too well assured of the old
negro's disposition, to hope that he would assist me, under any circumstances, in a personal contest
with his master. I made no doubt that the latter had been infected with some of the innumerable
Southern superstitions about money buried, and that his phantasy had received confirmation by the
finding of the scarabæus, or, perhaps, by Jupiter's obstinacy in maintaining it to be "a bug of real
gold." A mind disposed to lunacy would readily be led away by such suggestions—especially if
chiming in with favorite preconceived ideas—and then I called to mind the poor fellow's speech
about the beetle's being "the index of his fortune." Upon the whole, I was sadly vexed and puzzled,
but, at length, I concluded to make a virtue of necessity—to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner
to convince the visionary, by ocular demonstration, of the fallacy of the opinions he entertained.
The lanterns having been lit, we all fell to work with a zeal worthy a more rational cause; and, as
the glare fell upon our persons and implements, I could not help thinking how picturesque a group we
composed, and how strange and suspicious our labors must have appeared to any interloper who, by
chance, might have stumbled upon our whereabouts.
We dug very steadily for two hours. Little was said; and our chief embarrassment lay in the
yelpings of the dog, who took exceeding interest in our proceedings. He, at length, became so
obstreperous that we grew fearful of his giving the alarm to some stragglers in the vicinity;—or,
rather, this was the apprehension of Legrand;—for myself, I should have rejoiced at any interruption
which might have enabled me to get the wanderer home. The noise was, at length, very effectually
silenced by Jupiter, who, getting out of the hole with a dogged air of deliberation, tied the brute's
mouth up with one of his suspenders, and then returned, with a grave chuckle, to his task.
When the time mentioned had expired, we had reached a depth of five feet, and yet no signs of any
treasure became manifest. A general pause ensued, and I began to hope that the farce was at an end.
Legrand, however, although evidently much disconcerted, wiped his brow thoughtfully and
recommenced. We had excavated the entire circle of four feet diameter, and now we slightly enlarged
the limit, and went to the farther depth of two feet. Still nothing appeared. The gold-seeker, whom I
sincerely pitied, at length clambered from the pit, with the bitterest disappointment imprinted upon
every feature, and proceeded, slowly and reluctantly, to put on his coat, which he had thrown off at
the beginning of his labor. In the mean time I made no remark. Jupiter, at a signal from his master,
began to gather up his tools. This done, and the dog having been unmuzzled, we turned in profound
silence towards home.
We had taken, perhaps, a dozen steps in this direction, when, with a loud oath, Legrand strode up
to Jupiter, and seized him by the collar. The astonished negro opened his eyes and mouth to the fullest
extent, let fall the spades, and fell upon his knees.
"You scoundrel," said Legrand, hissing out the syllables from between his clenched teeth—"you
infernal black villain!—speak, I tell you!—answer me this instant, without prevarication!—which—
which is your left eye?"
"Oh, my golly, Massa Will! aint dis here my lef eye for sartain?" roared the terrified Jupiter,
placing his hand upon his right organ of vision, and holding it there with a desperate pertinacity, as if
in immediate dread of his master's attempt at a gouge.
"I thought so!—I knew it! hurrah!" vociferated Legrand, letting the negro go, and executing a
series of curvets and caracols, much to the astonishment of his valet, who, arising from his knees,
looked, mutely, from his master to myself, and then from myself to his master.
"Come! we must go back," said the latter, "the game's not up yet;" and he again led the way to the
tulip-tree.
"Jupiter," said he, when we reached its foot, "come here! was the skull nailed to the limb with the
face outwards, or with the face to the limb?"
"De face was out, massa, so dat de crows could get at de eyes good, widout any trouble."
"Well, then, was it this eye or that through which you dropped the beetle?"—here Legrand touched
each of Jupiter's eyes.
"Twas dis eye, massa—de lef eye—jis as you tell me," and here it was his right eye that the negro
indicated.
"That will do—must try it again."
Here my friend, about whose madness I now saw, or fancied that I saw, certain indications of
method, removed the peg which marked the spot where the beetle fell, to a spot about three inches to
the westward of its former position. Taking, now, the tape measure from the nearest point of the trunk
to the peg, as before, and continuing the extension in a straight line to the distance of fifty feet, a spot
was indicated, removed, by several yards, from the point at which we had been digging.
Around the new position a circle, somewhat larger than in the former instance, was now
described, and we again set to work with the spades. I was dreadfully weary, but, scarcely
understanding what had occasioned the change in my thoughts, I felt no longer any great aversion from
the labor imposed. I had become most unaccountably interested—nay, even excited. Perhaps there
was something, amid all the extravagant demeanor of Legrand—some air of forethought, or of
deliberation, which impressed me. I dug eagerly, and now and then caught myself actually looking,
with something that very much resembled expectation, for the fancied treasure, the vision of which
had demented my unfortunate companion. At a period when such vagaries of thought most fully
possessed me, and when we had been at work perhaps an hour and a half, we were again interrupted
by the violent howlings of the dog. His uneasiness, in the first instance, had been, evidently, but the
result of playfulness or caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and serious tone. Upon Jupiter's again
attempting to muzzle him, he made furious resistance, and, leaping into the hole, tore up the mould
frantically with his claws. In a few seconds he had uncovered a mass of human bones, forming two
complete skeletons, intermingled with several buttons of metal, and what appeared to be the dust of
decayed woollen. One or two strokes of a spade upturned the blade of a large Spanish knife, and, as
we dug farther, three or four loose pieces of gold and silver coin came to light.
At sight of these the joy of Jupiter could scarcely be restrained, but the countenance of his master
wore an air of extreme disappointment He urged us, however, to continue our exertions, and the
words were hardly uttered when I stumbled and fell forward, having caught the toe of my boot in a
large ring of iron that lay half buried in the loose earth.
We now worked in earnest, and never did I pass ten minutes of more intense excitement. During
this interval we had fairly unearthed an oblong chest of wood, which, from its perfect preservation
and wonderful hardness, had plainly been subjected to some mineralizing process—perhaps that of
the Bi-chloride of Mercury. This box was three feet and a half long, three feet broad, and two and a
half feet deep. It was firmly secured by bands of wrought iron, riveted, and forming a kind of open
trelliswork over the whole. On each side of the chest, near the top, were three rings of iron—six in
all—by means of which a firm hold could be obtained by six persons. Our utmost united endeavors
served only to disturb the coffer very slightly in its bed. We at once saw the impossibility of removing
so great a weight. Luckily, the sole fastenings of the lid consisted of two sliding bolts. These we drew
back—trembling and panting with anxiety. In an instant, a treasure of incalculable value lay gleaming
before us. As the rays of the lanterns fell within the pit, there flashed upwards a glow and a glare,
from a confused heap of gold and of jewels, that absolutely dazzled our eyes.
I shall not pretend to describe the feelings with which I gazed. Amazement was, of course,
predominant. Legrand appeared exhausted with excitement, and spoke very few words. Jupiter's
countenance wore, for some minutes, as deadly a pallor as it is possible, in nature of things, for any
negro's visage to assume. He seemed stupified—thunderstricken. Presently he fell upon his knees in
the pit, and, burying his naked arms up to the elbows in gold, let them there remain, as if enjoying the
luxury of a bath. At length, with a deep sigh, he exclaimed, as if in a soliloquy,
"And dis all cum ob de goole-bug! de putty goole bug! de poor little goole-bug, what I boosed in
dat sabage kind ob style! Aint you shamed ob yourself, nigger?—answer me dat!"
It became necessary, at last, that I should arouse both master and valet to the expediency of
removing the treasure. It was growing late, and it behooved us to make exertion, that we might get
every thing housed before daylight. It was difficult to say what should be done, and much time was
spent in deliberation—so confused were the ideas of all. We, finally, lightened the box by removing
two thirds of its contents, when we were enabled, with some trouble, to raise it from the hole. The
articles taken out were deposited among the brambles, and the dog left to guard them, with strict
orders from Jupiter neither, upon any pretence, to stir from the spot, nor to open his mouth until our
return. We then hurriedly made for home with the chest; reaching the hut in safety, but after excessive
toil, at one o'clock in the morning. Worn out as we were, it was not in human nature to do more
immediately. We rested until two, and had supper; starting for the hills immediately afterwards, armed
with three stout sacks, which, by good luck, were upon the premises. A little before four we arrived
at the pit, divided the remainder of the booty, as equally as might be, among us, and, leaving the holes
unfilled, again set out for the hut, at which, for the second time, we deposited our golden burthens,
just as the first faint streaks of the dawn gleamed from over the tree-tops in the East.
We were now thoroughly broken down; but the intense excitement of the time denied us repose.
After an unquiet slumber of some three or four hours' duration, we arose, as if by preconcert, to make
examination of our treasure.
The chest had been full to the brim, and we spent the whole day, and the greater part of the next
night, in a scrutiny of its contents. There had been nothing like order or arrangement. Every thing had
been heaped in promiscuously. Having assorted all with care, we found ourselves possessed of even
vaster wealth than we had at first supposed. In coin there was rather more than four hundred and fifty
thousand dollars—estimating the value of the pieces, as accurately as we could, by the tables of the
period. There was not a particle of silver. All was gold of antique date and of great variety—French,
Spanish, and German money, with a few English guineas, and some counters, of which we had never
seen specimens before. There were several very large and heavy coins, so worn that we could make
nothing of their inscriptions. There was no American money. The value of the jewels we found more
difficulty in estimating. There were diamonds—some of them exceedingly large and fine—a hundred
and ten in all, and not one of them small; eighteen rubies of remarkable brilliancy;—three hundred
and ten emeralds, all very beautiful; and twenty-one sapphires, with an opal. These stones had all
been broken from their settings and thrown loose in the chest. The settings themselves, which we
picked out from among the other gold, appeared to have been beaten up with hammers, as if to prevent
identification. Besides all this, there was a vast quantity of solid gold ornaments;—nearly two
hundred massive finger and earrings;—rich chains—thirty of these, if I remember;—eighty-three very
large and heavy crucifixes;—five gold censers of great value;—a prodigious golden punch bowl,
ornamented with richly chased vine-leaves and Bacchanalian figures; with two sword-handles
exquisitely embossed, and many other smaller articles which I cannot recollect. The weight of these
valuables exceeded three hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois; and in this estimate I have not
included one hundred and ninety-seven superb gold watches; three of the number being worth each
five hundred dollars, if one. Many of them were very old, and as time keepers valueless; the works
having suffered, more or less, from corrosion—but all were richly jewelled and in cases of great
worth. We estimated the entire contents of the chest, that night, at a million and a half of dollars; and
upon the subsequent disposal of the trinkets and jewels (a few being retained for our own use), it was
found that we had greatly undervalued the treasure. When, at length, we had concluded our
examination, and the intense excitement of the time had, in some measure, subsided, Legrand, who
saw that I was dying with impatience for a solution of this most extraordinary riddle, entered into a
full detail of all the circumstances connected with it.
"You remember;" said he, "the night when I handed you the rough sketch I had made of the
scarabæus. You recollect also, that I became quite vexed at you for insisting that my drawing
resembled a death's-head. When you first made this assertion I thought you were jesting; but
afterwards I called to mind the peculiar spots on the back of the insect, and admitted to myself that
your remark had some little foundation in fact. Still, the sneer at my graphic powers irritated me—for
I am considered a good artist—and, therefore, when you handed me the scrap of parchment, I was
about to crumple it up and throw it angrily into the fire."
"The scrap of paper, you mean," said I.
"No; it had much of the appearance of paper, and at first I supposed it to be such, but when I came
to draw upon it, I discovered it, at once, to be a piece of very thin parchment. It was quite dirty, you
remember. Well, as I was in the very act of crumpling it up, my glance fell upon the sketch at which
you had been looking, and you may imagine my astonishment when I perceived, in fact, the figure of a
death's-head just where, it seemed to me, I had made the drawing of the beetle. For a moment I was
too much amazed to think with accuracy. I knew that my design was very different in detail from this
—although there was a certain similarity in general outline. Presently I took a candle, and seating
myself at the other end of the room, proceeded to scrutinize the parchment more closely. Upon turning
it over, I saw my own sketch upon the reverse, just as I had made it. My first idea, now, was mere
surprise at the really remarkable similarity of outline—at the singular coincidence involved in the
fact, that unknown to me, there should have been a skull upon the other side of the parchment,
immediately beneath my figure of the scarabæus, and that this skull, not only in outline, but in size,
should so closely resemble my drawing. I say the singularity of this coincidence absolutely stupified
me for a time. This is the usual effect of such coincidences. The mind struggles to establish a
connexion—a sequence of cause and effect—and, being unable to do so, suffers a species of
temporary paralysis. But, when I recovered from this stupor, there dawned upon me gradually a
conviction which startled me even far more than the coincidence. I began distinctly, positively, to
remember that there had been no drawing upon the parchment when I made my sketch of the
scarabæus. I became perfectly certain of this; for I recollected turning up first one side and then the
other, in search of the cleanest spot. Had the skull been then there, of course I could not have failed to
notice it. Here was indeed a mystery which I felt it impossible to explain; but, even at that early
moment, there seemed to glimmer, faintly, within the most remote and secret chambers of my intellect,
a glow-worm-like conception of that truth which last night's adventure brought to so magnificent a
demonstration. I arose at once, and putting the parchment securely away, dismissed all farther
reflection until I should be alone.
"When you had gone, and when Jupiter was fast asleep, I betook myself to a more methodical
investigation of the affair. In the first place I considered the manner in which the parchment had come
into my possession. The spot where we discovered the scarabaeus was on the coast of the main land,
about a mile eastward of the island, and but a short distance above high water mark. Upon my taking
hold of it, it gave me a sharp bite, which caused me to let it drop. Jupiter, with his accustomed
caution, before seizing the insect, which had flown towards him, looked about him for a leaf, or
something of that nature, by which to take hold of it. It was at this moment that his eyes, and mine also,
fell upon the scrap of parchment, which I then supposed to be paper. It was lying half buried in the
sand, a corner sticking up. Near the spot where we found it, I observed the remnants of the hull of
what appeared to have been a ship's long boat. The wreck seemed to have been there for a very great
while; for the resemblance to boat timbers could scarcely be traced.
"Well, Jupiter picked up the parchment, wrapped the beetle in it, and gave it to me. Soon
afterwards we turned to go home, and on the way met Lieutenant G-. I showed him the insect, and he
begged me to let him take it to the fort. Upon my consenting, he thrust it forthwith into his waistcoat
pocket, without the parchment in which it had been wrapped, and which I had continued to hold in my
hand during his inspection. Perhaps he dreaded my changing my mind, and thought it best to make sure
of the prize at once—you know how enthusiastic he is on all subjects connected with Natural History.
At the same time, without being conscious of it, I must have deposited the parchment in my own
pocket.
"You remember that when I went to the table, for the purpose of making a sketch of the beetle, I
found no paper where it was usually kept. I looked in the drawer, and found none there. I searched my
pockets, hoping to find an old letter, when my hand fell upon the parchment. I thus detail the precise
mode in which it came into my possession; for the circumstances impressed me with peculiar force.
"No doubt you will think me fanciful—but I had already established a kind of connexion. I had put
together two links of a great chain. There was a boat lying upon a sea-coast, and not far from the boat
was a parchment—not a paper—with a skull depicted upon it. You will, of course, ask 'where is the
connexion?' I reply that the skull, or death's-head, is the well-known emblem of the pirate. The flag of
the death's head is hoisted in all engagements.
"I have said that the scrap was parchment, and not paper. Parchment is durable—almost
imperishable. Matters of little moment are rarely consigned to parchment; since, for the mere ordinary
purposes of drawing or writing, it is not nearly so well adapted as paper. This reflection suggested
some meaning—some relevancy—in the death's-head. I did not fail to observe, also, the form of the
parchment. Although one of its corners had been, by some accident, destroyed, it could be seen that
the original form was oblong. It was just such a slip, indeed, as might have been chosen for a
memorandum—for a record of something to be long remembered and carefully preserved."
"But," I interposed, "you say that the skull was not upon the parchment when you made the
drawing of the beetle. How then do you trace any connexion between the boat and the skull—since
this latter, according to your own admission, must have been designed (God only knows how or by
whom) at some period subsequent to your sketching the scarabæus?"
"Ah, hereupon turns the whole mystery; although the secret, at this point, I had comparatively little
difficulty in solving. My steps were sure, and could afford but a single result. I reasoned, for
example, thus: When I drew the scarabæus, there was no skull apparent upon the parchment. When I
had completed the drawing I gave it to you, and observed you narrowly until you returned it. You,
therefore, did not design the skull, and no one else was present to do it. Then it was not done by
human agency. And nevertheless it was done.
"At this stage of my reflections I endeavored to remember, and did remember, with entire
distinctness, every incident which occurred about the period in question. The weather was chilly (oh
rare and happy accident!), and a fire was blazing upon the hearth. I was heated with exercise and sat
near the table. You, however, had drawn a chair close to the chimney. Just as I placed the parchment
in your hand, and as you were in the act of inspecting it, Wolf, the Newfoundland, entered, and leaped
upon your shoulders. With your left hand you caressed him and kept him off, while your right, holding
the parchment, was permitted to fall listlessly between your knees, and in close proximity to the fire.
At one moment I thought the blaze had caught it, and was about to caution you, but, before I could
speak, you had withdrawn it, and were engaged in its examination. When I considered all these
particulars, I doubted not for a moment that heat had been the agent in bringing to light, upon the
parchment, the skull which I saw designed upon it. You are well aware that chemical preparations
exist, and have existed time out of mind, by means of which it is possible to write upon either paper
or vellum, so that the characters shall become visible only when subjected to the action of fire.
Zaffre, digested in aqua regia, and diluted with four times its weight of water, is sometimes
employed; a green tint results. The regulus of cobalt, dissolved in spirit of nitre, gives a red. These
colors disappear at longer or shorter intervals after the material written upon cools, but again become
apparent upon the re-application of heat.
"I now scrutinized the death's-head with care. Its outer edges—the edges of the drawing nearest
the edge of the vellum—were far more distinct than the others. It was clear that the action of the
caloric had been imperfect or unequal. I immediately kindled a fire, and subjected every portion of
the parchment to a glowing heat. At first, the only effect was the strengthening of the faint lines in the
skull; but, upon persevering in the experiment, there became visible, at the corner of the slip,
diagonally opposite to the spot in which the death's-head was delineated, the figure of what I at first
supposed to be a goat. A closer scrutiny, however, satisfied me that it was intended for a kid."
"Ha! ha!" said I, "to be sure I have no right to laugh at you—a million and a half of money is too
serious a matter for mirth—but you are not about to establish a third link in your chain—you will not
find any especial connexion between your pirates and a goat—pirates, you know, have nothing to do
with goats; they appertain to the farming interest."
"But I have just said that the figure was not that of a goat."
"Well, a kid then—pretty much the same thing."
"Pretty much, but not altogether," said Legrand. "You may have heard of one Captain Kidd. I at
once looked upon the figure of the animal as a kind of punning or hieroglyphical signature. I say
signature; because its position upon the vellum suggested this idea. The death's-head at the corner
diagonally opposite, had, in the same manner, the air of a stamp, or seal. But I was sorely put out by
the absence of all else—of the body to my imagined instrument—of the text for my context."
"I presume you expected to find a letter between the stamp and the signature."
"Something of that kind. The fact is, I felt irresistibly impressed with a presentiment of some vast
good fortune impending. I can scarcely say why. Perhaps, after all, it was rather a desire than an
actual belief;—but do you know that Jupiter's silly words, about the bug being of solid gold, had a
remarkable effect upon my fancy? And then the series of accidents and coincidences—these were so
very extraordinary. Do you observe how mere an accident it was that these events should have
occurred upon the sole day of all the year in which it has been, or may be, sufficiently cool for fire,
and that without the fire, or without the intervention of the dog at the precise moment in which he
appeared, I should never have become aware of the death's-head, and so never the possessor of the
treasure?"
"But proceed—I am all impatience."
"Well; you have heard, of course, the many stories current—the thousand vague rumors afloat
about money buried, somewhere upon the Atlantic coast, by Kidd and his associates. These rumors
must have had some foundation in fact. And that the rumors have existed so long and so continuous,
could have resulted, it appeared to me, only from the circumstance of the buried treasure still
remaining entombed. Had Kidd concealed his plunder for a time, and afterwards reclaimed it, the
rumors would scarcely have reached us in their present unvarying form. You will observe that the
stories told are all about money-seekers, not about money-finders. Had the pirate recovered his
money, there the affair would have dropped. It seemed to me that some accident—say the loss of a
memorandum indicating its locality—had deprived him of the means of recovering it, and that this
accident had become known to his followers, who otherwise might never have heard that treasure had
been concealed at all, and who, busying themselves in vain, because unguided attempts, to regain it,
had given first birth, and then universal currency, to the reports which are now so common. Have you
ever heard of any important treasure being unearthed along the coast?"
"Never."
"But that Kidd's accumulations were immense, is well known. I took it for granted, therefore, that
the earth still held them; and you will scarcely be surprised when I tell you that I felt a hope, nearly
amounting to certainty, that the parchment so strangely found, involved a lost record of the place of
deposit."
"But how did you proceed?"
"I held the vellum again to the fire, after increasing the heat; but nothing appeared. I now thought it
possible that the coating of dirt might have something to do with the failure; so I carefully rinsed the
parchment by pouring warm water over it, and, having done this, I placed it in a tin pan, with the skull
downwards, and put the pan upon a furnace of lighted charcoal. In a few minutes, the pan having
become thoroughly heated, I removed the slip, and, to my inexpressible joy, found it spotted, in
several places, with what appeared to be figures arranged in lines. Again I placed it in the pan, and
suffered it to remain another minute. Upon taking it off, the whole was just as you see it now." Here
Legrand, having re-heated the parchment, submitted it to my inspection. The following characters
were rudely traced, in a red tint, between the death's-head and the goat:
"53æææ305))6*;4826)4æ)4æ);806*;48æ8æ60))85;1æ);:æ
*8æ83(88)5*æ;46(;88*96*?;8)*æ(;485);5*æ2:*æ(;4956*
2(5*--4)8æ8*;4069285);)6æ8)4ææ;1(æ9;48081;8:8æ1;4
8æ85;4)485æ528806*81(æ9;48;(88;4(æ?34;48)4æ;161;:
188;æ?;"
"But," said I, returning him the slip, "I am as much in the dark as ever. Were all the jewels of
Golconda awaiting me upon my solution of this enigma, I am quite sure that I should be unable to earn
them."
"And yet," said Legrand, "the solution is by no means so difficult as you might be lead to imagine
from the first hasty inspection of the characters. These characters, as any one might readily guess,
form a cipher—that is to say, they convey a meaning; but then, from what is known of Kidd, I could
not suppose him capable of constructing any of the more abstruse cryptographs. I made up my mind, at
once, that this was of a simple species—such, however, as would appear, to the crude intellect of the
sailor, absolutely insoluble without the key."
"And you really solved it?"
"Readily; I have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand times greater. Circumstances, and a
certain bias of mind, have led me to take interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether
human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper
application, resolve. In fact, having once established connected and legible characters, I scarcely
gave a thought to the mere difficulty of developing their import.
"In the present case—indeed in all cases of secret writing—the first question regards the language
of the cipher; for the principles of solution, so far, especially, as the more simple ciphers are
concerned, depend upon, and are varied by, the genius of the particular idiom. In general, there is no
alternative but experiment (directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts the
solution, until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us, all difficulty was removed
by the signature. The pun upon the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no other language than the English.
But for this consideration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and French, as the
tongues in which a secret of this kind would most naturally have been written by a pirate of the
Spanish main. As it was, I assumed the cryptograph to be English.
"You observe there are no divisions between the words. Had there been divisions, the task would
have been comparatively easy. In such case I should have commenced with a collation and analysis of
the shorter words, and, had a word of a single letter occurred, as is most likely, (a or I, for example,)
I should have considered the solution as assured. But, there being no division, my first step was to
ascertain the predominant letters, as well as the least frequent. Counting all, I constructed a table,
thus:
Of the character 8 there are 33.
;
4
æ )
*
5
6
æ 1
0
9 2
: 3
?
æ
-.
"
"
"
"
"
"
"
"
"
"
"
"
"
26.
19.
16.
13.
12.
11.
8.
6.
5.
4.
3.
2.
1.
"Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is e. Afterwards, succession runs thus: a
o i d h n r s t u y c f g l m w b k p q x z. E predominates so remarkably that an individual sentence of
any length is rarely seen, in which it is not the prevailing character.
"Here, then, we leave, in the very beginning, the groundwork for something more than a mere
guess. The general use which may be made of the table is obvious—but, in this particular cipher, we
shall only very partially require its aid. As our predominant character is 8, we will commence by
assuming it as the e of the natural alphabet. To verify the supposition, let us observe if the 8 be seen
often in couples—for e is doubled with great frequency in English—in such words, for example, as
'meet,' '.fleet,' 'speed,' 'seen,' been,' 'agree,' &c. In the present instance we see it doubled no less than
five times, although the cryptograph is brief.
"Let us assume 8, then, as e. Now, of all words in the language, 'the' is most usual; let us see,
therefore, whether there are not repetitions of any three characters, in the same order of collocation,
the last of them being 8. If we discover repetitions of such letters, so arranged, they will most
probably represent the word 'the.' Upon inspection, we find no less than seven such arrangements, the
characters being;48. We may, therefore, assume that; represents t, 4 represents h, and 8 represents e—
the last being now well confirmed. Thus a great step has been taken.
"But, having established a single word, we are enabled to establish a vastly important point; that
is to say, several commencements and terminations of other words. Let us refer, for example, to the
last instance but one, in which the combination;48 occurs—not far from the end of the cipher. We
know that the; immediately ensuing is the commencement of a word, and, of the six characters
succeeding this 'the,' we are cognizant of no less than five. Let us set these characters down, thus, by
the letters we know them to represent, leaving a space for the unknown—
t eeth.
"Here we are enabled, at once, to discard the 'th,' as forming no portion of the word commencing
with the first t; since, by experiment of the entire alphabet for a letter adapted to the vacancy, we
perceive that no word can be formed of which this th can be a part. We are thus narrowed into
t ee,
and, going through the alphabet, if necessary, as before, we arrive at the word 'tree,' as the sole
possible reading. We thus gain another letter, r, represented by (, with the words 'the tree' in
juxtaposition.
"Looking beyond these words, for a short distance, we again see the combination;48, and employ
it by way of termination to what immediately precedes. We have thus this arrangement:
the tree;4(æ?34 the,
or, substituting the natural letters, where known, it reads thus:
the tree thræ?3h the.
"Now, if, in place of the unknown characters, we leave blank spaces, or substitute dots, we read
thus:
the tree thr...h the,
when the word 'through' makes itself evident at once. But this discovery gives us three new
letters, o, u and g, represented by æ? and 3.
"Looking now, narrowly, through the cipher for combinations of known characters, we find, not
very far from the beginning, this arrangement,
83(88, or egree,
which, plainly, is the conclusion of the word 'degree,' and gives us another letter, d, represented
by æ.
"Four letters beyond the word 'degree,' we perceive the combination
;46(;88.
"Translating the known characters, and representing the unknown by dots, as before, we read thus:
th rtee. an arrangement immediately suggestive of the word 'thirteen,' and again furnishing us with two
new characters, i and n, represented by 6 and *.
"Referring, now, to the beginning of the cryptograph, we find the combination,
53æææ.
"Translating, as before, we obtain
good,
which assures us that the first letter is A, and that the first two words are 'A good.'
"It is now time that we arrange our key, as far as discovered, in a tabular form, to avoid
confusion. It will stand thus:
5 represents
æ
"
8
"
3
"
4
"
6
"
*
"
æ
"
(
"
;
"
a
d
e
g
h
i
n
o
r
t
"We have, therefore, no less than ten of the most important letters represented, and it will be
unnecessary to proceed with the details of the solution. I have said enough to convince you that
ciphers of this nature are readily soluble, and to give you some insight into the rationale of their
development. But be assured that the specimen before us appertains to the very simplest species of
cryptograph. It now only remains to give you the full translation of the characters upon the parchment,
as unriddled. Here it is:
"'A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat forty-one degrees and thirteen minutes
northeast and by north main branch seventh limb east side shoot from the left eye of the death'shead a bee line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out.'"
"But," said I, "the enigma seems still in as bad a condition as ever. How is it possible to extort a
meaning from all this jargon about 'devil's seats,' 'death's heads,' and 'bishop's hotels?'"
"I confess," replied Legrand, "that the matter still wears a serious aspect, when regarded with a
casual glance. My first endeavor was to divide the sentence into the natural division intended by the
cryptographist."
"You mean, to punctuate it?"
"Something of that kind."
"But how was it possible to effect this?"
"I reflected that it had been a point with the writer to run his words together without division, so
as to increase the difficulty of solution. Now, a not over-acute man, in pursuing such an object would
be nearly certain to overdo the matter. When, in the course of his composition, he arrived at a break in
his subject which would naturally require a pause, or a point, he would be exceedingly apt to run his
characters, at this place, more than usually close together. If you will observe the MS., in the present
instance, you will easily detect five such cases of unusual crowding. Acting upon this hint, I made the
division thus: 'A good glass in the Bishop's hostel in the Devil's seat—forty-one degrees and thirteen
minutes—northeast and by north—main branch seventh limb east side—shoot from the left eye of the
death's-head—a bee-line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out.'"
"Even this division," said I, "leaves me still in the dark."
"It left me also in the dark," replied Legrand, "for a few days; during which I made diligent
inquiry, in the neighborhood of Sullivan's Island, for any building which went by the name of the
'Bishop's Hotel;' for, of course, I dropped the obsolete word 'hostel.' Gaining no information on the
subject, I was on the point of extending my sphere of search, and proceeding in a more systematic
manner, when, one morning, it entered into my head, quite suddenly, that this 'Bishop's Hostel' might
have some reference to an old family, of the name of Bessop, which, time out of mind, had held
possession of an ancient manor-house, about four miles to the northward of the Island. I accordingly
went over to the plantation, and re-instituted my inquiries among the older negroes of the place. At
length one of the most aged of the women said that she had heard of such a place as Bessop's Castle,
and thought that she could guide me to it, but that it was not a castle nor a tavern, but a high rock.
"I offered to pay her well for her trouble, and, after some demur, she consented to accompany me
to the spot. We found it without much difficulty, when, dismissing her, I proceeded to examine the
place. The 'castle' consisted of an irregular assemblage of cliffs and rocks—one of the latter being
quite remarkable for its height as well as for its insulated and artificial appearance I clambered to its
apex, and then felt much at a loss as to what should be next done.
"While I was busied in reflection, my eyes fell upon a narrow ledge in the eastern face of the
rock, perhaps a yard below the summit upon which I stood. This ledge projected about eighteen
inches, and was not more than a foot wide, while a niche in the cliff just above it, gave it a rude
resemblance to one of the hollow-backed chairs used by our ancestors. I made no doubt that here was
the 'devil's seat' alluded to in the MS., and now I seemed to grasp the full secret of the riddle.
"The 'good glass,' I knew, could have reference to nothing but a telescope; for the word 'glass' is
rarely employed in any other sense by seamen. Now here, I at once saw, was a telescope to be used,
and a definite point of view, admitting no variation, from which to use it. Nor did I hesitate to believe
that the phrases, "forty-one degrees and thirteen minutes,' and 'northeast and by north,' were intended
as directions for the levelling of the glass. Greatly excited by these discoveries, I hurried home,
procured a telescope, and returned to the rock.
"I let myself down to the ledge, and found that it was impossible to retain a seat upon it except in
one particular position. This fact confirmed my preconceived idea. I proceeded to use the glass. Of
course, the 'forty-one degrees and thirteen minutes' could allude to nothing but elevation above the
visible horizon, since the horizontal direction was clearly indicated by the words, 'northeast and by
north.' This latter direction I at once established by means of a pocket-compass; then, pointing the
glass as nearly at an angle of forty-one degrees of elevation as I could do it by guess, I moved it
cautiously up or down, until my attention was arrested by a circular rift or opening in the foliage of a
large tree that overtopped its fellows in the distance. In the centre of this rift I perceived a white spot,
but could not, at first, distinguish what it was. Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I again looked,
and now made it out to be a human skull.
"Upon this discovery I was so sanguine as to consider the enigma solved; for the phrase 'main
branch, seventh limb, east side,' could refer only to the position of the skull upon the tree, while 'shoot
from the left eye of the death's head' admitted, also, of but one interpretation, in regard to a search for
buried treasure. I perceived that the design was to drop a bullet from the left eye of the skull, and that
a bee-line, or, in other words, a straight line, drawn from the nearest point of the trunk through 'the
shot,' (or the spot where the bullet fell,) and thence extended to a distance of fifty feet, would indicate
a definite point—and beneath this point I thought it at least possible that a deposit of value lay
concealed."
"All this," I said, "is exceedingly clear, and, although ingenious, still simple and explicit. When
you left the Bishop's Hotel, what then?"
"Why, having carefully taken the bearings of the tree, I turned homewards. The instant that I left
'the devil's seat,' however, the circular rift vanished; nor could I get a glimpse of it afterwards, turn as
I would. What seems to me the chief ingenuity in this whole business, is the fact (for repeated
experiment has convinced me it is a fact) that the circular opening in question is visible from no other
attainable point of view than that afforded by the narrow ledge upon the face of the rock.
"In this expedition to the 'Bishop's Hotel' I had been attended by Jupiter, who had, no doubt,
observed, for some weeks past, the abstraction of my demeanor, and took especial care not to leave
me alone. But, on the next day, getting up very early, I contrived to give him the slip, and went into the
hills in search of the tree. After much toil I found it. When I came home at night my valet proposed to
give me a flogging. With the rest of the adventure I believe you are as well acquainted as myself."
"I suppose," said I, "you missed the spot, in the first attempt at digging, through Jupiter's stupidity
in letting the bug fall through the right instead of through the left eye of the skull."
"Precisely. This mistake made a difference of about two inches and a half in the 'shot'—that is to
say, in the position of the peg nearest the tree; and had the treasure been beneath the 'shot,' the error
would have been of little moment; but 'the shot,' together with the nearest point of the tree, were
merely two points for the establishment of a line of direction; of course the error, however trivial in
the beginning, increased as we proceeded with the line, and by the time we had gone fifty feet, threw
us quite off the scent. But for my deep-seated impressions that treasure was here somewhere actually
buried, we might have had all our labor in vain."
"But your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swinging the beetle—how excessively odd! I was
sure you were mad. And why did you insist upon letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the
skull?"
"Why, to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions touching my sanity, and so
resolved to punish you quietly, in my own way, by a little bit of sober mystification. For this reason I
swung the beetle, and for this reason I let it fall it from the tree. An observation of yours about its
great weight suggested the latter idea."
"Yes, I perceive; and now there is only one point which puzzles me. What are we to make of the
skeletons found in the hole?"
"That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself. There seems, however, only one
plausible way of accounting for them—and yet it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my
suggestion would imply. It is clear that Kidd—if Kidd indeed secreted this treasure, which I doubt not
—it is clear that he must have had assistance in the labor. But this labor concluded, he may have
thought it expedient to remove all participants in his secret. Perhaps a couple of blows with a mattock
were sufficient, while his coadjutors were busy in the pit; perhaps it required a dozen—who shall
tell?"
FOUR BEASTS IN ONE—THE HOMO-CAMELEOPARD
Chacun a ses vertus.
—Crebillon's Xerxes.
ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES is very generally looked upon as the Gog of the prophet Ezekiel. This
honor is, however, more properly attributable to Cambyses, the son of Cyrus. And, indeed, the
character of the Syrian monarch does by no means stand in need of any adventitious embellishment.
His accession to the throne, or rather his usurpation of the sovereignty, a hundred and seventy-one
years before the coming of Christ; his attempt to plunder the temple of Diana at Ephesus; his
implacable hostility to the Jews; his pollution of the Holy of Holies; and his miserable death at Taba,
after a tumultuous reign of eleven years, are circumstances of a prominent kind, and therefore more
generally noticed by the historians of his time than the impious, dastardly, cruel, silly, and whimsical
achievements which make up the sum total of his private life and reputation.
Let us suppose, gentle reader, that it is now the year of the world three thousand eight hundred and
thirty, and let us, for a few minutes, imagine ourselves at that most grotesque habitation of man, the
remarkable city of Antioch. To be sure there were, in Syria and other countries, sixteen cities of that
appellation, besides the one to which I more particularly allude. But ours is that which went by the
name of Antiochia Epidaphne, from its vicinity to the little village of Daphne, where stood a temple
to that divinity. It was built (although about this matter there is some dispute) by Seleucus Nicanor, the
first king of the country after Alexander the Great, in memory of his father Antiochus, and became
immediately the residence of the Syrian monarchy. In the flourishing times of the Roman Empire, it
was the ordinary station of the prefect of the eastern provinces; and many of the emperors of the queen
city (among whom may be mentioned, especially, Verus and Valens) spent here the greater part of
their time. But I perceive we have arrived at the city itself. Let us ascend this battlement, and throw
our eyes upon the town and neighboring country.
"What broad and rapid river is that which forces its way, with innumerable falls, through the
mountainous wilderness, and finally through the wilderness of buildings?"
That is the Orontes, and it is the only water in sight, with the exception of the Mediterranean,
which stretches, like a broad mirror, about twelve miles off to the southward. Every one has seen the
Mediterranean; but let me tell you, there are few who have had a peep at Antioch. By few, I mean,
few who, like you and me, have had, at the same time, the advantages of a modern education.
Therefore cease to regard that sea, and give your whole attention to the mass of houses that lie
beneath us. You will remember that it is now the year of the world three thousand eight hundred and
thirty. Were it later—for example, were it the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and forty-five, we
should be deprived of this extraordinary spectacle. In the nineteenth century Antioch is—that is to say,
Antioch will be—in a lamentable state of decay. It will have been, by that time, totally destroyed, at
three different periods, by three successive earthquakes. Indeed, to say the truth, what little of its
former self may then remain, will be found in so desolate and ruinous a state that the patriarch shall
have removed his residence to Damascus. This is well. I see you profit by my advice, and are making
the most of your time in inspecting the premises—in
-satisfying your eyes
With the memorials and the things of fame
That most renown this city.—
I beg pardon; I had forgotten that Shakespeare will not flourish for seventeen hundred and fifty
years to come. But does not the appearance of Epidaphne justify me in calling it grotesque?
"It is well fortified; and in this respect is as much indebted to nature as to art."
Very true.
"There are a prodigious number of stately palaces."
There are.
"And the numerous temples, sumptuous and magnificent, may bear comparison with the most
lauded of antiquity."
All this I must acknowledge. Still there is an infinity of mud huts, and abominable hovels. We
cannot help perceiving abundance of filth in every kennel, and, were it not for the over-powering
fumes of idolatrous incense, I have no doubt we should find a most intolerable stench. Did you ever
behold streets so insufferably narrow, or houses so miraculously tall? What gloom their shadows cast
upon the ground! It is well the swinging lamps in those endless colonnades are kept burning
throughout the day; we should otherwise have the darkness of Egypt in the time of her desolation.
"It is certainly a strange place! What is the meaning of yonder singular building? See! it towers
above all others, and lies to the eastward of what I take to be the royal palace."
That is the new Temple of the Sun, who is adored in Syria under the title of Elah Gabalah.
Hereafter a very notorious Roman Emperor will institute this worship in Rome, and thence derive a
cognomen, Heliogabalus. I dare say you would like to take a peep at the divinity of the temple. You
need not look up at the heavens; his Sunship is not there—at least not the Sunship adored by the
Syrians. That deity will be found in the interior of yonder building. He is worshipped under the figure
of a large stone pillar terminating at the summit in a cone or pyramid, whereby is denoted Fire.
"Hark—behold!—who can those ridiculous beings be, half naked, with their faces painted,
shouting and gesticulating to the rabble?"
Some few are mountebanks. Others more particularly belong to the race of philosophers. The
greatest portion, however—those especially who belabor the populace with clubs—are the principal
courtiers of the palace, executing as in duty bound, some laudable comicality of the king's.
"But what have we here? Heavens! the town is swarming with wild beasts! How terrible a
spectacle!—how dangerous a peculiarity!"
Terrible, if you please; but not in the least degree dangerous. Each animal if you will take the
pains to observe, is following, very quietly, in the wake of its master. Some few, to be sure, are led
with a rope about the neck, but these are chiefly the lesser or timid species. The lion, the tiger, and the
leopard are entirely without restraint. They have been trained without difficulty to their present
profession, and attend upon their respective owners in the capacity of valets-de-chambre. It is true,
there are occasions when Nature asserts her violated dominions;—but then the devouring of a man-atarms, or the throttling of a consecrated bull, is a circumstance of too little moment to be more than
hinted at in Epidaphne.
"But what extraordinary tumult do I hear? Surely this is a loud noise even for Antioch! It argues
some commotion of unusual interest."
Yes—undoubtedly. The king has ordered some novel spectacle—some gladiatorial exhibition at
the hippodrome—or perhaps the massacre of the Scythian prisoners—or the conflagration of his new
palace—or the tearing down of a handsome temple—or, indeed, a bonfire of a few Jews. The uproar
increases. Shouts of laughter ascend the skies. The air becomes dissonant with wind instruments, and
horrible with clamor of a million throats. Let us descend, for the love of fun, and see what is going
on! This way—be careful! Here we are in the principal street, which is called the street of
Timarchus. The sea of people is coming this way, and we shall find a difficulty in stemming the tide.
They are pouring through the alley of Heraclides, which leads directly from the palace;—therefore
the king is most probably among the rioters. Yes;—I hear the shouts of the herald proclaiming his
approach in the pompous phraseology of the East. We shall have a glimpse of his person as he passes
by the temple of Ashimah. Let us ensconce ourselves in the vestibule of the sanctuary; he will be here
anon. In the meantime let us survey this image. What is it? Oh! it is the god Ashimah in proper person.
You perceive, however, that he is neither a lamb, nor a goat, nor a satyr, neither has he much
resemblance to the Pan of the Arcadians. Yet all these appearances have been given—I beg pardon—
will be given—by the learned of future ages, to the Ashimah of the Syrians. Put on your spectacles,
and tell me what it is. What is it?
"Bless me! it is an ape!"
True—a baboon; but by no means the less a deity. His name is a derivation of the Greek Simia—
what great fools are antiquarians! But see!—see!—yonder scampers a ragged little urchin. Where is
he going? What is he bawling about? What does he say? Oh! he says the king is coming in triumph;
that he is dressed in state; that he has just finished putting to death, with his own hand, a thousand
chained Israelitish prisoners! For this exploit the ragamuffin is lauding him to the skies. Hark! here
comes a troop of a similar description. They have made a Latin hymn upon the valor of the king, and
are singing it as they go:
Mille, mille, mille,
Mille, mille, mille,
Decollavimus, unus homo!
Mille, mille, mille, mille, decollavimus!
Mille, mille, mille,
Vivat qui mille mille occidit!
Tantum vini habet nemo
Quantum sanguinis effudit!
Which may be thus paraphrased:
A thousand, a thousand, a thousand,
A thousand, a thousand, a thousand,
We, with one warrior, have slain!
A thousand, a thousand, a thousand, a thousand.
Sing a thousand over again!
Soho!—let us sing
Long life to our king,
Who knocked over a thousand so fine!
Soho!—let us roar,
He has given us more
Red gallons of gore
Than all Syria can furnish of wine!
"Do you hear that flourish of trumpets?"
Yes: the king is coming! See! the people are aghast with admiration, and lift up their eyes to the
heavens in reverence. He comes;—he is coming;—there he is!
"Who?—where?—the king?—do not behold him—cannot say that I perceive him."
Then you must be blind.
"Very possible. Still I see nothing but a tumultuous mob of idiots and madmen, who are busy in
prostrating themselves before a gigantic cameleopard, and endeavoring to obtain a kiss of the
animal's hoofs. See! the beast has very justly kicked one of the rabble over—and another—and
another—and another. Indeed, I cannot help admiring the animal for the excellent use he is making of
his feet."
Rabble, indeed!—why these are the noble and free citizens of Epidaphne! Beasts, did you say?—
take care that you are not overheard. Do you not perceive that the animal has the visage of a man?
Why, my dear sir, that cameleopard is no other than Antiochus Epiphanes, Antiochus the Illustrious,
King of Syria, and the most potent of all the autocrats of the East! It is true, that he is entitled, at times,
Antiochus Epimanes—Antiochus the madman—but that is because all people have not the capacity to
appreciate his merits. It is also certain that he is at present ensconced in the hide of a beast, and is
doing his best to play the part of a cameleopard; but this is done for the better sustaining his dignity as
king. Besides, the monarch is of gigantic stature, and the dress is therefore neither unbecoming nor
over large. We may, however, presume he would not have adopted it but for some occasion of
especial state. Such, you will allow, is the massacre of a thousand Jews. With how superior a dignity
the monarch perambulates on all fours! His tail, you perceive, is held aloft by his two principal
concubines, Elline and Argelais; and his whole appearance would be infinitely prepossessing, were
it not for the protuberance of his eyes, which will certainly start out of his head, and the queer color
of his face, which has become nondescript from the quantity of wine he has swallowed. Let us follow
him to the hippodrome, whither he is proceeding, and listen to the song of triumph which he is
commencing:
Who is king but Epiphanes?
Say—do you know?
Who is king but Epiphanes?
Bravo!—bravo!
There is none but Epiphanes,
No—there is none:
So tear down the temples,
And put out the sun!
Well and strenuously sung! The populace are hailing him 'Prince of Poets,' as well as 'Glory of the
East,' 'Delight of the Universe,' and 'Most Remarkable of Cameleopards.' They have encored his
effusion, and do you hear?—he is singing it over again. When he arrives at the hippodrome, he will
be crowned with the poetic wreath, in anticipation of his victory at the approaching Olympics.
"But, good Jupiter! what is the matter in the crowd behind us?"
Behind us, did you say?—oh! ah!—I perceive. My friend, it is well that you spoke in time. Let us
get into a place of safety as soon as possible. Here!—let us conceal ourselves in the arch of this
aqueduct, and I will inform you presently of the origin of the commotion. It has turned out as I have
been anticipating. The singular appearance of the cameleopard and the head of a man, has, it seems,
given offence to the notions of propriety entertained, in general, by the wild animals domesticated in
the city. A mutiny has been the result; and, as is usual upon such occasions, all human efforts will be
of no avail in quelling the mob. Several of the Syrians have already been devoured; but the general
voice of the four-footed patriots seems to be for eating up the cameleopard. 'The Prince of Poets,'
therefore, is upon his hinder legs, running for his life. His courtiers have left him in the lurch, and his
concubines have followed so excellent an example. 'Delight of the Universe,' thou art in a sad
predicament! 'Glory of the East,' thou art in danger of mastication! Therefore never regard so
piteously thy tail; it will undoubtedly be draggled in the mud, and for this there is no help. Look not
behind thee, then, at its unavoidable degradation; but take courage, ply thy legs with vigor, and scud
for the hippodrome! Remember that thou art Antiochus Epiphanes. Antiochus the Illustrious!—also
'Prince of Poets,' 'Glory of the East,' 'Delight of the Universe,' and 'Most Remarkable of
Cameleopards!' Heavens! what a power of speed thou art displaying! What a capacity for leg-bail
thou art developing! Run, Prince!—Bravo, Epiphanes! Well done, Cameleopard!—Glorious
Antiochus!—He runs!—he leaps!—he flies! Like an arrow from a catapult he approaches the
hippodrome! He leaps!—he shrieks!—he is there! This is well; for hadst thou, 'Glory of the East,'
been half a second longer in reaching the gates of the Amphitheatre, there is not a bear's cub in
Epidaphne that would not have had a nibble at thy carcase. Let us be off—let us take our departure!—
for we shall find our delicate modern ears unable to endure the vast uproar which is about to
commence in celebration of the king's escape! Listen! it has already commenced. See!—the whole
town is topsy-turvy.
"Surely this is the most populous city of the East! What a wilderness of people! what a jumble of
all ranks and ages! what a multiplicity of sects and nations! what a variety of costumes! what a Babel
of languages! what a screaming of beasts! what a tinkling of instruments! what a parcel of
philosophers!"
Come let us be off.
"Stay a moment! I see a vast hubbub in the hippodrome; what is the meaning of it, I beseech you?"
That?—oh, nothing! The noble and free citizens of Epidaphne being, as they declare, well
satisfied of the faith, valor, wisdom, and divinity of their king, and having, moreover, been eyewitnesses of his late superhuman agility, do think it no more than their duty to invest his brows (in
addition to the poetic crown) with the wreath of victory in the footrace—a wreath which it is evident
he must obtain at the celebration of the next Olympiad, and which, therefore, they now give him in
advance.
THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE
What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women,
although puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.
—Sir Thomas Browne.
The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of
analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are
always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the
strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action,
so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the
most trivial occupations bringing his talent into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of
hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary
apprehension præternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have,
in truth, the whole air of intuition.
The faculty of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by
that highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been
called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyse. A chess-player, for
example, does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon
mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a
somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take occasion to
assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked
by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where
the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex
is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. The attention is here called powerfully into
play. If it flag for an instant, an oversight is committed resulting in injury or defeat. The possible
moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such oversights are multiplied; and in nine
cases out of ten it is the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers. In
draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but little variation, the probabilities
of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what
advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen. To be less abstract—Let us
suppose a game of draughts where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no
oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all
equal) only by some recherchæ movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect.
Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the spirit of his opponent, identifies
himself therewith, and not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometime indeed
absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation.
Whist has long been noted for its influence upon what is termed the calculating power; and men of
the highest order of intellect have been known to take an apparently unaccountable delight in it, while
eschewing chess as frivolous. Beyond doubt there is nothing of a similar nature so greatly tasking the
faculty of analysis. The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of
chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all those more important undertakings
where mind struggles with mind. When I say proficiency, I mean that perfection in the game which
includes a comprehension of all the sources whence legitimate advantage may be derived. These are
not only manifold but multiform, and lie frequently among recesses of thought altogether inaccessible
to the ordinary understanding. To observe attentively is to remember distinctly; and, so far, the
concentrative chess-player will do very well at whist; while the rules of Hoyle (themselves based
upon the mere mechanism of the game) are sufficiently and generally comprehensible. Thus to have a
retentive memory, and to proceed by "the book," are points commonly regarded as the sum total of
good playing. But it is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule that the skill of the analyst is evinced.
He makes, in silence, a host of observations and inferences. So, perhaps, do his companions; and the
difference in the extent of the information obtained, lies not so much in the validity of the inference as
in the quality of the observation. The necessary knowledge is that of what to observe. Our player
confines himself not at all; nor, because the game is the object, does he reject deductions from things
external to the game. He examines the countenance of his partner, comparing it carefully with that of
each of his opponents. He considers the mode of assorting the cards in each hand; often counting
trump by trump, and honor by honor, through the glances bestowed by their holders upon each. He
notes every variation of face as the play progresses, gathering a fund of thought from the differences
in the expression of certainty, of surprise, of triumph, or of chagrin. From the manner of gathering up a
trick he judges whether the person taking it can make another in the suit. He recognises what is played
through feint, by the air with which it is thrown upon the table. A casual or inadvertent word; the
accidental dropping or turning of a card, with the accompanying anxiety or carelessness in regard to
its concealment; the counting of the tricks, with the order of their arrangement; embarrassment,
hesitation, eagerness or trepidation—all afford, to his apparently intuitive perception, indications of
the true state of affairs. The first two or three rounds having been played, he is in full possession of
the contents of each hand, and thenceforward puts down his cards with as absolute a precision of
purpose as if the rest of the party had turned outward the faces of their own.
The analytical power should not be confounded with ample ingenuity; for while the analyst is
necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis. The constructive
or combining power, by which ingenuity is usually manifested, and to which the phrenologists (I
believe erroneously) have assigned a separate organ, supposing it a primitive faculty, has been so
frequently seen in those whose intellect bordered otherwise upon idiocy, as to have attracted general
observation among writers on morals. Between ingenuity and the analytic ability there exists a
difference far greater, indeed, than that between the fancy and the imagination, but of a character very
strictly analogous. It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly
imaginative never otherwise than analytic.
The narrative which follows will appear to the reader somewhat in the light of a commentary
upon the propositions just advanced.
Residing in Paris during the spring and part of the summer of 18—, I there became acquainted
with a Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin. This young gentleman was of an excellent—indeed of an
illustrious family, but, by a variety of untoward events, had been reduced to such poverty that the
energy of his character succumbed beneath it, and he ceased to bestir himself in the world, or to care
for the retrieval of his fortunes. By courtesy of his creditors, there still remained in his possession a
small remnant of his patrimony; and, upon the income arising from this, he managed, by means of a
rigorous economy, to procure the necessaries of life, without troubling himself about its superfluities.
Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries, and in Paris these are easily obtained.
Our first meeting was at an obscure library in the Rue Montmartre, where the accident of our both
being in search of the same very rare and very remarkable volume, brought us into closer communion.
We saw each other again and again. I was deeply interested in the little family history which he
detailed to me with all that candor which a Frenchman indulges whenever mere self is his theme. I
was astonished, too, at the vast extent of his reading; and, above all, I felt my soul enkindled within
me by the wild fervor, and the vivid freshness of his imagination. Seeking in Paris the objects I then
sought, I felt that the society of such a man would be to me a treasure beyond price; and this feeling I
frankly confided to him. It was at length arranged that we should live together during my stay in the
city; and as my worldly circumstances were somewhat less embarrassed than his own, I was
permitted to be at the expense of renting, and furnishing in a style which suited the rather fantastic
gloom of our common temper, a time-eaten and grotesque mansion, long deserted through
superstitions into which we did not inquire, and tottering to its fall in a retired and desolate portion of
the Faubourg St. Germain.
Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the world, we should have been regarded
as madmen—although, perhaps, as madmen of a harmless nature. Our seclusion was perfect. We
admitted no visitors. Indeed the locality of our retirement had been carefully kept a secret from my
own former associates; and it had been many years since Dupin had ceased to know or be known in
Paris. We existed within ourselves alone.
It was a freak of fancy in my friend (for what else shall I call it?) to be enamored of the Night for
her own sake; and into this bizarrerie, as into all his others, I quietly fell; giving myself up to his wild
whims with a perfect abandon. The sable divinity would not herself dwell with us always; but we
could counterfeit her presence. At the first dawn of the morning we closed all the messy shutters of
our old building; lighting a couple of tapers which, strongly perfumed, threw out only the ghastliest
and feeblest of rays. By the aid of these we then busied our souls in dreams—reading, writing, or
conversing, until warned by the clock of the advent of the true Darkness. Then we sallied forth into
the streets arm in arm, continuing the topics of the day, or roaming far and wide until a late hour,
seeking, amid the wild lights and shadows of the populous city, that infinity of mental excitement
which quiet observation can afford.
At such times I could not help remarking and admiring (although from his rich ideality I had been
prepared to expect it) a peculiar analytic ability in Dupin. He seemed, too, to take an eager delight in
its exercise—if not exactly in its display—and did not hesitate to confess the pleasure thus derived.
He boasted to me, with a low chuckling laugh, that most men, in respect to himself, wore windows in
their bosoms, and was wont to follow up such assertions by direct and very startling proofs of his
intimate knowledge of my own. His manner at these moments was frigid and abstract; his eyes were
vacant in expression; while his voice, usually a rich tenor, rose into a treble which would have
sounded petulantly but for the deliberateness and entire distinctness of the enunciation. Observing him
in these moods, I often dwelt meditatively upon the old philosophy of the Bi-Part Soul, and amused
myself with the fancy of a double Dupin—the creative and the resolvent.
Let it not be supposed, from what I have just said, that I am detailing any mystery, or penning any
romance. What I have described in the Frenchman, was merely the result of an excited, or perhaps of
a diseased intelligence. But of the character of his remarks at the periods in question an example will
best convey the idea.
We were strolling one night down a long dirty street in the vicinity of the Palais Royal. Being
both, apparently, occupied with thought, neither of us had spoken a syllable for fifteen minutes at
least. All at once Dupin broke forth with these words:
"He is a very little fellow, that's true, and would do better for the Thæætre des Variætæs."
"There can be no doubt of that," I replied unwittingly, and not at first observing (so much had I
been absorbed in reflection) the extraordinary manner in which the speaker had chimed in with my
meditations. In an instant afterward I recollected myself, and my astonishment was profound.
"Dupin," said I, gravely, "this is beyond my comprehension. I do not hesitate to say that I am
amazed, and can scarcely credit my senses. How was it possible you should know I was thinking of
——-?" Here I paused, to ascertain beyond a doubt whether he really knew of whom I thought.
—"of Chantilly," said he, "why do you pause? You were remarking to yourself that his diminutive
figure unfitted him for tragedy."
This was precisely what had formed the subject of my reflections. Chantilly was a quondam
cobbler of the Rue St. Denis, who, becoming stage-mad, had attempted the ræle of Xerxes, in
Cræbillon's tragedy so called, and been notoriously Pasquinaded for his pains.
"Tell me, for Heaven's sake," I exclaimed, "the method—if method there is—by which you have
been enabled to fathom my soul in this matter." In fact I was even more startled than I would have
been willing to express.
"It was the fruiterer," replied my friend, "who brought you to the conclusion that the mender of
soles was not of sufficient height for Xerxes et id genus omne."
"The fruiterer!—you astonish me—I know no fruiterer whomsoever."
"The man who ran up against you as we entered the street—it may have been fifteen minutes ago."
I now remembered that, in fact, a fruiterer, carrying upon his head a large basket of apples, had
nearly thrown me down, by accident, as we passed from the Rue C —— into the thoroughfare where
we stood; but what this had to do with Chantilly I could not possibly understand.
There was not a particle of charlætanerie about Dupin. "I will explain," he said, "and that you
may comprehend all clearly, we will first retrace the course of your meditations, from the moment in
which I spoke to you until that of the rencontre with the fruiterer in question. The larger links of the
chain run thus—Chantilly, Orion, Dr. Nichols, Epicurus, Stereotomy, the street stones, the fruiterer."
There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused themselves in
retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their own minds have been attained. The
occupation is often full of interest and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the
apparently illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the goal. What, then,
must have been my amazement when I heard the Frenchman speak what he had just spoken, and when I
could not help acknowledging that he had spoken the truth. He continued:
"We had been talking of horses, if I remember aright, just before leaving the Rue C ——. This
was the last subject we discussed. As we crossed into this street, a fruiterer, with a large basket upon
his head, brushing quickly past us, thrust you upon a pile of paving stones collected at a spot where
the causeway is undergoing repair. You stepped upon one of the loose fragments, slipped, slightly
strained your ankle, appeared vexed or sulky, muttered a few words, turned to look at the pile, and
then proceeded in silence. I was not particularly attentive to what you did; but observation has
become with me, of late, a species of necessity.
"You kept your eyes upon the ground—glancing, with a petulant expression, at the holes and ruts
in the pavement, (so that I saw you were still thinking of the stones,) until we reached the little alley
called Lamartine, which has been paved, by way of experiment, with the overlapping and riveted
blocks. Here your countenance brightened up, and, perceiving your lips move, I could not doubt that
you murmured the word 'stereotomy,' a term very affectedly applied to this species of pavement. I
knew that you could not say to yourself 'stereotomy' without being brought to think of atomies, and
thus of the theories of Epicurus; and since, when we discussed this subject not very long ago, I
mentioned to you how singularly, yet with how little notice, the vague guesses of that noble Greek had
met with confirmation in the late nebular cosmogony, I felt that you could not avoid casting your eyes
upward to the great nebula in Orion, and I certainly expected that you would do so. You did look up;
and I was now assured that I had correctly followed your steps. But in that bitter tirade upon
Chantilly, which appeared in yesterday's 'Musæe,' the satirist, making some disgraceful allusions to
the cobbler's change of name upon assuming the buskin, quoted a Latin line about which we have
often conversed. I mean the line
Perdidit antiquum litera sonum.
"I had told you that this was in reference to Orion, formerly written Urion; and, from certain
pungencies connected with this explanation, I was aware that you could not have forgotten it. It was
clear, therefore, that you would not fail to combine the two ideas of Orion and Chantilly. That you did
combine them I saw by the character of the smile which passed over your lips. You thought of the
poor cobbler's immolation. So far, you had been stooping in your gait; but now I saw you draw
yourself up to your full height. I was then sure that you reflected upon the diminutive figure of
Chantilly. At this point I interrupted your meditations to remark that as, in fact, he was a very little
fellow—that Chantilly—he would do better at the Thæætre des Variætæs."
Not long after this, we were looking over an evening edition of the "Gazette des Tribunaux," when
the following paragraphs arrested our attention.
"EXTRAORDINARY MURDERS.—This morning, about three o'clock, the inhabitants of the
Quartier St. Roch were aroused from sleep by a succession of terrific shrieks, issuing, apparently,
from the fourth story of a house in the Rue Morgue, known to be in the sole occupancy of one Madame
L'Espanaye, and her daughter Mademoiselle Camille L'Espanaye. After some delay, occasioned by a
fruitless attempt to procure admission in the usual manner, the gateway was broken in with a crowbar,
and eight or ten of the neighbors entered accompanied by two gendarmes. By this time the cries had
ceased; but, as the party rushed up the first flight of stairs, two or more rough voices in angry
contention were distinguished and seemed to proceed from the upper part of the house. As the second
landing was reached, these sounds, also, had ceased and everything remained perfectly quiet. The
party spread themselves and hurried from room to room. Upon arriving at a large back chamber in the
fourth story, (the door of which, being found locked, with the key inside, was forced open,) a
spectacle presented itself which struck every one present not less with horror than with astonishment.
"The apartment was in the wildest disorder—the furniture broken and thrown about in all
directions. There was only one bedstead; and from this the bed had been removed, and thrown into
the middle of the floor. On a chair lay a razor, besmeared with blood. On the hearth were two or three
long and thick tresses of grey human hair, also dabbled in blood, and seeming to have been pulled out
by the roots. Upon the floor were found four Napoleons, an ear-ring of topaz, three large silver
spoons, three smaller of mætal d'Alger, and two bags, containing nearly four thousand francs in gold.
The drawers of a bureau, which stood in one corner were open, and had been, apparently, rifled,
although many articles still remained in them. A small iron safe was discovered under the bed (not
under the bedstead). It was open, with the key still in the door. It had no contents beyond a few old
letters, and other papers of little consequence.
"Of Madame L'Espanaye no traces were here seen; but an unusual quantity of soot being observed
in the fire-place, a search was made in the chimney, and (horrible to relate!) the corpse of the
daughter, head downward, was dragged therefrom; it having been thus forced up the narrow aperture
for a considerable distance. The body was quite warm. Upon examining it, many excoriations were
perceived, no doubt occasioned by the violence with which it had been thrust up and disengaged.
Upon the face were many severe scratches, and, upon the throat, dark bruises, and deep indentations
of finger nails, as if the deceased had been throttled to death.
"After a thorough investigation of every portion of the house, without farther discovery, the party
made its way into a small paved yard in the rear of the building, where lay the corpse of the old lady,
with her throat so entirely cut that, upon an attempt to raise her, the head fell off. The body, as well as
the head, was fearfully mutilated—the former so much so as scarcely to retain any semblance of
humanity.
"To this horrible mystery there is not as yet, we believe, the slightest clew."
The next day's paper had these additional particulars.
"The Tragedy in the Rue Morgue. Many individuals have been examined in relation to this most
extraordinary and frightful affair. [The word 'affaire' has not yet, in France, that levity of import
which it conveys with us,] "but nothing whatever has transpired to throw light upon it. We give below
all the material testimony elicited.
"Pauline Dubourg, laundress, deposes that she has known both the deceased for three years,
having washed for them during that period. The old lady and her daughter seemed on good terms—
very affectionate towards each other. They were excellent pay. Could not speak in regard to their
mode or means of living. Believed that Madame L. told fortunes for a living. Was reputed to have
money put by. Never met any persons in the house when she called for the clothes or took them home.
Was sure that they had no servant in employ. There appeared to be no furniture in any part of the
building except in the fourth story.
"Pierre Moreau, tobacconist, deposes that he has been in the habit of selling small quantities of
tobacco and snuff to Madame L'Espanaye for nearly four years. Was born in the neighborhood, and
has always resided there. The deceased and her daughter had occupied the house in which the corpses
were found, for more than six years. It was formerly occupied by a jeweller, who under-let the upper
rooms to various persons. The house was the property of Madame L. She became dissatisfied with
the abuse of the premises by her tenant, and moved into them herself, refusing to let any portion. The
old lady was childish. Witness had seen the daughter some five or six times during the six years. The
two lived an exceedingly retired life—were reputed to have money. Had heard it said among the
neighbors that Madame L. told fortunes—did not believe it. Had never seen any person enter the door
except the old lady and her daughter, a porter once or twice, and a physician some eight or ten times.
"Many other persons, neighbors, gave evidence to the same effect. No one was spoken of as
frequenting the house. It was not known whether there were any living connexions of Madame L. and
her daughter. The shutters of the front windows were seldom opened. Those in the rear were always
closed, with the exception of the large back room, fourth story. The house was a good house—not
very old.
"Isidore Muset, gendarme, deposes that he was called to the house about three o'clock in the
morning, and found some twenty or thirty persons at the gateway, endeavoring to gain admittance.
Forced it open, at length, with a bayonet—not with a crowbar. Had but little difficulty in getting it
open, on account of its being a double or folding gate, and bolted neither at bottom not top. The
shrieks were continued until the gate was forced—and then suddenly ceased. They seemed to be
screams of some person (or persons) in great agony—were loud and drawn out, not short and quick.
Witness led the way up stairs. Upon reaching the first landing, heard two voices in loud and angry
contention—the one a gruff voice, the other much shriller—a very strange voice. Could distinguish
some words of the former, which was that of a Frenchman. Was positive that it was not a woman's
voice. Could distinguish the words 'sacræ' and 'diable.' The shrill voice was that of a foreigner.
Could not be sure whether it was the voice of a man or of a woman. Could not make out what was
said, but believed the language to be Spanish. The state of the room and of the bodies was described
by this witness as we described them yesterday.
"Henri Duval, a neighbor, and by trade a silver-smith, deposes that he was one of the party who
first entered the house. Corroborates the testimony of Musæt in general. As soon as they forced an
entrance, they reclosed the door, to keep out the crowd, which collected very fast, notwithstanding the
lateness of the hour. The shrill voice, this witness thinks, was that of an Italian. Was certain it was not
French. Could not be sure that it was a man's voice. It might have been a woman's. Was not
acquainted with the Italian language. Could not distinguish the words, but was convinced by the
intonation that the speaker was an Italian. Knew Madame L. and her daughter. Had conversed with
both frequently. Was sure that the shrill voice was not that of either of the deceased.
"—Odenheimer, restaurateur. This witness volunteered his testimony. Not speaking French, was
examined through an interpreter. Is a native of Amsterdam. Was passing the house at the time of the
shrieks. They lasted for several minutes—probably ten. They were long and loud—very awful and
distressing. Was one of those who entered the building. Corroborated the previous evidence in every
respect but one. Was sure that the shrill voice was that of a man—of a Frenchman. Could not
distinguish the words uttered. They were loud and quick—unequal—spoken apparently in fear as
well as in anger. The voice was harsh—not so much shrill as harsh. Could not call it a shrill voice.
The gruff voice said repeatedly 'sacræ,' 'diable,' and once 'mon Dieu.'
"Jules Mignaud, banker, of the firm of Mignaud et Fils, Rue Deloraine. Is the elder Mignaud.
Madame L'Espanaye had some property. Had opened an account with his banking house in the spring
of the year—(eight years previously). Made frequent deposits in small sums. Had checked for nothing
until the third day before her death, when she took out in person the sum of 4000 francs. This sum was
paid in gold, and a clerk went home with the money.
"Adolphe Le Bon, clerk to Mignaud et Fils, deposes that on the day in question, about noon, he
accompanied Madame L'Espanaye to her residence with the 4000 francs, put up in two bags. Upon the
door being opened, Mademoiselle L. appeared and took from his hands one of the bags, while the old
lady relieved him of the other. He then bowed and departed. Did not see any person in the street at the
time. It is a bye-street—very lonely.
"William Bird, tailor deposes that he was one of the party who entered the house. Is an
Englishman. Has lived in Paris two years. Was one of the first to ascend the stairs. Heard the voices
in contention. The gruff voice was that of a Frenchman. Could make out several words, but cannot
now remember all. Heard distinctly 'sacræ' and 'mon Dieu.' There was a sound at the moment as if of
several persons struggling—a scraping and scuffling sound. The shrill voice was very loud—louder
than the gruff one. Is sure that it was not the voice of an Englishman. Appeared to be that of a German.
Might have been a woman's voice. Does not understand German.
"Four of the above-named witnesses, being recalled, deposed that the door of the chamber in
which was found the body of Mademoiselle L. was locked on the inside when the party reached it.
Every thing was perfectly silent—no groans or noises of any kind. Upon forcing the door no person
was seen. The windows, both of the back and front room, were down and firmly fastened from within.
A door between the two rooms was closed, but not locked. The door leading from the front room into
the passage was locked, with the key on the inside. A small room in the front of the house, on the
fourth story, at the head of the passage was open, the door being ajar. This room was crowded with
old beds, boxes, and so forth. These were carefully removed and searched. There was not an inch of
any portion of the house which was not carefully searched. Sweeps were sent up and down the
chimneys. The house was a four story one, with garrets (mansardes.) A trap-door on the roof was
nailed down very securely—did not appear to have been opened for years. The time elapsing
between the hearing of the voices in contention and the breaking open of the room door, was variously
stated by the witnesses. Some made it as short as three minutes—some as long as five. The door was
opened with difficulty.
"Alfonzo Garcio, undertaker, deposes that he resides in the Rue Morgue. Is a native of Spain. Was
one of the party who entered the house. Did not proceed up stairs. Is nervous, and was apprehensive
of the consequences of agitation. Heard the voices in contention. The gruff voice was that of a
Frenchman. Could not distinguish what was said. The shrill voice was that of an Englishman—is sure
of this. Does not understand the English language, but judges by the intonation.
"Alberto Montani, confectioner, deposes that he was among the first to ascend the stairs. Heard
the voices in question. The gruff voice was that of a Frenchman. Distinguished several words. The
speaker appeared to be expostulating. Could not make out the words of the shrill voice. Spoke quick
and unevenly. Thinks it the voice of a Russian. Corroborates the general testimony. Is an Italian.
Never conversed with a native of Russia.
"Several witnesses, recalled, here testified that the chimneys of all the rooms on the fourth story
were too narrow to admit the passage of a human being. By 'sweeps' were meant cylindrical
sweeping brushes, such as are employed by those who clean chimneys. These brushes were passed up
and down every flue in the house. There is no back passage by which any one could have descended
while the party proceeded up stairs. The body of Mademoiselle L'Espanaye was so firmly wedged in
the chimney that it could not be got down until four or five of the party united their strength.
"Paul Dumas, physician, deposes that he was called to view the bodies about day-break. They
were both then lying on the sacking of the bedstead in the chamber where Mademoiselle L. was
found. The corpse of the young lady was much bruised and excoriated. The fact that it had been thrust
up the chimney would sufficiently account for these appearances. The throat was greatly chafed.
There were several deep scratches just below the chin, together with a series of livid spots which
were evidently the impression of fingers. The face was fearfully discolored, and the eye-balls
protruded. The tongue had been partially bitten through. A large bruise was discovered upon the pit of
the stomach, produced, apparently, by the pressure of a knee. In the opinion of M. Dumas,
Mademoiselle L'Espanaye had been throttled to death by some person or persons unknown. The
corpse of the mother was horribly mutilated. All the bones of the right leg and arm were more or less
shattered. The left tibia much splintered, as well as all the ribs of the left side. Whole body
dreadfully bruised and discolored. It was not possible to say how the injuries had been inflicted. A
heavy club of wood, or a broad bar of iron—a chair—any large, heavy, and obtuse weapon would
have produced such results, if wielded by the hands of a very powerful man. No woman could have
inflicted the blows with any weapon. The head of the deceased, when seen by witness, was entirely
separated from the body, and was also greatly shattered. The throat had evidently been cut with some
very sharp instrument—probably with a razor.
"Alexandre Etienne, surgeon, was called with M. Dumas to view the bodies. Corroborated the
testimony, and the opinions of M. Dumas.
"Nothing farther of importance was elicited, although several other persons were examined. A
murder so mysterious, and so perplexing in all its particulars, was never before committed in Paris—
if indeed a murder has been committed at all. The police are entirely at fault—an unusual occurrence
in affairs of this nature. There is not, however, the shadow of a clew apparent."
The evening edition of the paper stated that the greatest excitement still continued in the Quartier
St. Roch—that the premises in question had been carefully re-searched, and fresh examinations of
witnesses instituted, but all to no purpose. A postscript, however, mentioned that Adolphe Le Bon had
been arrested and imprisoned—although nothing appeared to criminate him, beyond the facts already
detailed.
Dupin seemed singularly interested in the progress of this affair—at least so I judged from his
manner, for he made no comments. It was only after the announcement that Le Bon had been
imprisoned, that he asked me my opinion respecting the murders.
I could merely agree with all Paris in considering them an insoluble mystery. I saw no means by
which it would be possible to trace the murderer.
"We must not judge of the means," said Dupin, "by this shell of an examination. The Parisian
police, so much extolled for acumen, are cunning, but no more. There is no method in their
proceedings, beyond the method of the moment. They make a vast parade of measures; but, not
unfrequently, these are so ill adapted to the objects proposed, as to put us in mind of Monsieur
Jourdain's calling for his robe-de-chambre—pour mieux entendre la musique. The results attained by
them are not unfrequently surprising, but, for the most part, are brought about by simple diligence and
activity. When these qualities are unavailing, their schemes fail. Vidocq, for example, was a good
guesser and a persevering man. But, without educated thought, he erred continually by the very
intensity of his investigations. He impaired his vision by holding the object too close. He might see,
perhaps, one or two points with unusual clearness, but in so doing he, necessarily, lost sight of the
matter as a whole. Thus there is such a thing as being too profound. Truth is not always in a well. In
fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The
depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found. The
modes and sources of this kind of error are well typified in the contemplation of the heavenly bodies.
To look at a star by glances—to view it in a side-long way, by turning toward it the exterior portions
of the retina (more susceptible of feeble impressions of light than the interior), is to behold the star
distinctly—is to have the best appreciation of its lustre—a lustre which grows dim just in proportion
as we turn our vision fully upon it. A greater number of rays actually fall upon the eye in the latter
case, but, in the former, there is the more refined capacity for comprehension. By undue profundity we
perplex and enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even Venus herself vanish from the firmament
by a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct.
"As for these murders, let us enter into some examinations for ourselves, before we make up an
opinion respecting them. An inquiry will afford us amusement," [I thought this an odd term, so
applied, but said nothing] "and, besides, Le Bon once rendered me a service for which I am not
ungrateful. We will go and see the premises with our own eyes. I know G——, the Prefect of Police,
and shall have no difficulty in obtaining the necessary permission."
The permission was obtained, and we proceeded at once to the Rue Morgue. This is one of those
miserable thoroughfares which intervene between the Rue Richelieu and the Rue St. Roch. It was late
in the afternoon when we reached it; as this quarter is at a great distance from that in which we
resided. The house was readily found; for there were still many persons gazing up at the closed
shutters, with an objectless curiosity, from the opposite side of the way. It was an ordinary Parisian
house, with a gateway, on one side of which was a glazed watch-box, with a sliding panel in the
window, indicating a loge de concierge. Before going in we walked up the street, turned down an
alley, and then, again turning, passed in the rear of the building—Dupin, meanwhile examining the
whole neighborhood, as well as the house, with a minuteness of attention for which I could see no
possible object.
Retracing our steps, we came again to the front of the dwelling, rang, and, having shown our
credentials, were admitted by the agents in charge. We went up stairs—into the chamber where the
body of Mademoiselle L'Espanaye had been found, and where both the deceased still lay. The
disorders of the room had, as usual, been suffered to exist. I saw nothing beyond what had been stated
in the "Gazette des Tribunaux." Dupin scrutinized every thing—not excepting the bodies of the
victims. We then went into the other rooms, and into the yard; a gendarme accompanying us
throughout. The examination occupied us until dark, when we took our departure. On our way home
my companion stepped in for a moment at the office of one of the daily papers.
I have said that the whims of my friend were manifold, and that Je les mænagais:—for this phrase
there is no English equivalent. It was his humor, now, to decline all conversation on the subject of the
murder, until about noon the next day. He then asked me, suddenly, if I had observed any thing
peculiar at the scene of the atrocity.
There was something in his manner of emphasizing the word "peculiar," which caused me to
shudder, without knowing why.
"No, nothing peculiar," I said; "nothing more, at least, than we both saw stated in the paper."
"The 'Gazette,'" he replied, "has not entered, I fear, into the unusual horror of the thing. But
dismiss the idle opinions of this print. It appears to me that this mystery is considered insoluble, for
the very reason which should cause it to be regarded as easy of solution—I mean for the outræ
character of its features. The police are confounded by the seeming absence of motive—not for the
murder itself—but for the atrocity of the murder. They are puzzled, too, by the seeming impossibility
of reconciling the voices heard in contention, with the facts that no one was discovered up stairs but
the assassinated Mademoiselle L'Espanaye, and that there were no means of egress without the notice
of the party ascending. The wild disorder of the room; the corpse thrust, with the head downward, up
the chimney; the frightful mutilation of the body of the old lady; these considerations, with those just
mentioned, and others which I need not mention, have sufficed to paralyze the powers, by putting
completely at fault the boasted acumen, of the government agents. They have fallen into the gross but
common error of confounding the unusual with the abstruse. But it is by these deviations from the
plane of the ordinary, that reason feels its way, if at all, in its search for the true. In investigations
such as we are now pursuing, it should not be so much asked 'what has occurred,' as 'what has
occurred that has never occurred before.' In fact, the facility with which I shall arrive, or have
arrived, at the solution of this mystery, is in the direct ratio of its apparent insolubility in the eyes of
the police."
I stared at the speaker in mute astonishment.
"I am now awaiting," continued he, looking toward the door of our apartment—"I am now
awaiting a person who, although perhaps not the perpetrator of these butcheries, must have been in
some measure implicated in their perpetration. Of the worst portion of the crimes committed, it is
probable that he is innocent. I hope that I am right in this supposition; for upon it I build my
expectation of reading the entire riddle. I look for the man here—in this room—every moment. It is
true that he may not arrive; but the probability is that he will. Should he come, it will be necessary to
detain him. Here are pistols; and we both know how to use them when occasion demands their use."
I took the pistols, scarcely knowing what I did, or believing what I heard, while Dupin went on,
very much as if in a soliloquy. I have already spoken of his abstract manner at such times. His
discourse was addressed to myself; but his voice, although by no means loud, had that intonation
which is commonly employed in speaking to some one at a great distance. His eyes, vacant in
expression, regarded only the wall.
"That the voices heard in contention," he said, "by the party upon the stairs, were not the voices of
the women themselves, was fully proved by the evidence. This relieves us of all doubt upon the
question whether the old lady could have first destroyed the daughter and afterward have committed
suicide. I speak of this point chiefly for the sake of method; for the strength of Madame L'Espanaye
would have been utterly unequal to the task of thrusting her daughter's corpse up the chimney as it was
found; and the nature of the wounds upon her own person entirely preclude the idea of selfdestruction. Murder, then, has been committed by some third party; and the voices of this third party
were those heard in contention. Let me now advert—not to the whole testimony respecting these
voices—but to what was peculiar in that testimony. Did you observe any thing peculiar about it?"
I remarked that, while all the witnesses agreed in supposing the gruff voice to be that of a
Frenchman, there was much disagreement in regard to the shrill, or, as one individual termed it, the
harsh voice.
"That was the evidence itself," said Dupin, "but it was not the peculiarity of the evidence. You
have observed nothing distinctive. Yet there was something to be observed. The witnesses, as you
remark, agreed about the gruff voice; they were here unanimous. But in regard to the shrill voice, the
peculiarity is—not that they disagreed—but that, while an Italian, an Englishman, a Spaniard, a
Hollander, and a Frenchman attempted to describe it, each one spoke of it as that of a foreigner. Each
is sure that it was not the voice of one of his own countrymen. Each likens it—not to the voice of an
individual of any nation with whose language he is conversant—but the converse. The Frenchman
supposes it the voice of a Spaniard, and 'might have distinguished some words had he been
acquainted with the Spanish.' The Dutchman maintains it to have been that of a Frenchman; but we
find it stated that 'not understanding French this witness was examined through an interpreter.' The
Englishman thinks it the voice of a German, and 'does not understand German.' The Spaniard 'is sure'
that it was that of an Englishman, but 'judges by the intonation' altogether, 'as he has no knowledge of
the English.' The Italian believes it the voice of a Russian, but 'has never conversed with a native of
Russia.' A second Frenchman differs, moreover, with the first, and is positive that the voice was that
of an Italian; but, not being cognizant of that tongue, is, like the Spaniard, 'convinced by the
intonation.' Now, how strangely unusual must that voice have really been, about which such testimony
as this could have been elicited!—in whose tones, even, denizens of the five great divisions of
Europe could recognise nothing familiar! You will say that it might have been the voice of an Asiatic
—of an African. Neither Asiatics nor Africans abound in Paris; but, without denying the inference, I
will now merely call your attention to three points. The voice is termed by one witness 'harsh rather
than shrill.' It is represented by two others to have been 'quick and unequal.' No words—no sounds
resembling words—were by any witness mentioned as distinguishable.
"I know not," continued Dupin, "what impression I may have made, so far, upon your own
understanding; but I do not hesitate to say that legitimate deductions even from this portion of the
testimony—the portion respecting the gruff and shrill voices—are in themselves sufficient to
engender a suspicion which should give direction to all farther progress in the investigation of the
mystery. I said 'legitimate deductions;' but my meaning is not thus fully expressed. I designed to imply
that the deductions are the sole proper ones, and that the suspicion arises inevitably from them as the
single result. What the suspicion is, however, I will not say just yet. I merely wish you to bear in mind
that, with myself, it was sufficiently forcible to give a definite form—a certain tendency—to my
inquiries in the chamber.
"Let us now transport ourselves, in fancy, to this chamber. What shall we first seek here? The
means of egress employed by the murderers. It is not too much to say that neither of us believe in
præternatural events. Madame and Mademoiselle L'Espanaye were not destroyed by spirits. The
doers of the deed were material, and escaped materially. Then how? Fortunately, there is but one
mode of reasoning upon the point, and that mode must lead us to a definite decision.—Let us examine,
each by each, the possible means of egress. It is clear that the assassins were in the room where
Mademoiselle L'Espanaye was found, or at least in the room adjoining, when the party ascended the
stairs. It is then only from these two apartments that we have to seek issues. The police have laid bare
the floors, the ceilings, and the masonry of the walls, in every direction. No secret issues could have
escaped their vigilance. But, not trusting to their eyes, I examined with my own. There were, then, no
secret issues. Both doors leading from the rooms into the passage were securely locked, with the keys
inside. Let us turn to the chimneys. These, although of ordinary width for some eight or ten feet above
the hearths, will not admit, throughout their extent, the body of a large cat. The impossibility of
egress, by means already stated, being thus absolute, we are reduced to the windows. Through those
of the front room no one could have escaped without notice from the crowd in the street. The
murderers must have passed, then, through those of the back room. Now, brought to this conclusion in
so unequivocal a manner as we are, it is not our part, as reasoners, to reject it on account of apparent
impossibilities. It is only left for us to prove that these apparent 'impossibilities' are, in reality, not
such.
"There are two windows in the chamber. One of them is unobstructed by furniture, and is wholly
visible. The lower portion of the other is hidden from view by the head of the unwieldy bedstead
which is thrust close up against it. The former was found securely fastened from within. It resisted the
utmost force of those who endeavored to raise it. A large gimlet-hole had been pierced in its frame to
the left, and a very stout nail was found fitted therein, nearly to the head. Upon examining the other
window, a similar nail was seen similarly fitted in it; and a vigorous attempt to raise this sash, failed
also. The police were now entirely satisfied that egress had not been in these directions. And,
therefore, it was thought a matter of supererogation to withdraw the nails and open the windows.
"My own examination was somewhat more particular, and was so for the reason I have just given
—because here it was, I knew, that all apparent impossibilities must be proved to be not such in
reality.
"I proceeded to think thus—æ posteriori. The murderers did escape from one of these windows.
This being so, they could not have refastened the sashes from the inside, as they were found fastened;
—the consideration which put a stop, through its obviousness, to the scrutiny of the police in this
quarter. Yet the sashes were fastened. They must, then, have the power of fastening themselves. There
was no escape from this conclusion. I stepped to the unobstructed casement, withdrew the nail with
some difficulty and attempted to raise the sash. It resisted all my efforts, as I had anticipated. A
concealed spring must, I now know, exist; and this corroboration of my idea convinced me that my
premises at least, were correct, however mysterious still appeared the circumstances attending the
nails. A careful search soon brought to light the hidden spring. I pressed it, and, satisfied with the
discovery, forbore to upraise the sash.
"I now replaced the nail and regarded it attentively. A person passing out through this window
might have reclosed it, and the spring would have caught—but the nail could not have been replaced.
The conclusion was plain, and again narrowed in the field of my investigations. The assassins must
have escaped through the other window. Supposing, then, the springs upon each sash to be the same,
as was probable, there must be found a difference between the nails, or at least between the modes of
their fixture. Getting upon the sacking of the bedstead, I looked over the head-board minutely at the
second casement. Passing my hand down behind the board, I readily discovered and pressed the
spring, which was, as I had supposed, identical in character with its neighbor. I now looked at the
nail. It was as stout as the other, and apparently fitted in the same manner—driven in nearly up to the
head.
"You will say that I was puzzled; but, if you think so, you must have misunderstood the nature of
the inductions. To use a sporting phrase, I had not been once 'at fault.' The scent had never for an
instant been lost. There was no flaw in any link of the chain. I had traced the secret to its ultimate
result,—and that result was the nail. It had, I say, in every respect, the appearance of its fellow in the
other window; but this fact was an absolute nullity (conclusive us it might seem to be) when
compared with the consideration that here, at this point, terminated the clew. 'There must be
something wrong,' I said, 'about the nail.' I touched it; and the head, with about a quarter of an inch of
the shank, came off in my fingers. The rest of the shank was in the gimlet-hole where it had been
broken off. The fracture was an old one (for its edges were incrusted with rust), and had apparently
been accomplished by the blow of a hammer, which had partially imbedded, in the top of the bottom
sash, the head portion of the nail. I now carefully replaced this head portion in the indentation whence
I had taken it, and the resemblance to a perfect nail was complete—the fissure was invisible.
Pressing the spring, I gently raised the sash for a few inches; the head went up with it, remaining firm
in its bed. I closed the window, and the semblance of the whole nail was again perfect.
"The riddle, so far, was now unriddled. The assassin had escaped through the window which
looked upon the bed. Dropping of its own accord upon his exit (or perhaps purposely closed), it had
become fastened by the spring; and it was the retention of this spring which had been mistaken by the
police for that of the nail,—farther inquiry being thus considered unnecessary.
"The next question is that of the mode of descent. Upon this point I had been satisfied in my walk
with you around the building. About five feet and a half from the casement in question there runs a
lightning-rod. From this rod it would have been impossible for any one to reach the window itself, to
say nothing of entering it. I observed, however, that the shutters of the fourth story were of the
peculiar kind called by Parisian carpenters ferrades—a kind rarely employed at the present day, but
frequently seen upon very old mansions at Lyons and Bordeaux. They are in the form of an ordinary
door, (a single, not a folding door) except that the lower half is latticed or worked in open trellis—
thus affording an excellent hold for the hands. In the present instance these shutters are fully three feet
and a half broad. When we saw them from the rear of the house, they were both about half open—that
is to say, they stood off at right angles from the wall. It is probable that the police, as well as myself,
examined the back of the tenement; but, if so, in looking at these ferrades in the line of their breadth
(as they must have done), they did not perceive this great breadth itself, or, at all events, failed to take
it into due consideration. In fact, having once satisfied themselves that no egress could have been
made in this quarter, they would naturally bestow here a very cursory examination. It was clear to me,
however, that the shutter belonging to the window at the head of the bed, would, if swung fully back to
the wall, reach to within two feet of the lightning-rod. It was also evident that, by exertion of a very
unusual degree of activity and courage, an entrance into the window, from the rod, might have been
thus effected.—By reaching to the distance of two feet and a half (we now suppose the shutter open to
its whole extent) a robber might have taken a firm grasp upon the trellis-work. Letting go, then, his
hold upon the rod, placing his feet securely against the wall, and springing boldly from it, he might
have swung the shutter so as to close it, and, if we imagine the window open at the time, might even
have swung himself into the room.
"I wish you to bear especially in mind that I have spoken of a very unusual degree of activity as
requisite to success in so hazardous and so difficult a feat. It is my design to show you, first, that the
thing might possibly have been accomplished:—but, secondly and chiefly, I wish to impress upon
your understanding the very extraordinary—the almost præternatural character of that agility which
could have accomplished it.
"You will say, no doubt, using the language of the law, that 'to make out my case,' I should rather
undervalue, than insist upon a full estimation of the activity required in this matter. This may be the
practice in law, but it is not the usage of reason. My ultimate object is only the truth. My immediate
purpose is to lead you to place in juxtaposition, that very unusual activity of which I have just spoken
with that very peculiar shrill (or harsh) and unequal voice, about whose nationality no two persons
could be found to agree, and in whose utterance no syllabification could be detected."
At these words a vague and half-formed conception of the meaning of Dupin flitted over my mind.
I seemed to be upon the verge of comprehension without power to comprehend—men, at times, find
themselves upon the brink of remembrance without being able, in the end, to remember. My friend
went on with his discourse.
"You will see," he said, "that I have shifted the question from the mode of egress to that of ingress.
It was my design to convey the idea that both were effected in the same manner, at the same point. Let
us now revert to the interior of the room. Let us survey the appearances here. The drawers of the
bureau, it is said, had been rifled, although many articles of apparel still remained within them. The
conclusion here is absurd. It is a mere guess—a very silly one—and no more. How are we to know
that the articles found in the drawers were not all these drawers had originally contained? Madame
L'Espanaye and her daughter lived an exceedingly retired life—saw no company—seldom went out—
had little use for numerous changes of habiliment. Those found were at least of as good quality as any
likely to be possessed by these ladies. If a thief had taken any, why did he not take the best—why did
he not take all? In a word, why did he abandon four thousand francs in gold to encumber himself with
a bundle of linen? The gold was abandoned. Nearly the whole sum mentioned by Monsieur Mignaud,
the banker, was discovered, in bags, upon the floor. I wish you, therefore, to discard from your
thoughts the blundering idea of motive, engendered in the brains of the police by that portion of the
evidence which speaks of money delivered at the door of the house. Coincidences ten times as
remarkable as this (the delivery of the money, and murder committed within three days upon the party
receiving it), happen to all of us every hour of our lives, without attracting even momentary notice.
Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have
been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities—that theory to which the most glorious
objects of human research are indebted for the most glorious of illustration. In the present instance,
had the gold been gone, the fact of its delivery three days before would have formed something more
than a coincidence. It would have been corroborative of this idea of motive. But, under the real
circumstances of the case, if we are to suppose gold the motive of this outrage, we must also imagine
the perpetrator so vacillating an idiot as to have abandoned his gold and his motive together.
"Keeping now steadily in mind the points to which I have drawn your attention—that peculiar
voice, that unusual agility, and that startling absence of motive in a murder so singularly atrocious as
this—let us glance at the butchery itself. Here is a woman strangled to death by manual strength, and
thrust up a chimney, head downward. Ordinary assassins employ no such modes of murder as this.
Least of all, do they thus dispose of the murdered. In the manner of thrusting the corpse up the
chimney, you will admit that there was something excessively outræ—something altogether
irreconcilable with our common notions of human action, even when we suppose the actors the most
depraved of men. Think, too, how great must have been that strength which could have thrust the body
up such an aperture so forcibly that the united vigor of several persons was found barely sufficient to
drag it down!
"Turn, now, to other indications of the employment of a vigor most marvellous. On the hearth
were thick tresses—very thick tresses—of grey human hair. These had been torn out by the roots. You
are aware of the great force necessary in tearing thus from the head even twenty or thirty hairs
together. You saw the locks in question as well as myself. Their roots (a hideous sight!) were clotted
with fragments of the flesh of the scalp—sure token of the prodigious power which had been exerted
in uprooting perhaps half a million of hairs at a time. The throat of the old lady was not merely cut,
but the head absolutely severed from the body: the instrument was a mere razor. I wish you also to
look at the brutal ferocity of these deeds. Of the bruises upon the body of Madame L'Espanaye I do
not speak. Monsieur Dumas, and his worthy coadjutor Monsieur Etienne, have pronounced that they
were inflicted by some obtuse instrument; and so far these gentlemen are very correct. The obtuse
instrument was clearly the stone pavement in the yard, upon which the victim had fallen from the
window which looked in upon the bed. This idea, however simple it may now seem, escaped the
police for the same reason that the breadth of the shutters escaped them—because, by the affair of the
nails, their perceptions had been hermetically sealed against the possibility of the windows having
ever been opened at all.
"If now, in addition to all these things, you have properly reflected upon the odd disorder of the
chamber, we have gone so far as to combine the ideas of an agility astounding, a strength superhuman,
a ferocity brutal, a butchery without motive, a grotesquerie in horror absolutely alien from humanity,
and a voice foreign in tone to the ears of men of many nations, and devoid of all distinct or
intelligible syllabification. What result, then, has ensued? What impression have I made upon your
fancy?"
I felt a creeping of the flesh as Dupin asked me the question. "A madman," I said, "has done this
deed—some raving maniac, escaped from a neighboring Maison de Santæ."
"In some respects," he replied, "your idea is not irrelevant. But the voices of madmen, even in
their wildest paroxysms, are never found to tally with that peculiar voice heard upon the stairs.
Madmen are of some nation, and their language, however incoherent in its words, has always the
coherence of syllabification. Besides, the hair of a madman is not such as I now hold in my hand. I
disentangled this little tuft from the rigidly clutched fingers of Madame L'Espanaye. Tell me what you
can make of it."
"Dupin!" I said, completely unnerved; "this hair is most unusual—this is no human hair."
"I have not asserted that it is," said he; "but, before we decide this point, I wish you to glance at
the little sketch I have here traced upon this paper. It is a fac-simile drawing of what has been
described in one portion of the testimony as 'dark bruises, and deep indentations of finger nails,' upon
the throat of Mademoiselle L'Espanaye, and in another, (by Messrs. Dumas and Etienne,) as a 'series
of livid spots, evidently the impression of fingers.'
"You will perceive," continued my friend, spreading out the paper upon the table before us, "that
this drawing gives the idea of a firm and fixed hold. There is no slipping apparent. Each finger has
retained—possibly until the death of the victim—the fearful grasp by which it originally imbedded
itself. Attempt, now, to place all your fingers, at the same time, in the respective impressions as you
see them."
I made the attempt in vain.
"We are possibly not giving this matter a fair trial," he said. "The paper is spread out upon a plane
surface; but the human throat is cylindrical. Here is a billet of wood, the circumference of which is
about that of the throat. Wrap the drawing around it, and try the experiment again."
I did so; but the difficulty was even more obvious than before. "This," I said, "is the mark of no
human hand."
"Read now," replied Dupin, "this passage from Cuvier."
It was a minute anatomical and generally descriptive account of the large fulvous Ourang-Outang
of the East Indian Islands. The gigantic stature, the prodigious strength and activity, the wild ferocity,
and the imitative propensities of these mammalia are sufficiently well known to all. I understood the
full horrors of the murder at once.
"The description of the digits," said I, as I made an end of reading, "is in exact accordance with
this drawing. I see that no animal but an Ourang-Outang, of the species here mentioned, could have
impressed the indentations as you have traced them. This tuft of tawny hair, too, is identical in
character with that of the beast of Cuvier. But I cannot possibly comprehend the particulars of this
frightful mystery. Besides, there were two voices heard in contention, and one of them was
unquestionably the voice of a Frenchman."
"True; and you will remember an expression attributed almost unanimously, by the evidence, to
this voice,—the expression, 'mon Dieu!' This, under the circumstances, has been justly characterized
by one of the witnesses (Montani, the confectioner,) as an expression of remonstrance or
expostulation. Upon these two words, therefore, I have mainly built my hopes of a full solution of the
riddle. A Frenchman was cognizant of the murder. It is possible—indeed it is far more than probable
—that he was innocent of all participation in the bloody transactions which took place. The OurangOutang may have escaped from him. He may have traced it to the chamber; but, under the agitating
circumstances which ensued, he could never have re-captured it. It is still at large. I will not pursue
these guesses—for I have no right to call them more—since the shades of reflection upon which they
are based are scarcely of sufficient depth to be appreciable by my own intellect, and since I could not
pretend to make them intelligible to the understanding of another. We will call them guesses then, and
speak of them as such. If the Frenchman in question is indeed, as I suppose, innocent of this atrocity,
this advertisement which I left last night, upon our return home, at the office of 'Le Monde,' (a paper
devoted to the shipping interest, and much sought by sailors,) will bring him to our residence."
He handed me a paper, and I read thus:
CAUGHT—In the Bois de Boulogne, early in the morning of the—inst., (the morning of the
murder,) a very large, tawny Ourang-Outang of the Bornese species. The owner, (who is
ascertained to be a sailor, belonging to a Maltese vessel,) may have the animal again, upon
identifying it satisfactorily, and paying a few charges arising from its capture and keeping. Call at
No. ——, Rue ——, Faubourg St. Germain—au troisiæme.
"How was it possible," I asked, "that you should know the man to be a sailor, and belonging to a
Maltese vessel?"
"I do not know it," said Dupin. "I am not sure of it. Here, however, is a small piece of ribbon,
which from its form, and from its greasy appearance, has evidently been used in tying the hair in one
of those long queues of which sailors are so fond. Moreover, this knot is one which few besides
sailors can tie, and is peculiar to the Maltese. I picked the ribbon up at the foot of the lightning-rod. It
could not have belonged to either of the deceased. Now if, after all, I am wrong in my induction from
this ribbon, that the Frenchman was a sailor belonging to a Maltese vessel, still I can have done no
harm in saying what I did in the advertisement. If I am in error, he will merely suppose that I have
been misled by some circumstance into which he will not take the trouble to inquire. But if I am right,
a great point is gained. Cognizant although innocent of the murder, the Frenchman will naturally
hesitate about replying to the advertisement—about demanding the Ourang-Outang. He will reason
thus:—'I am innocent; I am poor; my Ourang-Outang is of great value—to one in my circumstances a
fortune of itself—why should I lose it through idle apprehensions of danger? Here it is, within my
grasp. It was found in the Bois de Boulogne—at a vast distance from the scene of that butchery. How
can it ever be suspected that a brute beast should have done the deed? The police are at fault—they
have failed to procure the slightest clew. Should they even trace the animal, it would be impossible to
prove me cognizant of the murder, or to implicate me in guilt on account of that cognizance. Above
all, I am known. The advertiser designates me as the possessor of the beast. I am not sure to what
limit his knowledge may extend. Should I avoid claiming a property of so great value, which it is
known that I possess, I will render the animal at least, liable to suspicion. It is not my policy to attract
attention either to myself or to the beast. I will answer the advertisement, get the Ourang-Outang, and
keep it close until this matter has blown over.'"
At this moment we heard a step upon the stairs.
"Be ready," said Dupin, "with your pistols, but neither use them nor show them until at a signal
from myself."
The front door of the house had been left open, and the visitor had entered, without ringing, and
advanced several steps upon the staircase. Now, however, he seemed to hesitate. Presently we heard
him descending. Dupin was moving quickly to the door, when we again heard him coming up. He did
not turn back a second time, but stepped up with decision, and rapped at the door of our chamber.
"Come in," said Dupin, in a cheerful and hearty tone.
A man entered. He was a sailor, evidently,—a tall, stout, and muscular-looking person, with a
certain dare-devil expression of countenance, not altogether unprepossessing. His face, greatly
sunburnt, was more than half hidden by whisker and mustachio. He had with him a huge oaken
cudgel, but appeared to be otherwise unarmed. He bowed awkwardly, and bade us "good evening," in
French accents, which, although somewhat Neufchatelish, were still sufficiently indicative of a
Parisian origin.
"Sit down, my friend," said Dupin. "I suppose you have called about the Ourang-Outang. Upon my
word, I almost envy you the possession of him; a remarkably fine, and no doubt a very valuable
animal. How old do you suppose him to be?"
The sailor drew a long breath, with the air of a man relieved of some intolerable burden, and then
replied, in an assured tone:
"I have no way of telling—but he can't be more than four or five years old. Have you got him
here?"
"Oh no, we had no conveniences for keeping him here. He is at a livery stable in the Rue
Dubourg, just by. You can get him in the morning. Of course you are prepared to identify the
property?"
"To be sure I am, sir."
"I shall be sorry to part with him," said Dupin.
"I don't mean that you should be at all this trouble for nothing, sir," said the man. "Couldn't expect
it. Am very willing to pay a reward for the finding of the animal—that is to say, any thing in reason."
"Well," replied my friend, "that is all very fair, to be sure. Let me think!—what should I have? Oh!
I will tell you. My reward shall be this. You shall give me all the information in your power about
these murders in the Rue Morgue."
Dupin said the last words in a very low tone, and very quietly. Just as quietly, too, he walked
toward the door, locked it and put the key in his pocket. He then drew a pistol from his bosom and
placed it, without the least flurry, upon the table.
The sailor's face flushed up as if he were struggling with suffocation. He started to his feet and
grasped his cudgel, but the next moment he fell back into his seat, trembling violently, and with the
countenance of death itself. He spoke not a word. I pitied him from the bottom of my heart.
"My friend," said Dupin, in a kind tone, "you are alarming yourself unnecessarily—you are
indeed. We mean you no harm whatever. I pledge you the honor of a gentleman, and of a Frenchman,
that we intend you no injury. I perfectly well know that you are innocent of the atrocities in the Rue
Morgue. It will not do, however, to deny that you are in some measure implicated in them. From what
I have already said, you must know that I have had means of information about this matter—means of
which you could never have dreamed. Now the thing stands thus. You have done nothing which you
could have avoided—nothing, certainly, which renders you culpable. You were not even guilty of
robbery, when you might have robbed with impunity. You have nothing to conceal. You have no
reason for concealment. On the other hand, you are bound by every principle of honor to confess all
you know. An innocent man is now imprisoned, charged with that crime of which you can point out
the perpetrator."
The sailor had recovered his presence of mind, in a great measure, while Dupin uttered these
words; but his original boldness of bearing was all gone.
"So help me God," said he, after a brief pause, "I will tell you all I know about this affair;—but I
do not expect you to believe one half I say—I would be a fool indeed if I did. Still, I am innocent, and
I will make a clean breast if I die for it."
What he stated was, in substance, this. He had lately made a voyage to the Indian Archipelago. A
party, of which he formed one, landed at Borneo, and passed into the interior on an excursion of
pleasure. Himself and a companion had captured the Ourang-Outang. This companion dying, the
animal fell into his own exclusive possession. After great trouble, occasioned by the intractable
ferocity of his captive during the home voyage, he at length succeeded in lodging it safely at his own
residence in Paris, where, not to attract toward himself the unpleasant curiosity of his neighbors, he
kept it carefully secluded, until such time as it should recover from a wound in the foot, received from
a splinter on board ship. His ultimate design was to sell it.
Returning home from some sailors' frolic the night, or rather in the morning of the murder, he
found the beast occupying his own bed-room, into which it had broken from a closet adjoining, where
it had been, as was thought, securely confined. Razor in hand, and fully lathered, it was sitting before
a looking-glass, attempting the operation of shaving, in which it had no doubt previously watched its
master through the key-hole of the closet. Terrified at the sight of so dangerous a weapon in the
possession of an animal so ferocious, and so well able to use it, the man, for some moments, was at a
loss what to do. He had been accustomed, however, to quiet the creature, even in its fiercest moods,
by the use of a whip, and to this he now resorted. Upon sight of it, the Ourang-Outang sprang at once
through the door of the chamber, down the stairs, and thence, through a window, unfortunately open,
into the street.
The Frenchman followed in despair; the ape, razor still in hand, occasionally stopping to look
back and gesticulate at its pursuer, until the latter had nearly come up with it. It then again made off. In
this manner the chase continued for a long time. The streets were profoundly quiet, as it was nearly
three o'clock in the morning. In passing down an alley in the rear of the Rue Morgue, the fugitive's
attention was arrested by a light gleaming from the open window of Madame L'Espanaye's chamber,
in the fourth story of her house. Rushing to the building, it perceived the lightning rod, clambered up
with inconceivable agility, grasped the shutter, which was thrown fully back against the wall, and, by
its means, swung itself directly upon the headboard of the bed. The whole feat did not occupy a
minute. The shutter was kicked open again by the Ourang-Outang as it entered the room.
The sailor, in the meantime, was both rejoiced and perplexed. He had strong hopes of now
recapturing the brute, as it could scarcely escape from the trap into which it had ventured, except by
the rod, where it might be intercepted as it came down. On the other hand, there was much cause for
anxiety as to what it might do in the house. This latter reflection urged the man still to follow the
fugitive. A lightning rod is ascended without difficulty, especially by a sailor; but, when he had
arrived as high as the window, which lay far to his left, his career was stopped; the most that he could
accomplish was to reach over so as to obtain a glimpse of the interior of the room. At this glimpse he
nearly fell from his hold through excess of horror. Now it was that those hideous shrieks arose upon
the night, which had startled from slumber the inmates of the Rue Morgue. Madame L'Espanaye and
her daughter, habited in their night clothes, had apparently been occupied in arranging some papers in
the iron chest already mentioned, which had been wheeled into the middle of the room. It was open,
and its contents lay beside it on the floor. The victims must have been sitting with their backs toward
the window; and, from the time elapsing between the ingress of the beast and the screams, it seems
probable that it was not immediately perceived. The flapping-to of the shutter would naturally have
been attributed to the wind.
As the sailor looked in, the gigantic animal had seized Madame L'Espanaye by the hair, (which
was loose, as she had been combing it,) and was flourishing the razor about her face, in imitation of
the motions of a barber. The daughter lay prostrate and motionless; she had swooned. The screams
and struggles of the old lady (during which the hair was torn from her head) had the effect of changing
the probably pacific purposes of the Ourang-Outang into those of wrath. With one determined sweep
of its muscular arm it nearly severed her head from her body. The sight of blood inflamed its anger
into phrenzy. Gnashing its teeth, and flashing fire from its eyes, it flew upon the body of the girl, and
imbedded its fearful talons in her throat, retaining its grasp until she expired. Its wandering and wild
glances fell at this moment upon the head of the bed, over which the face of its master, rigid with
horror, was just discernible. The fury of the beast, who no doubt bore still in mind the dreaded whip,
was instantly converted into fear. Conscious of having deserved punishment, it seemed desirous of
concealing its bloody deeds, and skipped about the chamber in an agony of nervous agitation;
throwing down and breaking the furniture as it moved, and dragging the bed from the bedstead. In
conclusion, it seized first the corpse of the daughter, and thrust it up the chimney, as it was found; then
that of the old lady, which it immediately hurled through the window headlong.
As the ape approached the casement with its mutilated burden, the sailor shrank aghast to the rod,
and, rather gliding than clambering down it, hurried at once home—dreading the consequences of the
butchery, and gladly abandoning, in his terror, all solicitude about the fate of the Ourang-Outang. The
words heard by the party upon the staircase were the Frenchman's exclamations of horror and affright,
commingled with the fiendish jabberings of the brute.
I have scarcely anything to add. The Ourang-Outang must have escaped from the chamber, by the
rod, just before the break of the door. It must have closed the window as it passed through it. It was
subsequently caught by the owner himself, who obtained for it a very large sum at the Jardin des
Plantes. Le Don was instantly released, upon our narration of the circumstances (with some
comments from Dupin) at the bureau of the Prefect of Police. This functionary, however well
disposed to my friend, could not altogether conceal his chagrin at the turn which affairs had taken, and
was fain to indulge in a sarcasm or two, about the propriety of every person minding his own
business.
"Let him talk," said Dupin, who had not thought it necessary to reply. "Let him discourse; it will
ease his conscience, I am satisfied with having defeated him in his own castle. Nevertheless, that he
failed in the solution of this mystery, is by no means that matter for wonder which he supposes it; for,
in truth, our friend the Prefect is somewhat too cunning to be profound. In his wisdom is no stamen. It
is all head and no body, like the pictures of the Goddess Laverna,—or, at best, all head and
shoulders, like a codfish. But he is a good creature after all. I like him especially for one master
stroke of cant, by which he has attained his reputation for ingenuity. I mean the way he has 'de nier ce
qui est, et d'expliquer ce qui n'est pas.'"
Rousseau—Nouvelle Heloise.
THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET.
A SEQUEL TO "THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE."
Es giebt eine Reihe idealischer Begebenheiten, die der Wirklichkeit parallel lauft. Selten fallen
sie zusammen. Menschen und zufalle modifieiren gewohulich die idealische Begebenheit, so dass sie
unvollkommen erscheint, und ihre Folgen gleichfalls unvollkommen sind. So bei der Reformation;
statt des Protestantismus kam das Lutherthum hervor.
There are ideal series of events which run parallel with the real ones. They rarely coincide. Men
and circumstances generally modify the ideal train of events, so that it seems imperfect, and its
consequences are equally imperfect. Thus with the Reformation; instead of Protestantism came
Lutheranism.
—Novalis. Moral Ansichten.
THERE are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been
startled into a vague yet thrilling half-credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly
marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them. Such
sentiments—for the half-credences of which I speak have never the full force of thought—such
sentiments are seldom thoroughly stifled unless by reference to the doctrine of chance, or, as it is
technically termed, the Calculus of Probabilities. Now this Calculus is, in its essence, purely
mathematical; and thus we have the anomaly of the most rigidly exact in science applied to the
shadow and spirituality of the most intangible in speculation.
The extraordinary details which I am now called upon to make public, will be found to form, as
regards sequence of time, the primary branch of a series of scarcely intelligible coincidences, whose
secondary or concluding branch will be recognized by all readers in the late murder of Mary Cecila
Rogers, at New York.
When, in an article entitled "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," I endeavored, about a year ago, to
depict some very remarkable features in the mental character of my friend, the Chevalier C. Auguste
Dupin, it did not occur to me that I should ever resume the subject. This depicting of character
constituted my design; and this design was thoroughly fulfilled in the wild train of circumstances
brought to instance Dupin's idiosyncrasy. I might have adduced other examples, but I should have
proven no more. Late events, however, in their surprising development, have startled me into some
farther details, which will carry with them the air of extorted confession. Hearing what I have lately
heard, it would be indeed strange should I remain silent in regard to what I both heard and saw so
long ago.
Upon the winding up of the tragedy involved in the deaths of Madame L'Espanaye and her
daughter, the Chevalier dismissed the affair at once from his attention, and relapsed into his old habits
of moody reverie. Prone, at all times, to abstraction, I readily fell in with his humor; and, continuing
to occupy our chambers in the Faubourg Saint Germain, we gave the Future to the winds, and
slumbered tranquilly in the Present, weaving the dull world around us into dreams.
But these dreams were not altogether uninterrupted. It may readily be supposed that the part
played by my friend, in the drama at the Rue Morgue, had not failed of its impression upon the fancies
of the Parisian police. With its emissaries, the name of Dupin had grown into a household word. The
simple character of those inductions by which he had disentangled the mystery never having been
explained even to the Prefect, or to any other individual than myself, of course it is not surprising that
the affair was regarded as little less than miraculous, or that the Chevalier's analytical abilities
acquired for him the credit of intuition. His frankness would have led him to disabuse every inquirer
of such prejudice; but his indolent humor forbade all farther agitation of a topic whose interest to
himself had long ceased. It thus happened that he found himself the cynosure of the political eyes; and
the cases were not few in which attempt was made to engage his services at the Prefecture. One of the
most remarkable instances was that of the murder of a young girl named Marie Rogæt.
This event occurred about two years after the atrocity in the Rue Morgue. Marie, whose Christian
and family name will at once arrest attention from their resemblance to those of the unfortunate
"cigargirl," was the only daughter of the widow Estelle Rogæt. The father had died during the child's
infancy, and from the period of his death, until within eighteen months before the assassination which
forms the subject of our narrative, the mother and daughter had dwelt together in the Rue Pavæe Saint
Andræe; Madame there keeping a pension, assisted by Marie. Affairs went on thus until the latter had
attained her twenty-second year, when her great beauty attracted the notice of a perfumer, who
occupied one of the shops in the basement of the Palais Royal, and whose custom lay chiefly among
the desperate adventurers infesting that neighborhood. Monsieur Le Blanc was not unaware of the
advantages to be derived from the attendance of the fair Marie in his perfumery; and his liberal
proposals were accepted eagerly by the girl, although with somewhat more of hesitation by Madame.
The anticipations of the shopkeeper were realized, and his rooms soon became notorious through
the charms of the sprightly grisette. She had been in his employ about a year, when her admirers were
thrown info confusion by her sudden disappearance from the shop. Monsieur Le Blanc was unable to
account for her absence, and Madame Rogæt was distracted with anxiety and terror. The public
papers immediately took up the theme, and the police were upon the point of making serious
investigations, when, one fine morning, after the lapse of a week, Marie, in good health, but with a
somewhat saddened air, made her re-appearance at her usual counter in the perfumery. All inquiry,
except that of a private character, was of course immediately hushed. Monsieur Le Blanc professed
total ignorance, as before. Marie, with Madame, replied to all questions, that the last week had been
spent at the house of a relation in the country. Thus the affair died away, and was generally forgotten;
for the girl, ostensibly to relieve herself from the impertinence of curiosity, soon bade a final adieu to
the perfumer, and sought the shelter of her mother's residence in the Rue Pavæe Saint Andræe.
It was about five months after this return home, that her friends were alarmed by her sudden
disappearance for the second time. Three days elapsed, and nothing was heard of her. On the fourth
her corpse was found floating in the Seine, * near the shore which is opposite the Quartier of the Rue
Saint Andree, and at a point not very far distant from the secluded neighborhood of the Barriære du
Roule.
The atrocity of this murder, (for it was at once evident that murder had been committed,) the youth
and beauty of the victim, and, above all, her previous notoriety, conspired to produce intense
excitement in the minds of the sensitive Parisians. I can call to mind no similar occurrence producing
so general and so intense an effect. For several weeks, in the discussion of this one absorbing theme,
even the momentous political topics of the day were forgotten. The Prefect made unusual exertions;
and the powers of the whole Parisian police were, of course, tasked to the utmost extent.
Upon the first discovery of the corpse, it was not supposed that the murderer would be able to
elude, for more than a very brief period, the inquisition which was immediately set on foot. It was not
until the expiration of a week that it was deemed necessary to offer a reward; and even then this
reward was limited to a thousand francs. In the mean time the investigation proceeded with vigor, if
not always with judgment, and numerous individuals were examined to no purpose; while, owing to
the continual absence of all clue to the mystery, the popular excitement greatly increased. At the end
of the tenth day it was thought advisable to double the sum originally proposed; and, at length, the
second week having elapsed without leading to any discoveries, and the prejudice which always
exists in Paris against the Police having given vent to itself in several serious æmeutes, the Prefect
took it upon himself to offer the sum of twenty thousand francs "for the conviction of the assassin," or,
if more than one should prove to have been implicated, "for the conviction of any one of the
assassins." In the proclamation setting forth this reward, a full pardon was promised to any
accomplice who should come forward in evidence against his fellow; and to the whole was
appended, wherever it appeared, the private placard of a committee of citizens, offering ten thousand
francs, in addition to the amount proposed by the Prefecture. The entire reward thus stood at no less
than thirty thousand francs, which will be regarded as an extraordinary sum when we consider the
humble condition of the girl, and the great frequency, in large cities, of such atrocities as the one
described.
No one doubted now that the mystery of this murder would be immediately brought to light. But
although, in one or two instances, arrests were made which promised elucidation, yet nothing was
elicited which could implicate the parties suspected; and they were discharged forthwith. Strange as
it may appear, the third week from the discovery of the body had passed, and passed without any light
being thrown upon the subject, before even a rumor of the events which had so agitated the public
mind, reached the ears of Dupin and myself. Engaged in researches which absorbed our whole
attention, it had been nearly a month since either of us had gone abroad, or received a visitor, or more
than glanced at the leading political articles in one of the daily papers. The first intelligence of the
murder was brought us by G ——, in person. He called upon us early in the afternoon of the thirteenth
of July, 18—, and remained with us until late in the night. He had been piqued by the failure of all his
endeavors to ferret out the assassins. His reputation—so he said with a peculiarly Parisian air—was
at stake. Even his honor was concerned. The eyes of the public were upon him; and there was really
no sacrifice which he would not be willing to make for the development of the mystery. He concluded
a somewhat droll speech with a compliment upon what he was pleased to term the tact of Dupin, and
made him a direct, and certainly a liberal proposition, the precise nature of which I do not feel myself
at liberty to disclose, but which has no bearing upon the proper subject of my narrative.
The compliment my friend rebutted as best he could, but the proposition he accepted at once,
although its advantages were altogether provisional. This point being settled, the Prefect broke forth
at once into explanations of his own views, interspersing them with long comments upon the
evidence; of which latter we were not yet in possession. He discoursed much, and beyond doubt,
learnedly; while I hazarded an occasional suggestion as the night wore drowsily away. Dupin, sitting
steadily in his accustomed arm-chair, was the embodiment of respectful attention. He wore
spectacles, during the whole interview; and an occasional signal glance beneath their green glasses,
sufficed to convince me that he slept not the less soundly, because silently, throughout the seven or
eight leaden-footed hours which immediately preceded the departure of the Prefect.
In the morning, I procured, at the Prefecture, a full report of all the evidence elicited, and, at the
various newspaper offices, a copy of every paper in which, from first to last, had been published any
decisive information in regard to this sad affair. Freed from all that was positively disproved, this
mass of information stood thus:
Marie Rogæt left the residence of her mother, in the Rue Pavæe St. Andræe, about nine o'clock in
the morning of Sunday June the twenty-second, 18—. In going out, she gave notice to a Monsieur
Jacques St. Eustache, and to him only, of her intent intention to spend the day with an aunt who
resided in the Rue des Dræmes. The Rue des Dræmes is a short and narrow but populous
thoroughfare, not far from the banks of the river, and at a distance of some two miles, in the most
direct course possible, from the pension of Madame Rogæt. St. Eustache was the accepted suitor of
Marie, and lodged, as well as took his meals, at the pension. He was to have gone for his betrothed at
dusk, and to have escorted her home. In the afternoon, however, it came on to rain heavily; and,
supposing that she would remain all night at her aunt's, (as she had done under similar circumstances
before,) he did not think it necessary to keep his promise. As night drew on, Madame Rogæt (who
was an infirm old lady, seventy years of age,) was heard to express a fear "that she should never see
Marie again;" but this observation attracted little attention at the time.
On Monday, it was ascertained that the girl had not been to the Rue des Dræmes; and when the
day elapsed without tidings of her, a tardy search was instituted at several points in the city, and its
environs. It was not, however until the fourth day from the period of disappearance that any thing
satisfactory was ascertained respecting her. On this day, (Wednesday, the twenty-fifth of June,) a
Monsieur Beauvais, who, with a friend, had been making inquiries for Marie near the Barriære du
Roule, on the shore of the Seine which is opposite the Rue Pavæe St. Andræe, was informed that a
corpse had just been towed ashore by some fishermen, who had found it floating in the river. Upon
seeing the body, Beauvais, after some hesitation, identified it as that of the perfumery-girl. His friend
recognized it more promptly.
The face was suffused with dark blood, some of which issued from the mouth. No foam was seen,
as in the case of the merely drowned. There was no discoloration in the cellular tissue. About the
throat were bruises and impressions of fingers. The arms were bent over on the chest and were rigid.
The right hand was clenched; the left partially open. On the left wrist were two circular excoriations,
apparently the effect of ropes, or of a rope in more than one volution. A part of the right wrist, also,
was much chafed, as well as the back throughout its extent, but more especially at the shoulderblades. In bringing the body to the shore the fishermen had attached to it a rope; but none of the
excoriations had been effected by this. The flesh of the neck was much swollen. There were no cuts
apparent, or bruises which appeared the effect of blows. A piece of lace was found tied so tightly
around the neck as to be hidden from sight; it was completely buried in the flesh, and was fasted by a
knot which lay just under the left ear. This alone would have sufficed to produce death. The medical
testimony spoke confidently of the virtuous character of the deceased. She had been subjected, it said,
to brutal violence. The corpse was in such condition when found, that there could have been no
difficulty in its recognition by friends.
The dress was much torn and otherwise disordered. In the outer garment, a slip, about a foot
wide, had been torn upward from the bottom hem to the waist, but not torn off. It was wound three
times around the waist, and secured by a sort of hitch in the back. The dress immediately beneath the
frock was of fine muslin; and from this a slip eighteen inches wide had been torn entirely out—torn
very evenly and with great care. It was found around her neck, fitting loosely, and secured with a hard
knot. Over this muslin slip and the slip of lace, the strings of a bonnet were attached; the bonnet being
appended. The knot by which the strings of the bonnet were fastened, was not a lady's, but a slip or
sailor's knot.
After the recognition of the corpse, it was not, as usual, taken to the Morgue, (this formality being
superfluous,) but hastily interred not far from the spot at which it was brought ashore. Through the
exertions of Beauvais, the matter was industriously hushed up, as far as possible; and several days
had elapsed before any public emotion resulted. A weekly paper, however, at length took up the
theme; the corpse was disinterred, and a re-examination instituted; but nothing was elicited beyond
what has been already noted. The clothes, however, were now submitted to the mother and friends of
the deceased, and fully identified as those worn by the girl upon leaving home.
Meantime, the excitement increased hourly. Several individuals were arrested and discharged. St.
Eustache fell especially under suspicion; and he failed, at first, to give an intelligible account of his
whereabouts during the Sunday on which Marie left home. Subsequently, however, he submitted to
Monsieur G——, affidavits, accounting satisfactorily for every hour of the day in question. As time
passed and no discovery ensued, a thousand contradictory rumors were circulated, and journalists
busied themselves in suggestions. Among these, the one which attracted the most notice, was the idea
that Marie Rogæt still lived—that the corpse found in the Seine was that of some other unfortunate. It
will be proper that I submit to the reader some passages which embody the suggestion alluded to.
These passages are literal translations from L'Etoile, a paper conducted, in general, with much
ability.
"Mademoiselle Rogæt left her mother's house on Sunday morning, June the twenty-second, 18—,
with the ostensible purpose of going to see her aunt, or some other connexion, in the Rue des Dræmes.
From that hour, nobody is proved to have seen her. There is no trace or tidings of her at all.... There
has no person, whatever, come forward, so far, who saw her at all, on that day, after she left her
mother's door.... Now, though we have no evidence that Marie Rogæt was in the land of the living
after nine o'clock on Sunday, June the twenty-second, we have proof that, up to that hour, she was
alive. On Wednesday noon, at twelve, a female body was discovered afloat on the shore of the
Barriære de Roule. This was, even if we presume that Marie Rogæt was thrown into the river within
three hours after she left her mother's house, only three days from the time she left her home—three
days to an hour. But it is folly to suppose that the murder, if murder was committed on her body, could
have been consummated soon enough to have enabled her murderers to throw the body into the river
before midnight. Those who are guilty of such horrid crimes, choose darkness rather the light.... Thus
we see that if the body found in the river was that of Marie Rogæt, it could only have been in the
water two and a half days, or three at the outside. All experience has shown that drowned bodies, or
bodies thrown into the water immediately after death by violence, require from six to ten days for
decomposition to take place to bring them to the top of the water. Even where a cannon is fired over a
corpse, and it rises before at least five or six days' immersion, it sinks again, if let alone. Now, we
ask, what was there in this cave to cause a departure from the ordinary course of nature?... If the body
had been kept in its mangled state on shore until Tuesday night, some trace would be found on shore
of the murderers. It is a doubtful point, also, whether the body would be so soon afloat, even were it
thrown in after having been dead two days. And, furthermore, it is exceedingly improbable that any
villains who had committed such a murder as is here supposed, would have thrown the body in
without weight to sink it, when such a precaution could have so easily been taken."
The editor here proceeds to argue that the body must have been in the water "not three days
merely, but, at least, five times three days," because it was so far decomposed that Beauvais had great
difficulty in recognizing it. This latter point, however, was fully disproved. I continue the translation:
"What, then, are the facts on which M. Beauvais says that he has no doubt the body was that of
Marie Rogæt? He ripped up the gown sleeve, and says he found marks which satisfied him of the
identity. The public generally supposed those marks to have consisted of some description of scars.
He rubbed the arm and found hair upon it—something as indefinite, we think, as can readily be
imagined—as little conclusive as finding an arm in the sleeve. M. Beauvais did not return that night,
but sent word to Madame Rogæt, at seven o'clock, on Wednesday evening, that an investigation was
still in progress respecting her daughter. If we allow that Madame Rogæt, from her age and grief,
could not go over, (which is allowing a great deal,) there certainly must have been some one who
would have thought it worth while to go over and attend the investigation, if they thought the body was
that of Marie. Nobody went over. There was nothing said or heard about the matter in the Rue Pavæe
St. Andræe, that reached even the occupants of the same building. M. St. Eustache, the lover and
intended husband of Marie, who boarded in her mother's house, deposes that he did not hear of the
discovery of the body of his intended until the next morning, when M. Beauvais came into his
chamber and told him of it. For an item of news like this, it strikes us it was very coolly received."
In this way the journal endeavored to create the impression of an apathy on the part of the
relatives of Marie, inconsistent with the supposition that these relatives believed the corpse to be
hers. Its insinuations amount to this:—that Marie, with the connivance of her friends, had absented
herself from the city for reasons involving a charge against her chastity; and that these friends, upon
the discovery of a corpse in the Seine, somewhat resembling that of the girl, had availed themselves
of the opportunity to impress the public with the belief of her death. But L'Etoile was again overhasty. It was distinctly proved that no apathy, such as was imagined, existed; that the old lady was
exceedingly feeble, and so agitated as to be unable to attend to any duty, that St. Eustache, so far from
receiving the news coolly, was distracted with grief, and bore himself so frantically, that M. Beauvais
prevailed upon a friend and relative to take charge of him, and prevent his attending the examination
at the disinterment. Moreover, although it was stated by L'Etoile, that the corpse was re-interred at the
public expense—that an advantageous offer of private sculpture was absolutely declined by the
family—and that no member of the family attended the ceremonial:—although, I say, all this was
asserted by L'Etoile in furtherance of the impression it designed to convey—yet all this was
satisfactorily disproved. In a subsequent number of the paper, an attempt was made to throw
suspicion upon Beauvais himself. The editor says:
"Now, then, a change comes over the matter. We are told that on one occasion, while a Madame B
—— was at Madame Rogæt's house, M. Beauvais, who was going out, told her that a gendarme was
expected there, and she, Madame B., must not say anything to the gendarme until he returned, but let
the matter be for him.... In the present posture of affairs, M. Beauvais appears to have the whole
matter locked up in his head. A single step cannot be taken without M. Beauvais; for, go which way
you will, you run against him.... For some reason, he determined that nobody shall have any thing to
do with the proceedings but himself, and he has elbowed the male relatives out of the way, according
to their representations, in a very singular manner. He seems to have been very much averse to
permitting the relatives to see the body."
By the following fact, some color was given to the suspicion thus thrown upon Beauvais. A
visitor at his office, a few days prior to the girl's disappearance, and during the absence of its
occupant, had observed a rose in the key-hole of the door, and the name "Marie" inscribed upon a
slate which hung near at hand.
The general impression, so far as we were enabled to glean it from the newspapers, seemed to be,
that Marie had been the victim of a gang of desperadoes—that by these she had been borne across the
river, maltreated and murdered. Le Commerciel, however, a print of extensive influence, was earnest
in combating this popular idea. I quote a passage or two from its columns:
"We are persuaded that pursuit has hitherto been on a false scent, so far as it has been directed to
the Barriære du Roule. It is impossible that a person so well known to thousands as this young woman
was, should have passed three blocks without some one having seen her; and any one who saw her
would have remembered it, for she interested all who knew her. It was when the streets were full of
people, when she went out.... It is impossible that she could have gone to the Barriære du Roule, or to
the Rue des Dræmes, without being recognized by a dozen persons; yet no one has come forward who
saw her outside of her mother's door, and there is no evidence, except the testimony concerning her
expressed intentions, that she did go out at all. Her gown was torn, bound round her, and tied; and by
that the body was carried as a bundle. If the murder had been committed at the Barriære du Roule,
there would have been no necessity for any such arrangement. The fact that the body was found
floating near the Barriære, is no proof as to where it was thrown into the water..... A piece of one of
the unfortunate girl's petticoats, two feet long and one foot wide, was torn out and tied under her chin
around the back of her head, probably to prevent screams. This was done by fellows who had no
pocket-handkerchief."
A day or two before the Prefect called upon us, however, some important information reached the
police, which seemed to overthrow, at least, the chief portion of Le Commerciel's argument. Two
small boys, sons of a Madame Deluc, while roaming among the woods near the Barriære du Roule,
chanced to penetrate a close thicket, within which were three or four large stones, forming a kind of
seat, with a back and footstool. On the upper stone lay a white petticoat; on the second a silk scarf. A
parasol, gloves, and a pocket-handkerchief were also here found. The handkerchief bore the name
"Marie Rogæt." Fragments of dress were discovered on the brambles around. The earth was
trampled, the bushes were broken, and there was every evidence of a struggle. Between the thicket
and the river, the fences were found taken down, and the ground bore evidence of some heavy burthen
having been dragged along it.
A weekly paper, Le Soleil, had the following comments upon this discovery—comments which
merely echoed the sentiment of the whole Parisian press:
"The things had all evidently been there at least three or four weeks; they were all mildewed
down hard with the action of the rain and stuck together from mildew. The grass had grown around
and over some of them. The silk on the parasol was strong, but the threads of it were run together
within. The upper part, where it had been doubled and folded, was all mildewed and rotten, and tore
on its being opened..... The pieces of her frock torn out by the bushes were about three inches wide
and six inches long. One part was the hem of the frock, and it had been mended; the other piece was
part of the skirt, not the hem. They looked like strips torn off, and were on the thorn bush, about a foot
from the ground..... There can be no doubt, therefore, that the spot of this appalling outrage has been
discovered."
Consequent upon this discovery, new evidence appeared. Madame Deluc testified that she keeps a
roadside inn not far from the bank of the river, opposite the Barriære du Roule. The neighborhood is
secluded—particularly so. It is the usual Sunday resort of blackguards from the city, who cross the
river in boats. About three o'clock, in the afternoon of the Sunday in question, a young girl arrived at
the inn, accompanied by a young man of dark complexion. The two remained here for some time. On
their departure, they took the road to some thick woods in the vicinity. Madame Deluc's attention was
called to the dress worn by the girl, on account of its resemblance to one worn by a deceased
relative. A scarf was particularly noticed. Soon after the departure of the couple, a gang of miscreants
made their appearance, behaved boisterously, ate and drank without making payment, followed in the
route of the young man and girl, returned to the inn about dusk, and re-crossed the river as if in great
haste.
It was soon after dark, upon this same evening, that Madame Deluc, as well as her eldest son,
heard the screams of a female in the vicinity of the inn. The screams were violent but brief. Madame
D. recognized not only the scarf which was found in the thicket, but the dress which was discovered
upon the corpse. An omnibus driver, Valence, now also testified that he saw Marie Rogæt cross a
ferry on the Seine, on the Sunday in question, in company with a young man of dark complexion. He,
Valence, knew Marie, and could not be mistaken in her identity. The articles found in the thicket were
fully identified by the relatives of Marie.
The items of evidence and information thus collected by myself, from the newspapers, at the
suggestion of Dupin, embraced only one more point—but this was a point of seemingly vast
consequence. It appears that, immediately after the discovery of the clothes as above described, the
lifeless, or nearly lifeless body of St. Eustache, Marie's betrothed, was found in the vicinity of what
all now supposed the scene of the outrage. A phial labelled "laudanum," and emptied, was found near
him. His breath gave evidence of the poison. He died without speaking. Upon his person was found a
letter, briefly stating his love for Marie, with his design of self-destruction.
"I need scarcely tell you," said Dupin, as he finished the perusal of my notes, "that this is a far
more intricate case than that of the Rue Morgue; from which it differs in one important respect. This is
an ordinary, although an atrocious instance of crime. There is nothing peculiarly outræ about it. You
will observe that, for this reason, the mystery has been considered easy, when, for this reason, it
should have been considered difficult, of solution. Thus; at first, it was thought unnecessary to offer a
reward. The myrmidons of G—— were able at once to comprehend how and why such an atrocity
might have been committed. They could picture to their imaginations a mode—many modes—and a
motive—many motives; and because it was not impossible that either of these numerous modes and
motives could have been the actual one, they have taken it for granted that one of them must. But the
case with which these variable fancies were entertained, and the very plausibility which each
assumed, should have been understood as indicative rather of the difficulties than of the facilities
which must attend elucidation. I have before observed that it is by prominences above the plane of the
ordinary, that reason feels her way, if at all, in her search for the true, and that the proper question in
cases such as this, is not so much 'what has occurred?' as 'what has occurred that has never occurred
before?' In the investigations at the house of Madame L'Espanaye, the agents of G—— were
discouraged and confounded by that very unusualness which, to a properly regulated intellect, would
have afforded the surest omen of success; while this same intellect might have been plunged in
despair at the ordinary character of all that met the eye in the case of the perfumery-girl, and yet told
of nothing but easy triumph to the functionaries of the Prefecture.
"In the case of Madame L'Espanaye and her daughter there was, even at the beginning of our
investigation, no doubt that murder had been committed. The idea of suicide was excluded at once.
Here, too, we are freed, at the commencement, from all supposition of self-murder. The body found at
the Barriære du Roule, was found under such circumstances as to leave us no room for
embarrassment upon this important point. But it has been suggested that the corpse discovered, is not
that of the Marie Rogæt for the conviction of whose assassin, or assassins, the reward is offered, and
respecting whom, solely, our agreement has been arranged with the Prefect. We both know this
gentleman well. It will not do to trust him too far. If, dating our inquiries from the body found, and
thence tracing a murderer, we yet discover this body to be that of some other individual than Marie;
or, if starting from the living Marie, we find her, yet find her unassassinated—in either case we lose
our labor; since it is Monsieur G—— with whom we have to deal. For our own purpose, therefore, if
not for the purpose of justice, it is indispensable that our first step should be the determination of the
identity of the corpse with the Marie Rogæt who is missing.
"With the public the arguments of L'Etoile have had weight; and that the journal itself is convinced
of their importance would appear from the manner in which it commences one of its essays upon the
subject—'Several of the morning papers of the day,' it says, 'speak of the conclusive article in
Monday's Etoile.' To me, this article appears conclusive of little beyond the zeal of its inditer. We
should bear in mind that, in general, it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation—to
make a point—than to further the cause of truth. The latter end is only pursued when it seems
coincident with the former. The print which merely falls in with ordinary opinion (however well
founded this opinion may be) earns for itself no credit with the mob. The mass of the people regard as
profound only him who suggests pungent contradictions of the general idea. In ratiocination, not less
than in literature, it is the epigram which is the most immediately and the most universally
appreciated. In both, it is of the lowest order of merit.
"What I mean to say is, that it is the mingled epigram and melodrame of the idea, that Marie
Rogæt still lives, rather than any true plausibility in this idea, which have suggested it to L'Etoile, and
secured it a favorable reception with the public. Let us examine the heads of this journal's argument;
endeavoring to avoid the incoherence with which it is originally set forth.
"The first aim of the writer is to show, from the brevity of the interval between Marie's
disappearance and the finding of the floating corpse, that this corpse cannot be that of Marie. The
reduction of this interval to its smallest possible dimension, becomes thus, at once, an object with the
reasoner. In the rash pursuit of this object, he rushes into mere assumption at the outset. 'It is folly to
suppose,' he says, 'that the murder, if murder was committed on her body, could have been
consummated soon enough to have enabled her murderers to throw the body into the river before
midnight.' We demand at once, and very naturally, why? Why is it folly to suppose that the murder was
committed within five minutes after the girl's quitting her mother's house? Why is it folly to suppose
that the murder was committed at any given period of the day? There have been assassinations at all
hours. But, had the murder taken place at any moment between nine o'clock in the morning of Sunday,
and a quarter before midnight, there would still have been time enough 'to throw the body into the
river before midnight.' This assumption, then, amounts precisely to this—that the murder was not
committed on Sunday at all—and, if we allow L'Etoile to assume this, we may permit it any liberties
whatever. The paragraph beginning 'It is folly to suppose that the murder, etc.,' however it appears as
printed in L'Etoile, may be imagined to have existed actually thus in the brain of its inditer—'It is
folly to suppose that the murder, if murder was committed on the body, could have been committed
soon enough to have enabled her murderers to throw the body into the river before midnight; it is
folly, we say, to suppose all this, and to suppose at the same time, (as we are resolved to suppose,)
that the body was not thrown in until after midnight'—a sentence sufficiently inconsequential in itself,
but not so utterly preposterous as the one printed.
"Were it my purpose," continued Dupin, "merely to make out a case against this passage of
L'Etoile's argument, I might safely leave it where it is. It is not, however, with L'Etoile that we have
to do, but with the truth. The sentence in question has but one meaning, as it stands; and this meaning I
have fairly stated: but it is material that we go behind the mere words, for an idea which these words
have obviously intended, and failed to convey. It was the design of the journalist to say that, at
whatever period of the day or night of Sunday this murder was committed, it was improbable that the
assassins would have ventured to bear the corpse to the river before midnight. And herein lies, really,
the assumption of which I complain. It is assumed that the murder was committed at such a position,
and under such circumstances, that the bearing it to the river became necessary. Now, the
assassination might have taken place upon the river's brink, or on the river itself; and, thus, the
throwing the corpse in the water might have been resorted to, at any period of the day or night, as the
most obvious and most immediate mode of disposal. You will understand that I suggest nothing here
as probable, or as cæincident with my own opinion. My design, so far, has no reference to the facts of
the case. I wish merely to caution you against the whole tone of L'Etoile's suggestion, by calling your
attention to its ex parte character at the outset.
"Having prescribed thus a limit to suit its own preconceived notions; having assumed that, if this
were the body of Marie, it could have been in the water but a very brief time; the journal goes on to
say:
'All experience has shown that drowned bodies, or bodies thrown into the water immediately
after death by violence, require from six to ten days for sufficient decomposition to take place to
bring them to the top of the water. Even when a cannon is fired over a corpse, and it rises before at
least five or six days' immersion, it sinks again if let alone.'
"These assertions have been tacitly received by every paper in Paris, with the exception of Le
Moniteur. This latter print endeavors to combat that portion of the paragraph which has reference to
'drowned bodies' only, by citing some five or six instances in which the bodies of individuals known
to be drowned were found floating after the lapse of less time than is insisted upon by L'Etoile. But
there is something excessively unphilosophical in the attempt on the part of Le Moniteur, to rebut the
general assertion of L'Etoile, by a citation of particular instances militating against that assertion. Had
it been possible to adduce fifty instead of five examples of bodies found floating at the end of two or
three days, these fifty examples could still have been properly regarded only as exceptions to
L'Etoile's rule, until such time as the rule itself should be confuted. Admitting the rule, (and this Le
Moniteur does not deny, insisting merely upon its exceptions,) the argument of L'Etoile is suffered to
remain in full force; for this argument does not pretend to involve more than a question of the
probability of the body having risen to the surface in less than three days; and this probability will be
in favor of L'Etoile's position until the instances so childishly adduced shall be sufficient in number to
establish an antagonistical rule.
"You will see at once that all argument upon this head should be urged, if at all, against the rule
itself; and for this end we must examine the rationale of the rule. Now the human body, in general, is
neither much lighter nor much heavier than the water of the Seine; that is to say, the specific gravity of
the human body, in its natural condition, is about equal to the bulk of fresh water which it displaces.
The bodies of fat and fleshy persons, with small bones, and of women generally, are lighter than those
of the lean and large-boned, and of men; and the specific gravity of the water of a river is somewhat
influenced by the presence of the tide from sea. But, leaving this tide out of question, it may be said
that very few human bodies will sink at all, even in fresh water, of their own accord. Almost any one,
falling into a river, will be enabled to float, if he suffer the specific gravity of the water fairly to be
adduced in comparison with his own—that is to say, if he suffer his whole person to be immersed,
with as little exception as possible. The proper position for one who cannot swim, is the upright
position of the walker on land, with the head thrown fully back, and immersed; the mouth and nostrils
alone remaining above the surface. Thus circumstanced, we shall find that we float without difficulty
and without exertion. It is evident, however, that the gravities of the body, and of the bulk of water
displaced, are very nicely balanced, and that a trifle will cause either to preponderate. An arm, for
instance, uplifted from the water, and thus deprived of its support, is an additional weight sufficient to
immerse the whole head, while the accidental aid of the smallest piece of timber will enable us to
elevate the head so as to look about. Now, in the struggles of one unused to swimming, the arms are
invariably thrown upwards, while an attempt is made to keep the head in its usual perpendicular
position. The result is the immersion of the mouth and nostrils, and the inception, during efforts to
breathe while beneath the surface, of water into the lungs. Much is also received into the stomach, and
the whole body becomes heavier by the difference between the weight of the air originally distending
these cavities, and that of the fluid which now fills them. This difference is sufficient to cause the
body to sink, as a general rule; but is insufficient in the cases of individuals with small bones and an
abnormal quantity of flaccid or fatty matter. Such individuals float even after drowning.
"The corpse, being supposed at the bottom of the river, will there remain until, by some means, its
specific gravity again becomes less than that of the bulk of water which it displaces. This effect is
brought about by decomposition, or otherwise. The result of decomposition is the generation of gas,
distending the cellular tissues and all the cavities, and giving the puffed appearance which is so
horrible. When this distension has so far progressed that the bulk of the corpse is materially increased
without a corresponding increase of mass or weight, its specific gravity becomes less than that of the
water displaced, and it forthwith makes its appearance at the surface. But decomposition is modified
by innumerable circumstances—is hastened or retarded by innumerable agencies; for example, by the
heat or cold of the season, by the mineral impregnation or purity of the water, by its depth or
shallowness, by its currency or stagnation, by the temperament of the body, by its infection or freedom
from disease before death. Thus it is evident that we can assign no period, with any thing like
accuracy, at which the corpse shall rise through decomposition. Under certain conditions this result
would be brought about within an hour; under others, it might not take place at all. There are chemical
infusions by which the animal frame can be preserved forever from corruption; the Bi-chloride of
Mercury is one. But, apart from decomposition, there may be, and very usually is, a generation of gas
within the stomach, from the acetous fermentation of vegetable matter (or within other cavities from
other causes) sufficient to induce a distension which will bring the body to the surface. The effect
produced by the firing of a cannon is that of simple vibration. This may either loosen the corpse from
the soft mud or ooze in which it is imbedded, thus permitting it to rise when other agencies have
already prepared it for so doing; or it may overcome the tenacity of some putrescent portions of the
cellular tissue; allowing the cavities to distend under the influence of the gas.
"Having thus before us the whole philosophy of this subject, we can easily test by it the assertions
of L'Etoile. 'All experience shows,' says this paper, 'that drowned bodies, or bodies thrown into the
water immediately after death by violence, require from six to ten days for sufficient decomposition
to take place to bring them to the top of the water. Even when a cannon is fired over a corpse, and it
rises before at least five or six days' immersion, it sinks again if let alone.'
"The whole of this paragraph must now appear a tissue of inconsequence and incoherence. All
experience does not show that 'drowned bodies' require from six to ten days for sufficient
decomposition to take place to bring them to the surface. Both science and experience show that the
period of their rising is, and necessarily must be, indeterminate. If, moreover, a body has risen to the
surface through firing of cannon, it will not 'sink again if let alone,' until decomposition has so far
progressed as to permit the escape of the generated gas. But I wish to call your attention to the
distinction which is made between 'drowned bodies,' and 'bodies thrown into the water immediately
after death by violence.' Although the writer admits the distinction, he yet includes them all in the
same category. I have shown how it is that the body of a drowning man becomes specifically heavier
than its bulk of water, and that he would not sink at all, except for the struggles by which he elevates
his arms above the surface, and his gasps for breath while beneath the surface—gasps which supply
by water the place of the original air in the lungs. But these struggles and these gasps would not occur
in the body 'thrown into the water immediately after death by violence.' Thus, in the latter instance,
the body, as a general rule, would not sink at all—a fact of which L'Etoile is evidently ignorant. When
decomposition had proceeded to a very great extent—when the flesh had in a great measure left the
bones—then, indeed, but not till then, should we lose sight of the corpse.
"And now what are we to make of the argument, that the body found could not be that of Marie
Rogæt, because, three days only having elapsed, this body was found floating? If drowned, being a
woman, she might never have sunk; or having sunk, might have reappeared in twenty-four hours, or
less. But no one supposes her to have been drowned; and, dying before being thrown into the river,
she might have been found floating at any period afterwards whatever.
"'But,' says L'Etoile, 'if the body had been kept in its mangled state on shore until Tuesday night,
some trace would be found on shore of the murderers.' Here it is at first difficult to perceive the
intention of the reasoner. He means to anticipate what he imagines would be an objection to his theory
—viz: that the body was kept on shore two days, suffering rapid decomposition—more rapid than if
immersed in water. He supposes that, had this been the case, it might have appeared at the surface on
the Wednesday, and thinks that only under such circumstances it could so have appeared. He is
accordingly in haste to show that it was not kept on shore; for, if so, 'some trace would be found on
shore of the murderers.' I presume you smile at the sequitur. You cannot be made to see how the mere
duration of the corpse on the shore could operate to multiply traces of the assassins. Nor can I.
"'And furthermore it is exceedingly improbable,' continues our journal, 'that any villains who had
committed such a murder as is here supposed, would have thrown the body in without weight to sink
it, when such a precaution could have so easily been taken.' Observe, here, the laughable confusion of
thought! No one—not even L'Etoile—disputes the murder committed on the body found. The marks of
violence are too obvious. It is our reasoner's object merely to show that this body is not Marie's. He
wishes to prove that Marie is not assassinated—not that the corpse was not. Yet his observation
proves only the latter point. Here is a corpse without weight attached. Murderers, casting it in, would
not have failed to attach a weight. Therefore it was not thrown in by murderers. This is all which is
proved, if any thing is. The question of identity is not even approached, and L'Etoile has been at great
pains merely to gainsay now what it has admitted only a moment before. 'We are perfectly convinced,'
it says, 'that the body found was that of a murdered female.'
"Nor is this the sole instance, even in this division of his subject, where our reasoner unwittingly
reasons against himself. His evident object, I have already said, is to reduce, as much as possible, the
interval between Marie's disappearance and the finding of the corpse. Yet we find him urging the
point that no person saw the girl from the moment of her leaving her mother's house. 'We have no
evidence,' he says, 'that Marie Rogæt was in the land of the living after nine o'clock on Sunday, June
the twenty-second.' As his argument is obviously an ex parte one, he should, at least, have left this
matter out of sight; for had any one been known to see Marie, say on Monday, or on Tuesday, the
interval in question would have been much reduced, and, by his own ratiocination, the probability
much diminished of the corpse being that of the grisette. It is, nevertheless, amusing to observe that
L'Etoile insists upon its point in the full belief of its furthering its general argument.
"Reperuse now that portion of this argument which has reference to the identification of the
corpse by Beauvais. In regard to the hair upon the arm, L'Etoile has been obviously disingenuous. M.
Beauvais, not being an idiot, could never have urged, in identification of the corpse, simply hair upon
its arm. No arm is without hair. The generality of the expression of L'Etoile is a mere perversion of
the witness' phraseology. He must have spoken of some peculiarity in this hair. It must have been a
peculiarity of color, of quantity, of length, or of situation.
"'Her foot,' says the journal, 'was small—so are thousands of feet. Her garter is no proof
whatever—nor is her shoe—for shoes and garters are sold in packages. The same may be said of the
flowers in her hat. One thing upon which M. Beauvais strongly insists is, that the clasp on the garter
found, had been set back to take it in. This amounts to nothing; for most women find it proper to take a
pair of garters home and fit them to the size of the limbs they are to encircle, rather than to try them in
the store where they purchase.' Here it is difficult to suppose the reasoner in earnest. Had M.
Beauvais, in his search for the body of Marie, discovered a corpse corresponding in general size and
appearance to the missing girl, he would have been warranted (without reference to the question of
habiliment at all) in forming an opinion that his search had been successful. If, in addition to the point
of general size and contour, he had found upon the arm a peculiar hairy appearance which he had
observed upon the living Marie, his opinion might have been justly strengthened; and the increase of
positiveness might well have been in the ratio of the peculiarity, or unusualness, of the hairy mark. If,
the feet of Marie being small, those of the corpse were also small, the increase of probability that the
body was that of Marie would not be an increase in a ratio merely arithmetical, but in one highly
geometrical, or accumulative. Add to all this shoes such as she had been known to wear upon the day
of her disappearance, and, although these shoes may be 'sold in packages,' you so far augment the
probability as to verge upon the certain. What, of itself, would be no evidence of identity, becomes
through its corroborative position, proof most sure. Give us, then, flowers in the hat corresponding to
those worn by the missing girl, and we seek for nothing farther. If only one flower, we seek for
nothing farther—what then if two or three, or more? Each successive one is multiple evidence—proof
not added to proof, but multiplied by hundreds or thousands. Let us now discover, upon the deceased,
garters such as the living used, and it is almost folly to proceed. But these garters are found to be
tightened, by the setting back of a clasp, in just such a manner as her own had been tightened by
Marie, shortly previous to her leaving home. It is now madness or hypocrisy to doubt. What L'Etoile
says in respect to this abbreviation of the garter's being an usual occurrence, shows nothing beyond its
own pertinacity in error. The elastic nature of the clasp-garter is self-demonstration of the
unusualness of the abbreviation. What is made to adjust itself, must of necessity require foreign
adjustment but rarely. It must have been by an accident, in its strictest sense, that these garters of
Marie needed the tightening described. They alone would have amply established her identity. But it
is not that the corpse was found to have the garters of the missing girl, or found to have her shoes, or
her bonnet, or the flowers of her bonnet, or her feet, or a peculiar mark upon the arm, or her general
size and appearance—it is that the corpse had each, and all collectively. Could it be proved that the
editor of L'Etoile really entertained a doubt, under the circumstances, there would be no need, in his
case, of a commission de lunatico inquirendo. He has thought it sagacious to echo the small talk of the
lawyers, who, for the most part, content themselves with echoing the rectangular precepts of the
courts. I would here observe that very much of what is rejected as evidence by a court, is the best of
evidence to the intellect. For the court, guiding itself by the general principles of evidence—the
recognized and booked principles—is averse from swerving at particular instances. And this
steadfast adherence to principle, with rigorous disregard of the conflicting exception, is a sure mode
of attaining the maximum of attainable truth, in any long sequence of time. The practice, in mass, is
therefore philosophical; but it is not the less certain that it engenders vast individual error.
"In respect to the insinuations levelled at Beauvais, you will be willing to dismiss them in a
breath. You have already fathomed the true character of this good gentleman. He is a busy-body, with
much of romance and little of wit. Any one so constituted will readily so conduct himself, upon
occasion of real excitement, as to render himself liable to suspicion on the part of the over acute, or
the ill-disposed. M. Beauvais (as it appears from your notes) had some personal interviews with the
editor of L'Etoile, and offended him by venturing an opinion that the corpse, notwithstanding the
theory of the editor, was, in sober fact, that of Marie. 'He persists,' says the paper, 'in asserting the
corpse to be that of Marie, but cannot give a circumstance, in addition to those which we have
commented upon, to make others believe.' Now, without re-adverting to the fact that stronger evidence
'to make others believe,' could never have been adduced, it may be remarked that a man may very
well be understood to believe, in a case of this kind, without the ability to advance a single reason for
the belief of a second party. Nothing is more vague than impressions of individual identity. Each man
recognizes his neighbor, yet there are few instances in which any one is prepared to give a reason for
his recognition. The editor of L'Etoile had no right to be offended at M. Beauvais' unreasoning belief.
"The suspicious circumstances which invest him, will be found to tally much better with my
hypothesis of romantic busy-bodyism, than with the reasoner's suggestion of guilt. Once adopting the
more charitable interpretation, we shall find no difficulty in comprehending the rose in the key-hole;
the 'Marie' upon the slate; the 'elbowing the male relatives out of the way;' the 'aversion to permitting
them to see the body;' the caution given to Madame B——, that she must hold no conversation with
the gendarme until his return (Beauvais'); and, lastly, his apparent determination 'that nobody should
have anything to do with the proceedings except himself.' It seems to me unquestionable that Beauvais
was a suitor of Marie's; that she coquetted with him; and that he was ambitious of being thought to
enjoy her fullest intimacy and confidence. I shall say nothing more upon this point; and, as the
evidence fully rebuts the assertion of L'Etoile, touching the matter of apathy on the part of the mother
and other relatives—an apathy inconsistent with the supposition of their believing the corpse to be
that of the perfumery-girl—we shall now proceed as if the question of identity were settled to our
perfect satisfaction."
"And what," I here demanded, "do you think of the opinions of Le Commerciel?"
"That, in spirit, they are far more worthy of attention than any which have been promulgated upon
the subject. The deductions from the premises are philosophical and acute; but the premises, in two
instances, at least, are founded in imperfect observation. Le Commerciel wishes to intimate that
Marie was seized by some gang of low ruffians not far from her mother's door. 'It is impossible,' it
urges, 'that a person so well known to thousands as this young woman was, should have passed three
blocks without some one having seen her.' This is the idea of a man long resident in Paris—a public
man—and one whose walks to and fro in the city, have been mostly limited to the vicinity of the
public offices. He is aware that he seldom passes so far as a dozen blocks from his own bureau,
without being recognized and accosted. And, knowing the extent of his personal acquaintance with
others, and of others with him, he compares his notoriety with that of the perfumery-girl, finds no
great difference between them, and reaches at once the conclusion that she, in her walks, would be
equally liable to recognition with himself in his. This could only be the case were her walks of the
same unvarying, methodical character, and within the same species of limited region as are his own.
He passes to and fro, at regular intervals, within a confined periphery, abounding in individuals who
are led to observation of his person through interest in the kindred nature of his occupation with their
own. But the walks of Marie may, in general, be supposed discursive. In this particular instance, it
will be understood as most probable, that she proceeded upon a route of more than average diversity
from her accustomed ones. The parallel which we imagine to have existed in the mind of Le
Commerciel would only be sustained in the event of the two individuals' traversing the whole city. In
this case, granting the personal acquaintances to be equal, the chances would be also equal that an
equal number of personal rencounters would be made. For my own part, I should hold it not only as
possible, but as very far more than probable, that Marie might have proceeded, at any given period,
by any one of the many routes between her own residence and that of her aunt, without meeting a
single individual whom she knew, or by whom she was known. In viewing this question in its full and
proper light, we must hold steadily in mind the great disproportion between the personal
acquaintances of even the most noted individual in Paris, and the entire population of Paris itself.
"But whatever force there may still appear to be in the suggestion of Le Commerciel, will be
much diminished when we take into consideration the hour at which the girl went abroad. 'It was
when the streets were full of people,' says Le Commerciel, 'that she went out.' But not so. It was at
nine o'clock in the morning. Now at nine o'clock of every morning in the week, with the exception of
Sunday, the streets of the city are, it is true, thronged with people. At nine on Sunday, the populace
are chiefly within doors preparing for church. No observing person can have failed to notice the
peculiarly deserted air of the town, from about eight until ten on the morning of every Sabbath.
Between ten and eleven the streets are thronged, but not at so early a period as that designated.
"There is another point at which there seems a deficiency of observation on the part of Le
Commerciel. 'A piece,' it says, 'of one of the unfortunate girl's petticoats, two feet long, and one foot
wide, was torn out and tied under her chin, and around the back of her head, probably to prevent
screams. This was done, by fellows who had no pocket-handkerchiefs.' Whether this idea is, or is not
well founded, we will endeavor to see hereafter; but by 'fellows who have no pocket-handkerchiefs'
the editor intends the lowest class of ruffians. These, however, are the very description of people
who will always be found to have handkerchiefs even when destitute of shirts. You must have had
occasion to observe how absolutely indispensable, of late years, to the thorough blackguard, has
become the pocket-handkerchief."
"And what are we to think," I asked, "of the article in Le Soleil?"
"That it is a vast pity its inditer was not born a parrot—in which case he would have been the
most illustrious parrot of his race. He has merely repeated the individual items of the already
published opinion; collecting them, with a laudable industry, from this paper and from that. 'The
things had all evidently been there,' he says,'at least, three or four weeks, and there can be no doubt
that the spot of this appalling outrage has been discovered.' The facts here re-stated by Le Soleil, are
very far indeed from removing my own doubts upon this subject, and we will examine them more
particularly hereafter in connexion with another division of the theme.
"At present we must occupy ourselves with other investigations. You cannot fail to have remarked
the extreme laxity of the examination of the corpse. To be sure, the question of identity was readily
determined, or should have been; but there were other points to be ascertained. Had the body been in
any respect despoiled? Had the deceased any articles of jewelry about her person upon leaving
home? if so, had she any when found? These are important questions utterly untouched by the
evidence; and there are others of equal moment, which have met with no attention. We must endeavor
to satisfy ourselves by personal inquiry. The case of St. Eustache must be re-examined. I have no
suspicion of this person; but let us proceed methodically. We will ascertain beyond a doubt the
validity of the affidavits in regard to his whereabouts on the Sunday. Affidavits of this character are
readily made matter of mystification. Should there be nothing wrong here, however, we will dismiss
St. Eustache from our investigations. His suicide, however corroborative of suspicion, were there
found to be deceit in the affidavits, is, without such deceit, in no respect an unaccountable
circumstance, or one which need cause us to deflect from the line of ordinary analysis.
"In that which I now propose, we will discard the interior points of this tragedy, and concentrate
our attention upon its outskirts. Not the least usual error, in investigations such as this, is the limiting
of inquiry to the immediate, with total disregard of the collateral or circumstantial events. It is the
mal-practice of the courts to confine evidence and discussion to the bounds of apparent relevancy. Yet
experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion
of truth, arises from the seemingly irrelevant. It is through the spirit of this principle, if not precisely
through its letter, that modern science has resolved to calculate upon the unforeseen. But perhaps you
do not comprehend me. The history of human knowledge has so uninterruptedly shown that to
collateral, or incidental, or accidental events we are indebted for the most numerous and most
valuable discoveries, that it has at length become necessary, in any prospective view of improvement,
to make not only large, but the largest allowances for inventions that shall arise by chance, and quite
out of the range of ordinary expectation. It is no longer philosophical to base, upon what has been, a
vision of what is to be. Accident is admitted as a portion of the substructure. We make chance a
matter of absolute calculation. We subject the unlooked for and unimagined, to the mathematical
formulae of the schools.
"I repeat that it is no more than fact, that the larger portion of all truth has sprung from the
collateral; and it is but in accordance with the spirit of the principle involved in this fact, that I would
divert inquiry, in the present case, from the trodden and hitherto unfruitful ground of the event itself, to
the contemporary circumstances which surround it. While you ascertain the validity of the affidavits, I
will examine the newspapers more generally than you have as yet done. So far, we have only
reconnoitred the field of investigation; but it will be strange indeed if a comprehensive survey, such
as I propose, of the public prints, will not afford us some minute points which shall establish a
direction for inquiry."
In pursuance of Dupin's suggestion, I made scrupulous examination of the affair of the affidavits.
The result was a firm conviction of their validity, and of the consequent innocence of St. Eustache. In
the mean time my friend occupied himself, with what seemed to me a minuteness altogether
objectless, in a scrutiny of the various newspaper files. At the end of a week he placed before me the
following extracts:
"About three years and a half ago, a disturbance very similar to the present, was caused by the
disappearance of this same Marie Rogæt, from the parfumerie of Monsieur Le Blanc, in the Palais
Royal. At the end of a week, however, she re-appeared at her customary comptoir, as well as ever,
with the exception of a slight paleness not altogether usual. It was given out by Monsieur Le Blanc
and her mother, that she had merely been on a visit to some friend in the country; and the affair was
speedily hushed up. We presume that the present absence is a freak of the same nature, and that, at the
expiration of a week, or perhaps of a month, we shall have her among us again."—Evening Paper—
Monday June 23.
"An evening journal of yesterday, refers to a former mysterious disappearance of Mademoiselle
Rogæt. It is well known that, during the week of her absence from Le Blanc's parfumerie, she was in
the company of a young naval officer, much noted for his debaucheries. A quarrel, it is supposed,
providentially led to her return home. We have the name of the Lothario in question, who is, at
present, stationed in Paris, but, for obvious reasons, forbear to make it public."—Le Mercurie—
Tuesday Morning, June 24.
"An outrage of the most atrocious character was perpetrated near this city the day before
yesterday. A gentleman, with his wife and daughter, engaged, about dusk, the services of six young
men, who were idly rowing a boat to and fro near the banks of the Seine, to convey him across the
river. Upon reaching the opposite shore, the three passengers stepped out, and had proceeded so far
as to be beyond the view of the boat, when the daughter discovered that she had left in it her parasol.
She returned for it, was seized by the gang, carried out into the stream, gagged, brutally treated, and
finally taken to the shore at a point not far from that at which she had originally entered the boat with
her parents. The villains have escaped for the time, but the police are upon their trail, and some of
them will soon be taken."—Morning Paper—June 25.
"We have received one or two communications, the object of which is to fasten the crime of the
late atrocity upon Mennais; but as this gentleman has been fully exonerated by a loyal inquiry, and as
the arguments of our several correspondents appear to be more zealous than profound, we do not think
it advisable to make them public."—Morning Paper—June 28.
"We have received several forcibly written communications, apparently from various sources,
and which go far to render it a matter of certainty that the unfortunate Marie Rogæt has become a
victim of one of the numerous bands of blackguards which infest the vicinity of the city upon Sunday.
Our own opinion is decidedly in favor of this supposition. We shall endeavor to make room for some
of these arguments hereafter."—Evening Paper—Tuesday, June 31.
"On Monday, one of the bargemen connected with the revenue service, saw a empty boat floating
down the Seine. Sails were lying in the bottom of the boat. The bargeman towed it under the barge
office. The next morning it was taken from thence, without the knowledge of any of the officers. The
rudder is now at the barge office."—Le Diligence—Thursday, June 26.
Upon reading these various extracts, they not only seemed to me irrelevant, but I could perceive
no mode in which any one of them could be brought to bear upon the matter in hand. I waited for some
explanation from Dupin.
"It is not my present design," he said, "to dwell upon the first and second of those extracts. I have
copied them chiefly to show you the extreme remissness of the police, who, as far as I can understand
from the Prefect, have not troubled themselves, in any respect, with an examination of the naval
officer alluded to. Yet it is mere folly to say that between the first and second disappearance of
Marie, there is no supposable connection. Let us admit the first elopement to have resulted in a
quarrel between the lovers, and the return home of the betrayed. We are now prepared to view a
second elopement (if we know that an elopement has again taken place) as indicating a renewal of the
betrayer's advances, rather than as the result of new proposals by a second individual—we are
prepared to regard it as a 'making up' of the old amour, rather than as the commencement of a new
one. The chances are ten to one, that he who had once eloped with Marie, would again propose an
elopement, rather than that she to whom proposals of elopement had been made by one individual,
should have them made to her by another. And here let me call your attention to the fact, that the time
elapsing between the first ascertained, and the second supposed elopement, is a few months more than
the general period of the cruises of our men-of-war. Had the lover been interrupted in his first villany
by the necessity of departure to sea, and had he seized the first moment of his return to renew the base
designs not yet altogether accomplished—or not yet altogether accomplished by him? Of all these
things we know nothing.
"You will say, however, that, in the second instance, there was no elopement as imagined.
Certainly not—but are we prepared to say that there was not the frustrated design? Beyond St.
Eustache, and perhaps Beauvais, we find no recognized, no open, no honorable suitors of Marie. Of
none other is there any thing said. Who, then, is the secret lover, of whom the relatives (at least most
of them) know nothing, but whom Marie meets upon the morning of Sunday, and who is so deeply in
her confidence, that she hesitates not to remain with him until the shades of the evening descend, amid
the solitary groves of the Barriære du Roule? Who is that secret lover, I ask, of whom, at least, most
of the relatives know nothing? And what means the singular prophecy of Madame Rogæt on the
morning of Marie's departure?—'I fear that I shall never see Marie again.'
"But if we cannot imagine Madame Rogæt privy to the design of elopement, may we not at least
suppose this design entertained by the girl? Upon quitting home, she gave it to be understood that she
was about to visit her aunt in the Rue des Dræmes and St. Eustache was requested to call for her at
dark. Now, at first glance, this fact strongly militates against my suggestion;—but let us reflect. That
she did meet some companion, and proceed with him across the river, reaching the Barriære du Roule
at so late an hour as three o'clock in the afternoon, is known. But in consenting so to accompany this
individual, (for whatever purpose—to her mother known or unknown,) she must have thought of her
expressed intention when leaving home, and of the surprise and suspicion aroused in the bosom of her
affianced suitor, St. Eustache, when, calling for her, at the hour appointed, in the Rue des Dræmes, he
should find that she had not been there, and when, moreover, upon returning to the pension with this
alarming intelligence, he should become aware of her continued absence from home. She must have
thought of these things, I say. She must have foreseen the chagrin of St. Eustache, the suspicion of all.
She could not have thought of returning to brave this suspicion; but the suspicion becomes a point of
trivial importance to her, if we suppose her not intending to return.
"We may imagine her thinking thus—'I am to meet a certain person for the purpose of elopement,
or for certain other purposes known only to myself. It is necessary that there be no chance of
interruption—there must be sufficient time given us to elude pursuit—I will give it to be understood
that I shall visit and spend the day with my aunt at the Rue des Dræmes—I well tell St. Eustache not
to call for me until dark—in this way, my absence from home for the longest possible period, without
causing suspicion or anxiety, will be accounted for, and I shall gain more time than in any other
manner. If I bid St. Eustache call for me at dark, he will be sure not to call before; but, if I wholly
neglect to bid him call, my time for escape will be diminished, since it will be expected that I return
the earlier, and my absence will the sooner excite anxiety. Now, if it were my design to return at all—
if I had in contemplation merely a stroll with the individual in question—it would not be my policy to
bid St. Eustache call; for, calling, he will be sure to ascertain that I have played him false—a fact of
which I might keep him for ever in ignorance, by leaving home without notifying him of my intention,
by returning before dark, and by then stating that I had been to visit my aunt in the Rue des Dræmes.
But, as it is my design never to return—or not for some weeks—or not until certain concealments are
effected—the gaining of time is the only point about which I need give myself any concern.'
"You have observed, in your notes, that the most general opinion in relation to this sad affair is,
and was from the first, that the girl had been the victim of a gang of blackguards. Now, the popular
opinion, under certain conditions, is not to be disregarded. When arising of itself—when manifesting
itself in a strictly spontaneous manner—we should look upon it as analogous with that intuition
which is the idiosyncrasy of the individual man of genius. In ninety-nine cases from the hundred I
would abide by its decision. But it is important that we find no palpable traces of suggestion. The
opinion must be rigorously the public's own; and the distinction is often exceedingly difficult to
perceive and to maintain. In the present instance, it appears to me that this 'public opinion' in respect
to a gang, has been superinduced by the collateral event which is detailed in the third of my extracts.
All Paris is excited by the discovered corpse of Marie, a girl young, beautiful and notorious. This
corpse is found, bearing marks of violence, and floating in the river. But it is now made known that, at
the very period, or about the very period, in which it is supposed that the girl was assassinated, an
outrage similar in nature to that endured by the deceased, although less in extent, was perpetuated, by
a gang of young ruffians, upon the person of a second young female. Is it wonderful that the one known
atrocity should influence the popular judgment in regard to the other unknown? This judgment awaited
direction, and the known outrage seemed so opportunely to afford it! Marie, too, was found in the
river; and upon this very river was this known outrage committed. The connexion of the two events
had about it so much of the palpable, that the true wonder would have been a failure of the populace
to appreciate and to seize it. But, in fact, the one atrocity, known to be so committed, is, if any thing,
evidence that the other, committed at a time nearly coincident, was not so committed. It would have
been a miracle indeed, if, while a gang of ruffians were perpetrating, at a given locality, a most
unheard-of wrong, there should have been another similar gang, in a similar locality, in the same city,
under the same circumstances, with the same means and appliances, engaged in a wrong of precisely
the same aspect, at precisely the same period of time! Yet in what, if not in this marvellous train of
coincidence, does the accidentally suggested opinion of the populace call upon us to believe?
"Before proceeding farther, let us consider the supposed scene of the assassination, in the thicket
at the Barriære du Roule. This thicket, although dense, was in the close vicinity of a public road.
Within were three or four large stones, forming a kind of seat with a back and footstool. On the upper
stone was discovered a white petticoat; on the second, a silk scarf. A parasol, gloves, and a pockethandkerchief, were also here found. The handkerchief bore the name, 'Marie Rogæt.' Fragments of
dress were seen on the branches around. The earth was trampled, the bushes were broken, and there
was every evidence of a violent struggle.
"Notwithstanding the acclamation with which the discovery of this thicket was received by the
press, and the unanimity with which it was supposed to indicate the precise scene of the outrage, it
must be admitted that there was some very good reason for doubt. That it was the scene, I may or I
may not believe—but there was excellent reason for doubt. Had the true scene been, as Le
Commerciel suggested, in the neighborhood of the Rue Pavæe St. Andræe, the perpetrators of the
crime, supposing them still resident in Paris, would naturally have been stricken with terror at the
public attention thus acutely directed into the proper channel; and, in certain classes of minds, there
would have arisen, at once, a sense of the necessity of some exertion to redivert this attention. And
thus, the thicket of the Barriære du Roule having been already suspected, the idea of placing the
articles where they were found, might have been naturally entertained. There is no real evidence,
although Le Soleil so supposes, that the articles discovered had been more than a very few days in the
thicket; while there is much circumstantial proof that they could not have remained there, without
attracting attention, during the twenty days elapsing between the fatal Sunday and the afternoon upon
which they were found by the boys. 'They were all mildewed down hard,' says Le Soleil, adopting the
opinions of its predecessors, 'with the action of the rain, and stuck together from mildew. The grass
had grown around and over some of them. The silk of the parasol was strong, but the threads of it
were run together within. The upper part, where it had been doubled and folded, was all mildewed
and rotten, and tore on being opened.' In respect to the grass having 'grown around and over some of
them,' it is obvious that the fact could only have been ascertained from the words, and thus from the
recollections, of two small boys; for these boys removed the articles and took them home before they
had been seen by a third party. But grass will grow, especially in warm and damp weather, (such as
was that of the period of the murder,) as much as two or three inches in a single day. A parasol lying
upon a newly turfed ground, might, in a single week, be entirely concealed from sight by the
upspringing grass. And touching that mildew upon which the editor of Le Soleil so pertinaciously
insists, that he employs the word no less than three times in the brief paragraph just quoted, is he
really unaware of the nature of this mildew? Is he to be told that it is one of the many classes of
fungus, of which the most ordinary feature is its upspringing and decadence within twenty-four hours?
"Thus we see, at a glance, that what has been most triumphantly adduced in support of the idea
that the articles had been 'for at least three or four weeks' in the thicket, is most absurdly null as
regards any evidence of that fact. On the other hand, it is exceedingly difficult to believe that these
articles could have remained in the thicket specified, for a longer period than a single week—for a
longer period than from one Sunday to the next. Those who know any thing of the vicinity of Paris,
know the extreme difficulty of finding seclusion unless at a great distance from its suburbs. Such a
thing as an unexplored, or even an unfrequently visited recess, amid its woods or groves, is not for a
moment to be imagined. Let any one who, being at heart a lover of nature, is yet chained by duty to the
dust and heat of this great metropolis—let any such one attempt, even during the weekdays, to slake
his thirst for solitude amid the scenes of natural loveliness which immediately surround us. At every
second step, he will find the growing charm dispelled by the voice and personal intrusion of some
ruffian or party of carousing blackguards. He will seek privacy amid the densest foliage, all in vain.
Here are the very nooks where the unwashed most abound—here are the temples most desecrate.
With sickness of the heart the wanderer will flee back to the polluted Paris as to a less odious
because less incongruous sink of pollution. But if the vicinity of the city is so beset during the
working days of the week, how much more so on the Sabbath! It is now especially that, released from
the claims of labor, or deprived of the customary opportunities of crime, the town blackguard seeks
the precincts of the town, not through love of the rural, which in his heart he despises, but by way of
escape from the restraints and conventionalities of society. He desires less the fresh air and the green
trees, than the utter license of the country. Here, at the road-side inn, or beneath the foliage of the
woods, he indulges, unchecked by any eye except those of his boon companions, in all the mad excess
of a counterfeit hilarity—the joint offspring of liberty and of rum. I say nothing more than what must
be obvious to every dispassionate observer, when I repeat that the circumstance of the articles in
question having remained undiscovered, for a longer period—than from one Sunday to another, in any
thicket in the immediate neighborhood of Paris, is to be looked upon as little less than miraculous.
"But there are not wanting other grounds for the suspicion that the articles were placed in the
thicket with the view of diverting attention from the real scene of the outrage. And, first, let me direct
your notice to the date of the discovery of the articles. Collate this with the date of the fifth extract
made by myself from the newspapers. You will find that the discovery followed, almost immediately,
the urgent communications sent to the evening paper. These communications, although various and
apparently from various sources, tended all to the same point—viz., the directing of attention to a
gang as the perpetrators of the outrage, and to the neighborhood of the Barriære du Roule as its scene.
Now here, of course, the suspicion is not that, in consequence of these communications, or of the
public attention by them directed, the articles were found by the boys; but the suspicion might and may
well have been, that the articles were not before found by the boys, for the reason that the articles had
not before been in the thicket; having been deposited there only at so late a period as at the date, or
shortly prior to the date of the communications by the guilty authors of these communications
themselves.
"This thicket was a singular—an exceedingly singular one. It was unusually dense. Within its
naturally walled enclosure were three extraordinary stones, forming a seat with a back and footstool.
And this thicket, so full of a natural art, was in the immediate vicinity, within a few rods, of the
dwelling of Madame Deluc, whose boys were in the habit of closely examining the shrubberies about
them in search of the bark of the sassafras. Would it be a rash wager—a wager of one thousand to one
—that a day never passed over the heads of these boys without finding at least one of them ensconced
in the umbrageous hall, and enthroned upon its natural throne? Those who would hesitate at such a
wager, have either never been boys themselves, or have forgotten the boyish nature. I repeat—it is
exceedingly hard to comprehend how the articles could have remained in this thicket undiscovered,
for a longer period than one or two days; and that thus there is good ground for suspicion, in spite of
the dogmatic ignorance of Le Soleil, that they were, at a comparatively late date, deposited where
found.
"But there are still other and stronger reasons for believing them so deposited, than any which I
have as yet urged. And, now, let me beg your notice to the highly artificial arrangement of the articles.
On the upper stone lay a white petticoat; on the second a silk scarf; scattered around, were a parasol,
gloves, and a pocket-handkerchief bearing the name, 'Marie Rogæt.' Here is just such an arrangement
as would naturally be made by a not over-acute person wishing to dispose the articles naturally. But it
is by no means a really natural arrangement. I should rather have looked to see the things all lying on
the ground and trampled under foot. In the narrow limits of that bower, it would have been scarcely
possible that the petticoat and scarf should have retained a position upon the stones, when subjected
to the brushing to and fro of many struggling persons. 'There was evidence,' it is said, 'of a struggle;
and the earth was trampled, the bushes were broken,'—but the petticoat and the scarf are found
deposited as if upon shelves. 'The pieces of the frock torn out by the bushes were about three inches
wide and six inches long. One part was the hem of the frock and it had been mended. They looked like
strips torn off.' Here, inadvertently, Le Soleil has employed an exceedingly suspicious phrase. The
pieces, as described, do indeed 'look like strips torn off;' but purposely and by hand. It is one of the
rarest of accidents that a piece is 'torn off,' from any garment such as is now in question, by the agency
of a thorn. From the very nature of such fabrics, a thorn or nail becoming entangled in them, tears them
rectangularly—divides them into two longitudinal rents, at right angles with each other, and meeting
at an apex where the thorn enters—but it is scarcely possible to conceive the piece 'torn off.' I never
so knew it, nor did you. To tear a piece off from such fabric, two distinct forces, in different
directions, will be, in almost every case, required. If there be two edges to the fabric—if, for
example, it be a pocket-handkerchief, and it is desired to tear from it a slip, then, and then only, will
the one force serve the purpose. But in the present case the question is of a dress, presenting but one
edge. To tear a piece from the interior, where no edge is presented, could only be effected by a
miracle through the agency of thorns, and no one thorn could accomplish it. But, even where an edge
is presented, two thorns will be necessary, operating, the one in two distinct directions, and the other
in one. And this in the supposition that the edge is unhemmed. If hemmed, the matter is nearly out of
the question. We thus see the numerous and great obstacles in the way of pieces being 'torn off'
through the simple agency of 'thorns;' yet we are required to believe not only that one piece but that
many have been so torn. 'And one part,' too, 'was the hem of the frock!' Another piece was 'part of the
skirt, not the hem,'—that is to say, was torn completely out through the agency of thorns, from the
uncaged interior of the dress! These, I say, are things which one may well be pardoned for
disbelieving; yet, taken collectedly, they form, perhaps, less of reasonable ground for suspicion, than
the one startling circumstance of the articles' having been left in this thicket at all, by any murderers
who had enough precaution to think of removing the corpse. You will not have apprehended me
rightly, however, if you suppose it my design to deny this thicket as the scene of the outrage. There
might have been a wrong here, or, more possibly, an accident at Madame Deluc's. But, in fact, this is
a point of minor importance. We are not engaged in an attempt to discover the scene, but to produce
the perpetrators of the murder. What I have adduced, notwithstanding the minuteness with which I
have adduced it, has been with the view, first, to show the folly of the positive and headlong
assertions of Le Soleil, but secondly and chiefly, to bring you, by the most natural route, to a further
contemplation of the doubt whether this assassination has, or has not been, the work of a gang.
"We will resume this question by mere allusion to the revolting details of the surgeon examined at
the inquest. It is only necessary to say that his published inferences, in regard to the number of
ruffians, have been properly ridiculed as unjust and totally baseless, by all the reputable anatomists of
Paris. Not that the matter might not have been as inferred, but that there was no ground for the
inference:—was there not much for another?
"Let us reflect now upon 'the traces of a struggle;' and let me ask what these traces have been
supposed to demonstrate. A gang. But do they not rather demonstrate the absence of a gang? What
struggle could have taken place—what struggle so violent and so enduring as to have left its 'traces' in
all directions—between a weak and defenceless girl and the gang of ruffians imagined? The silent
grasp of a few rough arms and all would have been over. The victim must have been absolutely
passive at their will. You will here bear in mind that the arguments urged against the thicket as the
scene, are applicable in chief part, only against it as the scene of an outrage committed by more than a
single individual. If we imagine but one violator, we can conceive, and thus only conceive, the
struggle of so violent and so obstinate a nature as to have left the 'traces' apparent.
"And again. I have already mentioned the suspicion to be excited by the fact that the articles in
question were suffered to remain at all in the thicket where discovered. It seems almost impossible
that these evidences of guilt should have been accidentally left where found. There was sufficient
presence of mind (it is supposed) to remove the corpse; and yet a more positive evidence than the
corpse itself (whose features might have been quickly obliterated by decay,) is allowed to lie
conspicuously in the scene of the outrage—I allude to the handkerchief with the name of the deceased.
If this was accident, it was not the accident of a gang. We can imagine it only the accident of an
individual. Let us see. An individual has committed the murder. He is alone with the ghost of the
departed. He is appalled by what lies motionless before him. The fury of his passion is over, and
there is abundant room in his heart for the natural awe of the deed. His is none of that confidence
which the presence of numbers inevitably inspires. He is alone with the dead. He trembles and is
bewildered. Yet there is a necessity for disposing of the corpse. He bears it to the river, but leaves
behind him the other evidences of guilt; for it is difficult, if not impossible to carry all the burthen at
once, and it will be easy to return for what is left. But in his toilsome journey to the water his fears
redouble within him. The sounds of life encompass his path. A dozen times he hears or fancies the
step of an observer. Even the very lights from the city bewilder him. Yet, in time and by long and
frequent pauses of deep agony, he reaches the river's brink, and disposes of his ghastly charge—
perhaps through the medium of a boat. But now what treasure does the world hold—what threat of
vengeance could it hold out—which would have power to urge the return of that lonely murderer over
that toilsome and perilous path, to the thicket and its blood chilling recollections? He returns not, let
the consequences be what they may. He could not return if he would. His sole thought is immediate
escape. He turns his back forever upon those dreadful shrubberies and flees as from the wrath to
come.
"But how with a gang? Their number would have inspired them with confidence; if, indeed
confidence is ever wanting in the breast of the arrant blackguard; and of arrant blackguards alone are
the supposed gangs ever constituted. Their number, I say, would have prevented the bewildering and
unreasoning terror which I have imagined to paralyze the single man. Could we suppose an oversight
in one, or two, or three, this oversight would have been remedied by a fourth. They would have left
nothing behind them; for their number would have enabled them to carry all at once. There would
have been no need of return.
"Consider now the circumstance that in the outer garment of the corpse when found, 'a slip, about
a foot wide had been torn upward from the bottom hem to the waist wound three times round the
waist, and secured by a sort of hitch in the back.' This was done with the obvious design of affording
a handle by which to carry the body. But would any number of men have dreamed of resorting to such
an expedient? To three or four, the limbs of the corpse would have afforded not only a sufficient, but
the best possible hold. The device is that of a single individual; and this brings us to the fact that
'between the thicket and the river, the rails of the fences were found taken down, and the ground bore
evident traces of some heavy burden having been dragged along it!' But would a number of men have
put themselves to the superfluous trouble of taking down a fence, for the purpose of dragging through
it a corpse which they might have lifted over any fence in an instant? Would a number of men have so
dragged a corpse at all as to have left evident traces of the dragging?
"And here we must refer to an observation of Le Commerciel; an observation upon which I have
already, in some measure, commented. 'A piece,' says this journal, 'of one of the unfortunate girl's
petticoats was torn out and tied under her chin, and around the back of her head, probably to prevent
screams. This was done by fellows who had no pocket-handkerchiefs.'
"I have before suggested that a genuine blackguard is never without a pocket-handkerchief. But it
is not to this fact that I now especially advert. That it was not through want of a handkerchief for the
purpose imagined by Le Commerciel, that this bandage was employed, is rendered apparent by the
handkerchief left in the thicket; and that the object was not 'to prevent screams' appears, also, from the
bandage having been employed in preference to what would so much better have answered the
purpose. But the language of the evidence speaks of the strip in question as 'found around the neck,
fitting loosely, and secured with a hard knot.' These words are sufficiently vague, but differ materially
from those of Le Commerciel. The slip was eighteen inches wide, and therefore, although of muslin,
would form a strong band when folded or rumpled longitudinally. And thus rumpled it was
discovered. My inference is this. The solitary murderer, having borne the corpse, for some distance,
(whether from the thicket or elsewhere) by means of the bandage hitched around its middle, found the
weight, in this mode of procedure, too much for his strength. He resolved to drag the burthen—the
evidence goes to show that it was dragged. With this object in view, it became necessary to attach
something like a rope to one of the extremities. It could be best attached about the neck, where the
head would prevent its slipping off. And, now, the murderer bethought him, unquestionably, of the
bandage about the loins. He would have used this, but for its volution about the corpse, the hitch
which embarrassed it, and the reflection that it had not been 'torn off' from the garment. It was easier
to tear a new slip from the petticoat. He tore it, made it fast about the neck, and so dragged his victim
to the brink of the river. That this 'bandage,' only attainable with trouble and delay, and but
imperfectly answering its purpose—that this bandage was employed at all, demonstrates that the
necessity for its employment sprang from circumstances arising at a period when the handkerchief
was no longer attainable—that is to say, arising, as we have imagined, after quitting the thicket, (if the
thicket it was), and on the road between the thicket and the river.
"But the evidence, you will say, of Madame Deluc, (!) points especially to the presence of a gang,
in the vicinity of the thicket, at or about the epoch of the murder. This I grant. I doubt if there were not
a dozen gangs, such as described by Madame Deluc, in and about the vicinity of the Barriære du
Roule at or about the period of this tragedy. But the gang which has drawn upon itself the pointed
animadversion, although the somewhat tardy and very suspicious evidence of Madame Deluc, is the
only gang which is represented by that honest and scrupulous old lady as having eaten her cakes and
swallowed her brandy, without putting themselves to the trouble of making her payment. Et hinc illæ
iræ?
"But what is the precise evidence of Madame Deluc? 'A gang of miscreants made their
appearance, behaved boisterously, ate and drank without making payment, followed in the route of the
young man and girl, returned to the inn about dusk, and recrossed the river as if in great haste.'
"Now this 'great haste' very possibly seemed greater haste in the eyes of Madame Deluc, since
she dwelt lingeringly and lamentingly upon her violated cakes and ale—cakes and ale for which she
might still have entertained a faint hope of compensation. Why, otherwise, since it was about dusk,
should she make a point of the haste? It is no cause for wonder, surely, that even a gang of
blackguards should make haste to get home, when a wide river is to be crossed in small boats, when
storm impends, and when night approaches.
"I say approaches; for the night had not yet arrived. It was only about dusk that the indecent haste
of these 'miscreants' offended the sober eyes of Madame Deluc. But we are told that it was upon this
very evening that Madame Deluc, as well as her eldest son, 'heard the screams of a female in the
vicinity of the inn.' And in what words does Madame Deluc designate the period of the evening at
which these screams were heard? 'It was soon after dark,' she says. But 'soon after dark,' is, at least,
dark; and 'about dusk' is as certainly daylight. Thus it is abundantly clear that the gang quitted the
Barriære du Roule prior to the screams overheard (?) by Madame Deluc. And although, in all the
many reports of the evidence, the relative expressions in question are distinctly and invariably
employed just as I have employed them in this conversation with yourself, no notice whatever of the
gross discrepancy has, as yet, been taken by any of the public journals, or by any of the Myrmidons of
police.
"I shall add but one to the arguments against a gang; but this one has, to my own understanding at
least, a weight altogether irresistible. Under the circumstances of large reward offered, and full
pardon to any King's evidence, it is not to be imagined, for a moment, that some member of a gang of
low ruffians, or of any body of men, would not long ago have betrayed his accomplices. Each one of a
gang so placed, is not so much greedy of reward, or anxious for escape, as fearful of betrayal. He
betrays eagerly and early that he may not himself be betrayed. That the secret has not been divulged,
is the very best of proof that it is, in fact, a secret. The horrors of this dark deed are known only to
one, or two, living human beings, and to God.
"Let us sum up now the meagre yet certain fruits of our long analysis. We have attained the idea
either of a fatal accident under the roof of Madame Deluc, or of a murder perpetrated, in the thicket at
the Barriære du Roule, by a lover, or at least by an intimate and secret associate of the deceased. This
associate is of swarthy complexion. This complexion, the 'hitch' in the bandage, and the 'sailor's knot,'
with which the bonnet-ribbon is tied, point to a seaman. His companionship with the deceased, a gay,
but not an abject young girl, designates him as above the grade of the common sailor. Here the well
written and urgent communications to the journals are much in the way of corroboration. The
circumstance of the first elopement, as mentioned by Le Mercurie, tends to blend the idea of this
seaman with that of the 'naval officer' who is first known to have led the unfortunate into crime.
"And here, most fitly, comes the consideration of the continued absence of him of the dark
complexion. Let me pause to observe that the complexion of this man is dark and swarthy; it was no
common swarthiness which constituted the sole point of remembrance, both as regards Valence and
Madame Deluc. But why is this man absent? Was he murdered by the gang? If so, why are there only
traces of the assassinated girl? The scene of the two outrages will naturally be supposed identical.
And where is his corpse? The assassins would most probably have disposed of both in the same way.
But it may be said that this man lives, and is deterred from making himself known, through dread of
being charged with the murder. This consideration might be supposed to operate upon him now—at
this late period—since it has been given in evidence that he was seen with Marie—but it would have
had no force at the period of the deed. The first impulse of an innocent man would have been to
announce the outrage, and to aid in identifying the ruffians. This policy would have suggested. He had
been seen with the girl. He had crossed the river with her in an open ferry-boat. The denouncing of
the assassins would have appeared, even to an idiot, the surest and sole means of relieving himself
from suspicion. We cannot suppose him, on the night of the fatal Sunday, both innocent himself and
incognizant of an outrage committed. Yet only under such circumstances is it possible to imagine that
he would have failed, if alive, in the denouncement of the assassins.
"And what means are ours, of attaining the truth? We shall find these means multiplying and
gathering distinctness as we proceed. Let us sift to the bottom this affair of the first elopement. Let us
know the full history of 'the officer,' with his present circumstances, and his whereabouts at the
precise period of the murder. Let us carefully compare with each other the various communications
sent to the evening paper, in which the object was to inculpate a gang. This done, let us compare these
communications, both as regards style and MS., with those sent to the morning paper, at a previous
period, and insisting so vehemently upon the guilt of Mennais. And, all this done, let us again
compare these various communications with the known MSS. of the officer. Let us endeavor to
ascertain, by repeated questionings of Madame Deluc and her boys, as well as of the omnibus driver,
Valence, something more of the personal appearance and bearing of the 'man of dark complexion.'
Queries, skilfully directed, will not fail to elicit, from some of these parties, information on this
particular point (or upon others)—information which the parties themselves may not even be aware
of possessing. And let us now trace the boat picked up by the bargeman on the morning of Monday the
twenty-third of June, and which was removed from the barge-office, without the cognizance of the
officer in attendance, and without the rudder, at some period prior to the discovery of the corpse.
With a proper caution and perseverance we shall infallibly trace this boat; for not only can the
bargeman who picked it up identify it, but the rudder is at hand. The rudder of a sail-boat would not
have been abandoned, without inquiry, by one altogether at ease in heart. And here let me pause to
insinuate a question. There was no advertisement of the picking up of this boat. It was silently taken to
the barge-office, and as silently removed. But its owner or employer—how happened he, at so early a
period as Tuesday morning, to be informed, without the agency of advertisement, of the locality of the
boat taken up on Monday, unless we imagine some connexion with the navy—some personal
permanent connexion leading to cognizance of its minute in interests—its petty local news?
"In speaking of the lonely assassin dragging his burden to the shore, I have already suggested the
probability of his availing himself of a boat. Now we are to understand that Marie Rogæt was
precipitated from a boat. This would naturally have been the case. The corpse could not have been
trusted to the shallow waters of the shore. The peculiar marks on the back and shoulders of the victim
tell of the bottom ribs of a boat. That the body was found without weight is also corroborative of the
idea. If thrown from the shore a weight would have been attached. We can only account for its
absence by supposing the murderer to have neglected the precaution of supplying himself with it
before pushing off. In the act of consigning the corpse to the water, he would unquestionably have
noticed his oversight; but then no remedy would have been at hand. Any risk would have been
preferred to a return to that accursed shore. Having rid himself of his ghastly charge, the murderer
would have hastened to the city. There, at some obscure wharf, he would have leaped on land. But the
boat—would he have secured it? He would have been in too great haste for such things as securing a
boat. Moreover, in fastening it to the wharf, he would have felt as if securing evidence against
himself. His natural thought would have been to cast from him, as far as possible, all that had held
connection with his crime. He would not only have fled from the wharf, but he would not have
permitted the boat to remain. Assuredly he would have cast it adrift. Let us pursue our fancies.—In
the morning, the wretch is stricken with unutterable horror at finding that the boat has been picked up
and detained at a locality which he is in the daily habit of frequenting —at a locality, perhaps, which
his duty compels him to frequent. The next night, without daring to ask for the rudder, he removes it.
Now where is that rudderless boat? Let it be one of our first purposes to discover. With the first
glimpse we obtain of it, the dawn of our success shall begin. This boat shall guide us, with a rapidity
which will surprise even ourselves, to him who employed it in the midnight of the fatal Sabbath.
Corroboration will rise upon corroboration, and the murderer will be traced."
[For reasons which we shall not specify, but which to many readers will appear obvious, we have
taken the liberty of here omitting, from the MSS. placed in our hands, such portion as details the
following up of the apparently slight clew obtained by Dupin. We feel it advisable only to state, in
brief, that the result desired was brought to pass; and that the Prefect fulfilled punctually, although
with reluctance, the terms of his compact with the Chevalier. Mr. Poe's article concludes with the
following words.—Eds. ]
It will be understood that I speak of coincidences and no more. What I have said above upon this
topic must suffice. In my own heart there dwells no faith in præter-nature. That Nature and its God are
two, no man who thinks, will deny. That the latter, creating the former, can, at will, control or modify
it, is also unquestionable. I say "at will;" for the question is of will, and not, as the insanity of logic
has assumed, of power. It is not that the Deity cannot modify his laws, but that we insult him in
imagining a possible necessity for modification. In their origin these laws were fashioned to embrace
all contingencies which could lie in the Future. With God all is Now.
I repeat, then, that I speak of these things only as of coincidences. And farther: in what I relate it
will be seen that between the fate of the unhappy Mary Cecilia Rogers, so far as that fate is known,
and the fate of one Marie Rogæt up to a certain epoch in her history, there has existed a parallel in the
contemplation of whose wonderful exactitude the reason becomes embarrassed. I say all this will be
seen. But let it not for a moment be supposed that, in proceeding with the sad narrative of Marie from
the epoch just mentioned, and in tracing to its dænouement the mystery which enshrouded her, it is my
covert design to hint at an extension of the parallel, or even to suggest that the measures adopted in
Paris for the discovery of the assassin of a grisette, or measures founded in any similar ratiocination,
would produce any similar result.
For, in respect to the latter branch of the supposition, it should be considered that the most trifling
variation in the facts of the two cases might give rise to the most important miscalculations, by
diverting thoroughly the two courses of events; very much as, in arithmetic, an error which, in its own
individuality, may be inappreciable, produces, at length, by dint of multiplication at all points of the
process, a result enormously at variance with truth. And, in regard to the former branch, we must not
fail to hold in view that the very Calculus of Probabilities to which I have referred, forbids all idea
of the extension of the parallel:—forbids it with a positiveness strong and decided just in proportion
as this parallel has already been long-drawn and exact. This is one of those anomalous propositions
which, seemingly appealing to thought altogether apart from the mathematical, is yet one which only
the mathematician can fully entertain. Nothing, for example, is more difficult than to convince the
merely general reader that the fact of sixes having been thrown twice in succession by a player at
dice, is sufficient cause for betting the largest odds that sixes will not be thrown in the third attempt.
A suggestion to this effect is usually rejected by the intellect at once. It does not appear that the two
throws which have been completed, and which lie now absolutely in the Past, can have influence
upon the throw which exists only in the Future. The chance for throwing sixes seems to be precisely
as it was at any ordinary time—that is to say, subject only to the influence of the various other throws
which may be made by the dice. And this is a reflection which appears so exceedingly obvious that
attempts to controvert it are received more frequently with a derisive smile than with anything like
respectful attention. The error here involved—a gross error redolent of mischief—I cannot pretend to
expose within the limits assigned me at present; and with the philosophical it needs no exposure. It
may be sufficient here to say that it forms one of an infinite series of mistakes which arise in the path
of Reason through her propensity for seeking truth in detail.
THE BALLOON-HOAX
[Astounding News by Express, via Norfolk!—The Atlantic crossed in Three Days! Signal
Triumph of Mr. Monck Mason's Flying Machine!—Arrival at Sullivan's Island, near
Charlestown, S.C., of Mr. Mason, Mr. Robert Holland, Mr. Henson, Mr. Harrison Ainsworth,
and four others, in the Steering Balloon, "Victoria," after a passage of Seventy-five Hours from
Land to Land! Full Particulars of the Voyage! The subjoined jeu d'esprit with the preceding
heading in magnificent capitals, well interspersed with notes of admiration, was originally
published, as matter of fact, in the "New York Sun," a daily newspaper, and therein fully
subserved the purpose of creating indigestible aliment for the quidnuncs during the few hours
intervening between a couple of the Charleston mails. The rush for the "sole paper which had the
news," was something beyond even the prodigious; and, in fact, if (as some assert) the "Victoria"
did not absolutely accomplish the voyage recorded, it will be difficult to assign a reason why
she should not have accomplished it.]
THE great problem is at length solved! The air, as well as the earth and the ocean, has been
subdued by science, and will become a common and convenient highway for mankind. The Atlantic
has been actually crossed in a Balloon! and this too without difficulty—without any great apparent
danger—with thorough control of the machine—and in the inconceivably brief period of seventy-five
hours from shore to shore! By the energy of an agent at Charleston, S.C., we are enabled to be the first
to furnish the public with a detailed account of this most extraordinary voyage, which was performed
between Saturday, the 6th instant, at 11, A.M., and 2, P.M., on Tuesday, the 9th instant, by Sir Everard
Bringhurst; Mr. Osborne, a nephew of Lord Bentinck's; Mr. Monck Mason and Mr. Robert Holland,
the well-known æronauts; Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, author of "Jack Sheppard," &c.; and Mr. Henson,
the projector of the late unsuccessful flying machine—with two seamen from Woolwich—in all, eight
persons. The particulars furnished below may be relied on as authentic and accurate in every respect,
as, with a slight exception, they are copied verbatim from the joint diaries of Mr. Monck Mason and
Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, to whose politeness our agent is also indebted for much verbal information
respecting the balloon itself, its construction, and other matters of interest. The only alteration in the
MS. received, has been made for the purpose of throwing the hurried account of our agent, Mr.
Forsyth, into a connected and intelligible form.
"THE BALLOON.
"Two very decided failures, of late—those of Mr. Henson and Sir George Cayley—had much
weakened the public interest in the subject of aerial navigation. Mr. Henson's scheme (which at first
was considered very feasible even by men of science,) was founded upon the principle of an inclined
plane, started from an eminence by an extrinsic force, applied and continued by the revolution of
impinging vanes, in form and number resembling the vanes of a windmill. But, in all the experiments
made with models at the Adelaide Gallery, it was found that the operation of these fans not only did
not propel the machine, but actually impeded its flight. The only propelling force it ever exhibited,
was the mere impetus acquired from the descent of the inclined plane; and this impetus carried the
machine farther when the vanes were at rest, than when they were in motion—a fact which
sufficiently demonstrates their inutility; and in the absence of the propelling, which was also the
sustaining power, the whole fabric would necessarily descend. This consideration led Sir George
Cayley to think only of adapting a propeller to some machine having of itself an independent power of
support—in a word, to a balloon; the idea, however, being novel, or original, with Sir George, only
so far as regards the mode of its application to practice. He exhibited a model of his invention at the
Polytechnic Institution. The propelling principle, or power, was here, also, applied to interrupted
surfaces, or vanes, put in revolution. These vanes were four in number, but were found entirely
ineffectual in moving the balloon, or in aiding its ascending power. The whole project was thus a
complete failure.
"It was at this juncture that Mr. Monck Mason (whose voyage from Dover to Weilburg in the
balloon, "Nassau," occasioned so much excitement in 1837,) conceived the idea of employing the
principle of the Archimedean screw for the purpose of propulsion through the air—rightly attributing
the failure of Mr. Henson's scheme, and of Sir George Cayley's, to the interruption of surface in the
independent vanes. He made the first public experiment at Willis's Rooms, but afterward removed his
model to the Adelaide Gallery.
"Like Sir George Cayley's balloon, his own was an ellipsoid. Its length was thirteen feet six
inches—height, six feet eight inches. It contained about three hundred and twenty cubic feet of gas,
which, if pure hydrogen, would support twenty-one pounds upon its first inflation, before the gas has
time to deteriorate or escape. The weight of the whole machine and apparatus was seventeen pounds
—leaving about four pounds to spare. Beneath the centre of the balloon, was a frame of light wood,
about nine feet long, and rigged on to the balloon itself with a network in the customary manner. From
this framework was suspended a wicker basket or car.
"The screw consists of an axis of hollow brass tube, eighteen inches in length, through which,
upon a semi-spiral inclined at fifteen degrees, pass a series of steel wire radii, two feet long, and thus
projecting a foot on either side. These radii are connected at the outer extremities by two bands of
flattened wire—the whole in this manner forming the framework of the screw, which is completed by
a covering of oiled silk cut into gores, and tightened so as to present a tolerably uniform surface. At
each end of its axis this screw is supported by pillars of hollow brass tube descending from the hoop.
In the lower ends of these tubes are holes in which the pivots of the axis revolve. From the end of the
axis which is next the car, proceeds a shaft of steel, connecting the screw with the pinion of a piece of
spring machinery fixed in the car. By the operation of this spring, the screw is made to revolve with
great rapidity, communicating a progressive motion to the whole. By means of the rudder, the machine
was readily turned in any direction. The spring was of great power, compared with its dimensions,
being capable of raising forty-five pounds upon a barrel of four inches diameter, after the first turn,
and gradually increasing as it was wound up. It weighed, altogether, eight pounds six ounces. The
rudder was a light frame of cane covered with silk, shaped somewhat like a battle-door, and was
about three feet long, and at the widest, one foot. Its weight was about two ounces. It could be turned
flat, and directed upwards or downwards, as well as to the right or left; and thus enabled the æronaut
to transfer the resistance of the air which in an inclined position it must generate in its passage, to any
side upon which he might desire to act; thus determining the balloon in the opposite direction.
"This model (which, through want of time, we have necessarily described in an imperfect
manner,) was put in action at the Adelaide Gallery, where it accomplished a velocity of five miles
per hour; although, strange to say, it excited very little interest in comparison with the previous
complex machine of Mr. Henson—so resolute is the world to despise anything which carries with it
an air of simplicity. To accomplish the great desideratum of ærial navigation, it was very generally
supposed that some exceedingly complicated application must be made of some unusually profound
principle in dynamics.
"So well satisfied, however, was Mr. Mason of the ultimate success of his invention, that he
determined to construct immediately, if possible, a balloon of sufficient capacity to test the question
by a voyage of some extent—the original design being to cross the British Channel, as before, in the
Nassau balloon. To carry out his views, he solicited and obtained the patronage of Sir Everard
Bringhurst and Mr. Osborne, two gentlemen well known for scientific acquirement, and especially for
the interest they have exhibited in the progress of ærostation. The project, at the desire of Mr.
Osborne, was kept a profound secret from the public—the only persons entrusted with the design
being those actually engaged in the construction of the machine, which was built (under the
superintendence of Mr. Mason, Mr. Holland, Sir Everard Bringhurst, and Mr. Osborne,) at the seat of
the latter gentleman near Penstruthal, in Wales. Mr. Henson, accompanied by his friend Mr.
Ainsworth, was admitted to a private view of the balloon, on Saturday last—when the two gentlemen
made final arrangements to be included in the adventure. We are not informed for what reason the two
seamen were also included in the party—but, in the course of a day or two, we shall put our readers
in possession of the minutest particulars respecting this extraordinary voyage.
"The balloon is composed of silk, varnished with the liquid gum caoutchouc. It is of vast
dimensions, containing more than 40,000 cubic feet of gas; but as coal gas was employed in place of
the more expensive and inconvenient hydrogen, the supporting power of the machine, when fully
inflated, and immediately after inflation, is not more than about 2500 pounds. The coal gas is not only
much less costly, but is easily procured and managed.
"For its introduction into common use for purposes of aerostation, we are indebted to Mr. Charles
Green. Up to his discovery, the process of inflation was not only exceedingly expensive, but
uncertain. Two, and even three days, have frequently been wasted in futile attempts to procure a
sufficiency of hydrogen to fill a balloon, from which it had great tendency to escape, owing to its
extreme subtlety, and its affinity for the surrounding atmosphere. In a balloon sufficiently perfect to
retain its contents of coal-gas unaltered, in quantity or amount, for six months, an equal quantity of
hydrogen could not be maintained in equal purity for six weeks.
"The supporting power being estimated at 2500 pounds, and the united weights of the party
amounting only to about 1200, there was left a surplus of 1300, of which again 1200 was exhausted
by ballast, arranged in bags of different sizes, with their respective weights marked upon them—by
cordage, barometers, telescopes, barrels containing provision for a fortnight, water-casks, cloaks,
carpet-bags, and various other indispensable matters, including a coffee-warmer, contrived for
warming coffee by means of slack-lime, so as to dispense altogether with fire, if it should be judged
prudent to do so. All these articles, with the exception of the ballast, and a few trifles, were
suspended from the hoop overhead. The car is much smaller and lighter, in proportion, than the one
appended to the model. It is formed of a light wicker, and is wonderfully strong, for so frail looking a
machine. Its rim is about four feet deep. The rudder is also very much larger, in proportion, than that
of the model; and the screw is considerably smaller. The balloon is furnished besides with a grapnel,
and a guide-rope; which latter is of the most indispensable importance. A few words, in explanation,
will here be necessary for such of our readers as are not conversant with the details of aerostation.
"As soon as the balloon quits the earth, it is subjected to the influence of many circumstances
tending to create a difference in its weight; augmenting or diminishing its ascending power. For
example, there may be a deposition of dew upon the silk, to the extent, even, of several hundred
pounds; ballast has then to be thrown out, or the machine may descend. This ballast being discarded,
and a clear sunshine evaporating the dew, and at the same time expanding the gas in the silk, the
whole will again rapidly ascend. To check this ascent, the only recourse is, (or rather was, until Mr.
Green's invention of the guide-rope,) the permission of the escape of gas from the valve; but, in the
loss of gas, is a proportionate general loss of ascending power; so that, in a comparatively brief
period, the best-constructed balloon must necessarily exhaust all its resources, and come to the earth.
This was the great obstacle to voyages of length.
"The guide-rope remedies the difficulty in the simplest manner conceivable. It is merely a very
long rope which is suffered to trail from the car, and the effect of which is to prevent the balloon from
changing its level in any material degree. If, for example, there should be a deposition of moisture
upon the silk, and the machine begins to descend in consequence, there will be no necessity for
discharging ballast to remedy the increase of weight, for it is remedied, or counteracted, in an exactly
just proportion, by the deposit on the ground of just so much of the end of the rope as is necessary. If,
on the other hand, any circumstances should cause undue levity, and consequent ascent, this levity is
immediately counteracted by the additional weight of rope upraised from the earth. Thus, the balloon
can neither ascend or descend, except within very narrow limits, and its resources, either in gas or
ballast, remain comparatively unimpaired. When passing over an expanse of water, it becomes
necessary to employ small kegs of copper or wood, filled with liquid ballast of a lighter nature than
water. These float, and serve all the purposes of a mere rope on land. Another most important office
of the guide-rope, is to point out the direction of the balloon. The rope drags, either on land or sea,
while the balloon is free; the latter, consequently, is always in advance, when any progress whatever
is made: a comparison, therefore, by means of the compass, of the relative positions of the two
objects, will always indicate the course. In the same way, the angle formed by the rope with the
vertical axis of the machine, indicates the velocity. When there is no angle—in other words, when the
rope hangs perpendicularly, the whole apparatus is stationary; but the larger the angle, that is to say,
the farther the balloon precedes the end of the rope, the greater the velocity; and the converse.
"As the original design was to cross the British Channel, and alight as near Paris as possible, the
voyagers had taken the precaution to prepare themselves with passports directed to all parts of the
Continent, specifying the nature of the expedition, as in the case of the Nassau voyage, and entitling
the adventurers to exemption from the usual formalities of office: unexpected events, however,
rendered these passports superfluous.
"The inflation was commenced very quietly at daybreak, on Saturday morning, the 6th instant, in
the Court-Yard of Weal-Vor House, Mr. Osborne's seat, about a mile from Penstruthal, in North
Wales; and at 7 minutes past 11, every thing being ready for departure, the balloon was set free, rising
gently but steadily, in a direction nearly South; no use being made, for the first half hour, of either the
screw or the rudder. We proceed now with the journal, as transcribed by Mr. Forsyth from the joint
MSS. of Mr. Monck Mason, and Mr. Ainsworth. The body of the journal, as given, is in the handwriting of Mr. Mason, and a P. S. is appended, each day, by Mr. Ainsworth, who has in preparation,
and will shortly give the public a more minute, and no doubt, a thrillingly interesting account of the
voyage.
"THE JOURNAL.
"Saturday, April the 6th.—Every preparation likely to embarrass us, having been made over
night, we commenced the inflation this morning at daybreak; but owing to a thick fog, which
encumbered the folds of the silk and rendered it unmanageable, we did not get through before nearly
eleven o'clock. Cut loose, then, in high spirits, and rose gently but steadily, with a light breeze at
North, which bore us in the direction of the British Channel. Found the ascending force greater than
we had expected; and as we arose higher and so got clear of the cliffs, and more in the sun's rays, our
ascent became very rapid. I did not wish, however, to lose gas at so early a period of the adventure,
and so concluded to ascend for the present. We soon ran out our guide-rope; but even when we had
raised it clear of the earth, we still went up very rapidly. The balloon was unusually steady, and
looked beautifully. In about ten minutes after starting, the barometer indicated an altitude of 15,000
feet. The weather was remarkably fine, and the view of the subjacent country—a most romantic one
when seen from any point,—was now especially sublime. The numerous deep gorges presented the
appearance of lakes, on account of the dense vapors with which they were filled, and the pinnacles
and crags to the South East, piled in inextricable confusion, resembling nothing so much as the giant
cities of eastern fable. We were rapidly approaching the mountains in the South; but our elevation was
more than sufficient to enable us to pass them in safety. In a few minutes we soared over them in fine
style; and Mr. Ainsworth, with the seamen, was surprised at their apparent want of altitude when
viewed from the car, the tendency of great elevation in a balloon being to reduce inequalities of the
surface below, to nearly a dead level. At half-past eleven still proceeding nearly South, we obtained
our first view of the Bristol Channel; and, in fifteen minutes afterward, the line of breakers on the
coast appeared immediately beneath us, and we were fairly out at sea. We now resolved to let off
enough gas to bring our guide-rope, with the buoys affixed, into the water. This was immediately
done, and we commenced a gradual descent. In about twenty minutes our first buoy dipped, and at the
touch of the second soon afterwards, we remained stationary as to elevation. We were all now
anxious to test the efficiency of the rudder and screw, and we put them both into requisition forthwith,
for the purpose of altering our direction more to the eastward, and in a line for Paris. By means of the
rudder we instantly effected the necessary change of direction, and our course was brought nearly at
right angles to that of the wind; when we set in motion the spring of the screw, and were rejoiced to
find it propel us readily as desired. Upon this we gave nine hearty cheers, and dropped in the sea a
bottle, enclosing a slip of parchment with a brief account of the principle of the invention. Hardly,
however, had we done with our rejoicings, when an unforeseen accident occurred which discouraged
us in no little degree. The steel rod connecting the spring with the propeller was suddenly jerked out
of place, at the car end, (by a swaying of the car through some movement of one of the two seamen we
had taken up,) and in an instant hung dangling out of reach, from the pivot of the axis of the screw.
While we were endeavoring to regain it, our attention being completely absorbed, we became
involved in a strong current of wind from the East, which bore us, with rapidly increasing force,
towards the Atlantic. We soon found ourselves driving out to sea at the rate of not less, certainly, than
fifty or sixty miles an hour, so that we came up with Cape Clear, at some forty miles to our North,
before we had secured the rod, and had time to think what we were about. It was now that Mr.
Ainsworth made an extraordinary, but to my fancy, a by no means unreasonable or chimerical
proposition, in which he was instantly seconded by Mr. Holland—viz.: that we should take advantage
of the strong gale which bore us on, and in place of beating back to Paris, make an attempt to reach
the coast of North America. After slight reflection I gave a willing assent to this bold proposition,
which (strange to say) met with objection from the two seamen only. As the stronger party, however,
we overruled their fears, and kept resolutely upon our course. We steered due West; but as the trailing
of the buoys materially impeded our progress, and we had the balloon abundantly at command, either
for ascent or descent, we first threw out fifty pounds of ballast, and then wound up (by means of a
windlass) so much of the rope as brought it quite clear of the sea. We perceived the effect of this
manoeuvre immediately, in a vastly increased rate of progress; and, as the gale freshened, we flew
with a velocity nearly inconceivable; the guide-rope flying out behind the car, like a streamer from a
vessel. It is needless to say that a very short time sufficed us to lose sight of the coast. We passed
over innumerable vessels of all kinds, a few of which were endeavoring to beat up, but the most of
them lying to. We occasioned the greatest excitement on board all—an excitement greatly relished by
ourselves, and especially by our two men, who, now under the influence of a dram of Geneva,
seemed resolved to give all scruple, or fear, to the wind. Many of the vessels fired signal guns; and in
all we were saluted with loud cheers (which we heard with surprising distinctness) and the waving of
caps and handkerchiefs. We kept on in this manner throughout the day, with no material incident, and,
as the shades of night closed around us, we made a rough estimate of the distance traversed. It could
not have been less than five hundred miles, and was probably much more. The propeller was kept in
constant operation, and, no doubt, aided our progress materially. As the sun went down, the gale
freshened into an absolute hurricane, and the ocean beneath was clearly visible on account of its
phosphorescence. The wind was from the East all night, and gave us the brightest omen of success.
We suffered no little from cold, and the dampness of the atmosphere was most unpleasant; but the
ample space in the car enabled us to lie down, and by means of cloaks and a few blankets, we did
sufficiently well.
"P.S. (by Mr. Ainsworth.) The last nine hours have been unquestionably the most exciting of my
life. I can conceive nothing more sublimating than the strange peril and novelty of an adventure such
as this. May God grant that we succeed! I ask not success for mere safety to my insignificant person,
but for the sake of human knowledge and—for the vastness of the triumph. And yet the feat is only so
evidently feasible that the sole wonder is why men have scrupled to attempt it before. One single gale
such as now befriends us—let such a tempest whirl forward a balloon for four or five days (these
gales often last longer) and the voyager will be easily borne, in that period, from coast to coast. In
view of such a gale the broad Atlantic becomes a mere lake. I am more struck, just now, with the
supreme silence which reigns in the sea beneath us, notwithstanding its agitation, than with any other
phenomenon presenting itself. The waters give up no voice to the heavens. The immense flaming
ocean writhes and is tortured uncomplainingly. The mountainous surges suggest the idea of
innumerable dumb gigantic fiends struggling in impotent agony. In a night such as is this to me, a man
lives—lives a whole century of ordinary life—nor would I forego this rapturous delight for that of a
whole century of ordinary existence.
"Sunday, the seventh. [Mr. Mason's MS.] This morning the gale, by 10, had subsided to an eight
or nine—knot breeze, (for a vessel at sea,) and bears us, perhaps, thirty miles per hour, or more. It
has veered, however, very considerably to the north; and now, at sundown, we are holding our course
due west, principally by the screw and rudder, which answer their purposes to admiration. I regard
the project as thoroughly successful, and the easy navigation of the air in any direction (not exactly in
the teeth of a gale) as no longer problematical. We could not have made head against the strong wind
of yesterday; but, by ascending, we might have got out of its influence, if requisite. Against a pretty
stiff breeze, I feel convinced, we can make our way with the propeller. At noon, to-day, ascended to
an elevation of nearly 25,000 feet, by discharging ballast. Did this to search for a more direct current,
but found none so favorable as the one we are now in. We have an abundance of gas to take us across
this small pond, even should the voyage last three weeks. I have not the slightest fear for the result.
The difficulty has been strangely exaggerated and misapprehended. I can choose my current, and
should I find all currents against me, I can make very tolerable headway with the propeller. We have
had no incidents worth recording. The night promises fair.
P.S. [By Mr. Ainsworth.] I have little to record, except the fact (to me quite a surprising one) that,
at an elevation equal to that of Cotopaxi, I experienced neither very intense cold, nor headache, nor
difficulty of breathing; neither, I find, did Mr. Mason, nor Mr. Holland, nor Sir Everard. Mr. Osborne
complained of constriction of the chest—but this soon wore off. We have flown at a great rate during
the day, and we must be more than half way across the Atlantic. We have passed over some twenty or
thirty vessels of various kinds, and all seem to be delightfully astonished. Crossing the ocean in a
balloon is not so difficult a feat after all. Omne ignotum pro magnifico. Mem: at 25,000 feet
elevation the sky appears nearly black, and the stars are distinctly visible; while the sea does not
seem convex (as one might suppose) but absolutely and most unequivocally concave.
"Monday, the 8th. [Mr. Mason's MS.] This morning we had again some little trouble with the rod
of the propeller, which must be entirely remodelled, for fear of serious accident—I mean the steel rod
—not the vanes. The latter could not be improved. The wind has been blowing steadily and strongly
from the north-east all day and so far fortune seems bent upon favoring us. Just before day, we were
all somewhat alarmed at some odd noises and concussions in the balloon, accompanied with the
apparent rapid subsidence of the whole machine. These phenomena were occasioned by the
expansion of the gas, through increase of heat in the atmosphere, and the consequent disruption of the
minute particles of ice with which the network had become encrusted during the night. Threw down
several bottles to the vessels below. Saw one of them picked up by a large ship—seemingly one of
the New York line packets. Endeavored to make out her name, but could not be sure of it. Mr.
Osborne's telescope made it out something like "Atalanta." It is now 12, at night, and we are still
going nearly west, at a rapid pace. The sea is peculiarly phosphorescent.
"P.S. [By Mr. Ainsworth.] It is now 2, A.M., and nearly calm, as well as I can judge—but it is
very difficult to determine this point, since we move with the air so completely. I have not slept since
quitting Wheal-Vor, but can stand it no longer, and must take a nap. We cannot be far from the
American coast.
"Tuesday, the 9th. [Mr. Ainsworth's MS.] One, P.M. We are in full view of the low coast of South
Carolina. The great problem is accomplished. We have crossed the Atlantic—fairly and easily
crossed it in a balloon! God be praised! Who shall say that anything is impossible hereafter?"
The Journal here ceases. Some particulars of the descent were communicated, however, by Mr.
Ainsworth to Mr. Forsyth. It was nearly dead calm when the voyagers first came in view of the coast,
which was immediately recognized by both the seamen, and by Mr. Osborne. The latter gentleman
having acquaintances at Fort Moultrie, it was immediately resolved to descend in its vicinity. The
balloon was brought over the beach (the tide being out and the sand hard, smooth, and admirably
adapted for a descent,) and the grapnel let go, which took firm hold at once. The inhabitants of the
island, and of the fort, thronged out, of course, to see the balloon; but it was with the greatest
difficulty that any one could be made to credit the actual voyage—the crossing of the Atlantic. The
grapnel caught at 2, P.M., precisely; and thus the whole voyage was completed in seventy-five hours;
or rather less, counting from shore to shore. No serious accident occurred. No real danger was at any
time apprehended. The balloon was exhausted and secured without trouble; and when the MS. from
which this narrative is compiled was despatched from Charleston, the party were still at Fort
Moultrie. Their farther intentions were not ascertained; but we can safely promise our readers some
additional information either on Monday or in the course of the next day, at farthest.
This is unquestionably the most stupendous, the most interesting, and the most important
undertaking, ever accomplished or even attempted by man. What magnificent events may ensue, it
would be useless now to think of determining.
MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE
Qui n'a plus qu'un moment a vivre
N'a plus rien a dissimuler.
—Quinault—Atys.
OF my country and of my family I have little to say. Ill usage and length of years have driven me
from the one, and estranged me from the other. Hereditary wealth afforded me an education of no
common order, and a contemplative turn of mind enabled me to methodize the stores which early
study very diligently garnered up.—Beyond all things, the study of the German moralists gave me
great delight; not from any ill-advised admiration of their eloquent madness, but from the ease with
which my habits of rigid thought enabled me to detect their falsities. I have often been reproached
with the aridity of my genius; a deficiency of imagination has been imputed to me as a crime; and the
Pyrrhonism of my opinions has at all times rendered me notorious. Indeed, a strong relish for physical
philosophy has, I fear, tinctured my mind with a very common error of this age—I mean the habit of
referring occurrences, even the least susceptible of such reference, to the principles of that science.
Upon the whole, no person could be less liable than myself to be led away from the severe precincts
of truth by the ignes fatui of superstition. I have thought proper to premise thus much, lest the
incredible tale I have to tell should be considered rather the raving of a crude imagination, than the
positive experience of a mind to which the reveries of fancy have been a dead letter and a nullity.
After many years spent in foreign travel, I sailed in the year 18— , from the port of Batavia, in the
rich and populous island of Java, on a voyage to the Archipelago of the Sunda islands. I went as
passenger—having no other inducement than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me as a
fiend.
Our vessel was a beautiful ship of about four hundred tons, copper-fastened, and built at Bombay
of Malabar teak. She was freighted with cotton-wool and oil, from the Lachadive islands. We had
also on board coir, jaggeree, ghee, cocoa-nuts, and a few cases of opium. The stowage was clumsily
done, and the vessel consequently crank.
We got under way with a mere breath of wind, and for many days stood along the eastern coast of
Java, without any other incident to beguile the monotony of our course than the occasional meeting
with some of the small grabs of the Archipelago to which we were bound.
One evening, leaning over the taffrail, I observed a very singular, isolated cloud, to the N.W. It
was remarkable, as well for its color, as from its being the first we had seen since our departure from
Batavia. I watched it attentively until sunset, when it spread all at once to the eastward and westward,
girting in the horizon with a narrow strip of vapor, and looking like a long line of low beach. My
notice was soon afterwards attracted by the dusky-red appearance of the moon, and the peculiar
character of the sea. The latter was undergoing a rapid change, and the water seemed more than
usually transparent. Although I could distinctly see the bottom, yet, heaving the lead, I found the ship
in fifteen fathoms. The air now became intolerably hot, and was loaded with spiral exhalations
similar to those arising from heat iron. As night came on, every breath of wind died away, an more
entire calm it is impossible to conceive. The flame of a candle burned upon the poop without the least
perceptible motion, and a long hair, held between the finger and thumb, hung without the possibility of
detecting a vibration. However, as the captain said he could perceive no indication of danger, and as
we were drifting in bodily to shore, he ordered the sails to be furled, and the anchor let go. No watch
was set, and the crew, consisting principally of Malays, stretched themselves deliberately upon deck.
I went below—not without a full presentiment of evil. Indeed, every appearance warranted me in
apprehending a Simoom. I told the captain my fears; but he paid no attention to what I said, and left
me without deigning to give a reply. My uneasiness, however, prevented me from sleeping, and about
midnight I went upon deck.—As I placed my foot upon the upper step of the companion-ladder, I was
startled by a loud, humming noise, like that occasioned by the rapid revolution of a mill-wheel, and
before I could ascertain its meaning, I found the ship quivering to its centre. In the next instant, a
wilderness of foam hurled us upon our beam-ends, and, rushing over us fore and aft, swept the entire
decks from stem to stern.
The extreme fury of the blast proved, in a great measure, the salvation of the ship. Although
completely water-logged, yet, as her masts had gone by the board, she rose, after a minute, heavily
from the sea, and, staggering awhile beneath the immense pressure of the tempest, finally righted.
By what miracle I escaped destruction, it is impossible to say. Stunned by the shock of the water, I
found myself, upon recovery, jammed in between the stern-post and rudder. With great difficulty I
gained my feet, and looking dizzily around, was, at first, struck with the idea of our being among
breakers; so terrific, beyond the wildest imagination, was the whirlpool of mountainous and foaming
ocean within which we were engulfed. After a while, I heard the voice of an old Swede, who had
shipped with us at the moment of our leaving port. I hallooed to him with all my strength, and
presently he came reeling aft. We soon discovered that we were the sole survivors of the accident.
All on deck, with the exception of ourselves, had been swept overboard;—the captain and mates must
have perished as they slept, for the cabins were deluged with water. Without assistance, we could
expect to do little for the security of the ship, and our exertions were at first paralyzed by the
momentary expectation of going down. Our cable had, of course, parted like pack-thread, at the first
breath of the hurricane, or we should have been instantaneously overwhelmed. We scudded with
frightful velocity before the sea, and the water made clear breaches over us. The frame-work of our
stern was shattered excessively, and, in almost every respect, we had received considerable injury;
but to our extreme Joy we found the pumps unchoked, and that we had made no great shifting of our
ballast. The main fury of the blast had already blown over, and we apprehended little danger from the
violence of the wind; but we looked forward to its total cessation with dismay; well believing, that,
in our shattered condition, we should inevitably perish in the tremendous swell which would ensue.
But this very just apprehension seemed by no means likely to be soon verified. For five entire days
and nights—during which our only subsistence was a small quantity of jaggeree, procured with great
difficulty from the forecastle—the hulk flew at a rate defying computation, before rapidly succeeding
flaws of wind, which, without equalling the first violence of the Simoom, were still more terrific than
any tempest I had before encountered. Our course for the first four days was, with trifling variations,
S.E. and by S.; and we must have run down the coast of New Holland.—On the fifth day the cold
became extreme, although the wind had hauled round a point more to the northward.—The sun arose
with a sickly yellow lustre, and clambered a very few degrees above the horizon—emitting no
decisive light.—There were no clouds apparent, yet the wind was upon the increase, and blew with a
fitful and unsteady fury. About noon, as nearly as we could guess, our attention was again arrested by
the appearance of the sun. It gave out no light, properly so called, but a dull and sullen glow without
reflection, as if all its rays were polarized. Just before sinking within the turgid sea, its central fires
suddenly went out, as if hurriedly extinguished by some unaccountable power. It was a dim, sliver-
like rim, alone, as it rushed down the unfathomable ocean.
We waited in vain for the arrival of the sixth day—that day to me has not arrived—to the Swede,
never did arrive. Thenceforward we were enshrouded in patchy darkness, so that we could not have
seen an object at twenty paces from the ship. Eternal night continued to envelop us, all unrelieved by
the phosphoric sea-brilliancy to which we had been accustomed in the tropics. We observed too, that,
although the tempest continued to rage with unabated violence, there was no longer to be discovered
the usual appearance of surf, or foam, which had hitherto attended us. All around were horror, and
thick gloom, and a black sweltering desert of ebony.—Superstitious terror crept by degrees into the
spirit of the old Swede, and my own soul was wrapped up in silent wonder. We neglected all care of
the ship, as worse than useless, and securing ourselves, as well as possible, to the stump of the
mizen-mast, looked out bitterly into the world of ocean. We had no means of calculating time, nor
could we form any guess of our situation. We were, however, well aware of having made farther to
the southward than any previous navigators, and felt great amazement at not meeting with the usual
impediments of ice. In the meantime every moment threatened to be our last—every mountainous
billow hurried to overwhelm us. The swell surpassed anything I had imagined possible, and that we
were not instantly buried is a miracle. My companion spoke of the lightness of our cargo, and
reminded me of the excellent qualities of our ship; but I could not help feeling the utter hopelessness
of hope itself, and prepared myself gloomily for that death which I thought nothing could defer beyond
an hour, as, with every knot of way the ship made, the swelling of the black stupendous seas became
more dismally appalling. At times we gasped for breath at an elevation beyond the albatross—at
times became dizzy with the velocity of our descent into some watery hell, where the air grew
stagnant, and no sound disturbed the slumbers of the kraken.
We were at the bottom of one of these abysses, when a quick scream from my companion broke
fearfully upon the night. "See! see!" cried he, shrieking in my ears, "Almighty God! see! see!" As he
spoke, I became aware of a dull, sullen glare of red light which streamed down the sides of the vast
chasm where we lay, and threw a fitful brilliancy upon our deck. Casting my eyes upwards, I beheld a
spectacle which froze the current of my blood. At a terrific height directly above us, and upon the
very verge of the precipitous descent, hovered a gigantic ship of, perhaps, four thousand tons.
Although upreared upon the summit of a wave more than a hundred times her own altitude, her
apparent size exceeded that of any ship of the line or East Indiaman in existence. Her huge hull was of
a deep dingy black, unrelieved by any of the customary carvings of a ship. A single row of brass
cannon protruded from her open ports, and dashed from their polished surfaces the fires of
innumerable battle-lanterns, which swung to and fro about her rigging. But what mainly inspired us
with horror and astonishment, was that she bore up under a press of sail in the very teeth of that
supernatural sea, and of that ungovernable hurricane. When we first discovered her, her bows were
alone to be seen, as she rose slowly from the dim and horrible gulf beyond her. For a moment of
intense terror she paused upon the giddy pinnacle, as if in contemplation of her own sublimity, then
trembled and tottered, and—came down.
At this instant, I know not what sudden self-possession came over my spirit. Staggering as far aft
as I could, I awaited fearlessly the ruin that was to overwhelm. Our own vessel was at length ceasing
from her struggles, and sinking with her head to the sea. The shock of the descending mass struck her,
consequently, in that portion of her frame which was already under water, and the inevitable result
was to hurl me, with irresistible violence, upon the rigging of the stranger.
As I fell, the ship hove in stays, and went about; and to the confusion ensuing I attributed my
escape from the notice of the crew. With little difficulty I made my way unperceived to the main
hatchway, which was partially open, and soon found an opportunity of secreting myself in the hold.
Why I did so I can hardly tell. An indefinite sense of awe, which at first sight of the navigators of the
ship had taken hold of my mind, was perhaps the principle of my concealment. I was unwilling to trust
myself with a race of people who had offered, to the cursory glance I had taken, so many points of
vague novelty, doubt, and apprehension. I therefore thought proper to contrive a hiding-place in the
hold. This I did by removing a small portion of the shifting-boards, in such a manner as to afford me a
convenient retreat between the huge timbers of the ship.
I had scarcely completed my work, when a footstep in the hold forced me to make use of it. A man
passed by my place of concealment with a feeble and unsteady gait. I could not see his face, but had
an opportunity of observing his general appearance. There was about it an evidence of great age and
infirmity. His knees tottered beneath a load of years, and his entire frame quivered under the burthen.
He muttered to himself, in a low broken tone, some words of a language which I could not understand,
and groped in a corner among a pile of singular-looking instruments, and decayed charts of
navigation. His manner was a wild mixture of the peevishness of second childhood, and the solemn
dignity of a God. He at length went on deck, and I saw him no more.
A feeling, for which I have no name, has taken possession of my soul —a sensation which will
admit of no analysis, to which the lessons of bygone times are inadequate, and for which I fear futurity
itself will offer me no key. To a mind constituted like my own, the latter consideration is an evil. I
shall never—I know that I shall never—be satisfied with regard to the nature of my conceptions. Yet
it is not wonderful that these conceptions are indefinite, since they have their origin in sources so
utterly novel. A new sense—a new entity is added to my soul.
It is long since I first trod the deck of this terrible ship, and the rays of my destiny are, I think,
gathering to a focus. Incomprehensible men! Wrapped up in meditations of a kind which I cannot
divine, they pass me by unnoticed. Concealment is utter folly on my part, for the people will not see.
It was but just now that I passed directly before the eyes of the mate—it was no long while ago that I
ventured into the captain's own private cabin, and took thence the materials with which I write, and
have written. I shall from time to time continue this Journal. It is true that I may not find an opportunity
of transmitting it to the world, but I will not fall to make the endeavour. At the last moment I will
enclose the MS. in a bottle, and cast it within the sea.
An incident has occurred which has given me new room for meditation. Are such things the
operation of ungoverned Chance? I had ventured upon deck and thrown myself down, without
attracting any notice, among a pile of ratlin-stuff and old sails in the bottom of the yawl. While musing
upon the singularity of my fate, I unwittingly daubed with a tar-brush the edges of a neatly-folded
studding-sail which lay near me on a barrel. The studding-sail is now bent upon the ship, and the
thoughtless touches of the brush are spread out into the word DISCOVERY.
I have made many observations lately upon the structure of the vessel. Although well armed, she
is not, I think, a ship of war. Her rigging, build, and general equipment, all negative a supposition of
this kind. What she is not, I can easily perceive—what she is I fear it is impossible to say. I know not
how it is, but in scrutinizing her strange model and singular cast of spars, her huge size and
overgrown suits of canvas, her severely simple bow and antiquated stern, there will occasionally
flash across my mind a sensation of familiar things, and there is always mixed up with such indistinct
shadows of recollection, an unaccountable memory of old foreign chronicles and ages long ago.
I have been looking at the timbers of the ship. She is built of a material to which I am a stranger.
There is a peculiar character about the wood which strikes me as rendering it unfit for the purpose to
which it has been applied. I mean its extreme porousness, considered independently by the wormeaten condition which is a consequence of navigation in these seas, and apart from the rottenness
attendant upon age. It will appear perhaps an observation somewhat over-curious, but this wood
would have every characteristic of Spanish oak, if Spanish oak were distended by any unnatural
means.
In reading the above sentence a curious apothegm of an old weather-beaten Dutch navigator
comes full upon my recollection. "It is as sure," he was wont to say, when any doubt was entertained
of his veracity, "as sure as there is a sea where the ship itself will grow in bulk like the living body of
the seaman."
About an hour ago, I made bold to thrust myself among a group of the crew. They paid me no
manner of attention, and, although I stood in the very midst of them all, seemed utterly unconscious of
my presence. Like the one I had at first seen in the hold, they all bore about them the marks of a hoary
old age. Their knees trembled with infirmity; their shoulders were bent double with decrepitude; their
shrivelled skins rattled in the wind; their voices were low, tremulous and broken; their eyes glistened
with the rheum of years; and their gray hairs streamed terribly in the tempest. Around them, on every
part of the deck, lay scattered mathematical instruments of the most quaint and obsolete construction.
I mentioned some time ago the bending of a studding-sail. From that period the ship, being thrown
dead off the wind, has continued her terrific course due south, with every rag of canvas packed upon
her, from her trucks to her lower studding-sail booms, and rolling every moment her top-gallant yardarms into the most appalling hell of water which it can enter into the mind of a man to imagine. I have
just left the deck, where I find it impossible to maintain a footing, although the crew seem to
experience little inconvenience. It appears to me a miracle of miracles that our enormous bulk is not
swallowed up at once and forever. We are surely doomed to hover continually upon the brink of
Eternity, without taking a final plunge into the abyss. From billows a thousand times more stupendous
than any I have ever seen, we glide away with the facility of the arrowy sea-gull; and the colossal
waters rear their heads above us like demons of the deep, but like demons confined to simple threats
and forbidden to destroy. I am led to attribute these frequent escapes to the only natural cause which
can account for such effect.—I must suppose the ship to be within the influence of some strong
current, or impetuous under-tow.
I have seen the captain face to face, and in his own cabin—but, as I expected, he paid me no
attention. Although in his appearance there is, to a casual observer, nothing which might bespeak him
more or less than man—still a feeling of irrepressible reverence and awe mingled with the sensation
of wonder with which I regarded him. In stature he is nearly my own height; that is, about five feet
eight inches. He is of a well-knit and compact frame of body, neither robust nor remarkably
otherwise. But it is the singularity of the expression which reigns upon the face—it is the intense, the
wonderful, the thrilling evidence of old age, so utter, so extreme, which excites within my spirit a
sense—a sentiment ineffable. His forehead, although little wrinkled, seems to bear upon it the stamp
of a myriad of years.—His gray hairs are records of the past, and his grayer eyes are Sybils of the
future. The cabin floor was thickly strewn with strange, iron-clasped folios, and mouldering
instruments of science, and obsolete long-forgotten charts. His head was bowed down upon his hands,
and he pored, with a fiery unquiet eye, over a paper which I took to be a commission, and which, at
all events, bore the signature of a monarch. He muttered to himself, as did the first seaman whom I
saw in the hold, some low peevish syllables of a foreign tongue, and although the speaker was close
at my elbow, his voice seemed to reach my ears from the distance of a mile.
The ship and all in it are imbued with the spirit of Eld. The crew glide to and fro like the ghosts
of buried centuries; their eyes have an eager and uneasy meaning; and when their fingers fall athwart
my path in the wild glare of the battle-lanterns, I feel as I have never felt before, although I have been
all my life a dealer in antiquities, and have imbibed the shadows of fallen columns at Balbec, and
Tadmor, and Persepolis, until my very soul has become a ruin.
When I look around me I feel ashamed of my former apprehensions. If I trembled at the blast
which has hitherto attended us, shall I not stand aghast at a warring of wind and ocean, to convey any
idea of which the words tornado and simoom are trivial and ineffective? All in the immediate vicinity
of the ship is the blackness of eternal night, and a chaos of foamless water; but, about a league on
either side of us, may be seen, indistinctly and at intervals, stupendous ramparts of ice, towering
away into the desolate sky, and looking like the walls of the universe.
As I imagined, the ship proves to be in a current; if that appellation can properly be given to a tide
which, howling and shrieking by the white ice, thunders on to the southward with a velocity like the
headlong dashing of a cataract.
To conceive the horror of my sensations is, I presume, utterly impossible; yet a curiosity to
penetrate the mysteries of these awful regions, predominates even over my despair, and will
reconcile me to the most hideous aspect of death. It is evident that we are hurrying onwards to some
exciting knowledge—some never-to-be-imparted secret, whose attainment is destruction. Perhaps this
current leads us to the southern pole itself. It must be confessed that a supposition apparently so wild
has every probability in its favor.
The crew pace the deck with unquiet and tremulous step; but there is upon their countenances an
expression more of the eagerness of hope than of the apathy of despair.
In the meantime the wind is still in our poop, and, as we carry a crowd of canvas, the ship is at
times lifted bodily from out the sea—Oh, horror upon horror! the ice opens suddenly to the right, and
to the left, and we are whirling dizzily, in immense concentric circles, round and round the borders of
a gigantic amphitheatre, the summit of whose walls is lost in the darkness and the distance. But little
time will be left me to ponder upon my destiny—the circles rapidly grow small—we are plunging
madly within the grasp of the whirlpool—and amid a roaring, and bellowing, and thundering of ocean
and of tempest, the ship is quivering, oh God! and—going down.
NOTE.—The "MS. Found in a Bottle," was originally published in 1831, and it was not until
many years afterwards that I became acquainted with the maps of Mercator, in which the ocean is
represented as rushing, by four mouths, into the (northern) Polar Gulf, to be absorbed into the bowels
of the earth; the Pole itself being represented by a black rock, towering to a prodigious height.
THE OVAL PORTRAIT
THE chateau into which my valet had ventured to make forcible entrance, rather than permit me,
in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those piles of
commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Appennines, not less in fact
than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe. To all appearance it had been temporarily and very lately
abandoned. We established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished
apartments. It lay in a remote turret of the building. Its decorations were rich, yet tattered and antique.
Its walls were hung with tapestry and bedecked with manifold and multiform armorial trophies,
together with an unusually great number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden
arabesque. In these paintings, which depended from the walls not only in their main surfaces, but in
very many nooks which the bizarre architecture of the chateau rendered necessary—in these paintings
my incipient delirium, perhaps, had caused me to take deep interest; so that I bade Pedro to close the
heavy shutters of the room—since it was already night—to light the tongues of a tall candelabrum
which stood by the head of my bed—and to throw open far and wide the fringed curtains of black
velvet which enveloped the bed itself. I wished all this done that I might resign myself, if not to sleep,
at least alternately to the contemplation of these pictures, and the perusal of a small volume which had
been found upon the pillow, and which purported to criticise and describe them.
Long—long I read—and devoutly, devotedly I gazed. Rapidly and gloriously the hours flew by
and the deep midnight came. The position of the candelabrum displeased me, and outreaching my
hand with difficulty, rather than disturb my slumbering valet, I placed it so as to throw its rays more
fully upon the book.
But the action produced an effect altogether unanticipated. The rays of the numerous candles (for
there were many) now fell within a niche of the room which had hitherto been thrown into deep shade
by one of the bed-posts. I thus saw in vivid light a picture all unnoticed before. It was the portrait of a
young girl just ripening into womanhood. I glanced at the painting hurriedly, and then closed my eyes.
Why I did this was not at first apparent even to my own perception. But while my lids remained thus
shut, I ran over in my mind my reason for so shutting them. It was an impulsive movement to gain time
for thought—to make sure that my vision had not deceived me—to calm and subdue my fancy for a
more sober and more certain gaze. In a very few moments I again looked fixedly at the painting.
That I now saw aright I could not and would not doubt; for the first flashing of the candles upon
that canvas had seemed to dissipate the dreamy stupor which was stealing over my senses, and to
startle me at once into waking life.
The portrait, I have already said, was that of a young girl. It was a mere head and shoulders, done
in what is technically termed a vignette manner; much in the style of the favorite heads of Sully. The
arms, the bosom, and even the ends of the radiant hair melted imperceptibly into the vague yet deep
shadow which formed the back-ground of the whole. The frame was oval, richly gilded and filigreed
in Moresque. As a thing of art nothing could be more admirable than the painting itself. But it could
have been neither the execution of the work, nor the immortal beauty of the countenance, which had so
suddenly and so vehemently moved me. Least of all, could it have been that my fancy, shaken from its
half slumber, had mistaken the head for that of a living person. I saw at once that the peculiarities of
the design, of the vignetting, and of the frame, must have instantly dispelled such idea—must have
prevented even its momentary entertainment. Thinking earnestly upon these points, I remained, for an
hour perhaps, half sitting, half reclining, with my vision riveted upon the portrait. At length, satisfied
with the true secret of its effect, I fell back within the bed. I had found the spell of the picture in an
absolute life-likeliness of expression, which, at first startling, finally confounded, subdued, and
appalled me. With deep and reverent awe I replaced the candelabrum in its former position. The
cause of my deep agitation being thus shut from view, I sought eagerly the volume which discussed the
paintings and their histories. Turning to the number which designated the oval portrait, I there read the
vague and quaint words which follow:
"She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour
when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having
already a bride in his Art; she a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee; all light
and smiles, and frolicsome as the young fawn; loving and cherishing all things; hating only the Art
which was her rival; dreading only the pallet and brushes and other untoward instruments which
deprived her of the countenance of her lover. It was thus a terrible thing for this lady to hear the
painter speak of his desire to portray even his young bride. But she was humble and obedient, and sat
meekly for many weeks in the dark, high turret-chamber where the light dripped upon the pale canvas
only from overhead. But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour, and
from day to day. And he was a passionate, and wild, and moody man, who became lost in reveries; so
that he would not see that the light which fell so ghastly in that lone turret withered the health and the
spirits of his bride, who pined visibly to all but him. Yet she smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly,
because she saw that the painter (who had high renown) took a fervid and burning pleasure in his
task, and wrought day and night to depict her who so loved him, yet who grew daily more dispirited
and weak. And in sooth some who beheld the portrait spoke of its resemblance in low words, as of a
mighty marvel, and a proof not less of the power of the painter than of his deep love for her whom he
depicted so surpassingly well. But at length, as the labor drew nearer to its conclusion, there were
admitted none into the turret; for the painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his
eyes from canvas merely, even to regard the countenance of his wife. And he would not see that the
tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sate beside him. And
when many weeks had passed, and but little remained to do, save one brush upon the mouth and one
tint upon the eye, the spirit of the lady again flickered up as the flame within the socket of the lamp.
And then the brush was given, and then the tint was placed; and, for one moment, the painter stood
entranced before the work which he had wrought; but in the next, while he yet gazed, he grew
tremulous and very pallid, and aghast, and crying with a loud voice, 'This is indeed Life itself!' turned
suddenly to regard his beloved:—She was dead!"
THE PURLOINED LETTER
Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio.
Seneca.
At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18-, I was enjoying the twofold luxury
of meditation and a meerschaum, in company with my friend C. Auguste Dupin, in his little back
library, or book-closet, au troisiême, No. 33, Rue Dunôt, Faubourg St. Germain. For one hour at
least we had maintained a profound silence; while each, to any casual observer, might have seemed
intently and exclusively occupied with the curling eddies of smoke that oppressed the atmosphere of
the chamber. For myself, however, I was mentally discussing certain topics which had formed matter
for conversation between us at an earlier period of the evening; I mean the affair of the Rue Morgue,
and the mystery attending the murder of Marie Rogêt. I looked upon it, therefore, as something of a
coincidence, when the door of our apartment was thrown open and admitted our old acquaintance,
Monsieur G—, the Prefect of the Parisian police.
We gave him a hearty welcome; for there was nearly half as much of the entertaining as of the
contemptible about the man, and we had not seen him for several years. We had been sitting in the
dark, and Dupin now arose for the purpose of lighting a lamp, but sat down again, without doing so,
upon G.'s saying that he had called to consult us, or rather to ask the opinion of my friend, about some
official business which had occasioned a great deal of trouble.
"If it is any point requiring reflection," observed Dupin, as he forebore to enkindle the wick, "we
shall examine it to better purpose in the dark."
"That is another of your odd notions," said the Prefect, who had a fashion of calling every thing
"odd" that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of "oddities."
"Very true," said Dupin, as he supplied his visiter with a pipe, and rolled towards him a
comfortable chair.
"And what is the difficulty now?" I asked. "Nothing more in the assassination way, I hope?"
"Oh no; nothing of that nature. The fact is, the business is very simple indeed, and I make no doubt
that we can manage it sufficiently well ourselves; but then I thought Dupin would like to hear the
details of it, because it is so excessively odd."
"Simple and odd," said Dupin.
"Why, yes; and not exactly that, either. The fact is, we have all been a good deal puzzled because
the affair is so simple, and yet baffles us altogether."
"Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing which puts you at fault," said my friend.
"What nonsense you do talk!" replied the Prefect, laughing heartily.
"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 visiter, profoundly amused, "oh, Dupin, you
will be the death of me yet!"
"And what, after all, is the matter on hand?" I asked.
"Why, I will tell you," replied the Prefect, as he gave a long, steady and contemplative puff, and
settled himself in his chair. "I will tell you in a few words; but, before I begin, let me caution you that
this is an affair demanding the greatest secrecy, and that I should most probably lose the position I
now hold, were it known that I confided it to any one."
"Proceed," said I.
"Or not," said Dupin.
"Well, then; I have received personal information, from a very high quarter, that a certain
document of the last importance, has been purloined from the royal apartments. The individual who
purloined it is known; this beyond a doubt; he was seen to take it. It is known, also, that it still
remains in his possession."
"How is this known?" asked Dupin.
"It is clearly inferred," replied the Prefect, "from the nature of the document, and from the nonappearance of certain results which would at once arise from its passing out of the robber's
possession; that is to say, from his employing it as he must design in the end to employ it."
"Be a little more explicit," I said.
"Well, I may venture so far as to say that the paper gives its holder a certain power in a certain
quarter where such power is immensely valuable." The Prefect was fond of the cant of diplomacy.
"Still I do not quite understand," said Dupin.
"No? Well; the disclosure of the document to a third person, who shall be nameless, would bring
in question the honor of a personage of most exalted station; and this fact gives the holder of the
document an ascendancy over the illustrious personage whose honor and peace are so jeopardized."
"But this ascendancy," I interposed, "would depend upon the robber's knowledge of the loser's
knowledge of the robber. Who would dare—"
"The thief," said G., "is the Minister D—, who dares all things, those unbecoming as well as
those becoming a man. The method of the theft was not less ingenious than bold. The document in
question—a letter, to be frank—had been received by the personage robbed while alone in the royal
boudoir. During its perusal she was suddenly interrupted by the entrance of the other exalted
personage from whom especially it was her wish to conceal it. After a hurried and vain endeavor to
thrust it in a drawer, she was forced to place it, open as it was, upon a table. The address, however,
was uppermost, and, the contents thus unexposed, the letter escaped notice. At this juncture enters the
Minister D—. His lynx eye immediately perceives the paper, recognises the handwriting of the
address, observes the confusion of the personage addressed, and fathoms her secret. After some
business transactions, hurried through in his ordinary manner, he produces a letter somewhat similar
to the one in question, opens it, pretends to read it, and then places it in close juxtaposition to the
other. Again he converses, for some fifteen minutes, upon the public affairs. At length, in taking leave,
he takes also from the table the letter to which he had no claim. Its rightful owner saw, but, of course,
dared not call attention to the act, in the presence of the third personage who stood at her elbow. The
minister decamped; leaving his own letter—one of no importance—upon the table."
"Here, then," said Dupin to me, "you have precisely what you demand to make the ascendancy
complete—the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber."
"Yes," replied the Prefect; "and the power thus attained has, for some months past, been wielded,
for political purposes, to a very dangerous extent. The personage robbed is more thoroughly
convinced, every day, of the necessity of reclaiming her letter. But this, of course, cannot be done
openly. In fine, driven to despair, she has committed the matter to me."
"Than whom," said Dupin, amid a perfect whirlwind of smoke, "no more sagacious agent could, I
suppose, be desired, or even imagined."
"You flatter me," replied the Prefect; "but it is possible that some such opinion may have been
entertained."
"It is clear," said I, "as you observe, that the letter is still in possession of the minister; since it is
this possession, and not any employment of the letter, which bestows the power. With the employment
the power departs."
"True," said G.; "and upon this conviction I proceeded. My first care was to make thorough search
of the minister's hotel; and here my chief embarrassment lay in the necessity of searching without his
knowledge. Beyond all things, I have been warned of the danger which would result from giving him
reason to suspect our design."
"But," said I, "you are quite au fait in these investigations. The Parisian police have done this
thing often before."
"O yes; and for this reason I did not despair. The habits of the minister gave me, too, a great
advantage. He is frequently absent from home all night. His servants are by no means numerous. They
sleep at a distance from their master's apartment, and, being chiefly Neapolitans, are readily made
drunk. I have keys, as you know, with which I can open any chamber or cabinet in Paris. For three
months a night has not passed, during the greater part of which I have not been engaged, personally, in
ransacking the D— Hotel. My honor is interested, and, to mention a great secret, the reward is
enormous. So I did not abandon the search until I had become fully satisfied that the thief is a more
astute man than myself. I fancy that I have investigated every nook and corner of the premises in
which it is possible that the paper can be concealed."
"But is it not possible," I suggested, "that although the letter may be in possession of the minister,
as it unquestionably is, he may have concealed it elsewhere than upon his own premises?"
"This is barely possible," said Dupin. "The present peculiar condition of affairs at court, and
especially of those intrigues in which D— is known to be involved, would render the instant
availability of the document—its susceptibility of being produced at a moment's notice—a point of
nearly equal importance with its possession."
"Its susceptibility of being produced?" said I.
"That is to say, of being destroyed," said Dupin.
"True," I observed; "the paper is clearly then upon the premises. As for its being upon the person
of the minister, we may consider that as out of the question."
"Entirely," said the Prefect. "He has been twice waylaid, as if by footpads, and his person
rigorously searched under my own inspection."
"You might have spared yourself this trouble," said Dupin. "D—, I presume, is not altogether a
fool, and, if not, must have anticipated these waylayings, as a matter of course."
"Not altogether a fool," said G., "but then he's a poet, which I take to be only one remove from a
fool."
"True," said Dupin, after a long and thoughtful whiff from his meerschaum, "although I have been
guilty of certain doggrel myself."
"Suppose you detail," said I, "the particulars of your search."
"Why the fact is, we took our time, and we searched every where. I have had long experience in
these affairs. I took the entire building, room by room; devoting the nights of a whole week to each.
We examined, first, the furniture of each apartment. We opened every possible drawer; and I presume
you know that, to a properly trained police agent, such a thing as a secret drawer is impossible. Any
man is a dolt who permits a 'secret' drawer to escape him in a search of this kind. The thing is so
plain. There is a certain amount of bulk—of space—to be accounted for in every cabinet. Then we
have accurate rules. The fiftieth part of a line could not escape us. After the cabinets we took the
chairs. The cushions we probed with the fine long needles you have seen me employ. From the tables
we removed the tops."
"Why so?"
"Sometimes the top of a table, or other similarly arranged piece of furniture, is removed by the
person wishing to conceal an article; then the leg is excavated, the article deposited within the cavity,
and the top replaced. The bottoms and tops of bedposts are employed in the same way."
"But could not the cavity be detected by sounding?" I asked.
"By no means, if, when the article is deposited, a sufficient wadding of cotton be placed around it.
Besides, in our case, we were obliged to proceed without noise."
"But you could not have removed—you could not have taken to pieces all articles of furniture in
which it would have been possible to make a deposit in the manner you mention. A letter may be
compressed into a thin spiral roll, not differing much in shape or bulk from a large knitting-needle,
and in this form it might be inserted into the rung of a chair, for example. You did not take to pieces
all the chairs?"
"Certainly not; but we did better—we examined the rungs of every chair in the hotel, and, indeed
the jointings of every description of furniture, by the aid of a most powerful microscope. Had there
been any traces of recent disturbance we should not have failed to detect it instantly. A single grain of
gimlet-dust, for example, would have been as obvious as an apple. Any disorder in the glueing—any
unusual gaping in the joints—would have sufficed to insure detection."
"I presume you looked to the mirrors, between the boards and the plates, and you probed the beds
and the bed-clothes, as well as the curtains and carpets."
"That of course; and when we had absolutely completed every particle of the furniture in this way,
then we examined the house itself. We divided its entire surface into compartments, which we
numbered, so that none might be missed; then we scrutinized each individual square inch throughout
the premises, including the two houses immediately adjoining, with the microscope, as before."
"The two houses adjoining!" I exclaimed; "you must have had a great deal of trouble."
"We had; but the reward offered is prodigious!"
"You include the grounds about the houses?"
"All the grounds are paved with brick. They gave us comparatively 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, but we turned
over every leaf in each volume, not contenting ourselves with a mere shake, according to the fashion
of some of our police officers. We also measured the thickness of every book-cover, with the most
accurate admeasurement, and applied to each the most jealous scrutiny of the microscope. Had any of
the bindings been recently meddled with, it would have been utterly impossible that the fact should
have escaped observation. Some five or six volumes, just from the hands of the binder, we carefully
probed, longitudinally, with the needles."
"You explored the floors beneath the carpets?"
"Beyond 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 been making a miscalculation, and the letter is not upon the premises, 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 premises."
"That is absolutely needless," replied G—. "I am not more sure that I breathe than I am that the
letter is not at the Hotel."
"I have no better advice to give you," said Dupin. "You have, of course, an accurate description of
the letter?"
"Oh yes!"—And here the Prefect, producing a memorandum-book proceeded to read aloud a
minute account of the internal, and especially of the external appearance of the missing document.
Soon after finishing the perusal of this description, he took his departure, more entirely depressed in
spirits than I had ever known the good gentleman before. In about a month afterwards he paid us
another visit, and found us occupied very nearly as before. He took a pipe and a chair and entered
into some ordinary conversation. At length I said,—
"Well, but G—, what of the purloined letter? I presume you have at last made up your mind that
there is no such thing as overreaching the Minister?"
"Confound him, say I—yes; I made the re-examination, however, as Dupin suggested—but it was
all labor lost, as I knew it would be."
"How much was the reward offered, did you say?" asked Dupin.
"Why, a very great deal—a very liberal reward—I don't like to say how much, precisely; but one
thing I will say, that I wouldn't mind giving my individual check for fifty thousand francs to any one
who could obtain me that letter. The fact is, it is becoming of more and more importance every day;
and the reward has been lately doubled. If it were trebled, however, I could do no more than I have
done."
"Why, yes," said Dupin, drawlingly, between the whiffs of his meerschaum, "I really—think, G—,
you have not exerted yourself—to the utmost in this matter. You might—do a little more, I think, eh?"
"How?—in what way?'
"Why—puff, puff—you might—puff, puff—employ counsel in the matter, eh?—puff, puff, puff. Do
you remember the story they tell of Abernethy?"
"No; hang Abernethy!"
"To be sure! hang him and welcome. But, once upon a time, a certain rich miser conceived the
design of spunging upon this Abernethy for a medical opinion. Getting up, for this purpose, an
ordinary conversation in a private company, he insinuated his case to the physician, as that of an
imaginary individual.
"'We will suppose,' said the miser, 'that his symptoms are such and such; now, doctor, what would
you have directed him to take?'
"'Take!' said Abernethy, 'why, take advice, to be sure.'"
"But," said the Prefect, a little discomposed, "I am perfectly willing to take advice, and to pay for
it. I would really give fifty thousand francs to any one who would aid me in the matter."
"In that case," replied Dupin, opening a drawer, and producing a check-book, "you may as well
fill me up a check for the amount mentioned. When you have signed it, I will hand you the letter."
I was astounded. The Prefect appeared absolutely thunder-stricken. For some minutes he
remained speechless and motionless, looking incredulously at my friend with open mouth, and eyes
that seemed starting from their sockets; then, apparently recovering himself in some measure, he
seized a pen, and after several pauses and vacant stares, finally filled up and signed a check for fifty
thousand francs, and handed it across the table to Dupin. The latter examined it carefully and
deposited it in his pocket-book; then, unlocking an escritoire, took thence a letter and gave it to the
Prefect. This functionary grasped it in a perfect agony of joy, opened it with a trembling hand, cast a
rapid glance at its contents, and then, scrambling and struggling to the door, rushed at length
unceremoniously from the room and from the house, without having uttered a syllable since Dupin had
requested him to fill up the check.
When he had gone, my friend entered into some explanations.
"The Parisian police," he said, "are exceedingly able in their way. They are persevering,
ingenious, cunning, and thoroughly versed in the knowledge which their duties seem chiefly to
demand. Thus, when G— detailed to us his mode of searching the premises at the Hotel D—, I felt
entire confidence in his having made a satisfactory investigation—so far as his labors extended."
"So far as his labors extended?" said I.
"Yes," said Dupin. "The measures adopted were not only the best of their kind, but carried out to
absolute perfection. Had the letter been deposited within the range of their search, these fellows
would, beyond a question, have found it."
I merely laughed—but he seemed quite serious in all that he said.
"The measures, then," he continued, "were good in their kind, and well executed; their defect lay
in their being inapplicable to the case, and to the man. A certain set of highly ingenious resources are,
with the Prefect, a sort of Procrustean bed, to which he forcibly adapts his designs. But he perpetually
errs by being too deep or too shallow, for the matter in hand; and many a schoolboy is a better
reasoner than he. I knew one about eight years of age, whose success at guessing in the game of 'even
and odd' attracted universal admiration. This game is simple, and is played with marbles. One player
holds in his hand a number of these toys, and demands of another whether that number is even or odd.
If the guess is right, the guesser wins one; if wrong, he loses one. The boy to whom I allude won all
the marbles of the school. Of course he had some principle of guessing; and this lay in mere
observation and admeasurement of the astuteness of his opponents. For example, an arrant simpleton
is his opponent, and, holding up his closed hand, asks, 'are they even or odd?' Our schoolboy replies,
'odd,' and loses; but upon the second trial he wins, for he then says to himself, 'the simpleton had them
even upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just sufficient to make him have them odd upon
the second; I will therefore guess odd;'—he guesses odd, and wins. Now, with a simpleton a degree
above the first, he would have reasoned thus: 'This fellow finds that in the first instance I guessed
odd, and, in the second, he will propose to himself, upon the first impulse, a simple variation from
even to odd, as did the first simpleton; but then a second thought will suggest that this is too simple a
variation, and finally he will decide upon putting it even as before. I will therefore guess even;'—he
guesses even, and wins. Now this mode of reasoning in the schoolboy, whom his fellows termed
'lucky,'—what, in its last analysis, is it?"
"It is merely," I said, "an identification of the reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent."
"It is," said Dupin; "and, upon inquiring of the boy by what means he effected the thorough
identification in which his success consisted, I received answer as follows: 'When I wish to find out
how wise, or how stupid, or how good, or how wicked is any one, or what are his thoughts at the
moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the
expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to
match or correspond with the expression.' This response of the schoolboy lies at the bottom of all the
spurious profundity which has been attributed to Rochefoucault, to La Bougive, to Machiavelli, and to
Campanella."
"And the identification," I said, "of the reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent, depends, if I
understand you aright, upon the accuracy with which the opponent's intellect is admeasured."
"For its practical value it depends upon this," replied Dupin; "and the Prefect and his cohort fail
so frequently, first, by default of this identification, and, secondly, by ill-admeasurement, or rather
through non-admeasurement, of the intellect with which they are engaged. They consider only their
own ideas of ingenuity; and, in searching for anything hidden, advert only to the modes in which they
would have hidden it. They are right in this much—that their own ingenuity is a faithful representative
of that of the mass; but when the cunning of the individual felon is diverse in character from their
own, the felon foils them, of course. This always happens when it is above their own, and very
usually when it is below. They have no variation of principle in their investigations; at best, when
urged by some unusual emergency—by some extraordinary reward—they extend or exaggerate their
old modes of practice, without touching their principles. What, for example, in this case of D—, has
been done to vary the principle of action? What is all this boring, and probing, and sounding, and
scrutinizing with the microscope and dividing the surface of the building into registered square inches
—what is it all but an exaggeration of the application of the one principle or set of principles of
search, which are based upon the one set of notions regarding human ingenuity, to which the Prefect,
in the long routine of his duty, has been accustomed? Do you not see he has taken it for granted that all
men proceed to conceal a letter,—not exactly in a gimlet hole bored in a chair-leg—but, at least, in
some out-of-the-way hole or corner suggested by the same tenor of thought which would urge a man to
secrete a letter in a gimlet-hole bored in a chair-leg? And do you not see also, that such recherchés
nooks for concealment are adapted only for ordinary occasions, and would be adopted only by
ordinary intellects; for, in all cases of concealment, a disposal of the article concealed—a disposal of
it in this recherché manner,—is, in the very first instance, presumable and presumed; and thus its
discovery depends, not at all upon the acumen, but altogether upon the mere care, patience, and
determination of the seekers; and where the case is of importance—or, what amounts to the same thing
in the policial eyes, when the reward is of magnitude,—the qualities in question have never been
known to fail. You will now understand what I meant in suggesting that, had the purloined letter been
hidden any where within the limits of the Prefect's examination—in other words, had the principle of
its concealment been comprehended within the principles of the Prefect—its discovery would have
been a matter altogether beyond question. This functionary, however, has been thoroughly mystified;
and the remote source of his defeat lies in the supposition that the Minister is a fool, because he has
acquired renown as a poet. All fools are poets; this the Prefect feels; and he is merely guilty of a non
distributio medii in thence inferring that all poets are fools."
"But is this really the poet?" I asked. "There are two brothers, I know; and both have attained
reputation in letters. The Minister I believe has written learnedly 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 mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all, and thus would have been at the
mercy of the Prefect."
"You surprise me," I said, "by these opinions, which have been contradicted by the voice of the
world. You do not mean to set at naught the well-digested idea of centuries. The mathematical reason
has long been regarded as the reason par excellence."
"'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
grant you, have done their best to promulgate the popular error to which you allude, and which is
none the less an error for its promulgation as truth. With an art worthy a better cause, for example,
they have insinuated the term 'analysis' into application to algebra. The French are the originators of
this particular deception; but if a term is of any importance—if words derive any value from
applicability—then 'analysis' conveys 'algebra' about as much as, in Latin, 'ambitus' implies
'ambition,' 'religio' 'religion,' or 'homines honesti,' a set of honorablemen."
"You have a quarrel on hand, I see," said I, "with some of the algebraists of Paris; but proceed."
"I dispute the availability, and thus the value, of that reason which is cultivated in any especial
form other than the abstractly logical. I dispute, in particular, the reason educed by mathematical
study. The mathematics are the science of form and quantity; mathematical reasoning is merely logic
applied to observation upon form and quantity. The great error lies in supposing that even the truths of
what is called pure algebra, are abstract or general truths. And this error is so egregious that I am
confounded at the universality with which it has been received. Mathematical axioms are not axioms
of general truth. What is true of relation—of form and quantity—is often grossly false in regard to
morals, for example. In this latter science it is very usually untrue that the aggregated parts are equal
to the whole. In chemistry also the axiom fails. In the consideration of motive it fails; for two motives,
each of a given value, have not, necessarily, a value when united, equal to the sum of their values
apart. There are numerous other mathematical truths which are only truths within the limits of relation.
But the mathematician argues, from his finite truths, through habit, as if they were of an absolutely
general applicability—as the world indeed imagines them to be. Bryant, in his very learned
'Mythology,' mentions an analogous source of error, when he says that 'although the Pagan fables are
not believed, yet we forget ourselves continually, and make inferences from them as existing
realities.' With the algebraists, however, who are Pagans themselves, the 'Pagan fables' are believed,
and the inferences are made, not so much through lapse of memory, as through an unaccountable
addling of the brains. In short, I never yet encountered the mere mathematician who could be trusted
out of equal roots, or one who did not clandestinely hold it as a point of his faith that x2+px was
absolutely and unconditionally equal to q. Say to one of these gentlemen, by way of experiment, if you
please, that you believe occasions may occur where x2+px is not altogether equal to q, and, having
made him understand what you mean, get out of his reach as speedily as convenient, for, beyond
doubt, he will endeavor to knock you down.
"I mean to say," continued Dupin, while I merely laughed at his last observations, "that if the
Minister had been no more than a mathematician, the Prefect would have been under no necessity of
giving me this check. I know him, however, as both mathematician and poet, and my measures were
adapted to his capacity, with reference to the circumstances by which he was surrounded. I knew him
as a courtier, too, and as a bold intriguant. Such a man, I considered, could not fail to be aware of the
ordinary policial modes of action. He could not have failed to anticipate—and events have proved
that he did not fail to anticipate—the waylayings to which he was subjected. He must have foreseen, I
reflected, the secret investigations of his premises. His frequent absences from home at night, which
were hailed by the Prefect as certain aids to his success, I regarded only as ruses, to afford
opportunity for thorough search to the police, and thus the sooner to impress them with the conviction
to which G—, in fact, did finally arrive—the conviction that the letter was not upon the premises. I
felt, also, that the whole train of thought, which I was at some pains in detailing to you just now,
concerning the invariable principle of policial action in searches for articles concealed—I felt that
this whole train of thought would necessarily pass through the mind of the Minister. It would
imperatively lead him to despise all the ordinary nooks of concealment. He could not, I reflected, be
so weak as not to see that the most intricate and remote recess of his hotel would be as open as his
commonest closets to the eyes, to the probes, to the gimlets, and to the microscopes of the Prefect. I
saw, in fine, that he would be driven, as a matter of course, to simplicity, if not deliberately induced
to it as a matter of choice. You will remember, perhaps, how desperately the Prefect laughed when I
suggested, upon our first interview, that it was just possible this mystery troubled him so much on
account of its being so very self-evident."
"Yes," said I, "I remember his merriment well. I really thought he would have fallen into
convulsions."
"The material world," continued Dupin, "abounds with very strict analogies to the immaterial; and
thus some color of truth has been given to the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor, or simile, may be made
to strengthen an argument, as well as to embellish a description. The principle of the vis inertiæ, for
example, seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a
large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum
is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while
more forcible, more constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are
yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed and full of hesitation in the first few steps of their
progress. Again: have you ever noticed which of the street signs, over the shop-doors, are the most
attractive of attention?"
"I have never given the matter a thought," I said.
"There is a game of puzzles," he resumed, "which is played upon a map. One party playing
requires another to find a given word—the name of town, river, state or empire—any word, in short,
upon the motley and perplexed surface of the chart. A novice in the game generally seeks to embarrass
his opponents by giving them the most minutely lettered names; but the adept selects such words as
stretch, in large characters, from one end of the chart to the other. These, like the over-largely lettered
signs and placards of the street, escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious; and here the
physical oversight is precisely analogous with the moral inapprehension by which the intellect suffers
to pass unnoticed those considerations which are too obtrusively and too palpably self-evident. But
this is a point, it appears, somewhat above or beneath the understanding of the Prefect. He never once
thought it probable, or possible, that the Minister had deposited the letter immediately beneath the
nose of the whole world, by way of best preventing any portion of that world from perceiving it.
"But the more I reflected upon the daring, dashing, and discriminating ingenuity of D—; upon the
fact that the document must always have been at hand, if he intended to use it to good purpose; and
upon the decisive evidence, obtained by the Prefect, that it was not hidden within the limits of that
dignitary's ordinary search—the more satisfied I became that, to conceal this letter, the Minister had
resorted to the comprehensive and sagacious expedient of not attempting to conceal it at all.
"Full of these ideas, I prepared myself with a pair of green spectacles, and called one fine
morning, quite by accident, at the Ministerial hotel. I found D— at home, yawning, lounging, and
dawdling, as usual, and pretending to be in the last extremity of ennui. He is, perhaps, the most really
energetic human being now alive—but that is only when nobody sees him.
"To be even with him, I complained of my weak eyes, and lamented the necessity of the
spectacles, under cover of which I cautiously and thoroughly surveyed the whole apartment, while
seemingly intent only upon the conversation of my host.
"I paid especial attention to a large writing-table near which he sat, and upon which lay
confusedly, some miscellaneous letters and other papers, with one or two musical instruments and a
few books. Here, however, after a long and very deliberate scrutiny, I saw nothing to excite particular
suspicion.
"At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery fillagree card-rack of
pasteboard, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the middle
of the mantel-piece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting
cards and a solitary letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two, across
the middle—as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless, had been altered, or
stayed, in the second. It had a large black seal, bearing the D— cipher very conspicuously, and was
addressed, in a diminutive female hand, to D—, the minister, himself. It was thrust carelessly, and
even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into one of the uppermost divisions of the rack.
"No sooner had I glanced at this letter, than I concluded it to be that of which I was in search. To
be sure, it was, to all appearance, radically different from the one of which the Prefect had read us so
minute a description. 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, diminutive and
feminine; there the superscription, to a certain royal personage, was markedly bold and decided; the
size alone formed a point of correspondence. But, then, the radicalness of these differences, which
was excessive; the dirt; the soiled and torn condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the true
methodical habits of D—, and so suggestive of a design to delude the beholder into an idea of the
worthlessness of the document; these things, together with the hyper-obtrusive situation of this
document, full in the view of every visiter, and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to
which I had previously arrived; these things, I say, were strongly corroborative of suspicion, in one
who came with the intention to suspect.
"I protracted my visit as long as possible, and, while I maintained a most animated discussion
with the Minister upon a topic which I knew well had never failed to interest and excite him, I kept
my attention really riveted upon the letter. In this examination, I committed to memory its external
appearance and arrangement in the rack; and also fell, at length, upon a discovery which set at rest
whatever trivial doubt I might have entertained. In scrutinizing the edges of the paper, I observed them
to be more chafed than seemed necessary. They presented the broken appearance which is manifested
when a stiff paper, having been once folded and pressed with a folder, is refolded in a reversed
direction, in the same creases or edges which had formed the original fold. This discovery was
sufficient. It was clear to me that the letter had been turned, as a glove, inside out, re-directed, and resealed. I bade the Minister good morning, and took my departure at once, leaving a gold snuff-box
upon the table.
"The next morning I called for the snuff-box, when we resumed, quite eagerly, the conversation of
the preceding day. While thus engaged, however, a loud report, as if of a pistol, was heard
immediately beneath the windows of the hotel, and was succeeded by a series of fearful screams, and
the shoutings of a terrified mob. D— rushed to a casement, threw it open, and looked out. In the
meantime, I stepped to the card-rack, took the letter, put it in my pocket, and replaced it by a facsimile, (so far as regards externals,) which I had carefully prepared at my lodgings—imitating the D
— cipher, very readily, by means of a seal formed of bread.
"The disturbance in the street had been occasioned by the frantic behavior of a man with a musket.
He had fired it among a crowd of women and children. It proved, however, to have been without ball,
and the fellow was suffered to go his way as a lunatic or a drunkard. When he had gone, D— came
from the window, whither I had followed him immediately upon securing the object in view. Soon
afterwards I bade him farewell. The pretended lunatic was a man in my own pay."
"But what purpose had you," I asked, "in replacing the letter by a fac-simile? Would it not have
been better, at the first visit, to have seized it openly, and departed?"
"D—," replied Dupin, "is a desperate man, and a man of nerve. His hotel, too, is not without
attendants devoted to his interests. Had I made the wild attempt you suggest, I might never have left
the Ministerial presence alive. The good people of Paris might have heard of me no more. But I had
an object apart from these considerations. You know my political prepossessions. In this matter, I act
as a partisan of the lady concerned. For eighteen months the Minister has had her in his power. She
has now him in hers—since, being unaware that the letter is not in his possession, he will proceed
with his exactions as if it was. Thus will he inevitably commit himself, at once, to his political
destruction. His downfall, too, will not be more precipitate than awkward. It is all very well to talk
about the facilis descensus Averni; but in all kinds of climbing, as Catalani said of singing, it is far
more easy to get up than to come down. In the present instance I have no sympathy—at least no pity—
for him who descends. He is that monstrum horrendum, an unprincipled man of genius. I confess,
however, that I should like very well to know the precise character of his thoughts, when, being
defied by her whom the Prefect terms 'a certain personage' he is reduced to opening the letter which I
left for him in the card-rack."
"How? did you put any thing particular in it?"
"Why—it did not seem altogether right to leave the interior blank—that would have been
insulting. D—, at Vienna once, did me an evil turn, which I told him, quite good-humoredly, that I
should remember. So, as I knew he would feel some curiosity in regard to the identity of the person
who had outwitted him, I thought it a pity not to give him a clue. He is well acquainted with my MS.,
and I just copied into the middle of the blank sheet the words—
"'— — Un dessein si funeste, S'il n'est digne d'Atrée, est digne de Thyeste. They are to be found
in Crebillon's 'Atrée.'"
THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE OF SCHEHERAZADE
Truth is stranger than fiction.
OLD SAYING.
HAVING had occasion, lately, in the course of some Oriental investigations, to consult the
Tellmenow Isitsoornot, a work which (like the Zohar of Simeon Jochaides) is scarcely known at all,
even in Europe; and which has never been quoted, to my knowledge, by any American—if we except,
perhaps, the author of the "Curiosities of American Literature";—having had occasion, I say, to turn
over some pages of the first-mentioned very remarkable work, I was not a little astonished to
discover that the literary world has hitherto been strangely in error respecting the fate of the vizier's
daughter, Scheherazade, as that fate is depicted in the "Arabian Nights"; and that the denouement there
given, if not altogether inaccurate, as far as it goes, is at least to blame in not having gone very much
farther.
For full information on this interesting topic, I must refer the inquisitive reader to the "Isitsoornot"
itself, but in the meantime, I shall be pardoned for giving a summary of what I there discovered.
It will be remembered, that, in the usual version of the tales, a certain monarch having good cause
to be jealous of his queen, not only puts her to death, but makes a vow, by his beard and the prophet,
to espouse each night the most beautiful maiden in his dominions, and the next morning to deliver her
up to the executioner.
Having fulfilled this vow for many years to the letter, and with a religious punctuality and method
that conferred great credit upon him as a man of devout feeling and excellent sense, he was
interrupted one afternoon (no doubt at his prayers) by a visit from his grand vizier, to whose daughter,
it appears, there had occurred an idea.
Her name was Scheherazade, and her idea was, that she would either redeem the land from the
depopulating tax upon its beauty, or perish, after the approved fashion of all heroines, in the attempt.
Accordingly, and although we do not find it to be leap-year (which makes the sacrifice more
meritorious), she deputes her father, the grand vizier, to make an offer to the king of her hand. This
hand the king eagerly accepts—(he had intended to take it at all events, and had put off the matter
from day to day, only through fear of the vizier),—but, in accepting it now, he gives all parties very
distinctly to understand, that, grand vizier or no grand vizier, he has not the slightest design of giving
up one iota of his vow or of his privileges. When, therefore, the fair Scheherazade insisted upon
marrying the king, and did actually marry him despite her father's excellent advice not to do any thing
of the kind—when she would and did marry him, I say, will I, nill I, it was with her beautiful black
eyes as thoroughly open as the nature of the case would allow.
It seems, however, that this politic damsel (who had been reading Machiavelli, beyond doubt),
had a very ingenious little plot in her mind. On the night of the wedding, she contrived, upon I forget
what specious pretence, to have her sister occupy a couch sufficiently near that of the royal pair to
admit of easy conversation from bed to bed; and, a little before cock-crowing, she took care to
awaken the good monarch, her husband (who bore her none the worse will because he intended to
wring her neck on the morrow),—she managed to awaken him, I say, (although on account of a capital
conscience and an easy digestion, he slept well) by the profound interest of a story (about a rat and a
black cat, I think) which she was narrating (all in an undertone, of course) to her sister. When the day
broke, it so happened that this history was not altogether finished, and that Scheherazade, in the nature
of things could not finish it just then, since it was high time for her to get up and be bowstrung—a
thing very little more pleasant than hanging, only a trifle more genteel.
The king's curiosity, however, prevailing, I am sorry to say, even over his sound religious
principles, induced him for this once to postpone the fulfilment of his vow until next morning, for the
purpose and with the hope of hearing that night how it fared in the end with the black cat (a black cat,
I think it was) and the rat.
The night having arrived, however, the lady Scheherazade not only put the finishing stroke to the
black cat and the rat (the rat was blue) but before she well knew what she was about, found herself
deep in the intricacies of a narration, having reference (if I am not altogether mistaken) to a pink horse
(with green wings) that went, in a violent manner, by clockwork, and was wound up with an indigo
key. With this history the king was even more profoundly interested than with the other—and, as the
day broke before its conclusion (notwithstanding all the queen's endeavors to get through with it in
time for the bowstringing), there was again no resource but to postpone that ceremony as before, for
twenty-four hours. The next night there happened a similar accident with a similar result; and then the
next—and then again the next; so that, in the end, the good monarch, having been unavoidably
deprived of all opportunity to keep his vow during a period of no less than one thousand and one
nights, either forgets it altogether by the expiration of this time, or gets himself absolved of it in the
regular way, or (what is more probable) breaks it outright, as well as the head of his father confessor.
At all events, Scheherazade, who, being lineally descended from Eve, fell heir, perhaps, to the whole
seven baskets of talk, which the latter lady, we all know, picked up from under the trees in the garden
of Eden—Scheherazade, I say, finally triumphed, and the tariff upon beauty was repealed.
Now, this conclusion (which is that of the story as we have it upon record) is, no doubt,
excessively proper and pleasant—but alas! like a great many pleasant things, is more pleasant than
true, and I am indebted altogether to the "Isitsoornot" for the means of correcting the error. "Le
mieux," says a French proverb, "est l'ennemi du bien," and, in mentioning that Scheherazade had
inherited the seven baskets of talk, I should have added that she put them out at compound interest
until they amounted to seventy-seven.
"My dear sister," said she, on the thousand-and-second night, (I quote the language of the
"Isitsoornot" at this point, verbatim) "my dear sister," said she, "now that all this little difficulty about
the bowstring has blown over, and that this odious tax is so happily repealed, I feel that I have been
guilty of great indiscretion in withholding from you and the king (who I am sorry to say, snores—a
thing no gentleman would do) the full conclusion of Sinbad the sailor. This person went through
numerous other and more interesting adventures than those which I related; but the truth is, I felt
sleepy on the particular night of their narration, and so was seduced into cutting them short—a
grievous piece of misconduct, for which I only trust that Allah will forgive me. But even yet it is not
too late to remedy my great neglect—and as soon as I have given the king a pinch or two in order to
wake him up so far that he may stop making that horrible noise, I will forthwith entertain you (and him
if he pleases) with the sequel of this very remarkable story."
Hereupon the sister of Scheherazade, as I have it from the "Isitsoornot," expressed no very
particular intensity of gratification; but the king, having been sufficiently pinched, at length ceased
snoring, and finally said, "hum!" and then "hoo!" when the queen, understanding these words (which
are no doubt Arabic) to signify that he was all attention, and would do his best not to snore any more
—the queen, I say, having arranged these matters to her satisfaction, re-entered thus, at once, into the
history of Sinbad the sailor:
"'At length, in my old age,' [these are the words of Sinbad himself, as retailed by Scheherazade]
—'at length, in my old age, and after enjoying many years of tranquillity at home, I became once more
possessed of a desire of visiting foreign countries; and one day, without acquainting any of my family
with my design, I packed up some bundles of such merchandise as was most precious and least bulky,
and, engaged a porter to carry them, went with him down to the sea-shore, to await the arrival of any
chance vessel that might convey me out of the kingdom into some region which I had not as yet
explored.
"'Having deposited the packages upon the sands, we sat down beneath some trees, and looked out
into the ocean in the hope of perceiving a ship, but during several hours we saw none whatever. At
length I fancied that I could hear a singular buzzing or humming sound; and the porter, after listening
awhile, declared that he also could distinguish it. Presently it grew louder, and then still louder, so
that we could have no doubt that the object which caused it was approaching us. At length, on the
edge of the horizon, we discovered a black speck, which rapidly increased in size until we made it
out to be a vast monster, swimming with a great part of its body above the surface of the sea. It came
toward us with inconceivable swiftness, throwing up huge waves of foam around its breast, and
illuminating all that part of the sea through which it passed, with a long line of fire that extended far
off into the distance.
"'As the thing drew near we saw it very distinctly. Its length was equal to that of three of the
loftiest trees that grow, and it was as wide as the great hall of audience in your palace, O most
sublime and munificent of the Caliphs. Its body, which was unlike that of ordinary fishes, was as solid
as a rock, and of a jetty blackness throughout all that portion of it which floated above the water, with
the exception of a narrow blood-red streak that completely begirdled it. The belly, which floated
beneath the surface, and of which we could get only a glimpse now and then as the monster rose and
fell with the billows, was entirely covered with metallic scales, of a color like that of the moon in
misty weather. The back was flat and nearly white, and from it there extended upwards of six spines,
about half the length of the whole body.
"'The horrible creature had no mouth that we could perceive, but, as if to make up for this
deficiency, it was provided with at least four score of eyes, that protruded from their sockets like
those of the green dragon-fly, and were arranged all around the body in two rows, one above the
other, and parallel to the blood-red streak, which seemed to answer the purpose of an eyebrow. Two
or three of these dreadful eyes were much larger than the others, and had the appearance of solid
gold.
"'Although this beast approached us, as I have before said, with the greatest rapidity, it must have
been moved altogether by necromancy—for it had neither fins like a fish nor web-feet like a duck, nor
wings like the seashell which is blown along in the manner of a vessel; nor yet did it writhe itself
forward as do the eels. Its head and its tail were shaped precisely alike, only, not far from the latter,
were two small holes that served for nostrils, and through which the monster puffed out its thick
breath with prodigious violence, and with a shrieking, disagreeable noise.
"'Our terror at beholding this hideous thing was very great, but it was even surpassed by our
astonishment, when upon getting a nearer look, we perceived upon the creature's back a vast number
of animals about the size and shape of men, and altogether much resembling them, except that they
wore no garments (as men do), being supplied (by nature, no doubt) with an ugly uncomfortable
covering, a good deal like cloth, but fitting so tight to the skin, as to render the poor wretches
laughably awkward, and put them apparently to severe pain. On the very tips of their heads were
certain square-looking boxes, which, at first sight, I thought might have been intended to answer as
turbans, but I soon discovered that they were excessively heavy and solid, and I therefore concluded
they were contrivances designed, by their great weight, to keep the heads of the animals steady and
safe upon their shoulders. Around the necks of the creatures were fastened black collars, (badges of
servitude, no doubt,) such as we keep on our dogs, only much wider and infinitely stiffer, so that it
was quite impossible for these poor victims to move their heads in any direction without moving the
body at the same time; and thus they were doomed to perpetual contemplation of their noses—a view
puggish and snubby in a wonderful, if not positively in an awful degree.
"'When the monster had nearly reached the shore where we stood, it suddenly pushed out one of
its eyes to a great extent, and emitted from it a terrible flash of fire, accompanied by a dense cloud of
smoke, and a noise that I can compare to nothing but thunder. As the smoke cleared away, we saw one
of the odd man-animals standing near the head of the large beast with a trumpet in his hand, through
which (putting it to his mouth) he presently addressed us in loud, harsh, and disagreeable accents,
that, perhaps, we should have mistaken for language, had they not come altogether through the nose.
"'Being thus evidently spoken to, I was at a loss how to reply, as I could in no manner understand
what was said; and in this difficulty I turned to the porter, who was near swooning through affright,
and demanded of him his opinion as to what species of monster it was, what it wanted, and what kind
of creatures those were that so swarmed upon its back. To this the porter replied, as well as he could
for trepidation, that he had once before heard of this sea-beast; that it was a cruel demon, with bowels
of sulphur and blood of fire, created by evil genii as the means of inflicting misery upon mankind; that
the things upon its back were vermin, such as sometimes infest cats and dogs, only a little larger and
more savage; and that these vermin had their uses, however evil—for, through the torture they caused
the beast by their nibbling and stingings, it was goaded into that degree of wrath which was requisite
to make it roar and commit ill, and so fulfil the vengeful and malicious designs of the wicked genii.
"This account determined me to take to my heels, and, without once even looking behind me, I ran
at full speed up into the hills, while the porter ran equally fast, although nearly in an opposite
direction, so that, by these means, he finally made his escape with my bundles, of which I have no
doubt he took excellent care—although this is a point I cannot determine, as I do not remember that I
ever beheld him again.
"'For myself, I was so hotly pursued by a swarm of the men-vermin (who had come to the shore in
boats) that I was very soon overtaken, bound hand and foot, and conveyed to the beast, which
immediately swam out again into the middle of the sea.
"'I now bitterly repented my folly in quitting a comfortable home to peril my life in such
adventures as this; but regret being useless, I made the best of my condition, and exerted myself to
secure the goodwill of the man-animal that owned the trumpet, and who appeared to exercise
authority over his fellows. I succeeded so well in this endeavor that, in a few days, the creature
bestowed upon me various tokens of his favor, and in the end even went to the trouble of teaching me
the rudiments of what it was vain enough to denominate its language; so that, at length, I was enabled
to converse with it readily, and came to make it comprehend the ardent desire I had of seeing the
world.
"'Washish squashish squeak, Sinbad, hey-diddle diddle, grunt unt grumble, hiss, fiss, whiss,' said
he to me, one day after dinner—but I beg a thousand pardons, I had forgotten that your majesty is not
conversant with the dialect of the Cock-neighs (so the man-animals were called; I presume because
their language formed the connecting link between that of the horse and that of the rooster). With your
permission, I will translate. 'Washish squashish,' and so forth:—that is to say, 'I am happy to find, my
dear Sinbad, that you are really a very excellent fellow; we are now about doing a thing which is
called circumnavigating the globe; and since you are so desirous of seeing the world, I will strain a
point and give you a free passage upon back of the beast.'"
When the Lady Scheherazade had proceeded thus far, relates the "Isitsoornot," the king turned
over from his left side to his right, and said:
"It is, in fact, very surprising, my dear queen, that you omitted, hitherto, these latter adventures of
Sinbad. Do you know I think them exceedingly entertaining and strange?"
The king having thus expressed himself, we are told, the fair Scheherazade resumed her history in
the following words:
"Sinbad went on in this manner with his narrative to the caliph—'I thanked the man-animal for its
kindness, and soon found myself very much at home on the beast, which swam at a prodigious rate
through the ocean; although the surface of the latter is, in that part of the world, by no means flat, but
round like a pomegranate, so that we went—so to say—either up hill or down hill all the time.'
"That I think, was very singular," interrupted the king.
"Nevertheless, it is quite true," replied Scheherazade.
"I have my doubts," rejoined the king; "but, pray, be so good as to go on with the story."
"I will," said the queen. "'The beast,' continued Sinbad to the caliph, 'swam, as I have related, up
hill and down hill until, at length, we arrived at an island, many hundreds of miles in circumference,
but which, nevertheless, had been built in the middle of the sea by a colony of little things like
caterpillars'"
"Hum!" said the king.
"'Leaving this island,' said Sinbad—(for Scheherazade, it must be understood, took no notice of
her husband's ill-mannered ejaculation) 'leaving this island, we came to another where the forests
were of solid stone, and so hard that they shivered to pieces the finest-tempered axes with which we
endeavoured to cut them down."'
"Hum!" said the king, again; but Scheherazade, paying him no attention, continued in the language
of Sinbad.
"'Passing beyond this last island, we reached a country where there was a cave that ran to the
distance of thirty or forty miles within the bowels of the earth, and that contained a greater number of
far more spacious and more magnificent palaces than are to be found in all Damascus and Bagdad.
From the roofs of these palaces there hung myriads of gems, like diamonds, but larger than men; and
in among the streets of towers and pyramids and temples, there flowed immense rivers as black as
ebony, and swarming with fish that had no eyes.'"
"Hum!" said the king. "'We then swam into a region of the sea where we found a lofty mountain,
down whose sides there streamed torrents of melted metal, some of which were twelve miles wide
and sixty miles long ; while from an abyss on the summit, issued so vast a quantity of ashes that the
sun was entirely blotted out from the heavens, and it became darker than the darkest midnight; so that
when we were even at the distance of a hundred and fifty miles from the mountain, it was impossible
to see the whitest object, however close we held it to our eyes.'"
"Hum!" said the king.
"'After quitting this coast, the beast continued his voyage until we met with a land in which the
nature of things seemed reversed—for we here saw a great lake, at the bottom of which, more than a
hundred feet beneath the surface of the water, there flourished in full leaf a forest of tall and luxuriant
trees.'"
"Hoo!" said the king.
"Some hundred miles farther on brought us to a climate where the atmosphere was so dense as to
sustain iron or steel, just as our own does feather.'"
"Fiddle de dee," said the king.
"Proceeding still in the same direction, we presently arrived at the most magnificent region in the
whole world. Through it there meandered a glorious river for several thousands of miles. This river
was of unspeakable depth, and of a transparency richer than that of amber. It was from three to six
miles in width; and its banks which arose on either side to twelve hundred feet in perpendicular
height, were crowned with ever-blossoming trees and perpetual sweet-scented flowers, that made the
whole territory one gorgeous garden; but the name of this luxuriant land was the Kingdom of Horror,
and to enter it was inevitable death'"
"Humph!" said the king.
"'We left this kingdom in great haste, and, after some days, came to another, where we were
astonished to perceive myriads of monstrous animals with horns resembling scythes upon their heads.
These hideous beasts dig for themselves vast caverns in the soil, of a funnel shape, and line the sides
of them with rocks, so disposed one upon the other that they fall instantly, when trodden upon by other
animals, thus precipitating them into the monster's dens, where their blood is immediately sucked, and
their carcasses afterwards hurled contemptuously out to an immense distance from "the caverns of
death."'"
"Pooh!" said the king.
"'Continuing our progress, we perceived a district with vegetables that grew not upon any soil but
in the air. There were others that sprang from the substance of other vegetables; others that derived
their substance from the bodies of living animals; and then again, there were others that glowed all
over with intense fire; others that moved from place to place at pleasure, and what was still more
wonderful, we discovered flowers that lived and breathed and moved their limbs at will and had,
moreover, the detestable passion of mankind for enslaving other creatures, and confining them in
horrid and solitary prisons until the fulfillment of appointed tasks.'"
"Pshaw!" said the king.
"'Quitting this land, we soon arrived at another in which the bees and the birds are mathematicians
of such genius and erudition, that they give daily instructions in the science of geometry to the wise
men of the empire. The king of the place having offered a reward for the solution of two very difficult
problems, they were solved upon the spot—the one by the bees, and the other by the birds; but the
king keeping their solution a secret, it was only after the most profound researches and labor, and the
writing of an infinity of big books, during a long series of years, that the men-mathematicians at length
arrived at the identical solutions which had been given upon the spot by the bees and by the birds.'"
"Oh my!" said the king.
"'We had scarcely lost sight of this empire when we found ourselves close upon another, from
whose shores there flew over our heads a flock of fowls a mile in breadth, and two hundred and forty
miles long; so that, although they flew a mile during every minute, it required no less than four hours
for the whole flock to pass over us—in which there were several millions of millions of fowl.'"
"Oh fy!" said the king.
"'No sooner had we got rid of these birds, which occasioned us great annoyance, than we were
terrified by the appearance of a fowl of another kind, and infinitely larger than even the rocs which I
met in my former voyages; for it was bigger than the biggest of the domes on your seraglio, oh, most
Munificent of Caliphs. This terrible fowl had no head that we could perceive, but was fashioned
entirely of belly, which was of a prodigious fatness and roundness, of a soft-looking substance,
smooth, shining and striped with various colors. In its talons, the monster was bearing away to his
eyrie in the heavens, a house from which it had knocked off the roof, and in the interior of which we
distinctly saw human beings, who, beyond doubt, were in a state of frightful despair at the horrible
fate which awaited them. We shouted with all our might, in the hope of frightening the bird into letting
go of its prey, but it merely gave a snort or puff, as if of rage and then let fall upon our heads a heavy
sack which proved to be filled with sand!'"
"Stuff!" said the king.
"'It was just after this adventure that we encountered a continent of immense extent and prodigious
solidity, but which, nevertheless, was supported entirely upon the back of a sky-blue cow that had no
fewer than four hundred horns.'"
"That, now, I believe," said the king, "because I have read something of the kind before, in a
book."
"'We passed immediately beneath this continent, (swimming in between the legs of the cow), and,
after some hours, found ourselves in a wonderful country indeed, which, I was informed by the mananimal, was his own native land, inhabited by things of his own species. This elevated the mananimal very much in my esteem, and in fact, I now began to feel ashamed of the contemptuous
familiarity with which I had treated him; for I found that the man-animals in general were a nation of
the most powerful magicians, who lived with worms in their brain, which, no doubt, served to
stimulate them by their painful writhings and wrigglings to the most miraculous efforts of
imagination!'"
"Nonsense!" said the king.
"'Among the magicians, were domesticated several animals of very singular kinds; for example,
there was a huge horse whose bones were iron and whose blood was boiling water. In place of corn,
he had black stones for his usual food; and yet, in spite of so hard a diet, he was so strong and swift
that he would drag a load more weighty than the grandest temple in this city, at a rate surpassing that
of the flight of most birds.'"
"Twattle!" said the king.
"'I saw, also, among these people a hen without feathers, but bigger than a camel; instead of flesh
and bone she had iron and brick; her blood, like that of the horse, (to whom, in fact, she was nearly
related,) was boiling water; and like him she ate nothing but wood or black stones. This hen brought
forth very frequently, a hundred chickens in the day; and, after birth, they took up their residence for
several weeks within the stomach of their mother.'"
"Fa! lal!" said the king.
"'One of this nation of mighty conjurors created a man out of brass and wood, and leather, and
endowed him with such ingenuity that he would have beaten at chess, all the race of mankind with the
exception of the great Caliph, Haroun Alraschid. Another of these magi constructed (of like material)
a creature that put to shame even the genius of him who made it; for so great were its reasoning
powers that, in a second, it performed calculations of so vast an extent that they would have required
the united labor of fifty thousand fleshy men for a year. But a still more wonderful conjuror fashioned
for himself a mighty thing that was neither man nor beast, but which had brains of lead, intermixed
with a black matter like pitch, and fingers that it employed with such incredible speed and dexterity
that it would have had no trouble in writing out twenty thousand copies of the Koran in an hour, and
this with so exquisite a precision, that in all the copies there should not be found one to vary from
another by the breadth of the finest hair. This thing was of prodigious strength, so that it erected or
overthrew the mightiest empires at a breath; but its powers were exercised equally for evil and for
good.'"
"Ridiculous!" said the king.
"'Among this nation of necromancers there was also one who had in his veins the blood of the
salamanders; for he made no scruple of sitting down to smoke his chibouc in a red-hot oven until his
dinner was thoroughly roasted upon its floor. Another had the faculty of converting the common
metals into gold, without even looking at them during the process. Another had such a delicacy of
touch that he made a wire so fine as to be invisible. Another had such quickness of perception that he
counted all the separate motions of an elastic body, while it was springing backward and forward at
the rate of nine hundred millions of times in a second.'"
"Absurd!" said the king.
"'Another of these magicians, by means of a fluid that nobody ever yet saw, could make the
corpses of his friends brandish their arms, kick out their legs, fight, or even get up and dance at his
will. Another had cultivated his voice to so great an extent that he could have made himself heard
from one end of the world to the other. Another had so long an arm that he could sit down in
Damascus and indite a letter at Bagdad—or indeed at any distance whatsoever. Another commanded
the lightning to come down to him out of the heavens, and it came at his call; and served him for a
plaything when it came. Another took two loud sounds and out of them made a silence. Another
constructed a deep darkness out of two brilliant lights. Another made ice in a red-hot furnace.
Another directed the sun to paint his portrait, and the sun did. Another took this luminary with the
moon and the planets, and having first weighed them with scrupulous accuracy, probed into their
depths and found out the solidity of the substance of which they were made. But the whole nation is,
indeed, of so surprising a necromantic ability, that not even their infants, nor their commonest cats and
dogs have any difficulty in seeing objects that do not exist at all, or that for twenty millions of years
before the birth of the nation itself had been blotted out from the face of creation."'
"Preposterous!" said the king.
"'The wives and daughters of these incomparably great and wise magi,'" continued Scheherazade,
without being in any manner disturbed by these frequent and most ungentlemanly interruptions on the
part of her husband—"'the wives and daughters of these eminent conjurers are every thing that is
accomplished and refined; and would be every thing that is interesting and beautiful, but for an
unhappy fatality that besets them, and from which not even the miraculous powers of their husbands
and fathers has, hitherto, been adequate to save. Some fatalities come in certain shapes, and some in
others—but this of which I speak has come in the shape of a crotchet.'"
"A what?" said the king.
"'A crotchet'" said Scheherazade. "'One of the evil genii, who are perpetually upon the watch to
inflict ill, has put it into the heads of these accomplished ladies that the thing which we describe as
personal beauty consists altogether in the protuberance of the region which lies not very far below the
small of the back. Perfection of loveliness, they say, is in the direct ratio of the extent of this lump.
Having been long possessed of this idea, and bolsters being cheap in that country, the days have long
gone by since it was possible to distinguish a woman from a dromedary-'"
"Stop!" said the king—"I can't stand that, and I won't. You have already given me a dreadful
headache with your lies. The day, too, I perceive, is beginning to break. How long have we been
married?—my conscience is getting to be troublesome again. And then that dromedary touch—do you
take me for a fool? Upon the whole, you might as well get up and be throttled."
These words, as I learn from the "Isitsoornot," both grieved and astonished Scheherazade; but, as
she knew the king to be a man of scrupulous integrity, and quite unlikely to forfeit his word, she
submitted to her fate with a good grace. She derived, however, great consolation, (during the
tightening of the bowstring,) from the reflection that much of the history remained still untold, and that
the petulance of her brute of a husband had reaped for him a most righteous reward, in depriving him
of many inconceivable adventures.
A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTRÖM.
The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways; nor are the models that we
frame any way commensurate to the vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, which
have a depth in them greater than the well of Democritus.
—Joseph Glanville.
WE had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the old man seemed too
much exhausted to speak.
"Not long ago," said he at length, "and I could have guided you on this route as well as the
youngest of my sons; but, about three years past, there happened to me an event such as never
happened to mortal man—or at least such as no man ever survived to tell of—and the six hours of
deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up body and soul. You suppose me a very old man
—but I am not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to
weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion, and am frightened
at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look over this little cliff without getting giddy?"
The "little cliff," upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown himself down to rest that the
weightier portion of his body hung over it, while he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his
elbow on its extreme and slippery edge—this "little cliff" arose, a sheer unobstructed precipice of
black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet from the world of crags beneath us. Nothing
would have tempted me to within half a dozen yards of its brink. In truth so deeply was I excited by
the perilous position of my companion, that I fell at full length upon the ground, clung to the shrubs
around me, and dared not even glance upward at the sky—while I struggled in vain to divest myself of
the idea that the very foundations of the mountain were in danger from the fury of the winds. It was
long before I could reason myself into sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the distance.
"You must get over these fancies," said the guide, "for I have brought you here that you might have
the best possible view of the scene of that event I mentioned—and to tell you the whole story with the
spot just under your eye."
"We are now," he continued, in that particularizing manner which distinguished him—"we are
now close upon the Norwegian coast—in the sixty-eighth degree of latitude—in the great province of
Nordland—and in the dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon whose top we sit is Helseggen,
the Cloudy. Now raise yourself up a little higher—hold on to the grass if you feel giddy—so—and
look out, beyond the belt of vapor beneath us, into the sea."
I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore so inky a hue as to
bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer's account of the Mare Tenebrarum. A panorama more
deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could
reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black and beetling cliff,
whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up
against its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. Just opposite the promontory upon
whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible
a small, bleak-looking island; or, more properly, its position was discernible through the wilderness
of surge in which it was enveloped. About two miles nearer the land, arose another of smaller size,
hideously craggy and barren, and encompassed at various intervals by a cluster of dark rocks.
The appearance of the ocean, in the space between the more distant island and the shore, had
something very unusual about it. Although, at the time, so strong a gale was blowing landward that a
brig in the remote offing lay to under a double-reefed trysail, and constantly plunged her whole hull
out of sight, still there was here nothing like a regular swell, but only a short, quick, angry cross
dashing of water in every direction—as well in the teeth of the wind as otherwise. Of foam there was
little except in the immediate vicinity of the rocks.
"The island in the distance," resumed the old man, "is called by the Norwegians Vurrgh. The one
midway is Moskoe. That a mile to the northward is Ambaaren. Yonder are Islesen, Hotholm,
Keildhelm, Suarven, and Buckholm. Farther off—between Moskoe and Vurrgh—are Otterholm,
Flimen, Sandflesen, and Stockholm. These are the true names of the places—but why it has been
thought necessary to name them at all, is more than either you or I can understand. Do you hear
anything? Do you see any change in the water?"
We had now been about ten minutes upon the top of Helseggen, to which we had ascended from
the interior of Lofoden, so that we had caught no glimpse of the sea until it had burst upon us from the
summit. As the old man spoke, I became aware of a loud and gradually increasing sound, like the
moaning of a vast herd of buffaloes upon an American prairie; and at the same moment I perceived
that what seamen term the chopping character of the ocean beneath us, was rapidly changing into a
current which set to the eastward. Even while I gazed, this current acquired a monstrous velocity.
Each moment added to its speed—to its headlong impetuosity. In five minutes the whole sea, as far as
Vurrgh, was lashed into ungovernable fury; but it was between Moskoe and the coast that the main
uproar held its sway. Here the vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting
channels, burst suddenly into phrensied convulsion—heaving, boiling, hissing—gyrating in gigantic
and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the eastward with a rapidity which
water never elsewhere assumes except in precipitous descents.
In a few minutes more, there came over the scene another radical alteration. The general surface
grew somewhat more smooth, and the whirlpools, one by one, disappeared, while prodigious streaks
of foam became apparent where none had been seen before. These streaks, at length, spreading out to
a great distance, and entering into combination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the
subsided vortices, and seemed to form the germ of another more vast. Suddenly—very suddenly—this
assumed a distinct and definite existence, in a circle of more than a mile in diameter. The edge of the
whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth
of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jetblack wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily
round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling
voice, half shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony
to Heaven.
The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked. I threw myself upon my face, and
clung to the scant herbage in an excess of nervous agitation.
"This," said I at length, to the old man—"this can be nothing else than the great whirlpool of the
Maelström."
"So it is sometimes termed," said he. "We Norwegians call it the Moskoe-ström, from the island
of Moskoe in the midway."
The ordinary accounts of this vortex had by no means prepared me for what I saw. That of Jonas
Ramus, which is perhaps the most circumstantial of any, cannot impart the faintest conception either
of the magnificence, or of the horror of the scene—or of the wild bewildering sense of the novel
which confounds the beholder. I am not sure from what point of view the writer in question surveyed
it, nor at what time; but it could neither have been from the summit of Helseggen, nor during a storm.
There are some passages of his description, nevertheless, which may be quoted for their details,
although their effect is exceedingly feeble in conveying an impression of the spectacle.
"Between Lofoden and Moskoe," he says, "the depth of the water is between thirty-six and forty
fathoms; but on the other side, toward Ver (Vurrgh) this depth decreases so as not to afford a
convenient passage for a vessel, without the risk of splitting on the rocks, which happens even in the
calmest weather. When it is flood, the stream runs up the country between Lofoden and Moskoe with a
boisterous rapidity; but the roar of its impetuous ebb to the sea is scarce equalled by the loudest and
most dreadful cataracts; the noise being heard several leagues off, and the vortices or pits are of such
an extent and depth, that if a ship comes within its attraction, it is inevitably absorbed and carried
down to the bottom, and there beat to pieces against the rocks; and when the water relaxes, the
fragments thereof are thrown up again. But these intervals of tranquility are only at the turn of the ebb
and flood, and in calm weather, and last but a quarter of an hour, its violence gradually returning.
When the stream is most boisterous, and its fury heightened by a storm, it is dangerous to come within
a Norway mile of it. Boats, yachts, and ships have been carried away by not guarding against it
before they were within its reach. It likewise happens frequently, that whales come too near the
stream, and are overpowered by its violence; and then it is impossible to describe their howlings and
bellowings in their fruitless struggles to disengage themselves. A bear once, attempting to swim from
Lofoden to Moskoe, was caught by the stream and borne down, while he roared terribly, so as to be
heard on shore. Large stocks of firs and pine trees, after being absorbed by the current, rise again
broken and torn to such a degree as if bristles grew upon them. This plainly shows the bottom to
consist of craggy rocks, among which they are whirled to and fro. This stream is regulated by the flux
and reflux of the sea—it being constantly high and low water every six hours. In the year 1645, early
in the morning of Sexagesima Sunday, it raged with such noise and impetuosity that the very stones of
the houses on the coast fell to the ground."
In regard to the depth of the water, I could not see how this could have been ascertained at all in
the immediate vicinity of the vortex. The "forty fathoms" must have reference only to portions of the
channel close upon the shore either of Moskoe or Lofoden. The depth in the centre of the Moskoeström must be immeasurably greater; and no better proof of this fact is necessary than can be
obtained from even the sidelong glance into the abyss of the whirl which may be had from the highest
crag of Helseggen. Looking down from this pinnacle upon the howling Phlegethon below, I could not
help smiling at the simplicity with which the honest Jonas Ramus records, as a matter difficult of
belief, the anecdotes of the whales and the bears; for it appeared to me, in fact, a self-evident thing,
that the largest ship of the line in existence, coming within the influence of that deadly attraction,
could resist it as little as a feather the hurricane, and must disappear bodily and at once.
The attempts to account for the phenomenon—some of which, I remember, seemed to me
sufficiently plausible in perusal—now wore a very different and unsatisfactory aspect. The idea
generally received is that this, as well as three smaller vortices among the Ferroe islands, "have no
other cause than the collision of waves rising and falling, at flux and reflux, against a ridge of rocks
and shelves, which confines the water so that it precipitates itself like a cataract; and thus the higher
the flood rises, the deeper must the fall be, and the natural result of all is a whirlpool or vortex, the
prodigious suction of which is sufficiently known by lesser experiments."—These are the words of
the Encyclopædia Britannica. Kircher and others imagine that in the centre of the channel of the
Maelström is an abyss penetrating the globe, and issuing in some very remote part—the Gulf of
Bothnia being somewhat decidedly named in one instance. This opinion, idle in itself, was the one to
which, as I gazed, my imagination most readily assented; and, mentioning it to the guide, I was rather
surprised to hear him say that, although it was the view almost universally entertained of the subject
by the Norwegians, it nevertheless was not his own. As to the former notion he confessed his inability
to comprehend it; and here I agreed with him—for, however conclusive on paper, it becomes
altogether unintelligible, and even absurd, amid the thunder of the abyss.
"You have had a good look at the whirl now," said the old man, "and if you will creep round this
crag, so as to get in its lee, and deaden the roar of the water, I will tell you a story that will convince
you I ought to know something of the Moskoe-ström."
I placed myself as desired, and he proceeded.
"Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner-rigged smack of about seventy tons burthen,
with which we were in the habit of fishing among the islands beyond Moskoe, nearly to Vurrgh. In all
violent eddies at sea there is good fishing, at proper opportunities, if one has only the courage to
attempt it; but among the whole of the Lofoden coastmen, we three were the only ones who made a
regular business of going out to the islands, as I tell you. The usual grounds are a great way lower
down to the southward. There fish can be got at all hours, without much risk, and therefore these
places are preferred. The choice spots over here among the rocks, however, not only yield the finest
variety, but in far greater abundance; so that we often got in a single day, what the more timid of the
craft could not scrape together in a week. In fact, we made it a matter of desperate speculation—the
risk of life standing instead of labor, and courage answering for capital.
"We kept the smack in a cove about five miles higher up the coast than this; and it was our
practice, in fine weather, to take advantage of the fifteen minutes' slack to push across the main
channel of the Moskoe-ström, far above the pool, and then drop down upon anchorage somewhere
near Otterholm, or Sandflesen, where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere. Here we used to
remain until nearly time for slack-water again, when we weighed and made for home. We never set
out upon this expedition without a steady side wind for going and coming—one that we felt sure
would not fail us before our return—and we seldom made a mis-calculation upon this point. Twice,
during six years, we were forced to stay all night at anchor on account of a dead calm, which is a rare
thing indeed just about here; and once we had to remain on the grounds nearly a week, starving to
death, owing to a gale which blew up shortly after our arrival, and made the channel too boisterous to
be thought of. Upon this occasion we should have been driven out to sea in spite of everything, (for
the whirlpools threw us round and round so violently, that, at length, we fouled our anchor and
dragged it) if it had not been that we drifted into one of the innumerable cross currents—here to-day
and gone to-morrow—which drove us under the lee of Flimen, where, by good luck, we brought up.
"I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties we encountered 'on the grounds'—it is a
bad spot to be in, even in good weather—but we made shift always to run the gauntlet of the Moskoeström itself without accident; although at times my heart has been in my mouth when we happened to
be a minute or so behind or before the slack. The wind sometimes was not as strong as we thought it
at starting, and then we made rather less way than we could wish, while the current rendered the
smack unmanageable. My eldest brother had a son eighteen years old, and I had two stout boys of my
own. These would have been of great assistance at such times, in using the sweeps, as well as
afterward in fishing—but, somehow, although we ran the risk ourselves, we had not the heart to let the
young ones get into the danger—for, after all is said and done, it was a horrible danger, and that is the
truth.
"It is now within a few days of three years since what I am going to tell you occurred. It was on
the tenth day of July, 18-, a day which the people of this part of the world will never forget—for it
was one in which blew the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the heavens. And yet all the
morning, and indeed until late in the afternoon, there was a gentle and steady breeze from the southwest, while the sun shone brightly, so that the oldest seaman among us could not have foreseen what
was to follow.
"The three of us—my two brothers and myself—had crossed over to the islands about two o'clock
P. M., and had soon nearly loaded the smack with fine fish, which, we all remarked, were more plenty
that day than we had ever known them. It was just seven, by my watch, when we weighed and started
for home, so as to make the worst of the Ström at slack water, which we knew would be at eight.
"We set out with a fresh wind on our starboard quarter, and for some time spanked along at a great
rate, never dreaming of danger, for indeed we saw not the slightest reason to apprehend it. All at once
we were taken aback by a breeze from over Helseggen. This was most unusual—something that had
never happened to us before—and I began to feel a little uneasy, without exactly knowing why. We put
the boat on the wind, but could make no headway at all for the eddies, and I was upon the point of
proposing to return to the anchorage, when, looking astern, we saw the whole horizon covered with a
singular copper-colored cloud that rose with the most amazing velocity.
"In the meantime the breeze that had headed us off fell away, and we were dead becalmed,
drifting about in every direction. This state of things, however, did not last long enough to give us
time to think about it. In less than a minute the storm was upon us—in less than two the sky was
entirely overcast—and what with this and the driving spray, it became suddenly so dark that we could
not see each other in the smack.
"Such a hurricane as then blew it is folly to attempt describing. The oldest seaman in Norway
never experienced any thing like it. We had let our sails go by the run before it cleverly took us; but,
at the first puff, both our masts went by the board as if they had been sawed off—the mainmast taking
with it my youngest brother, who had lashed himself to it for safety.
"Our boat was the lightest feather of a thing that ever sat upon water. It had a complete flush deck,
with only a small hatch near the bow, and this hatch it had always been our custom to batten down
when about to cross the Ström, by way of precaution against the chopping seas. But for this
circumstance we should have foundered at once—for we lay entirely buried for some moments. How
my elder brother escaped destruction I cannot say, for I never had an opportunity of ascertaining. For
my part, as soon as I had let the foresail run, I threw myself flat on deck, with my feet against the
narrow gunwale of the bow, and with my hands grasping a ring-bolt near the foot of the fore-mast. It
was mere instinct that prompted me to do this—which was undoubtedly the very best thing I could
have done—for I was too much flurried to think.
"For some moments we were completely deluged, as I say, and all this time I held my breath, and
clung to the bolt. When I could stand it no longer I raised myself upon my knees, still keeping hold
with my hands, and thus got my head clear. Presently our little boat gave herself a shake, just as a dog
does in coming out of the water, and thus rid herself, in some measure, of the seas. I was now trying to
get the better of the stupor that had come over me, and to collect my senses so as to see what was to
be done, when I felt somebody grasp my arm. It was my elder brother, and my heart leaped for joy, for
I had made sure that he was overboard—but the next moment all this joy was turned into horror—for
he put his mouth close to my ear, and screamed out the word 'Moskoe-ström!'
"No one ever will know what my feelings were at that moment. I shook from head to foot as if I
had had the most violent fit of the ague. I knew what he meant by that one word well enough—I knew
what he wished to make me understand. With the wind that now drove us on, we were bound for the
whirl of the Ström, and nothing could save us!
"You perceive that in crossing the Ström channel, we always went a long way up above the
whirl, even in the calmest weather, and then had to wait and watch carefully for the slack—but now
we were driving right upon the pool itself, and in such a hurricane as this! 'To be sure,' I thought, 'we
shall get there just about the slack—there is some little hope in that'—but in the next moment I cursed
myself for being so great a fool as to dream of hope at all. I knew very well that we were doomed,
had we been ten times a ninety-gun ship.
"By this time the first fury of the tempest had spent itself, or perhaps we did not feel it so much, as
we scudded before it, but at all events the seas, which at first had been kept down by the wind, and
lay flat and frothing, now got up into absolute mountains. A singular change, too, had come over the
heavens. Around in every direction it was still as black as pitch, but nearly overhead there burst out,
all at once, a circular rift of clear sky—as clear as I ever saw—and of a deep bright blue—and
through it there blazed forth the full moon with a lustre that I never before knew her to wear. She lit up
every thing about us with the greatest distinctness—but, oh God, what a scene it was to light up!
"I now made one or two attempts to speak to my brother—but, in some manner which I could not
understand, the din had so increased that I could not make him hear a single word, although I
screamed at the top of my voice in his ear. Presently he shook his head, looking as pale as death, and
held up one of his fingers, as if to say 'listen! '
"At first I could not make out what he meant—but soon a hideous thought flashed upon me. I
dragged my watch from its fob. It was not going. I glanced at its face by the moonlight, and then burst
into tears as I flung it far away into the ocean. It had run down at seven o'clock! We were behind the
time of the slack, and the whirl of the Ström was in full fury!
"When a boat is well built, properly trimmed, and not deep laden, the waves in a strong gale,
when she is going large, seem always to slip from beneath her—which appears very strange to a
landsman—and this is what is called riding, in sea phrase. Well, so far we had ridden the swells very
cleverly; but presently a gigantic sea happened to take us right under the counter, and bore us with it
as it rose—up—up—as if into the sky. I would not have believed that any wave could rise so high.
And then down we came with a sweep, a slide, and a plunge, that made me feel sick and dizzy, as if I
was falling from some lofty mountain-top in a dream. But while we were up I had thrown a quick
glance around—and that one glance was all sufficient. I saw our exact position in an instant. The
Moskoe-Ström whirlpool was about a quarter of a mile dead ahead—but no more like the every-day
Moskoe-Ström, than the whirl as you now see it is like a mill-race. If I had not known where we
were, and what we had to expect, I should not have recognised the place at all. As it was, I
involuntarily closed my eyes in horror. The lids clenched themselves together as if in a spasm.
"It could not have been more than two minutes afterward until we suddenly felt the waves
subside, and were enveloped in foam. The boat made a sharp half turn to larboard, and then shot off
in its new direction like a thunderbolt. At the same moment the roaring noise of the water was
completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek—such a sound as you might imagine given out by the
waste-pipes of many thousand steam-vessels, letting off their steam all together. We were now in the
belt of surf that always surrounds the whirl; and I thought, of course, that another moment would
plunge us into the abyss—down which we could only see indistinctly on account of the amazing
velocity with which we wore borne along. The boat did not seem to sink into the water at all, but to
skim like an air-bubble upon the surface of the surge. Her starboard side was next the whirl, and on
the larboard arose the world of ocean we had left. It stood like a huge writhing wall between us and
the horizon.
"It may appear strange, but now, when we were in the very jaws of the gulf, I felt more composed
than when we were only approaching it. Having made up my mind to hope no more, I got rid of a
great deal of that terror which unmanned me at first. I suppose it was despair that strung my nerves.
"It may look like boasting—but what I tell you is truth—I began to reflect how magnificent a thing
it was to die in such a manner, and how foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as
my own individual life, in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God's power. I do believe that I
blushed with shame when this idea crossed my mind. After a little while I became possessed with the
keenest curiosity about the whirl itself. I positively felt a wish to explore its depths, even at the
sacrifice I was going to make; and my principal grief was that I should never be able to tell my old
companions on shore about the mysteries I should see. These, no doubt, were singular fancies to
occupy a man's mind in such extremity—and I have often thought since, that the revolutions of the boat
around the pool might have rendered me a little light-headed.
"There was another circumstance which tended to restore my self-possession; and this was the
cessation of the wind, which could not reach us in our present situation—for, as you saw yourself, the
belt of surf is considerably lower than the general bed of the ocean, and this latter now towered
above us, a high, black, mountainous ridge. If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can
form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by the wind and spray together. They blind, deafen,
and strangle you, and take away all power of action or reflection. But we were now, in a great
measure, rid of these annoyances—just as death-condemned felons in prison are allowed petty
indulgences, forbidden them while their doom is yet uncertain.
"How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impossible to say. We careered round and round
for perhaps an hour, flying rather than floating, getting gradually more and more into the middle of the
surge, and then nearer and nearer to its horrible inner edge. All this time I had never let go of the ringbolt. My brother was at the stern, holding on to a small empty water-cask which had been securely
lashed under the coop of the counter, and was the only thing on deck that had not been swept
overboard when the gale first took us. As we approached the brink of the pit he let go his hold upon
this, and made for the ring, from which, in the agony of his terror, he endeavored to force my hands, as
it was not large enough to afford us both a secure grasp. I never felt deeper grief than when I saw him
attempt this act—although I knew he was a madman when he did it—a raving maniac through sheer
fright. I did not care, however, to contest the point with him. I knew it could make no difference
whether either of us held on at all; so I let him have the bolt, and went astern to the cask. This there
was no great difficulty in doing; for the smack flew round steadily enough, and upon an even keel—
only swaying to and fro, with the immense sweeps and swelters of the whirl. Scarcely had I secured
myself in my new position, when we gave a wild lurch to starboard, and rushed headlong into the
abyss. I muttered a hurried prayer to God, and thought all was over.
"As I felt the sickening sweep of the descent, I had instinctively tightened my hold upon the barrel,
and closed my eyes. For some seconds I dared not open them—while I expected instant destruction,
and wondered that I was not already in my death-struggles with the water. But moment after moment
elapsed. I still lived. The sense of falling had ceased; and the motion of the vessel seemed much as it
had been before, while in the belt of foam, with the exception that she now lay more along. I took
courage, and looked once again upon the scene.
"Never shall I forget the sensations of awe, horror, and admiration with which I gazed about me.
The boat appeared to be hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel
vast in circumference, prodigious in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides might have been
mistaken for ebony, but for the bewildering rapidity with which they spun around, and for the
gleaming and ghastly radiance they shot forth, as the rays of the full moon, from that circular rift amid
the clouds which I have already described, streamed in a flood of golden glory along the black walls,
and far away down into the inmost recesses of the abyss.
"At first I was too much confused to observe anything accurately. The general burst of terrific
grandeur was all that I beheld. When I recovered myself a little, however, my gaze fell instinctively
downward. In this direction I was able to obtain an unobstructed view, from the manner in which the
smack hung on the inclined surface of the pool. She was quite upon an even keel—that is to say, her
deck lay in a plane parallel with that of the water—but this latter sloped at an angle of more than
forty-five degrees, so that we seemed to be lying upon our beam-ends. I could not help observing,
nevertheless, that I had scarcely more difficulty in maintaining my hold and footing in this situation,
than if we had been upon a dead level; and this, I suppose, was owing to the speed at which we
revolved.
"The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom of the profound gulf; but still I could
make out nothing distinctly, on account of a thick mist in which everything there was enveloped, and
over which there hung a magnificent rainbow, like that narrow and tottering bridge which Mussulmen
say is the only pathway between Time and Eternity. This mist, or spray, was no doubt occasioned by
the clashing of the great walls of the funnel, as they all met together at the bottom—but the yell that
went up to the Heavens from out of that mist, I dare not attempt to describe.
"Our first slide into the abyss itself, from the belt of foam above, had carried us a great distance
down the slope; but our farther descent was by no means proportionate. Round and round we swept—
not with any uniform movement—but in dizzying swings and jerks, that sent us sometimes only a few
hundred yards—sometimes nearly the complete circuit of the whirl. Our progress downward, at each
revolution, was slow, but very perceptible.
"Looking about me upon the wide waste of liquid ebony on which we were thus borne, I
perceived that our boat was not the only object in the embrace of the whirl. Both above and below us
were visible fragments of vessels, large masses of building timber and trunks of trees, with many
smaller articles, such as pieces of house furniture, broken boxes, barrels and staves. I have already
described the unnatural curiosity which had taken the place of my original terrors. It appeared to
grow upon me as I drew nearer and nearer to my dreadful doom. I now began to watch, with a strange
interest, the numerous things that floated in our company. I must have been delirious—for I even
sought amusement in speculating upon the relative velocities of their several descents toward the
foam below. 'This fir tree,' I found myself at one time saying, 'will certainly be the next thing that
takes the awful plunge and disappears,'—and then I was disappointed to find that the wreck of a
Dutch merchant ship overtook it and went down before. At length, after making several guesses of this
nature, and being deceived in all—this fact—the fact of my invariable miscalculation—set me upon a
train of reflection that made my limbs again tremble, and my heart beat heavily once more.
"It was not a new terror that thus affected me, but the dawn of a more exciting hope. This hope
arose partly from memory, and partly from present observation. I called to mind the great variety of
buoyant matter that strewed the coast of Lofoden, having been absorbed and then thrown forth by the
Moskoe-ström. By far the greater number of the articles were shattered in the most extraordinary
way—so chafed and roughened as to have the appearance of being stuck full of splinters—but then I
distinctly recollected that there were some of them which were not disfigured at all. Now I could not
account for this difference except by supposing that the roughened fragments were the only ones
which had been completely absorbed—that the others had entered the whirl at so late a period of the
tide, or, for some reason, had descended so slowly after entering, that they did not reach the bottom
before the turn of the flood came, or of the ebb, as the case might be. I conceived it possible, in either
instance, that they might thus be whirled up again to the level of the ocean, without undergoing the fate
of those which had been drawn in more early, or absorbed more rapidly. I made, also, three important
observations. The first was, that, as a general rule, the larger the bodies were, the more rapid their
descent—the second, that, between two masses of equal extent, the one spherical, and the other of any
other shape, the superiority in speed of descent was with the sphere—the third, that, between two
masses of equal size, the one cylindrical, and the other of any other shape, the cylinder was absorbed
the more slowly. Since my escape, I have had several conversations on this subject with an old
school-master of the district; and it was from him that I learned the use of the words 'cylinder' and
'sphere.' He explained to me—although I have forgotten the explanation—how what I observed was,
in fact, the natural consequence of the forms of the floating fragments—and showed me how it
happened that a cylinder, swimming in a vortex, offered more resistance to its suction, and was drawn
in with greater difficulty than an equally bulky body, of any form whatever.
"There was one startling circumstance which went a great way in enforcing these observations,
and rendering me anxious to turn them to account, and this was that, at every revolution, we passed
something like a barrel, or else the yard or the mast of a vessel, while many of these things, which had
been on our level when I first opened my eyes upon the wonders of the whirlpool, were now high up
above us, and seemed to have moved but little from their original station.
"I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash myself securely to the water cask upon which
I now held, to cut it loose from the counter, and to throw myself with it into the water. I attracted my
brother's attention by signs, pointed to the floating barrels that came near us, and did everything in my
power to make him understand what I was about to do. I thought at length that he comprehended my
design—but, whether this was the case or not, he shook his head despairingly, and refused to move
from his station by the ring-bolt. It was impossible to reach him; the emergency admitted of no delay;
and so, with a bitter struggle, I resigned him to his fate, fastened myself to the cask by means of the
lashings which secured it to the counter, and precipitated myself with it into the sea, without another
moment's hesitation.
"The result was precisely what I had hoped it might be. As it is myself who now tell you this tale
—as you see that I did escape—and as you are already in possession of the mode in which this
escape was effected, and must therefore anticipate all that I have farther to say—I will bring my story
quickly to conclusion. It might have been an hour, or thereabout, after my quitting the smack, when,
having descended to a vast distance beneath me, it made three or four wild gyrations in rapid
succession, and, bearing my loved brother with it, plunged headlong, at once and forever, into the
chaos of foam below. The barrel to which I was attached sunk very little farther than half the distance
between the bottom of the gulf and the spot at which I leaped overboard, before a great change took
place in the character of the whirlpool. The slope of the sides of the vast funnel became momently
less and less steep. The gyrations of the whirl grew, gradually, less and less violent. By degrees, the
froth and the rainbow disappeared, and the bottom of the gulf seemed slowly to uprise. The sky was
clear, the winds had gone down, and the full moon was setting radiantly in the west, when I found
myself on the surface of the ocean, in full view of the shores of Lofoden, and above the spot where the
pool of the Moskoe-ström had been. It was the hour of the slack—but the sea still heaved in
mountainous waves from the effects of the hurricane. I was borne violently into the channel of the
Ström, and in a few minutes was hurried down the coast into the 'grounds' of the fishermen. A boat
picked me up—exhausted from fatigue—and (now that the danger was removed) speechless from the
memory of its horror. Those who drew me on board were my old mates and daily companions—but
they knew me no more than they would have known a traveller from the spirit-land. My hair which
had been raven-black the day before, was as white as you see it now. They say too that the whole
expression of my countenance had changed. I told them my story—they did not believe it. I now tell it
to you—and I can scarcely expect you to put more faith in it than did the merry fishermen of Lofoden."
VON KEMPELEN AND HIS DISCOVERY
AFTER THE very minute and elaborate paper by Arago, to say nothing of the summary in
'Silliman's Journal,' with the detailed statement just published by Lieutenant Maury, it will not be
supposed, of course, that in offering a few hurried remarks in reference to Von Kempelen's discovery,
I have any design to look at the subject in a scientific point of view. My object is simply, in the first
place, to say a few words of Von Kempelen himself (with whom, some years ago, I had the honor of a
slight personal acquaintance), since every thing which concerns him must necessarily, at this moment,
be of interest; and, in the second place, to look in a general way, and speculatively, at the results of
the discovery.
It may be as well, however, to premise the cursory observations which I have to offer, by denying,
very decidedly, what seems to be a general impression (gleaned, as usual in a case of this kind, from
the newspapers), viz.: that this discovery, astounding as it unquestionably is, is unanticipated.
By reference to the 'Diary of Sir Humphrey Davy' (Cottle and Munroe, London, pp. 150), it will
be seen at pp. 53 and 82, that this illustrious chemist had not only conceived the idea now in question,
but had actually made no inconsiderable progress, experimentally, in the very identical analysis now
so triumphantly brought to an issue by Von Kempelen, who although he makes not the slightest allusion
to it, is, without doubt (I say it unhesitatingly, and can prove it, if required), indebted to the 'Diary' for
at least the first hint of his own undertaking.
The paragraph from the 'Courier and Enquirer,' which is now going the rounds of the press, and
which purports to claim the invention for a Mr. Kissam, of Brunswick, Maine, appears to me, I
confess, a little apocryphal, for several reasons; although there is nothing either impossible or very
improbable in the statement made. I need not go into details. My opinion of the paragraph is founded
principally upon its manner. It does not look true. Persons who are narrating facts, are seldom so
particular as Mr. Kissam seems to be, about day and date and precise location. Besides, if Mr.
Kissam actually did come upon the discovery he says he did, at the period designated—nearly eight
years ago—how happens it that he took no steps, on the instant, to reap the immense benefits which
the merest bumpkin must have known would have resulted to him individually, if not to the world at
large, from the discovery? It seems to me quite incredible that any man of common understanding
could have discovered what Mr. Kissam says he did, and yet have subsequently acted so like a baby
—so like an owl—as Mr. Kissam admits that he did. By-the-way, who is Mr. Kissam? and is not the
whole paragraph in the 'Courier and Enquirer' a fabrication got up to 'make a talk'? It must be
confessed that it has an amazingly moon-hoaxy-air. Very little dependence is to be placed upon it, in
my humble opinion; and if I were not well aware, from experience, how very easily men of science
are mystified, on points out of their usual range of inquiry, I should be profoundly astonished at
finding so eminent a chemist as Professor Draper, discussing Mr. Kissam's (or is it Mr. Quizzem's?)
pretensions to the discovery, in so serious a tone.
But to return to the 'Diary' of Sir Humphrey Davy. This pamphlet was not designed for the public
eye, even upon the decease of the writer, as any person at all conversant with authorship may satisfy
himself at once by the slightest inspection of the style. At page 13, for example, near the middle, we
read, in reference to his researches about the protoxide of azote: 'In less than half a minute the
respiration being continued, diminished gradually and were succeeded by analogous to gentle
pressure on all the muscles.' That the respiration was not 'diminished,' is not only clear by the
subsequent context, but by the use of the plural, 'were.' The sentence, no doubt, was thus intended: 'In
less than half a minute, the respiration [being continued, these feelings] diminished gradually, and
were succeeded by [a sensation] analogous to gentle pressure on all the muscles.' A hundred similar
instances go to show that the MS. so inconsiderately published, was merely a rough note-book, meant
only for the writer's own eye, but an inspection of the pamphlet will convince almost any thinking
person of the truth of my suggestion. The fact is, Sir Humphrey Davy was about the last man in the
world to commit himself on scientific topics. Not only had he a more than ordinary dislike to
quackery, but he was morbidly afraid of appearing empirical; so that, however fully he might have
been convinced that he was on the right track in the matter now in question, he would never have
spoken out, until he had every thing ready for the most practical demonstration. I verily believe that
his last moments would have been rendered wretched, could he have suspected that his wishes in
regard to burning this 'Diary' (full of crude speculations) would have been unattended to; as, it seems,
they were. I say 'his wishes,' for that he meant to include this note-book among the miscellaneous
papers directed 'to be burnt,' I think there can be no manner of doubt. Whether it escaped the flames
by good fortune or by bad, yet remains to be seen. That the passages quoted above, with the other
similar ones referred to, gave Von Kempelen the hint, I do not in the slightest degree question; but I
repeat, it yet remains to be seen whether this momentous discovery itself (momentous under any
circumstances) will be of service or disservice to mankind at large. That Von Kempelen and his
immediate friends will reap a rich harvest, it would be folly to doubt for a moment. They will
scarcely be so weak as not to 'realize,' in time, by large purchases of houses and land, with other
property of intrinsic value.
In the brief account of Von Kempelen which appeared in the 'Home Journal,' and has since been
extensively copied, several misapprehensions of the German original seem to have been made by the
translator, who professes to have taken the passage from a late number of the Presburg 'Schnellpost.'
'Viele' has evidently been misconceived (as it often is), and what the translator renders by 'sorrows,'
is probably 'lieden,' which, in its true version, 'sufferings,' would give a totally different complexion
to the whole account; but, of course, much of this is merely guess, on my part.
Von Kempelen, however, is by no means 'a misanthrope,' in appearance, at least, whatever he may
be in fact. My acquaintance with him was casual altogether; and I am scarcely warranted in saying
that I know him at all; but to have seen and conversed with a man of so prodigious a notoriety as he
has attained, or will attain in a few days, is not a small matter, as times go.
'The Literary World' speaks of him, confidently, as a native of Presburg (misled, perhaps, by the
account in 'The Home Journal') but I am pleased in being able to state positively, since I have it from
his own lips, that he was born in Utica, in the State of New York, although both his parents, I believe,
are of Presburg descent. The family is connected, in some way, with Maelzel, of Automaton-chessplayer memory. In person, he is short and stout, with large, fat, blue eyes, sandy hair and whiskers, a
wide but pleasing mouth, fine teeth, and I think a Roman nose. There is some defect in one of his feet.
His address is frank, and his whole manner noticeable for bonhomie. Altogether, he looks, speaks,
and acts as little like 'a misanthrope' as any man I ever saw. We were fellow-sojourners for a week
about six years ago, at Earl's Hotel, in Providence, Rhode Island; and I presume that I conversed with
him, at various times, for some three or four hours altogether. His principal topics were those of the
day, and nothing that fell from him led me to suspect his scientific attainments. He left the hotel before
me, intending to go to New York, and thence to Bremen; it was in the latter city that his great
discovery was first made public; or, rather, it was there that he was first suspected of having made it.
This is about all that I personally know of the now immortal Von Kempelen; but I have thought that
even these few details would have interest for the public.
There can be little question that most of the marvellous rumors afloat about this affair are pure
inventions, entitled to about as much credit as the story of Aladdin's lamp; and yet, in a case of this
kind, as in the case of the discoveries in California, it is clear that the truth may be stranger than
fiction. The following anecdote, at least, is so well authenticated, that we may receive it implicitly.
Von Kempelen had never been even tolerably well off during his residence at Bremen; and often,
it was well known, he had been put to extreme shifts in order to raise trifling sums. When the great
excitement occurred about the forgery on the house of Gutsmuth & Co., suspicion was directed
toward Von Kempelen, on account of his having purchased a considerable property in Gasperitch
Lane, and his refusing, when questioned, to explain how he became possessed of the purchase money.
He was at length arrested, but nothing decisive appearing against him, was in the end set at liberty.
The police, however, kept a strict watch upon his movements, and thus discovered that he left home
frequently, taking always the same road, and invariably giving his watchers the slip in the
neighborhood of that labyrinth of narrow and crooked passages known by the flash name of the
'Dondergat.' Finally, by dint of great perseverance, they traced him to a garret in an old house of
seven stories, in an alley called Flatzplatz,—and, coming upon him suddenly, found him, as they
imagined, in the midst of his counterfeiting operations. His agitation is represented as so excessive
that the officers had not the slightest doubt of his guilt. After hand-cuffing him, they searched his
room, or rather rooms, for it appears he occupied all the mansarde.
Opening into the garret where they caught him, was a closet, ten feet by eight, fitted up with some
chemical apparatus, of which the object has not yet been ascertained. In one corner of the closet was
a very small furnace, with a glowing fire in it, and on the fire a kind of duplicate crucible—two
crucibles connected by a tube. One of these crucibles was nearly full of lead in a state of fusion, but
not reaching up to the aperture of the tube, which was close to the brim. The other crucible had some
liquid in it, which, as the officers entered, seemed to be furiously dissipating in vapor. They relate
that, on finding himself taken, Kempelen seized the crucibles with both hands (which were encased in
gloves that afterwards turned out to be asbestic), and threw the contents on the tiled floor. It was now
that they hand-cuffed him; and before proceeding to ransack the premises they searched his person,
but nothing unusual was found about him, excepting a paper parcel, in his coat-pocket, containing
what was afterward ascertained to be a mixture of antimony and some unknown substance, in nearly,
but not quite, equal proportions. All attempts at analyzing the unknown substance have, so far, failed,
but that it will ultimately be analyzed, is not to be doubted.
Passing out of the closet with their prisoner, the officers went through a sort of ante-chamber, in
which nothing material was found, to the chemist's sleeping-room. They here rummaged some
drawers and boxes, but discovered only a few papers, of no importance, and some good coin, silver
and gold. At length, looking under the bed, they saw a large, common hair trunk, without hinges, hasp,
or lock, and with the top lying carelessly across the bottom portion. Upon attempting to draw this
trunk out from under the bed, they found that, with their united strength (there were three of them, all
powerful men), they 'could not stir it one inch.' Much astonished at this, one of them crawled under
the bed, and looking into the trunk, said:
'No wonder we couldn't move it—why it's full to the brim of old bits of brass!'
Putting his feet, now, against the wall so as to get a good purchase, and pushing with all his force,
while his companions pulled with all theirs, the trunk, with much difficulty, was slid out from under
the bed, and its contents examined. The supposed brass with which it was filled was all in small,
smooth pieces, varying from the size of a pea to that of a dollar; but the pieces were irregular in
shape, although more or less flat-looking, upon the whole, 'very much as lead looks when thrown
upon the ground in a molten state, and there suffered to grow cool.' Now, not one of these officers for
a moment suspected this metal to be any thing but brass. The idea of its being gold never entered their
brains, of course; how could such a wild fancy have entered it? And their astonishment may be well
conceived, when the next day it became known, all over Bremen, that the 'lot of brass' which they had
carted so contemptuously to the police office, without putting themselves to the trouble of pocketing
the smallest scrap, was not only gold—real gold—but gold far finer than any employed in coinagegold, in fact, absolutely pure, virgin, without the slightest appreciable alloy.
I need not go over the details of Von Kempelen's confession (as far as it went) and release, for
these are familiar to the public. That he has actually realized, in spirit and in effect, if not to the letter,
the old chimaera of the philosopher's stone, no sane person is at liberty to doubt. The opinions of
Arago are, of course, entitled to the greatest consideration; but he is by no means infallible; and what
he says of bismuth, in his report to the Academy, must be taken cum grano salis. The simple truth is,
that up to this period all analysis has failed; and until Von Kempelen chooses to let us have the key to
his own published enigma, it is more than probable that the matter will remain, for years, in statu quo.
All that as yet can fairly be said to be known is, that 'Pure gold can be made at will, and very readily
from lead in connection with certain other substances, in kind and in proportions, unknown.'
Speculation, of course, is busy as to the immediate and ultimate results of this discovery—a
discovery which few thinking persons will hesitate in referring to an increased interest in the matter
of gold generally, by the late developments in California; and this reflection brings us inevitably to
another—the exceeding inopportuneness of Von Kempelen's analysis. If many were prevented from
adventuring to California, by the mere apprehension that gold would so materially diminish in value,
on account of its plentifulness in the mines there, as to render the speculation of going so far in search
of it a doubtful one—what impression will be wrought now, upon the minds of those about to
emigrate, and especially upon the minds of those actually in the mineral region, by the announcement
of this astounding discovery of Von Kempelen? a discovery which declares, in so many words, that
beyond its intrinsic worth for manufacturing purposes (whatever that worth may be), gold now is, or
at least soon will be (for it cannot be supposed that Von Kempelen can long retain his secret), of no
greater value than lead, and of far inferior value to silver. It is, indeed, exceedingly difficult to
speculate prospectively upon the consequences of the discovery, but one thing may be positively
maintained—that the announcement of the discovery six months ago would have had material
influence in regard to the settlement of California.
In Europe, as yet, the most noticeable results have been a rise of two hundred per cent. in the
price of lead, and nearly twenty-five per cent. that of silver.
MESMERIC REVELATION
WHATEVER doubt may still envelop the rationale of mesmerism, its startling facts are now
almost universally admitted. Of these latter, those who doubt, are your mere doubters by profession—
an unprofitable and disreputable tribe. There can be no more absolute waste of time than the attempt
to prove, at the present day, that man, by mere exercise of will, can so impress his fellow, as to cast
him into an abnormal condition, of which the phenomena resemble very closely those of death, or at
least resemble them more nearly than they do the phenomena of any other normal condition within our
cognizance; that, while in this state, the person so impressed employs only with effort, and then
feebly, the external organs of sense, yet perceives, with keenly refined perception, and through
channels supposed unknown, matters beyond the scope of the physical organs; that, moreover, his
intellectual faculties are wonderfully exalted and invigorated; that his sympathies with the person so
impressing him are profound; and, finally, that his susceptibility to the impression increases with its
frequency, while, in the same proportion, the peculiar phenomena elicited are more extended and
more pronounced.
I say that these—which are the laws of mesmerism in its general features—it would be
supererogation to demonstrate; nor shall I inflict upon my readers so needless a demonstration; today. My purpose at present is a very different one indeed. I am impelled, even in the teeth of a world
of prejudice, to detail without comment the very remarkable substance of a colloquy, occurring
between a sleep-waker and myself.
I had been long in the habit of mesmerizing the person in question, (Mr. Vankirk,) and the usual
acute susceptibility and exaltation of the mesmeric perception had supervened. For many months he
had been laboring under confirmed phthisis, the more distressing effects of which had been relieved
by my manipulations; and on the night of Wednesday, the fifteenth instant, I was summoned to his
bedside.
The invalid was suffering with acute pain in the region of the heart, and breathed with great
difficulty, having all the ordinary symptoms of asthma. In spasms such as these he had usually found
relief from the application of mustard to the nervous centres, but to-night this had been attempted in
vain.
As I entered his room he greeted me with a cheerful smile, and although evidently in much bodily
pain, appeared to be, mentally, quite at ease.
"I sent for you to-night," he said, "not so much to administer to my bodily ailment, as to satisfy me
concerning certain psychal impressions which, of late, have occasioned me much anxiety and
surprise. I need not tell you how sceptical I have hitherto been on the topic of the soul's immortality. I
cannot deny that there has always existed, as if in that very soul which I have been denying, a vague
half-sentiment of its own existence. But this half-sentiment at no time amounted to conviction. With it
my reason had nothing to do. All attempts at logical inquiry resulted, indeed, in leaving me more
sceptical than before. I had been advised to study Cousin. I studied him in his own works as well as
in those of his European and American echoes. The 'Charles Elwood' of Mr. Brownson, for example,
was placed in my hands. I read it with profound attention. Throughout I found it logical, but the
portions which were not merely logical were unhappily the initial arguments of the disbelieving hero
of the book. In his summing up it seemed evident to me that the reasoner had not even succeeded in
convincing himself. His end had plainly forgotten his beginning, like the government of Trinculo. In
short, I was not long in perceiving that if man is to be intellectually convinced of his own immortality,
he will never be so convinced by the mere abstractions which have been so long the fashion of the
moralists of England, of France, and of Germany. Abstractions may amuse and exercise, but take no
hold on the mind. Here upon earth, at least, philosophy, I am persuaded, will always in vain call upon
us to look upon qualities as things. The will may assent—the soul—the intellect, never.
"I repeat, then, that I only half felt, and never intellectually believed. But latterly there has been a
certain deepening of the feeling, until it has come so nearly to resemble the acquiescence of reason,
that I find it difficult to distinguish between the two. I am enabled, too, plainly to trace this effect to
the mesmeric influence. I cannot better explain my meaning than by the hypothesis that the mesmeric
exaltation enables me to perceive a train of ratiocination which, in my abnormal existence, convinces,
but which, in full accordance with the mesmeric phenomena, does not extend, except through its
effect, into my normal condition. In sleep-waking, the reasoning and its conclusion—the cause and its
effect—are present together. In my natural state, the cause vanishing, the effect only, and perhaps only
partially, remains.
"These considerations have led me to think that some good results might ensue from a series of
well-directed questions propounded to me while mesmerized. You have often observed the profound
self-cognizance evinced by the sleep-waker—the extensive knowledge he displays upon all points
relating to the mesmeric condition itself; and from this self-cognizance may be deduced hints for the
proper conduct of a catechism."
I consented of course to make this experiment. A few passes threw Mr. Vankirk into the mesmeric
sleep. His breathing became immediately more easy, and he seemed to suffer no physical uneasiness.
The following conversation then ensued:—V. in the dialogue representing the patient, and P. myself.
P. Are you asleep?
V. Yes—no I would rather sleep more soundly.
P. [After a few more passes.] Do you sleep now?
V. Yes.
P. How do you think your present illness will result?
V. [After a long hesitation and speaking as if with effort.] I must die.
P. Does the idea of death afflict you?
V. [Very quickly.] No—no!
P. Are you pleased with the prospect?
V. If I were awake I should like to die, but now it is no matter. The mesmeric condition is so near
death as to content me.
P. I wish you would explain yourself, Mr. Vankirk.
V. I am willing to do so, but it requires more effort than I feel able to make. You do not question
me properly.
P. What then shall I ask?
V. You must begin at the beginning.
P. The beginning! but where is the beginning?
V. You know that the beginning is GOD. [This was said in a low, fluctuating tone, and with every
sign of the most profound veneration.]
P. What then is God?
V. [Hesitating for many minutes.] I cannot tell.
P. Is not God spirit?
V. While I was awake I knew what you meant by "spirit," but now it seems only a word—such for
instance as truth, beauty—a quality, I mean.
P. Is not God immaterial?
V. There is no immateriality—it is a mere word. That which is not matter, is not at all—unless
qualities are things.
P. Is God, then, material?
V. No. [This reply startled me very much.]
P. What then is he?
V. [After a long pause, and mutteringly.] I see—but it is a thing difficult to tell. [Another long
pause.] He is not spirit, for he exists. Nor is he matter, as you understand it. But there are gradations
of matter of which man knows nothing; the grosser impelling the finer, the finer pervading the grosser.
The atmosphere, for example, impels the electric principle, while the electric principle permeates the
atmosphere. These gradations of matter increase in rarity or fineness, until we arrive at a matter
unparticled—without particles—indivisible—one and here the law of impulsion and permeation is
modified. The ultimate, or unparticled matter, not only permeates all things but impels all things—and
thus is all things within itself. This matter is God. What men attempt to embody in the word "thought,"
is this matter in motion.
P. The metaphysicians maintain that all action is reducible to motion and thinking, and that the
latter is the origin of the former.
V. Yes; and I now see the confusion of idea. Motion is the action of mind—not of thinking. The
unparticled matter, or God, in quiescence, is (as nearly as we can conceive it) what men call mind.
And the power of self-movement (equivalent in effect to human volition) is, in the unparticled matter,
the result of its unity and omniprevalence; how I know not, and now clearly see that I shall never
know. But the unparticled matter, set in motion by a law, or quality, existing within itself, is thinking.
P. Can you give me no more precise idea of what you term the unparticled matter?
V. The matters of which man is cognizant, escape the senses in gradation. We have, for example, a
metal, a piece of wood, a drop of water, the atmosphere, a gas, caloric, electricity, the luminiferous
ether. Now we call all these things matter, and embrace all matter in one general definition; but in
spite of this, there can be no two ideas more essentially distinct than that which we attach to a metal,
and that which we attach to the luminiferous ether. When we reach the latter, we feel an almost
irresistible inclination to class it with spirit, or with nihility. The only consideration which restrains
us is our conception of its atomic constitution; and here, even, we have to seek aid from our notion of
an atom, as something possessing in infinite minuteness, solidity, palpability, weight. Destroy the idea
of the atomic constitution and we should no longer be able to regard the ether as an entity, or at least
as matter. For want of a better word we might term it spirit. Take, now, a step beyond the luminiferous
ether—conceive a matter as much more rare than the ether, as this ether is more rare than the metal,
and we arrive at once (in spite of all the school dogmas) at a unique mass—an unparticled matter. For
although we may admit infinite littleness in the atoms themselves, the infinitude of littleness in the
spaces between them is an absurdity. There will be a point—there will be a degree of rarity, at
which, if the atoms are sufficiently numerous, the interspaces must vanish, and the mass absolutely
coalesce. But the consideration of the atomic constitution being now taken away, the nature of the
mass inevitably glides into what we conceive of spirit. It is clear, however, that it is as fully matter as
before. The truth is, it is impossible to conceive spirit, since it is impossible to imagine what is not.
When we flatter ourselves that we have formed its conception, we have merely deceived our
understanding by the consideration of infinitely rarified matter.
P. There seems to me an insurmountable objection to the idea of absolute coalescence;—and that
is the very slight resistance experienced by the heavenly bodies in their revolutions through space—a
resistance now ascertained, it is true, to exist in some degree, but which is, nevertheless, so slight as
to have been quite overlooked by the sagacity even of Newton. We know that the resistance of bodies
is, chiefly, in proportion to their density. Absolute coalescence is absolute density. Where there are
no interspaces, there can be no yielding. An ether, absolutely dense, would put an infinitely more
effectual stop to the progress of a star than would an ether of adamant or of iron.
V. Your objection is answered with an ease which is nearly in the ratio of its apparent
unanswerability.—As regards the progress of the star, it can make no difference whether the star
passes through the ether or the ether through it. There is no astronomical error more unaccountable
than that which reconciles the known retardation of the comets with the idea of their passage through
an ether: for, however rare this ether be supposed, it would put a stop to all sidereal revolution in a
very far briefer period than has been admitted by those astronomers who have endeavored to slur
over a point which they found it impossible to comprehend. The retardation actually experienced is,
on the other hand, about that which might be expected from the friction of the ether in the
instantaneous passage through the orb. In the one case, the retarding force is momentary and complete
within itself—in the other it is endlessly accumulative.
P. But in all this—in this identification of mere matter with God—is there nothing of irreverence?
[I was forced to repeat this question before the sleep-waker fully comprehended my meaning.]
V. Can you say why matter should be less reverenced than mind? But you forget that the matter of
which I speak is, in all respects, the very "mind" or "spirit" of the schools, so far as regards its high
capacities, and is, moreover, the "matter" of these schools at the same time. God, with all the powers
attributed to spirit, is but the perfection of matter.
P. You assert, then, that the unparticled matter, in motion, is thought?
V. In general, this motion is the universal thought of the universal mind. This thought creates. All
created things are but the thoughts of God.
P. You say, "in general."
V. Yes. The universal mind is God. For new individualities, matter is necessary.
P. But you now speak of "mind" and "matter" as do the metaphysicians.
V. Yes—to avoid confusion. When I say "mind," I mean the unparticled or ultimate matter; by
"matter," I intend all else.
P. You were saying that "for new individualities matter is necessary."
V. Yes; for mind, existing unincorporate, is merely God. To create individual, thinking beings, it
was necessary to incarnate portions of the divine mind. Thus man is individualized. Divested of
corporate investiture, he were God. Now, the particular motion of the incarnated portions of the
unparticled matter is the thought of man; as the motion of the whole is that of God.
P. You say that divested of the body man will be God?
V. [After much hesitation.] I could not have said this; it is an absurdity.
P. [Referring to my notes.] You did say that "divested of corporate investiture man were God."
V. And this is true. Man thus divested would be God—would be unindividualized. But he can
never be thus divested—at least never will be—else we must imagine an action of God returning
upon itself—a purposeless and futile action. Man is a creature. Creatures are thoughts of God. It is the
nature of thought to be irrevocable.
P. I do not comprehend. You say that man will never put off the body?
V. I say that he will never be bodiless.
P. Explain.
V. There are two bodies—the rudimental and the complete; corresponding with the two conditions
of the worm and the butterfly. What we call "death," is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present
incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The
ultimate life is the full design.
P. But of the worm's metamorphosis we are palpably cognizant.
V. We, certainly—but not the worm. The matter of which our rudimental body is composed, is
within the ken of the organs of that body; or, more distinctly, our rudimental organs are adapted to the
matter of which is formed the rudimental body; but not to that of which the ultimate is composed. The
ultimate body thus escapes our rudimental senses, and we perceive only the shell which falls, in
decaying, from the inner form; not that inner form itself; but this inner form, as well as the shell, is
appreciable by those who have already acquired the ultimate life.
P. You have often said that the mesmeric state very nearly resembles death. How is this?
V. When I say that it resembles death, I mean that it resembles the ultimate life; for when I am
entranced the senses of my rudimental life are in abeyance, and I perceive external things directly,
without organs, through a medium which I shall employ in the ultimate, unorganized life.
P. Unorganized?
V. Yes; organs are contrivances by which the individual is brought into sensible relation with
particular classes and forms of matter, to the exclusion of other classes and forms. The organs of man
are adapted to his rudimental condition, and to that only; his ultimate condition, being unorganized, is
of unlimited comprehension in all points but one—the nature of the volition of God—that is to say, the
motion of the unparticled matter. You will have a distinct idea of the ultimate body by conceiving it to
be entire brain. This it is not; but a conception of this nature will bring you near a comprehension of
what it is. A luminous body imparts vibration to the luminiferous ether. The vibrations generate
similar ones within the retina; these again communicate similar ones to the optic nerve. The nerve
conveys similar ones to the brain; the brain, also, similar ones to the unparticled matter which
permeates it. The motion of this latter is thought, of which perception is the first undulation. This is
the mode by which the mind of the rudimental life communicates with the external world; and this
external world is, to the rudimental life, limited, through the idiosyncrasy of its organs. But in the
ultimate, unorganized life, the external world reaches the whole body, (which is of a substance having
affinity to brain, as I have said,) with no other intervention than that of an infinitely rarer ether than
even the luminiferous; and to this ether—in unison with it—the whole body vibrates, setting in motion
the unparticled matter which permeates it. It is to the absence of idiosyncratic organs, therefore, that
we must attribute the nearly unlimited perception of the ultimate life. To rudimental beings, organs are
the cages necessary to confine them until fledged.
P. You speak of rudimental "beings." Are there other rudimental thinking beings than man?
V. The multitudinous conglomeration of rare matter into nebulæ, planets, suns, and other bodies
which are neither nebulæ, suns, nor planets, is for the sole purpose of supplying pabulum for the
idiosyncrasy of the organs of an infinity of rudimental beings. But for the necessity of the rudimental,
prior to the ultimate life, there would have been no bodies such as these. Each of these is tenanted by
a distinct variety of organic, rudimental, thinking creatures. In all, the organs vary with the features of
the place tenanted. At death, or metamorphosis, these creatures, enjoying the ultimate life—
immortality—and cognizant of all secrets but the one, act all things and pass everywhere by mere
volition:—indwelling, not the stars, which to us seem the sole palpabilities, and for the
accommodation of which we blindly deem space created—but that SPACE itself—that infinity of
which the truly substantive vastness swallows up the star-shadows—blotting them out as non-entities
from the perception of the angels.
P. You say that "but for the necessity of the rudimental life" there would have been no stars. But
why this necessity?
V. In the inorganic life, as well as in the inorganic matter generally, there is nothing to impede the
action of one simple unique law—the Divine Volition. With the view of producing impediment, the
organic life and matter, (complex, substantial, and law-encumbered,) were contrived.
P. But again—why need this impediment have been produced?
V. The result of law inviolate is perfection—right—negative happiness. The result of law violate
is imperfection, wrong, positive pain. Through the impediments afforded by the number, complexity,
and substantiality of the laws of organic life and matter, the violation of law is rendered, to a certain
extent, practicable. Thus pain, which in the inorganic life is impossible, is possible in the organic.
P. But to what good end is pain thus rendered possible?
V. All things are either good or bad by comparison. A sufficient analysis will show that pleasure,
in all cases, is but the contrast of pain. Positive pleasure is a mere idea. To be happy at any one point
we must have suffered at the same. Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed. But
it has been shown that, in the inorganic life, pain cannot be thus the necessity for the organic. The pain
of the primitive life of Earth, is the sole basis of the bliss of the ultimate life in Heaven.
P. Still, there is one of your expressions which I find it impossible to comprehend—"the truly
substantive vastness of infinity."
V. This, probably, is because you have no sufficiently generic conception of the term "substance"
itself. We must not regard it as a quality, but as a sentiment:—it is the perception, in thinking beings,
of the adaptation of matter to their organization. There are many things on the Earth, which would be
nihility to the inhabitants of Venus—many things visible and tangible in Venus, which we could not be
brought to appreciate as existing at all. But to the inorganic beings—to the angels—the whole of the
unparticled matter is substance—that is to say, the whole of what we term "space" is to them the truest
substantiality;—the stars, meantime, through what we consider their materiality, escaping the angelic
sense, just in proportion as the unparticled matter, through what we consider its immateriality, eludes
the organic.
As the sleep-waker pronounced these latter words, in a feeble tone, I observed on his
countenance a singular expression, which somewhat alarmed me, and induced me to awake him at
once. No sooner had I done this, than, with a bright smile irradiating all his features, he fell back upon
his pillow and expired. I noticed that in less than a minute afterward his corpse had all the stern
rigidity of stone. His brow was of the coldness of ice. Thus, ordinarily, should it have appeared, only
after long pressure from Azrael's hand. Had the sleep-waker, indeed, during the latter portion of his
discourse, been addressing me from out the region of the shadows?
THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR
OF course I shall not pretend to consider it any matter for wonder, that the extraordinary case of
M. Valdemar has excited discussion. It would have been a miracle had it not-especially under the
circumstances. Through the desire of all parties concerned, to keep the affair from the public, at least
for the present, or until we had farther opportunities for investigation—through our endeavors to
effect this—a garbled or exaggerated account made its way into society, and became the source of
many unpleasant misrepresentations, and, very naturally, of a great deal of disbelief.
It is now rendered necessary that I give the facts—as far as I comprehend them myself. They are,
succinctly, these:
My attention, for the last three years, had been repeatedly drawn to the subject of Mesmerism;
and, about nine months ago it occurred to me, quite suddenly, that in the series of experiments made
hitherto, there had been a very remarkable and most unaccountable omission:—no person had as yet
been mesmerized in articulo mortis. It remained to be seen, first, whether, in such condition, there
existed in the patient any susceptibility to the magnetic influence; secondly, whether, if any existed, it
was impaired or increased by the condition; thirdly, to what extent, or for how long a period, the
encroachments of Death might be arrested by the process. There were other points to be ascertained,
but these most excited my curiosity—the last in especial, from the immensely important character of
its consequences.
In looking around me for some subject by whose means I might test these particulars, I was
brought to think of my friend, M. Ernest Valdemar, the well-known compiler of the "Bibliotheca
Forensica," and author (under the nom de plume of Issachar Marx) of the Polish versions of
"Wallenstein" and "Gargantua." M. Valdemar, who has resided principally at Harlaem, N.Y., since the
year 1839, is (or was) particularly noticeable for the extreme spareness of his person—his lower
limbs much resembling those of John Randolph; and, also, for the whiteness of his whiskers, in
violent contrast to the blackness of his hair—the latter, in consequence, being very generally mistaken
for a wig. His temperament was markedly nervous, and rendered him a good subject for mesmeric
experiment. On two or three occasions I had put him to sleep with little difficulty, but was
disappointed in other results which his peculiar constitution had naturally led me to anticipate. His
will was at no period positively, or thoroughly, under my control, and in regard to clairvoyance, I
could accomplish with him nothing to be relied upon. I always attributed my failure at these points to
the disordered state of his health. For some months previous to my becoming acquainted with him, his
physicians had declared him in a confirmed phthisis. It was his custom, indeed, to speak calmly of his
approaching dissolution, as of a matter neither to be avoided nor regretted.
When the ideas to which I have alluded first occurred to me, it was of course very natural that I
should think of M. Valdemar. I knew the steady philosophy of the man too well to apprehend any
scruples from him; and he had no relatives in America who would be likely to interfere. I spoke to
him frankly upon the subject; and, to my surprise, his interest seemed vividly excited. I say to my
surprise, for, although he had always yielded his person freely to my experiments, he had never
before given me any tokens of sympathy with what I did. His disease was of that character which
would admit of exact calculation in respect to the epoch of its termination in death; and it was finally
arranged between us that he would send for me about twenty-four hours before the period announced
by his physicians as that of his decease.
It is now rather more than seven months since I received, from M. Valdemar himself, the
subjoined note:
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, and in fifteen minutes more I was in
the dying man's chamber. I had not seen him for ten days, and was appalled by the fearful alteration
which the brief interval had wrought in him. His face wore a leaden hue; the eyes were utterly
lustreless; and the emaciation was so extreme that the skin had been broken through by the cheekbones. His expectoration was excessive. The pulse was barely perceptible. He retained,
nevertheless, in a very remarkable manner, both his mental power and a certain degree of physical
strength. He spoke with distinctness—took some palliative medicines without aid—and, when I
entered the room, was occupied in penciling memoranda in a pocket-book. He was propped up in the
bed by pillows. Doctors D—— and F—— were in attendance.
After pressing Valdemar's hand, I took these gentlemen aside, and obtained from them a minute
account of the patient's condition. The left lung had been for eighteen months in a semi-osseous or
cartilaginous state, and was, of course, entirely useless for all purposes of vitality. The right, in its
upper portion, was also partially, if not thoroughly, ossified, while the lower region was merely a
mass of purulent tubercles, running one into another. Several extensive perforations existed; and, at
one point, permanent adhesion to the ribs had taken place. These appearances in the right lobe were
of comparatively recent date. The ossification had proceeded with very unusual rapidity; no sign of it
had been discovered a month before, and the adhesion had only been observed during the three
previous days. Independently of the phthisis, the patient was suspected of aneurism of the aorta; but
on this point the osseous symptoms rendered an exact diagnosis impossible. It was the opinion of both
physicians that M. Valdemar would die about midnight on the morrow (Sunday). It was then seven
o'clock on Saturday evening.
On quitting the invalid's bed-side to hold conversation with myself, Doctors D—— and F——
had bidden him a final farewell. It had not been their intention to return; but, at my request, they
agreed to look in upon the patient about ten the next night.
When they had gone, I spoke freely with M. Valdemar on the subject of his approaching
dissolution, as well as, more particularly, of the experiment proposed. He still professed himself
quite willing and even anxious to have it made, and urged me to commence it at once. A male and a
female nurse were in attendance; but I did not feel myself altogether at liberty to engage in a task of
this character with no more reliable witnesses than these people, in case of sudden accident, might
prove. I therefore postponed operations until about eight the next night, when the arrival of a medical
student with whom I had some acquaintance, (Mr. Theodore L—l,) relieved me from farther
embarrassment. It had been my design, originally, to wait for the physicians; but I was induced to
proceed, first, by the urgent entreaties of M. Valdemar, and secondly, by my conviction that I had not a
moment to lose, as he was evidently sinking fast.
Mr. L—l was so kind as to accede to my desire that he would take notes of all that occurred, and
it is from his memoranda that what I now have to relate is, for the most part, either condensed or
copied verbatim.
It wanted about five minutes of eight when, taking the patient's hand, I begged him to state, as
distinctly as he could, to Mr. L—l, whether he (M. Valdemar) was entirely willing that I should make
the experiment of mesmerizing him in his then condition.
He replied feebly, yet quite audibly, "Yes, I wish to be. I fear you have mesmerized"—adding
immediately afterwards, "deferred it too long."
While he spoke thus, I commenced the passes which I had already found most effectual in
subduing him. He was evidently influenced with the first lateral stroke of my hand across his
forehead; but although I exerted all my powers, no further perceptible effect was induced until some
minutes after ten o'clock, when Doctors D— and F— called, according to appointment. I explained to
them, in a few words, what I designed, and as they opposed no objection, saying that the patient was
already in the death agony, I proceeded without hesitation—exchanging, however, the lateral passes
for downward ones, and directing my gaze entirely into the right eye of the sufferer.
By this time his pulse was imperceptible and his breathing was stertorous, and at intervals of half
a minute.
This condition was nearly unaltered for a quarter of an hour. At the expiration of this period,
however, a natural although a very deep sigh escaped the bosom of the dying man, and the stertorous
breathing ceased—that is to say, its stertorousness was no longer apparent; the intervals were
undiminished. The patient's extremities were of an icy coldness.
At five minutes before eleven I perceived unequivocal signs of the mesmeric influence. The
glassy roll of the eye was changed for that expression of uneasy inward examination which is never
seen except in cases of sleep-waking, and which it is quite impossible to mistake. With a few rapid
lateral passes I made the lids quiver, as in incipient sleep, and with a few more I closed them
altogether. I was not satisfied, however, with this, but continued the manipulations vigorously, and
with the fullest exertion of the will, until I had completely stiffened the limbs of the slumberer, after
placing them in a seemingly easy position. The legs were at full length; the arms were nearly so, and
reposed on the bed at a moderate distance from the loin. The head was very slightly elevated.
When I had accomplished this, it was fully midnight, and I requested the gentlemen present to
examine M. Valdemar's condition. After a few experiments, they admitted him to be an unusually
perfect state of mesmeric trance. The curiosity of both the physicians was greatly excited. Dr. D——
resolved at once to remain with the patient all night, while Dr. F—— took leave with a promise to
return at daybreak. Mr. L—l and the nurses remained.
We left M. Valdemar entirely undisturbed until about three o'clock in the morning, when I
approached him and found him in precisely the same condition as when Dr. F—went away—that is to
say, he lay in the same position; the pulse was imperceptible; the breathing was gentle (scarcely
noticeable, unless through the application of a mirror to the lips); the eyes were closed naturally; and
the limbs were as rigid and as cold as marble. Still, the general appearance was certainly not that of
death.
As I approached M. Valdemar I made a kind of half effort to influence his right arm into pursuit of
my own, as I passed the latter gently to and fro above his person. In such experiments with this
patient, I had never perfectly succeeded before, and assuredly I had little thought of succeeding now;
but to my astonishment, his arm very readily, although feebly, followed every direction I assigned it
with mine. I determined to hazard a few words of conversation.
"M. Valdemar," I said, "are you asleep?" He made no answer, but I perceived a tremor about the
lips, and was thus induced to repeat the question, again and again. At its third repetition, his whole
frame was agitated by a very slight shivering; the eyelids unclosed themselves so far as to display a
white line of the ball; the lips moved sluggishly, and from between them, in a barely audible whisper,
issued the words:
"Yes;—asleep now. Do not wake me!—let me die so!"
I here felt the limbs and found them as rigid as ever. The right arm, as before, obeyed the direction
of my hand. I questioned the sleep-waker again:
"Do you still feel pain in the breast, M. Valdemar?"
The answer now was immediate, but even less audible than before: "No pain—I am dying."
I did not think it advisable to disturb him farther just then, and nothing more was said or done until
the arrival of Dr. F—, who came a little before sunrise, and expressed unbounded astonishment at
finding the patient still alive. After feeling the pulse and applying a mirror to the lips, he requested me
to speak to the sleep-waker again. I did so, saying:
"M. Valdemar, do you still sleep?"
As before, some minutes elapsed ere a reply was made; and during the interval the dying man
seemed to be collecting his energies to speak. At my fourth repetition of the question, he said very
faintly, almost inaudibly:
"Yes; still asleep—dying."
It was now the opinion, or rather the wish, of the physicians, that M. Valdemar should be suffered
to remain undisturbed in his present apparently tranquil condition, until death should supervene—and
this, it was generally agreed, must now take place within a few minutes. I concluded, however, to
speak to him once more, and merely repeated my previous question.
While I spoke, there came a marked change over the countenance of the sleep-waker. The eyes
rolled themselves slowly open, the pupils disappearing upwardly; the skin generally assumed a
cadaverous hue, resembling not so much parchment as white paper; and the circular hectic spots
which, hitherto, had been strongly defined in the centre of each cheek, went out at once. I use this
expression, because the suddenness of their departure put me in mind of nothing so much as the
extinguishment of a candle by a puff of the breath. The upper lip, at the same time, writhed itself away
from the teeth, which it had previously covered completely; while the lower jaw fell with an audible
jerk, leaving the mouth widely extended, and disclosing in full view the swollen and blackened
tongue. I presume that no member of the party then present had been unaccustomed to death-bed
horrors; but so hideous beyond conception was the appearance of M. Valdemar at this moment, that
there was a general shrinking back from the region of the bed.
I now feel that I have reached a point of this narrative at which every reader will be startled into
positive disbelief. It is my business, however, simply to proceed.
There was no longer the faintest sign of vitality in M. Valdemar; and concluding him to be dead,
we were consigning him to the charge of the nurses, when a strong vibratory motion was observable
in the tongue. This continued for perhaps a minute. At the expiration of this period, there issued from
the distended and motionless jaws a voice—such as it would be madness in me to attempt describing.
There are, indeed, two or three epithets which might be considered as applicable to it in part; I might
say, for example, that the sound was harsh, and broken and hollow; but the hideous whole is
indescribable, for the simple reason that no similar sounds have ever jarred upon the ear of humanity.
There were two particulars, nevertheless, which I thought then, and still think, might fairly be stated
as characteristic of the intonation—as well adapted to convey some idea of its unearthly peculiarity.
In the first place, the voice seemed to reach our ears—at least mine—from a vast distance, or from
some deep cavern within the earth. In the second place, it impressed me (I fear, indeed, that it will be
impossible to make myself comprehended) as gelatinous or glutinous matters impress the sense of
touch.
I have spoken both of "sound" and of "voice." I mean to say that the sound was one of distinct—of
even wonderfully, thrillingly distinct—syllabification. M. Valdemar spoke—obviously in reply to the
question I had propounded to him a few minutes before. I had asked him, it will be remembered, if he
still slept. He now said:
"Yes;—no;—I have been sleeping—and now—now—I am dead."
No person present even affected to deny, or attempted to repress, the unutterable, shuddering
horror which these few words, thus uttered, were so well calculated to convey. Mr. L—l (the student)
swooned. The nurses immediately left the chamber, and could not be induced to return. My own
impressions I would not pretend to render intelligible to the reader. For nearly an hour, we busied
ourselves, silently—without the utterance of a word—in endeavors to revive Mr. L—l. When he
came to himself, we addressed ourselves again to an investigation of M. Valdemar's condition.
It remained in all respects as I have last described it, with the exception that the mirror no longer
afforded evidence of respiration. An attempt to draw blood from the arm failed. I should mention, too,
that this limb was no farther subject to my will. I endeavored in vain to make it follow the direction
of my hand. The only real indication, indeed, of the mesmeric influence, was now found in the
vibratory movement of the tongue, whenever I addressed M. Valdemar a question. He seemed to be
making an effort to reply, but had no longer sufficient volition. To queries put to him by any other
person than myself he seemed utterly insensible—although I endeavored to place each member of the
company in mesmeric rapport with him. I believe that I have now related all that is necessary to an
understanding of the sleep-waker's state at this epoch. Other nurses were procured; and at ten o'clock
I left the house in company with the two physicians and Mr. L—l.
In the afternoon we all called again to see the patient. His condition remained precisely the same.
We had now some discussion as to the propriety and feasibility of awakening him; but we had little
difficulty in agreeing that no good purpose would be served by so doing. It was evident that, so far,
death (or what is usually termed death) had been arrested by the mesmeric process. It seemed clear to
us all that to awaken M. Valdemar would be merely to insure his instant, or at least his speedy
dissolution.
From this period until the close of last week—an interval of nearly seven months—we continued
to make daily calls at M. Valdemar's house, accompanied, now and then, by medical and other
friends. All this time the sleeper-waker remained exactly as I have last described him. The nurses'
attentions were continual.
It was on Friday last that we finally resolved to make the experiment of awakening or attempting
to awaken him; and it is the (perhaps) unfortunate result of this latter experiment which has given rise
to so much discussion in private circles—to so much of what I cannot help thinking unwarranted
popular feeling.
For the purpose of relieving M. Valdemar from the mesmeric trance, I made use of the customary
passes. These, for a time, were unsuccessful. The first indication of revival was afforded by a partial
descent of the iris. It was observed, as especially remarkable, that this lowering of the pupil was
accompanied by the profuse out-flowing of a yellowish ichor (from beneath the lids) of a pungent and
highly offensive odor.
It was now suggested that I should attempt to influence the patient's arm, as heretofore. I made the
attempt and failed. Dr. F—then intimated a desire to have me put a question. I did so, as follows:
"M. Valdemar, can you explain to us what are your feelings or wishes now?"
There was an instant return of the hectic circles on the cheeks; the tongue quivered, or rather
rolled violently in the mouth (although the jaws and lips remained rigid as before;) and at length the
same hideous voice which I have already described, broke forth:
"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 thoroughly unnerved, and for an instant remained undecided what to do. At first I made an
endeavor to re-compose the patient; but, failing in this through total abeyance of the will, I retraced
my steps and as earnestly struggled to awaken him. In this attempt I soon saw that I should be
successful—or at least I soon fancied that my success would be complete—and I am sure that all in
the room were prepared to see the patient awaken.
For what really occurred, however, it is quite impossible that any human being could have been
prepared.
As I rapidly made the mesmeric passes, amid ejaculations of "dead! dead!" absolutely bursting
from the tongue and not from the lips of the sufferer, his whole frame at once—within the space of a
single minute, or even less, shrunk—crumbled—absolutely rotted away beneath my hands. Upon the
bed, before that whole company, there lay a nearly liquid mass of loathsome—of detestable putridity.
THE BLACK CAT.
FOR the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit
belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence.
Yet, mad am I not—and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would
unburthen my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and
without comment, a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events have
terrified—have tortured—have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they
have presented little but Horror—to many they will seem less terrible than barroques. Hereafter,
perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place—some
intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the
circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and
effects.
From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My tenderness of
heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of
animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my
time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them. This peculiarity of character grew
with my growth, and in my manhood, I derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure. To
those who have cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble
of explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus derivable. There is something in the
unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had
frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own.
Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most
agreeable kind. We had birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.
This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an
astonishing degree. In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured
with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats
as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point—and I mention the matter at all
for no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be remembered.
Pluto—this was the cat's name—was my favorite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he
attended me wherever I went about the house. It was even with difficulty that I could prevent him
from following me through the streets.
Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which my general temperament and
character—through the instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance—had (I blush to confess it)
experienced a radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more
regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At
length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my
disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them. For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient
regard to restrain me from maltreating him, as I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the
monkey, or even the dog, when by accident, or through affection, they came in my way. But my disease
grew upon me—for what disease is like Alcohol!—and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming
old, and consequently somewhat peevish—even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill
temper.
One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the
cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound
upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer.
My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body and a more than fiendish
malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a penknife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the
socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.
When reason returned with the morning—when I had slept off the fumes of the night's debauch—I
experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it
was, at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I again plunged into
excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed.
In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket of the lost eye presented, it is true, a
frightful appearance, but he no longer appeared to suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual,
but, as might be expected, fled in extreme terror at my approach. I had so much of my old heart left, as
to be at first grieved by this evident dislike on the part of a creature which had once so loved me. But
this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow,
the spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that
my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart—one of
the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who
has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than
because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best
judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of
perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex
itself—to offer violence to its own nature—to do wrong for the wrong's sake only—that urged me to
continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One morning,
in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree;—hung it with the tears
streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart;—hung it because I knew that it
had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence;—hung it because I knew that
in so doing I was committing a sin—a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to
place it—if such a thing wore possible—even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most
Merciful and Most Terrible God.
On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was aroused from sleep by the cry of
fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames. The whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty
that my wife, a servant, and myself, made our escape from the conflagration. The destruction was
complete. My entire worldly wealth was swallowed up, and I resigned myself thenceforward to
despair.
I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the
disaster and the atrocity. But I am detailing a chain of facts—and wish not to leave even a possible
link imperfect. On the day succeeding the fire, I visited the ruins. The walls, with one exception, had
fallen in. This exception was found in a compartment wall, not very thick, which stood about the
middle of the house, and against which had rested the head of my bed. The plastering had here, in
great measure, resisted the action of the fire—a fact which I attributed to its having been recently
spread. About this wall a dense crowd were collected, and many persons seemed to be examining a
particular portion of it with very minute and eager attention. The words "strange!" "singular!" and
other similar expressions, excited my curiosity. I approached and saw, as if graven in bas relief upon
the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. The impression was given with an accuracy truly
marvellous. There was a rope about the animal's neck.
When I first beheld this apparition—for I could scarcely regard it as less—my wonder and my
terror were extreme. But at length reflection came to my aid. The cat, I remembered, had been hung in
a garden adjacent to the house. Upon the alarm of fire, this garden had been immediately filled by the
crowd—by some one of whom the animal must have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an
open window, into my chamber. This had probably been done with the view of arousing me from
sleep. The falling of other walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty into the substance of the
freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which, with the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass, had
then accomplished the portraiture as I saw it.
Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to my conscience, for the startling
fact just detailed, it did not the less fail to make a deep impression upon my fancy. For months I could
not rid myself of the phantasm of the cat; and, during this period, there came back into my spirit a
half-sentiment that seemed, but was not, remorse. I went so far as to regret the loss of the animal, and
to look about me, among the vile haunts which I now habitually frequented, for another pet of the same
species, and of somewhat similar appearance, with which to supply its place.
One night as I sat, half stupified, in a den of more than infamy, my attention was suddenly drawn to
some black object, reposing upon the head of one of the immense hogsheads of Gin, or of Rum, which
constituted the chief furniture of the apartment. I had been looking steadily at the top of this hogshead
for some minutes, and what now caused me surprise was the fact that I had not sooner perceived the
object thereupon. I approached it, and touched it with my hand. It was a black cat—a very large one
—fully as large as Pluto, and closely resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a white
hair upon any portion of his body; but this cat had a large, although indefinite splotch of white,
covering nearly the whole region of the breast. Upon my touching him, he immediately arose, purred
loudly, rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted with my notice. This, then, was the very
creature of which I was in search. I at once offered to purchase it of the landlord; but this person
made no claim to it—knew nothing of it—had never seen it before.
I continued my caresses, and, when I prepared to go home, the animal evinced a disposition to
accompany me. I permitted it to do so; occasionally stooping and patting it as I proceeded. When it
reached the house it domesticated itself at once, and became immediately a great favorite with my
wife.
For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was just the reverse of what I
had anticipated; but—I know not how or why it was—its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted
and annoyed. By slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of
hatred. I avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of
cruelty, preventing me from physically abusing it. I did not, for some weeks, strike, or otherwise
violently ill use it; but gradually—very gradually—I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing,
and to flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a pestilence.
What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on the morning after I brought
it home, that, like Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however,
only endeared it to my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed, in a high degree, that humanity of
feeling which had once been my distinguishing trait, and the source of many of my simplest and purest
pleasures.
With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase. It followed my
footsteps with a pertinacity which it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I
sat, it would crouch beneath my chair, or spring upon my knees, covering me with its loathsome
caresses. If I arose to walk it would get between my feet and thus nearly throw me down, or, fastening
its long and sharp claws in my dress, clamber, in this manner, to my breast. At such times, although I
longed to destroy it with a blow, I was yet withheld from so doing, partly by a memory of my former
crime, but chiefly—let me confess it at once—by absolute dread of the beast.
This dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil—and yet I should be at a loss how otherwise
to define it. I am almost ashamed to own—yes, even in this felon's cell, I am almost ashamed to own
—that the terror and horror with which the animal inspired me, had been heightened by one of the
merest chimaeras it would be possible to conceive. My wife had called my attention, more than once,
to the character of the mark of white hair, of which I have spoken, and which constituted the sole
visible difference between the strange beast and the one I had destroyed. The reader will remember
that this mark, although large, had been originally very indefinite; but, by slow degrees—degrees
nearly imperceptible, and which for a long time my Reason struggled to reject as fanciful—it had, at
length, assumed a rigorous distinctness of outline. It was now the representation of an object that I
shudder to name—and for this, above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have rid myself of the
monster had I dared—it was now, I say, the image of a hideous—of a ghastly thing—of the
GALLOWS!—oh, mournful and terrible engine of Horror and of Crime—of Agony and of Death!
And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity. And a brute beast
—whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed—a brute beast to work out for me—for me a man,
fashioned in the image of the High God—so much of insufferable wo! Alas! neither by day nor by
night knew I the blessing of Rest any more! During the former the creature left me no moment alone;
and, in the latter, I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the thing
upon my face, and its vast weight—an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off—
incumbent eternally upon my heart!
Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within me
succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates—the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The
moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind; while, from the
sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my
uncomplaining wife, alas! was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers.
One day she accompanied me, upon some household errand, into the cellar of the old building
which our poverty compelled us to inhabit. The cat followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly
throwing me headlong, exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my wrath, the
childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a blow at the animal which, of course,
would have proved instantly fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blow was arrested by the
hand of my wife. Goaded, by the interference, into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm
from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan.
This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and with entire deliberation, to the task
of concealing the body. I knew that I could not remove it from the house, either by day or by night,
without the risk of being observed by the neighbors. Many projects entered my mind. At one period I
thought of cutting the corpse into minute fragments, and destroying them by fire. At another, I resolved
to dig a grave for it in the floor of the cellar. Again, I deliberated about casting it in the well in the
yard—about packing it in a box, as if merchandize, with the usual arrangements, and so getting a
porter to take it from the house. Finally I hit upon what I considered a far better expedient than either
of these. I determined to wall it up in the cellar—as the monks of the middle ages are recorded to
have walled up their victims.
For a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted. Its walls were loosely constructed, and
had lately been plastered throughout with a rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had
prevented from hardening. Moreover, in one of the walls was a projection, caused by a false chimney,
or fireplace, that had been filled up, and made to resemble the red of the cellar. I made no doubt that I
could readily displace the bricks at this point, insert the corpse, and wall the whole up as before, so
that no eye could detect any thing suspicious. And in this calculation I was not deceived. By means of
a crow-bar I easily dislodged the bricks, and, having carefully deposited the body against the inner
wall, I propped it in that position, while, with little trouble, I re-laid the whole structure as it
originally stood. Having procured mortar, sand, and hair, with every possible precaution, I prepared a
plaster which could not be distinguished from the old, and with this I very carefully went over the
new brickwork. When I had finished, I felt satisfied that all was right. The wall did not present the
slightest appearance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was picked up with the
minutest care. I looked around triumphantly, and said to myself—"Here at least, then, my labor has not
been in vain."
My next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause of so much wretchedness; for I
had, at length, firmly resolved to put it to death. Had I been able to meet with it, at the moment, there
could have been no doubt of its fate; but it appeared that the crafty animal had been alarmed at the
violence of my previous anger, and forebore to present itself in my present mood. It is impossible to
describe, or to imagine, the deep, the blissful sense of relief which the absence of the detested
creature occasioned in my bosom. It did not make its appearance during the night—and thus for one
night at least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with
the burden of murder upon my soul!
The second and the third day passed, and still my tormentor came not. Once again I breathed as a
freeman. The monster, in terror, had fled the premises forever! I should behold it no more! My
happiness was supreme! The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. Some few inquiries had
been made, but these had been readily answered. Even a search had been instituted—but of course
nothing was to be discovered. I looked upon my future felicity as secured.
Upon the fourth day of the assassination, a party of the police came, very unexpectedly, into the
house, and proceeded again to make rigorous investigation of the premises. Secure, however, in the
inscrutability of my place of concealment, I felt no embarrassment whatever. The officers bade me
accompany them in their search. They left no nook or corner unexplored. At length, for the third or
fourth time, they descended into the cellar. I quivered not in a muscle. My heart beat calmly as that of
one who slumbers in innocence. I walked the cellar from end to end. I folded my arms upon my
bosom, and roamed easily to and fro. The police were thoroughly satisfied and prepared to depart.
The glee at my heart was too strong to be restrained. I burned to say if but one word, by way of
triumph, and to render doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness.
"Gentlemen," I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, "I delight to have allayed your
suspicions. I wish you all health, and a little more courtesy. By the bye, gentlemen, this—this is a very
well constructed house." [In the rabid desire to say something easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered at
all.]—"I may say an excellently well constructed house. These walls—are you going, gentlemen?—
these walls are solidly put together;" and here, through the mere phrenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily,
with a cane which I held in my hand, upon that very portion of the brick-work behind which stood the
corpse of the wife of my bosom.
But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the Arch-Fiend! No sooner had the
reverberation of my blows sunk into silence, than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb!—
by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one
long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman—a howl—a wailing shriek, half of
horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of
the dammed in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation.
Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to the opposite wall. For one
instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In the
next, a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed
and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended
mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and
whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the
tomb!
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
Sitôt qu'on le touche il rèsonne..
De Béranger.
DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds
hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly
dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view
of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building,
a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by
any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the
sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere
house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eyelike windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an
utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the afterdream of the reveller upon opium—the bitter lapse into everyday life—the hideous dropping off of
the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of
thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it—I
paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was
a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I
pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt,
there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still
the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected,
that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be
sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon
this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre
by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the
remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eyelike windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its
proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had
elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the
country—a letter from him—which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a
personal reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness
—of a mental disorder which oppressed him—and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and
indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some
alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said—it was the
apparent heart that went with his request—which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I
accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons.
Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend. His
reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family
had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through
long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet
unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to
the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very
remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no
period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and
had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I
considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the
accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one,
in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other—it was this deficiency, perhaps, of
collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with
the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the
quaint and equivocal appellation of the "House of Usher"—an appellation which seemed to include,
in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment—that of looking down within
the tarn—had been to deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the
consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition—for why should I not so term it?—served
mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all
sentiments having terror as a basis. And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again
uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy
—a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which
oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole
mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity—
an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed
trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn—a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly
discernible, and leaden-hued.
Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect
of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of
ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work
from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry
had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts,
and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the
specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no
disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however,
the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have
discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made
its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant in waiting took my
horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in
silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master. Much
that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I
have already spoken. While the objects around me—while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre
tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies
which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from
my infancy—while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this—I still wondered to find
how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I
met the physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning
and perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and
ushered me into the presence of his master.
The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and
pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from
within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellissed panes, and served to
render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to
reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark
draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered.
Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I
felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over
and pervaded all.
Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted
me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality—of the
constrained effort of the ennuyé man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced
me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him
with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a
period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of
the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had
been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous
beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose
of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely
moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than
web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the
temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere
exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to
convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and
the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too,
had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell
about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple
humanity.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence—an inconsistency; and I soon
found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy—an
excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his
letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar
physical conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice
varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to
that species of energetic concision—that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation
—that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the
lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the
solace he expected me to afford him. He entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the
nature of his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he
despaired to find a remedy—a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would
undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he
detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of
the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most
insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all
flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar
sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.
To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. "I shall perish," said he, "I must
perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the
future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial,
incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of
danger, except in its absolute effect—in terror. In this unnerved—in this pitiable condition—I feel that
the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle
with the grim phantasm, FEAR."
I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature
of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the
dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth—in regard to
an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated—an
influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint
of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit—an effect which the physique of the gray walls
and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the
morale of his existence.
He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus
afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin—to the severe and longcontinued illness—indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution—of a tenderly beloved sister—
his sole companion for long years—his last and only relative on earth. "Her decease," he said, with a
bitterness which I can never forget, "would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the
ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly
through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I
regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread—and yet I found it impossible to
account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating
steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the
countenance of the brother—but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a
far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many
passionate tears.
The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a
gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially
cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the
pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed; but, on the closing in of the evening
of my arrival at the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with inexpressible
agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of
her person would thus probably be the last I should obtain—that the lady, at least while living, would
be seen by me no more.
For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or myself: and during this
period I was busied in earnest endeavors to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and
read together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. And
thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his
spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which
darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical
universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom.
I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus spent alone with the master
of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the
studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the way. An excited and highly
distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will ring
forever in my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and
amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his
elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the
more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not why;—from these paintings (vivid as their images
now are before me) I would in vain endeavor to educe more than a small portion which should lie
within the compass of merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs,
he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher.
For me at least—in the circumstances then surrounding me—there arose out of the pure abstractions
which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvass, an intensity of intolerable awe, no
shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries
of Fuseli.
One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of
abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior
of an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without
interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this
excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any
portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood
of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendor.
I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which rendered all music
intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was,
perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in
great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus
could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of
his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations),
the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as
observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these
rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave
it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first
time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The
verses, which were entitled "The Haunted Palace," ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:
I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace—
Radiant palace—reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion—
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
II.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This—all this—was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.
III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-tunéd law,
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
IV.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
V.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
VI.
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh—but smile no more.
I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad, led us into a train of thought wherein
there became manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its novelty,
(for other men * have thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. This
opinion, in its general form, was that of the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered
fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon
the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his
persuasion. The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the gray stones of
the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in
the method of collocation of these stones—in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of the
many fungi which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which stood around—above all, in the
long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn.
Its evidence—the evidence of the sentience—was to be seen, he said, (and I here started as he
spoke,) in the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the
walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and terrible influence
which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family, and which made him what I now saw him
—what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will make none.
* Watson, Dr. Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop of Landaff.—See "Chemical
Essays," vol v.
Our books—the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the mental existence of
the invalid—were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored
together over such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset; the Belphegor of Machiavelli; the
Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg; the
Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D'Indaginé, and of De la Chambre; the Journey into the Blue
Distance of Tieck; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favorite volume was a small octavo
edition of the Directorium Inquisitorium, by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were
passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and OEgipans, over which Usher would sit
dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and
curious book in quarto Gothic—the manual of a forgotten church—the Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum
Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae.
I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the
hypochondriac, when, one evening, having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more,
he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, (previously to its final interment,) in
one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the building. The worldly reason, however,
assigned for this singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother
had been led to his resolution (so he told me) by consideration of the unusual character of the malady
of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the
remote and exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will not deny that when I called to
mind the sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of my arrival at
the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means an
unnatural, precaution.
At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment.
The body having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it
(and which had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere,
gave us little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission
for light; lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own
sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a
donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible
substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway through which we
reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly
protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges.
Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of horror, we partially
turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking
similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher, divining,
perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I learned that the deceased and
himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed
between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead—for we could not regard her
unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in
all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the
face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and
screwed down the lid, and, having secured the door of iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely
less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house.
And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the features
of the mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations
were neglected or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and
objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue—but the
luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no
more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance. There
were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive
secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was obliged to
resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for
long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was
no wonder that his condition terrified—that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet
certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.
It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or eighth day after the
placing of the lady Madeline within the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings.
Sleep came not near my couch—while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off the
nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavored to believe that much, if not all of what I felt,
was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room—of the dark and tattered
draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro
upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless.
An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an
incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon
the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, harkened—I know not
why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me—to certain low and indefinite sounds which came,
through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense
sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I
should sleep no more during the night), and endeavored to arouse myself from the pitiable condition
into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.
I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an adjoining staircase arrested my
attention. I presently recognised it as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle
touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan—
but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes—an evidently restrained hysteria in his
whole demeanor. His air appalled me—but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had so
long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.
"And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having stared about him for some moments in
silence—"you have not then seen it?—but, stay! you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully
shaded his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm.
The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet. It was, indeed, a
tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A
whirlwind had apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were frequent and violent
alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as
to press upon the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the life-like velocity with which
they flew careering from all points against each other, without passing away into the distance. I say
that even their exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this—yet we had no glimpse of the
moon or stars—nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge
masses of agitated vapor, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in
the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung about
and enshrouded the mansion.
"You must not—you shall not behold this!" said I, shudderingly, to Usher, as I led him, with a
gentle violence, from the window to a seat. "These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely
electrical phenomena not uncommon—or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the rank
miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement;—the air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here
is one of your favorite romances. I will read, and you shall listen;—and so we will pass away this
terrible night together."
The antique volume which I had taken up was the "Mad Trist" of Sir Launcelot Canning; but I had
called it a favorite of Usher's more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth
and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my
friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the
excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of mental disorder
is full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have
judged, indeed, by the wild overstrained air of vivacity with which he harkened, or apparently
harkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my
design.
I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred, the hero of the Trist, having
sought in vain for peaceable admission into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an
entrance by force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run thus:
"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now mighty withal, on
account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with
the hermit, who, in sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the rain upon his
shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and, with blows, made
quickly room in the plankings of the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith sturdily,
he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood
alarummed and reverberated throughout the forest."
At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment, paused; for it appeared to me
(although I at once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me)—it appeared to me that, from
some very remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been,
in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking
and ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond doubt, the
coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the
casements, and the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself, had
nothing, surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the story:
"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to
perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious
demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver;
and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten—
Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;
Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;
And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon, which fell before him,
and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred
had fain to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never
before heard."
Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement—for there could be no
doubt whatever that, in this instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I
found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual
screaming or grating sound—the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the
dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.
Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and most extraordinary
coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were
predominant, I still retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the
sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds in
question; although, assuredly, a strange alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his
demeanor. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as to sit
with his face to the door of the chamber; and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I
saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast
—yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of
it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this idea—for he rocked from side to
side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the
narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded:
"And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon, bethinking himself
of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the
carcass from out of the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement of the
castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming, but feel
down at his feet upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound."
No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than—as if a shield of brass had indeed, at the
moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of silver—I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and
clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the
measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes
were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity.
But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person; a
sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur,
as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous import of
his words.
"Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long—long—long—many minutes, many hours,
many days, have I heard it—yet I dared not—oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!—I dared not—I
dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell
you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them—many, many days ago
—yet I dared not—I dared not speak! And now—to-night—Ethelred—ha! ha!—the breaking of the
hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!—say, rather, the rending
of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered
archway of the vault! Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid
me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and
horrible beating of her heart? Madman!"—here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his
syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul—"Madman! I tell you that she now stands
without the door!"
As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell—the
huge antique pannels to which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their
ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust—but then without those doors there
did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her
white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For
a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold—then, with a low
moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final
death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its
wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light,
and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows
were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now
shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as
extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure
rapidly widened—there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind—the entire orb of the satellite burst at
once upon my sight—my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder—there was a long
tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters—and the deep and dank tarn at my feet
closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House of Usher."
SILENCE—A FABLE
ALCMAN. The mountain pinnacles slumber; valleys, crags and caves are silent.
"LISTEN to me," said the Demon as he placed his hand upon my head. "The region of which I
speak is a dreary region in Libya, by the borders of the river Zaire. And there is no quiet there, nor
silence.
"The waters of the river have a saffron and sickly hue; and they flow not onwards to the sea, but
palpitate forever and forever beneath the red eye of the sun with a tumultuous and convulsive motion.
For many miles on either side of the river's oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies. They
sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and stretch towards the heaven their long and ghastly necks,
and nod to and fro their everlasting heads. And there is an indistinct murmur which cometh out from
among them like the rushing of subterrene water. And they sigh one unto the other.
"But there is a boundary to their realm—the boundary of the dark, horrible, lofty forest. There,
like the waves about the Hebrides, the low underwood is agitated continually. But there is no wind
throughout the heaven. And the tall primeval trees rock eternally hither and thither with a crashing and
mighty sound. And from their high summits, one by one, drop everlasting dews. And at the roots
strange poisonous flowers lie writhing in perturbed slumber. And overhead, with a rustling and loud
noise, the gray clouds rush westwardly forever, until they roll, a cataract, over the fiery wall of the
horizon. But there is no wind throughout the heaven. And by the shores of the river Zaire there is
neither quiet nor silence.
"It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood. And I
stood in the morass among the tall and the rain fell upon my head—and the lilies sighed one unto the
other in the solemnity of their desolation.
"And, all at once, the moon arose through the thin ghastly mist, and was crimson in color. And
mine eyes fell upon a huge gray rock which stood by the shore of the river, and was lighted by the
light of the moon. And the rock was gray, and ghastly, and tall,—and the rock was gray. Upon its front
were characters engraven in the stone; and I walked through the morass of water-lilies, until I came
close unto the shore, that I might read the characters upon the stone. But I could not decypher them.
And I was going back into the morass, when the moon shone with a fuller red, and I turned and looked
again upon the rock, and upon the characters;—and the characters were DESOLATION.
"And I looked upwards, and there stood a man upon the summit of the rock; and I hid myself
among the water-lilies that I might discover the actions of the man. And the man was tall and stately in
form, and was wrapped up from his shoulders to his feet in the toga of old Rome. And the outlines of
his figure were indistinct—but his features were the features of a deity; for the mantle of the night, and
of the mist, and of the moon, and of the dew, had left uncovered the features of his face. And his brow
was lofty with thought, and his eye wild with care; and, in the few furrows upon his cheek I read the
fables of sorrow, and weariness, and disgust with mankind, and a longing after solitude.
"And the man sat upon the rock, and leaned his head upon his hand, and looked out upon the
desolation. He looked down into the low unquiet shrubbery, and up into the tall primeval trees, and up
higher at the rustling heaven, and into the crimson moon. And I lay close within shelter of the lilies,
and observed the actions of the man. And the man trembled in the solitude;—but the night waned, and
he sat upon the rock.
"And the man turned his attention from the heaven, and looked out upon the dreary river Zaire, and
upon the yellow ghastly waters, and upon the pale legions of the water-lilies. And the man listened to
the sighs of the water-lilies, and to the murmur that came up from among them. And I lay close within
my covert and observed the actions of the man. And the man trembled in the solitude;—but the night
waned and he sat upon the rock.
"Then I went down into the recesses of the morass, and waded afar in among the wilderness of the
lilies, and called unto the hippopotami which dwelt among the fens in the recesses of the morass. And
the hippopotami heard my call, and came, with the behemoth, unto the foot of the rock, and roared
loudly and fearfully beneath the moon. And I lay close within my covert and observed the actions of
the man. And the man trembled in the solitude;—but the night waned and he sat upon the rock.
"Then I cursed the elements with the curse of tumult; and a frightful tempest gathered in the heaven
where, before, there had been no wind. And the heaven became livid with the violence of the tempest
—and the rain beat upon the head of the man—and the floods of the river came down—and the river
was tormented into foam—and the water-lilies shrieked within their beds—and the forest crumbled
before the wind—and the thunder rolled—and the lightning fell—and the rock rocked to its
foundation. And I lay close within my covert and observed the actions of the man. And the man
trembled in the solitude;—but the night waned and he sat upon the rock.
"Then I grew angry and cursed, with the curse of silence, the river, and the lilies, and the wind,
and the forest, and the heaven, and the thunder, and the sighs of the water-lilies. And they became
accursed, and were still. And the moon ceased to totter up its pathway to heaven—and the thunder
died away—and the lightning did not flash—and the clouds hung motionless—and the waters sunk to
their level and remained—and the trees ceased to rock—and the water-lilies sighed no more—and
the murmur was heard no longer from among them, nor any shadow of sound throughout the vast
illimitable desert. And I looked upon the characters of the rock, and they were changed;—and the
characters were SILENCE.
"And mine eyes fell upon the countenance of the man, and his countenance was wan with terror.
And, hurriedly, he raised his head from his hand, and stood forth upon the rock and listened. But there
was no voice throughout the vast illimitable desert, and the characters upon the rock were SILENCE.
And the man shuddered, and turned his face away, and fled afar off, in haste, so that I beheld him no
more."
Now there are fine tales in the volumes of the Magi—in the iron-bound, melancholy volumes of
the Magi. Therein, I say, are glorious histories of the Heaven, and of the Earth, and of the mighty sea
—and of the Genii that over-ruled the sea, and the earth, and the lofty heaven. There was much lore
too in the sayings which were said by the Sybils; and holy, holy things were heard of old by the dim
leaves that trembled around Dodona—but, as Allah liveth, that fable which the Demon told me as he
sat by my side in the shadow of the tomb, I hold to be the most wonderful of all! And as the Demon
made an end of his story, he fell back within the cavity of the tomb and laughed. And I could not laugh
with the Demon, and he cursed me because I could not laugh. And the lynx which dwelleth forever in
the tomb, came out therefrom, and lay down at the feet of the Demon, and looked at him steadily in the
face.
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH.
THE "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so
hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp
pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet
stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out
from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and
termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.
But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half
depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the
knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated
abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet
august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having
entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means
neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was
amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external
world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had
provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were
ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were
within. Without was the "Red Death."
It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged
most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of
the most unusual magnificence.
It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held.
There were seven—an imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight
vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the
whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different; as might have been expected
from the duke's love of the bizarre. The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision
embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards,
and at each turn a novel effect. To the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow
Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the suite. These
windows were of stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the
decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example,
in blue—and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and
tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the
casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange—the fifth with white—the sixth with
violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the
ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in
this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes
here were scarlet—a deep blood color. Now in no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or
candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from
the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers.
But in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod,
bearing a brazier of fire that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the
room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or
black chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted
panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who
entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.
It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony.
Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made
the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a
sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and
emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause,
momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their
evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the
clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their
hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased,
a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at
their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming
of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes,
(which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another
chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before.
But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. The tastes of the duke were
peculiar. He had a fine eye for colors and effects. He disregarded the decora of mere fashion. His
plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who
would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear and see and
touch him to be sure that he was not.
He had directed, in great part, the moveable embellishments of the seven chambers, upon
occasion of this great fete; and it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the
masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and
phantasm—much of what has been since seen in "Hernani." There were arabesque figures with
unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There
was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not
a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in
fact, a multitude of dreams. And these—the dreams—writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms,
and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes
the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is
silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the
chime die away—they have endured but an instant—and a light, half-subdued laughter floats after
them as they depart. And now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more
merrily than ever, taking hue from the many-tinted windows through which stream the rays from the
tripods. But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the
maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier light through the bloodcolored panes; and the blackness of the sable drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the
sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than
any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote gaieties of the other apartments.
But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life.
And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the
clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and
there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be
sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, with more
of time, into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled. And thus, too, it happened,
perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many
individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure
which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. And the rumor of this new presence
having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or
murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise—then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust.
In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary
appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly
unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the
prince's indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be
touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are
matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in
the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and
gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the
visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny
must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not
approved, by the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the
Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood—and his broad brow, with all the features of the face,
was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.
When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image (which with a slow and solemn
movement, as if more fully to sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to
be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his
brow reddened with rage.
"Who dares?" he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him—"who dares insult us
with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him—that we may know whom we have to
hang at sunrise, from the battlements!"
It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the Prince Prospero as he uttered these
words. They rang throughout the seven rooms loudly and clearly—for the prince was a bold and
robust man, and the music had become hushed at the waving of his hand.
It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale courtiers by his side. At first,
as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of the intruder, who at
the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to
the speaker. But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had
inspired the whole party, there were found none who put forth hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded,
he passed within a yard of the prince's person; and, while the vast assembly, as if with one impulse,
shrank from the centres of the rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same
solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber to the
purple—through the purple to the green—through the green to the orange—through this again to the
white—and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was
then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary
cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on account of a
deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid
impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the
extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry
—and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell
prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the
revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall
figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror
at finding the grave-cerements and corpse-like mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness,
untenanted by any tangible form.
And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night.
And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the
despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay.
And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable
dominion over all.
THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO.
THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult,
I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I
gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled—but the
very definitiveness with which it was resolved, precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but
punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally
unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.
It must be understood, that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good
will. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now
was at the thought of his immolation.
He had a weak point—this Fortunato—although in other regards he was a man to be respected
and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true
virtuoso spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity—to
practise imposture upon the British and Austrian millionaires. In painting and gemmary, Fortunato,
like his countrymen, was a quack—but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this respect I did
not differ from him materially: I was skilful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely
whenever I could.
It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that I
encountered my friend. He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The
man wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was surmounted by the
conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see him, that I thought I should never have done wringing
his hand.
I said to him—"My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkably well you are looking today! But I have received a pipe of what passes for Amontillado, and I have my doubts."
"How?" said he. "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
consulting you in the matter. You were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain."
"Amontillado!"
"I have my doubts."
"Amontillado!"
"And I must satisfy them."
"Amontillado!"
"As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchesi. If any one has a critical turn, it is he. He will
tell me—"
"Luchesi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry."
"And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for your own."
"Come, let us go."
"Whither?"
"To your vaults."
"My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I perceive you have an engagement.
Luchesi—"
"I have no engagement;—come."
"My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with which I perceive you are
afflicted. The vaults are insufferably damp. They are encrusted with nitre."
"Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. Amontillado! You have been imposed upon.
And as for Luchesi, he cannot distinguish Sherry from Amontillado."
Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm. Putting on a mask of black silk, and
drawing a roquelaire closely about my person, I suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo.
There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry in honor of the time. I had
told them that I should not return until the morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from
the house. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate disappearance, one
and all, as soon as my back was turned.
I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to Fortunato, bowed him through several
suites of rooms to the archway that led into the vaults. I passed down a long and winding staircase,
requesting him to be cautious as he followed. We came at length to the foot of the descent, and stood
together on the damp ground of the catacombs of the Montresors.
The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap jingled as he strode.
"The pipe," said he.
"It is farther on," said I; "but observe the white web-work which gleams from these cavern
walls."
He turned towards me, and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs that distilled the rheum of
intoxication.
"Nitre?" he asked, at length.
"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 found it impossible to reply for many minutes.
"It is nothing," he said, at last.
"Come," I said, with decision, "we will go back; your health is precious. You are rich, respected,
admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter.
We will go back; you will be ill, and I cannot be responsible. Besides, there is Luchesi—"
"Enough," he said; "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough."
"True—true," I replied; "and, indeed, I had no intention of alarming you unnecessarily—but you
should use all proper caution. A draught of this Medoc will defend us from the damps."
Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row of its fellows that lay upon
the mould.
"Drink," I said, presenting him the wine.
He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly, while his bells
jingled.
"I drink," he said, "to the buried that repose around us."
"And I to your long life."
He again took my arm, and we proceeded.
"These vaults," he said, "are extensive."
"The Montresors," I replied, "were a great and numerous family."
"I forget your arms."
"A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are
imbedded 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 fancy grew warm with the Medoc.
We had passed through walls of piled bones, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost
recesses of the catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize Fortunato by an arm
above the elbow.
"The nitre!" I said: "see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the vaults. We are below the river's
bed. The drops of moisture trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Your
cough—"
"It is nothing," he said; "let us go on. But first, another draught of the Medoc."
I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grâve. He emptied it at a breath. His eyes flashed with a
fierce light. He laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.
I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement—a grotesque one.
"You do not comprehend?" he said.
"Not I," I replied.
"Then you are not of the brotherhood."
"How?"
"You are not of the masons."
"Yes, yes," I said, "yes, yes."
"You? Impossible! A mason?"
"A mason," I replied.
"A sign," he said.
"It is this," I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the folds of my roquelaire.
"You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But let us proceed to the Amontillado."
"Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak, and again offering him my arm. He leaned
upon it heavily. We continued our route in search of the Amontillado. We passed through a range of
low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, in which the
foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow than flame.
At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious. Its walls had been lined
with human remains, piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three
sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner. From the fourth the bones had been
thrown down, and lay promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some size.
Within the wall thus exposed by the displacing of the bones, we perceived a still interior recess, in
depth about four feet, in width three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no
especial use in itself, but formed merely the interval between two of the colossal supports of the roof
of the catacombs, and was backed by one of their circumscribing walls of solid granite.
It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavored to pry into the depths of the
recess. Its termination the feeble light did not enable us to see.
"Proceed," I said; "herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchesi—"
"He is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed
immediately at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his
progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to
the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally.
From one of these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. Throwing the links about his
waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure it. He was too much astounded to resist.
Withdrawing the key I stepped back from the recess.
"Pass your hand," I said, "over the wall; you cannot help feeling the nitre. Indeed it is very damp.
Once more let me implore you to return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render
you all the little attentions in my power."
"The Amontillado!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his astonishment.
"True," I replied; "the Amontillado."
As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of which I have before spoken.
Throwing them aside, I soon uncovered a quantity of building stone and mortar. With these materials
and with the aid of my trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche.
I had scarcely laid the first tier of my masonry when I discovered that the intoxication of
Fortunato had in a great measure worn off. The earliest indication I had of this was a low moaning cry
from the depth of the recess. It was not the cry of a drunken man. There was then a long and obstinate
silence. I laid the second tier, and the third, and the fourth; and then I heard the furious vibrations of
the chain. The noise lasted for several minutes, during which, that I might hearken to it with the more
satisfaction, I ceased my labors and sat down upon the bones. When at last the clanking subsided, I
resumed the trowel, and finished without interruption the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh tier. The wall
was now nearly upon a level with my breast. I again paused, and holding the flambeaux over the
mason-work, threw a few feeble rays upon the figure within.
A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form,
seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated—I trembled. Unsheathing my
rapier, I began to grope with it about the recess: but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed
my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall. I replied
to the yells of him who clamored. I re-echoed—I aided—I surpassed them in volume and in strength. I
did this, and the clamorer grew still.
It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had completed the eighth, the ninth,
and the tenth tier. I had finished a portion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a single
stone to be fitted and plastered in. I struggled with its weight; I placed it partially in its destined
position. But now there came from out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It
was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognising as that of the noble Fortunato.
The voice said—
"Ha! ha! ha!—he! he!—a very good joke indeed—an excellent jest. We will have many a rich
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 not they be
awaiting us at the palazzo, the Lady Fortunato and the rest? Let us be gone."
"Yes," I said, "let us be gone."
"For the love of God, Montressor!"
"Yes," I said, "for the love of God!"
But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I called aloud—
"Fortunato!"
No answer. I called again—
"Fortunato!"
No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. There came
forth in return only a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick—on account of the dampness of the
catacombs. I hastened to make an end of my labor. I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered
it up. Against the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no
mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!
THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE
IN THE consideration of the faculties and impulses—of the prima mobilia of the human soul, the
phrenologists have failed to make room for a propensity which, although obviously existing as a
radical, primitive, irreducible sentiment, has been equally overlooked by all the moralists who have
preceded them. In the pure arrogance of the reason, we have all overlooked it. We have suffered its
existence to escape our senses, solely through want of belief—of faith;—whether it be faith in
Revelation, or faith in the Kabbala. The idea of it has never occurred to us, simply because of its
supererogation. We saw no need of the impulse—for the propensity. We could not perceive its
necessity. We could not understand, that is to say, we could not have understood, had the notion of this
primum mobile ever obtruded itself;—we could not have understood in what manner it might be made
to further the objects of humanity, either temporal or eternal. It cannot be denied that phrenology and,
in great measure, all metaphysicianism have been concocted a priori. The intellectual or logical man,
rather than the understanding or observant man, set himself to imagine designs—to dictate purposes to
God. Having thus fathomed, to his satisfaction, the intentions of Jehovah, out of these intentions he
built his innumerable systems of mind. In the matter of phrenology, for example, we first determined,
naturally enough, that it was the design of the Deity that man should eat. We then assigned to man an
organ of alimentiveness, and this organ is the scourge with which the Deity compels man, will-I nill-I,
into eating. Secondly, having settled it to be God's will that man should continue his species, we
discovered an organ of amativeness, forthwith. And so with combativeness, with ideality, with
causality, with constructiveness,—so, in short, with every organ, whether representing a propensity, a
moral sentiment, or a faculty of the pure intellect. And in these arrangements of the Principia of human
action, the Spurzheimites, whether right or wrong, in part, or upon the whole, have but followed, in
principle, the footsteps of their predecessors: deducing and establishing every thing from the
preconceived destiny of man, and upon the ground of the objects of his Creator.
It would have been wiser, it would have been safer, to classify (if classify we must) upon the
basis of what man usually or occasionally did, and was always occasionally doing, rather than upon
the basis of what we took it for granted the Deity intended him to do. If we cannot comprehend God in
his visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being? If we cannot
understand him in his objective creatures, how then in his substantive moods and phases of creation?
Induction, a posteriori, would have brought phrenology to admit, as an innate and primitive
principle of human action, a paradoxical something, which we may call perverseness, for want of a
more characteristic term. In the sense I intend, it is, in fact, a mobile without motive, a motive not
motivirt. Through its promptings we act without comprehensible object; or, if this shall be understood
as a contradiction in terms, we may so far modify the proposition as to say, that through its promptings
we act, for the reason that we should not. In theory, no reason can be more unreasonable, but, in fact,
there is none more strong. With certain minds, under certain conditions, it becomes absolutely
irresistible. I am not more certain that I breathe, than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any
action is often the one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone impels us to its prosecution.
Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong's sake, admit of analysis, or
resolution into ulterior elements. It is a radical, a primitive impulse-elementary. It will be said, I am
aware, that when we persist in acts because we feel we should not persist in them, our conduct is but
a modification of that which ordinarily springs from the combativeness of phrenology. But a glance
will show the fallacy of this idea. The phrenological combativeness has for its essence, the necessity
of self-defence. It is our safeguard against injury. Its principle regards our well-being; and thus the
desire to be well is excited simultaneously with its development. It follows, that the desire to be well
must be excited simultaneously with any principle which shall be merely a modification of
combativeness, but in the case of that something which I term perverseness, the desire to be well is
not only not aroused, but a strongly antagonistical sentiment exists.
An appeal to one's own heart is, after all, the best reply to the sophistry just noticed. No one who
trustingly consults and thoroughly questions his own soul, will be disposed to deny the entire
radicalness of the propensity in question. It is not more incomprehensible than distinctive. There lives
no man who at some period has not been tormented, for example, by an earnest desire to tantalize a
listener by circumlocution. The speaker is aware that he displeases; he has every intention to please,
he is usually curt, precise, and clear, the most laconic and luminous language is struggling for
utterance upon his tongue, it is only with difficulty that he restrains himself from giving it flow; he
dreads and deprecates the anger of him whom he addresses; yet, the thought strikes him, that by
certain involutions and parentheses this anger may be engendered. That single thought is enough. The
impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the
longing (to the deep regret and mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences) is
indulged.
We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to
make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and
action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of
whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we
put it off until to-morrow, and why? There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word
with no comprehension of the principle. To-morrow arrives, and with it a more impatient anxiety to
do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful,
because unfathomable, craving for delay. This craving gathers strength as the moments fly. The last
hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of the conflict within us,—of the definite with
the indefinite—of the substance with the shadow. But, if the contest have proceeded thus far, it is the
shadow which prevails,—we struggle in vain. The clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At
the same time, it is the chanticleer—note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It flies—it
disappears—we are free. The old energy returns. We will labor now. Alas, it is too late!
We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss—we grow sick and dizzy. Our first
impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and
dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling. By gradations, still more
imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor from the bottle out of which arose the
genius in the Arabian Nights. But out of this our cloud upon the precipice's edge, there grows into
palpability, a shape, far more terrible than any genius or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a
thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness
of the delight of its horror. It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping
precipitancy of a fall from such a height. And this fall—this rushing annihilation—for the very reason
that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images of
death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imagination—for this very cause do
we now the most vividly desire it. And because our reason violently deters us from the brink,
therefore do we the most impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally
impatient, as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a Plunge. To
indulge, for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to
forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail
in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.
Examine these similar actions as we will, we shall find them resulting solely from the spirit of the
Perverse. We perpetrate them because we feel that we should not. Beyond or behind this there is no
intelligible principle; and we might, indeed, deem this perverseness a direct instigation of the ArchFiend, were it not occasionally known to operate in furtherance of good.
I have said thus much, that in some measure I may answer your question, that I may explain to you
why I am here, that I may assign to you something that shall have at least the faint aspect of a cause for
my wearing these fetters, and for my tenanting this cell of the condemned. Had I not been thus prolix,
you might either have misunderstood me altogether, or, with the rabble, have fancied me mad. As it is,
you will easily perceive that I am one of the many uncounted victims of the Imp of the Perverse.
It is impossible that any deed could have been wrought with a more thorough deliberation. For
weeks, for months, I pondered upon the means of the murder. I rejected a thousand schemes, because
their accomplishment involved a chance of detection. At length, in reading some French Memoirs, I
found an account of a nearly fatal illness that occurred to Madame Pilau, through the agency of a
candle accidentally poisoned. The idea struck my fancy at once. I knew my victim's habit of reading
in bed. I knew, too, that his apartment was narrow and ill-ventilated. But I need not vex you with
impertinent details. I need not describe the easy artifices by which I substituted, in his bed-room
candle-stand, a wax-light of my own making for the one which I there found. The next morning he was
discovered dead in his bed, and the Coroner's verdict was—"Death by the visitation of God."
Having inherited his estate, all went well with me for years. The idea of detection never once
entered my brain. Of the remains of the fatal taper I had myself carefully disposed. I had left no
shadow of a clew by which it would be possible to convict, or even to suspect me of the crime. It is
inconceivable how rich a sentiment of satisfaction arose in my bosom as I reflected upon my absolute
security. For a very long period of time I was accustomed to revel in this sentiment. It afforded me
more real delight than all the mere worldly advantages accruing from my sin. But there arrived at
length an epoch, from which the pleasurable feeling grew, by scarcely perceptible gradations, into a
haunting and harassing thought. It harassed because it haunted. I could scarcely get rid of it for an
instant. It is quite a common thing to be thus annoyed with the ringing in our ears, or rather in our
memories, of the burthen of some ordinary song, or some unimpressive snatches from an opera. Nor
will we be the less tormented if the song in itself be good, or the opera air meritorious. In this
manner, at last, I would perpetually catch myself pondering upon my security, and repeating, in a low
undertone, the phrase, "I am safe."
One day, whilst sauntering along the streets, I arrested myself in the act of murmuring, half aloud,
these customary syllables. In a fit of petulance, I remodelled them thus; "I am safe—I am safe—yes—
if I be not fool enough to make open confession!"
No sooner had I spoken these words, than I felt an icy chill creep to my heart. I had had some
experience in these fits of perversity, (whose nature I have been at some trouble to explain), and I
remembered well that in no instance I had successfully resisted their attacks. And now my own casual
self-suggestion that I might possibly be fool enough to confess the murder of which I had been guilty,
confronted me, as if the very ghost of him whom I had murdered—and beckoned me on to death.
At first, I made an effort to shake off this nightmare of the soul. I walked vigorously—faster—still
faster—at length I ran. I felt a maddening desire to shriek aloud. Every succeeding wave of thought
overwhelmed me with new terror, for, alas! I well, too well understood that to think, in my situation,
was to be lost. I still quickened my pace. I bounded like a madman through the crowded
thoroughfares. At length, the populace took the alarm, and pursued me. I felt then the consummation of
my fate. Could I have torn out my tongue, I would have done it, but a rough voice resounded in my
ears—a rougher grasp seized me by the shoulder. I turned—I gasped for breath. For a moment I
experienced all the pangs of suffocation; I became blind, and deaf, and giddy; and then some invisible
fiend, I thought, struck me with his broad palm upon the back. The long imprisoned secret burst forth
from my soul.
They say that I spoke with a distinct enunciation, but with marked emphasis and passionate hurry,
as if in dread of interruption before concluding the brief, but pregnant sentences that consigned me to
the hangman and to hell.
Having related all that was necessary for the fullest judicial conviction, I fell prostrate in a
swoon.
But why shall I say more? To-day I wear these chains, and am here! To-morrow I shall be
fetterless!—but where?
THE ISLAND OF THE FAY
Nullus enim locus sine genio est.—Servius.
"LA MUSIQUE," says Marmontel, in those "Contes Moraux" which in all our translations, we
have insisted upon calling "Moral Tales," as if in mockery of their spirit—"la musique est le seul des
talents qui jouissent de lui-meme; tous les autres veulent des temoins." He here confounds the
pleasure derivable from sweet sounds with the capacity for creating them. No more than any other
talent, is that for music susceptible of complete enjoyment, where there is no second party to
appreciate its exercise. And it is only in common with other talents that it produces effects which may
be fully enjoyed in solitude. The idea which the raconteur has either failed to entertain clearly, or has
sacrificed in its expression to his national love of point, is, doubtless, the very tenable one that the
higher order of music is the most thoroughly estimated when we are exclusively alone. The
proposition, in this form, will be admitted at once by those who love the lyre for its own sake, and for
its spiritual uses. But there is one pleasure still within the reach of fallen mortality and perhaps only
one—which owes even more than does music to the accessory sentiment of seclusion. I mean the
happiness experienced in the contemplation of natural scenery. In truth, the man who would behold
aright the glory of God upon earth must in solitude behold that glory. To me, at least, the presence—
not of human life only, but of life in any other form than that of the green things which grow upon the
soil and are voiceless—is a stain upon the landscape—is at war with the genius of the scene. I love,
indeed, to regard the dark valleys, and the gray rocks, and the waters that silently smile, and the
forests that sigh in uneasy slumbers, and the proud watchful mountains that look down upon all,—I
love to regard these as themselves but the colossal members of one vast animate and sentient whole—
a whole whose form (that of the sphere) is the most perfect and most inclusive of all; whose path is
among associate planets; whose meek handmaiden is the moon, whose mediate sovereign is the sun;
whose life is eternity, whose thought is that of a God; whose enjoyment is knowledge; whose
destinies are lost in immensity, whose cognizance of ourselves is akin with our own cognizance of the
animalculae which infest the brain—a being which we, in consequence, regard as purely inanimate
and material much in the same manner as these animalculae must thus regard us.
Our telescopes and our mathematical investigations assure us on every hand—notwithstanding the
cant of the more ignorant of the priesthood—that space, and therefore that bulk, is an important
consideration in the eyes of the Almighty. The cycles in which the stars move are those best adapted
for the evolution, without collision, of the greatest possible number of bodies. The forms of those
bodies are accurately such as, within a given surface, to include the greatest possible amount of
matter;—while the surfaces themselves are so disposed as to accommodate a denser population than
could be accommodated on the same surfaces otherwise arranged. Nor is it any argument against bulk
being an object with God, that space itself is infinite; for there may be an infinity of matter to fill it.
And since we see clearly that the endowment of matter with vitality is a principle—indeed, as far as
our judgments extend, the leading principle in the operations of Deity,—it is scarcely logical to
imagine it confined to the regions of the minute, where we daily trace it, and not extending to those of
the august. As we find cycle within cycle without end,—yet all revolving around one far-distant
centre which is the God-head, may we not analogically suppose in the same manner, life within life,
the less within the greater, and all within the Spirit Divine? In short, we are madly erring, through
self-esteem, in believing man, in either his temporal or future destinies, to be of more moment in the
universe than that vast "clod of the valley" which he tills and contemns, and to which he denies a soul
for no more profound reason than that he does not behold it in operation.
These fancies, and such as these, have always given to my meditations among the mountains and
the forests, by the rivers and the ocean, a tinge of what the everyday world would not fail to term
fantastic. My wanderings amid such scenes have been many, and far-searching, and often solitary; and
the interest with which I have strayed through many a dim, deep valley, or gazed into the reflected
Heaven of many a bright lake, has been an interest greatly deepened by the thought that I have strayed
and gazed alone. What flippant Frenchman was it who said in allusion to the well-known work of
Zimmerman, that, "la solitude est une belle chose; mais il faut quelqu'un pour vous dire que la
solitude est une belle chose?" The epigram cannot be gainsayed; but the necessity is a thing that does
not exist.
It was during one of my lonely journeyings, amid a far distant region of mountain locked within
mountain, and sad rivers and melancholy tarn writhing or sleeping within all—that I chanced upon a
certain rivulet and island. I came upon them suddenly in the leafy June, and threw myself upon the
turf, beneath the branches of an unknown odorous shrub, that I might doze as I contemplated the scene.
I felt that thus only should I look upon it—such was the character of phantasm which it wore.
On all sides—save to the west, where the sun was about sinking—arose the verdant walls of the
forest. The little river which turned sharply in its course, and was thus immediately lost to sight,
seemed to have no exit from its prison, but to be absorbed by the deep green foliage of the trees to the
east—while in the opposite quarter (so it appeared to me as I lay at length and glanced upward) there
poured down noiselessly and continuously into the valley, a rich golden and crimson waterfall from
the sunset fountains of the sky.
About midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in, one small circular island,
profusely verdured, reposed upon the bosom of the stream.
So blended bank and shadow there
That each seemed pendulous in air—so mirror-like was the glassy water, that it was scarcely
possible to say at what point upon the slope of the emerald turf its crystal dominion began.
My position enabled me to include in a single view both the eastern and western extremities of the
islet; and I observed a singularly-marked difference in their aspects. The latter was all one radiant
harem of garden beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the eyes of the slant sunlight, and fairly
laughed with flowers. The grass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and Asphodel-interspersed. The
trees were lithe, mirthful, erect—bright, slender, and graceful,—of eastern figure and foliage, with
bark smooth, glossy, and parti-colored. There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all; and
although no airs blew from out the heavens, yet every thing had motion through the gentle sweepings
to and fro of innumerable butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tulips with wings.
The other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the blackest shade. A sombre, yet beautiful
and peaceful gloom here pervaded all things. The trees were dark in color, and mournful in form and
attitude, wreathing themselves into sad, solemn, and spectral shapes that conveyed ideas of mortal
sorrow and untimely death. The grass wore the deep tint of the cypress, and the heads of its blades
hung droopingly, and hither and thither among it were many small unsightly hillocks, low and narrow,
and not very long, that had the aspect of graves, but were not; although over and all about them the rue
and the rosemary clambered. The shade of the trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury
itself therein, impregnating the depths of the element with darkness. I fancied that each shadow, as the
sun descended lower and lower, separated itself sullenly from the trunk that gave it birth, and thus
became absorbed by the stream; while other shadows issued momently from the trees, taking the place
of their predecessors thus entombed.
This idea, having once seized upon my fancy, greatly excited it, and I lost myself forthwith in
revery. "If ever island were enchanted," said I to myself, "this is it. This is the haunt of the few gentle
Fays who remain from the wreck of the race. Are these green tombs theirs?—or do they yield up their
sweet lives as mankind yield up their own? In dying, do they not rather waste away mournfully,
rendering unto God, little by little, their existence, as these trees render up shadow after shadow,
exhausting their substance unto dissolution? What the wasting tree is to the water that imbibes its
shade, growing thus blacker by what it preys upon, may not the life of the Fay be to the death which
engulfs it?"
As I thus mused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun sank rapidly to rest, and eddying currents
careered round and round the island, bearing upon their bosom large, dazzling, white flakes of the
bark of the sycamore-flakes which, in their multiform positions upon the water, a quick imagination
might have converted into any thing it pleased, while I thus mused, it appeared to me that the form of
one of those very Fays about whom I had been pondering made its way slowly into the darkness from
out the light at the western end of the island. She stood erect in a singularly fragile canoe, and urged it
with the mere phantom of an oar. While within the influence of the lingering sunbeams, her attitude
seemed indicative of joy—but sorrow deformed it as she passed within the shade. Slowly she glided
along, and at length rounded the islet and re-entered the region of light. "The revolution which has just
been made by the Fay," continued I, musingly, "is the cycle of the brief year of her life. She has
floated through her winter and through her summer. She is a year nearer unto Death; for I did not fail
to see that, as she came into the shade, her shadow fell from her, and was swallowed up in the dark
water, making its blackness more black."
And again the boat appeared and the Fay, but about the attitude of the latter there was more of care
and uncertainty and less of elastic joy. She floated again from out the light and into the gloom (which
deepened momently) and again her shadow fell from her into the ebony water, and became absorbed
into its blackness. And again and again she made the circuit of the island, (while the sun rushed down
to his slumbers), and at each issuing into the light there was more sorrow about her person, while it
grew feebler and far fainter and more indistinct, and at each passage into the gloom there fell from her
a darker shade, which became whelmed in a shadow more black. But at length when the sun had
utterly departed, the Fay, now the mere ghost of her former self, went disconsolately with her boat
into the region of the ebony flood, and that she issued thence at all I cannot say, for darkness fell over
all things and I beheld her magical figure no more.
THE ASSIGNATION
Stay for me there! I will not fail.
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
[Exequy on the death of his wife, by Henry King, Bishop of Chichester.]
ILL-FATED and mysterious man!—bewildered in the brilliancy of thine own imagination, and
fallen in the flames of thine own youth! Again in fancy I behold thee! Once more thy form hath risen
before me!—not—oh not as thou art—in the cold valley and shadow—but as thou shouldst be—
squandering away a life of magnificent meditation in that city of dim visions, thine own Venice—
which is a star-beloved Elysium of the sea, and the wide windows of whose Palladian palaces look
down with a deep and bitter meaning upon the secrets of her silent waters. Yes! I repeat it—as thou
shouldst be. There are surely other worlds than this—other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude
—other speculations than the speculations of the sophist. Who then shall call thy conduct into
question? who blame thee for thy visionary hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting away
of life, which were but the overflowings of thine everlasting energies?
It was at Venice, beneath the covered archway there called the Ponte di Sospiri, that I met for the
third or fourth time the person of whom I speak. It is with a confused recollection that I bring to mind
the circumstances of that meeting. Yet I remember—ah! how should I forget?—the deep midnight, the
Bridge of Sighs, the beauty of woman, and the Genius of Romance that stalked up and down the
narrow canal.
It was a night of unusual gloom. The great clock of the Piazza had sounded the fifth hour of the
Italian evening. The square of the Campanile lay silent and deserted, and the lights in the old Ducal
Palace were dying fast away. I was returning home from the Piazetta, by way of the Grand Canal. But
as my gondola arrived opposite the mouth of the canal San Marco, a female voice from its recesses
broke suddenly upon the night, in one wild, hysterical, and long continued shriek. Startled at the
sound, I sprang upon my feet: while the gondolier, letting slip his single oar, lost it in the pitchy
darkness beyond a chance of recovery, and we were consequently left to the guidance of the current
which here sets from the greater into the smaller channel. Like some huge and sable-feathered condor,
we were slowly drifting down towards the Bridge of Sighs, when a thousand flambeaux flashing from
the windows, and down the staircases of the Ducal Palace, turned all at once that deep gloom into a
livid and preternatural day.
A child, slipping from the arms of its own mother, had fallen from an upper window of the lofty
structure into the deep and dim canal. The quiet waters had closed placidly over their victim; and,
although my own gondola was the only one in sight, many a stout swimmer, already in the stream, was
seeking in vain upon the surface, the treasure which was to be found, alas! only within the abyss.
Upon the broad black marble flagstones at the entrance of the palace, and a few steps above the
water, stood a figure which none who then saw can have ever since forgotten. It was the Marchesa
Aphrodite—the adoration of all Venice—the gayest of the gay—the most lovely where all were
beautiful—but still the young wife of the old and intriguing Mentoni, and the mother of that fair child,
her first and only one, who now, deep beneath the murky water, was thinking in bitterness of heart
upon her sweet caresses, and exhausting its little life in struggles to call upon her name.
She stood alone. Her small, bare, and silvery feet gleamed in the black mirror of marble beneath
her. Her hair, not as yet more than half loosened for the night from its ball-room array, clustered, amid
a shower of diamonds, round and round her classical head, in curls like those of the young hyacinth. A
snowy-white and gauze-like drapery seemed to be nearly the sole covering to her delicate form; but
the mid-summer and midnight air was hot, sullen, and still, and no motion in the statue-like form
itself, stirred even the folds of that raiment of very vapor which hung around it as the heavy marble
hangs around the Niobe. Yet—strange to say!—her large lustrous eyes were not turned downwards
upon that grave wherein her brightest hope lay buried—but riveted in a widely different direction!
The prison of the Old Republic is, I think, the stateliest building in all Venice—but how could that
lady gaze so fixedly upon it, when beneath her lay stifling her only child? Yon dark, gloomy niche,
too, yawns right opposite her chamber window—what, then, could there be in its shadows—in its
architecture—in its ivy-wreathed and solemn cornices—that the Marchesa di Mentoni had not
wondered at a thousand times before? Nonsense!—Who does not remember that, at such a time as
this, the eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of its sorrow, and sees in innumerable faroff places, the woe which is close at hand?
Many steps above the Marchesa, and within the arch of the water-gate, stood, in full dress, the
Satyr-like figure of Mentoni himself. He was occasionally occupied in thrumming a guitar, and
seemed ennuye to the very death, as at intervals he gave directions for the recovery of his child.
Stupified and aghast, I had myself no power to move from the upright position I had assumed upon
first hearing the shriek, and must have presented to the eyes of the agitated group a spectral and
ominous appearance, as with pale countenance and rigid limbs, I floated down among them in that
funereal gondola.
All efforts proved in vain. Many of the most energetic in the search were relaxing their exertions,
and yielding to a gloomy sorrow. There seemed but little hope for the child; (how much less than for
the mother!) but now, from the interior of that dark niche which has been already mentioned as
forming a part of the Old Republican prison, and as fronting the lattice of the Marchesa, a figure
muffled in a cloak, stepped out within reach of the light, and, pausing a moment upon the verge of the
giddy descent, plunged headlong into the canal. As, in an instant afterwards, he stood with the still
living and breathing child within his grasp, upon the marble flagstones by the side of the Marchesa,
his cloak, heavy with the drenching water, became unfastened, and, falling in folds about his feet,
discovered to the wonder-stricken spectators the graceful person of a very young man, with the sound
of whose name the greater part of Europe was then ringing.
No word spoke the deliverer. But the Marchesa! She will now receive her child—she will press
it to her heart—she will cling to its little form, and smother it with her caresses. Alas! another's arms
have taken it from the stranger—another's arms have taken it away, and borne it afar off, unnoticed,
into the palace! And the Marchesa! Her lip—her beautiful lip trembles: tears are gathering in her eyes
—those eyes which, like Pliny's acanthus, are "soft and almost liquid." Yes! tears are gathering in
those eyes—and see! the entire woman thrills throughout the soul, and the statue has started into life!
The pallor of the marble countenance, the swelling of the marble bosom, the very purity of the marble
feet, we behold suddenly flushed over with a tide of ungovernable crimson; and a slight shudder
quivers about her delicate frame, as a gentle air at Napoli about the rich silver lilies in the grass.
Why should that lady blush! To this demand there is no answer—except that, having left, in the
eager haste and terror of a mother's heart, the privacy of her own boudoir, she has neglected to
enthral her tiny feet in their slippers, and utterly forgotten to throw over her Venetian shoulders that
drapery which is their due. What other possible reason could there have been for her so blushing?—
for the glance of those wild appealing eyes? for the unusual tumult of that throbbing bosom?—for the
convulsive pressure of that trembling hand?—that hand which fell, as Mentoni turned into the palace,
accidentally, upon the hand of the stranger. What reason could there have been for the low—the
singularly low tone of those unmeaning words which the lady uttered hurriedly in bidding him adieu?
"Thou hast conquered," she said, or the murmurs of the water deceived me; "thou hast conquered—
one hour after sunrise—we shall meet—so let it be!"
The tumult had subsided, the lights had died away within the palace, and the stranger, whom I now
recognized, stood alone upon the flags. He shook with inconceivable agitation, and his eye glanced
around in search of a gondola. I could not do less than offer him the service of my own; and he
accepted the civility. Having obtained an oar at the water-gate, we proceeded together to his
residence, while he rapidly recovered his self-possession, and spoke of our former slight
acquaintance in terms of great apparent cordiality.
There are some subjects upon which I take pleasure in being minute. The person of the stranger—
let me call him by this title, who to all the world was still a stranger—the person of the stranger is
one of these subjects. In height he might have been below rather than above the medium size: although
there were moments of intense passion when his frame actually expanded and belied the assertion.
The light, almost slender symmetry of his figure, promised more of that ready activity which he
evinced at the Bridge of Sighs, than of that Herculean strength which he has been known to wield
without an effort, upon occasions of more dangerous emergency. With the mouth and chin of a deity—
singular, wild, full, liquid eyes, whose shadows varied from pure hazel to intense and brilliant jet—
and a profusion of curling, black hair, from which a forehead of unusual breadth gleamed forth at
intervals all light and ivory—his were features than which I have seen none more classically regular,
except, perhaps, the marble ones of the Emperor Commodus. Yet his countenance was, nevertheless,
one of those which all men have seen at some period of their lives, and have never afterwards seen
again. It had no peculiar—it had no settled predominant expression to be fastened upon the memory; a
countenance seen and instantly forgotten—but forgotten with a vague and never-ceasing desire of
recalling it to mind. Not that the spirit of each rapid passion failed, at any time, to throw its own
distinct image upon the mirror of that face—but that the mirror, mirror-like, retained no vestige of the
passion, when the passion had departed.
Upon leaving him on the night of our adventure, he solicited me, in what I thought an urgent
manner, to call upon him very early the next morning. Shortly after sunrise, I found myself accordingly
at his Palazzo, one of those huge structures of gloomy, yet fantastic pomp, which tower above the
waters of the Grand Canal in the vicinity of the Rialto. I was shown up a broad winding staircase of
mosaics, into an apartment whose unparalleled splendor burst through the opening door with an actual
glare, making me blind and dizzy with luxuriousness.
I knew my acquaintance to be wealthy. Report had spoken of his possessions in terms which I had
even ventured to call terms of ridiculous exaggeration. But as I gazed about me, I could not bring
myself to believe that the wealth of any subject in Europe could have supplied the princely
magnificence which burned and blazed around.
Although, as I say, the sun had arisen, yet the room was still brilliantly lighted up. I judge from
this circumstance, as well as from an air of exhaustion in the countenance of my friend, that he had not
retired to bed during the whole of the preceding night. In the architecture and embellishments of the
chamber, the evident design had been to dazzle and astound. Little attention had been paid to the
decora of what is technically called keeping, or to the proprieties of nationality. The eye wandered
from object to object, and rested upon none—neither the grotesques of the Greek painters, nor the
sculptures of the best Italian days, nor the huge carvings of untutored Egypt. Rich draperies in every
part of the room trembled to the vibration of low, melancholy music, whose origin was not to be
discovered. The senses were oppressed by mingled and conflicting perfumes, reeking up from strange
convolute censers, together with multitudinous flaring and flickering tongues of emerald and violet
fire. The rays of the newly risen sun poured in upon the whole, through windows, formed each of a
single pane of crimson-tinted glass. Glancing to and fro, in a thousand reflections, from curtains
which rolled from their cornices like cataracts of molten silver, the beams of natural glory mingled at
length fitfully with the artificial light, and lay weltering in subdued masses upon a carpet of rich,
liquid-looking cloth of Chili gold.
"Ha! ha! ha!—ha! ha! ha!"—laughed the proprietor, motioning me to a seat as I entered the room,
and throwing himself back at full-length upon an ottoman. "I see," said he, perceiving that I could not
immediately reconcile myself to the bienseance of so singular a welcome—"I see you are astonished
at my apartment—at my statues—my pictures—my originality of conception in architecture and
upholstery! absolutely drunk, eh, with my magnificence? But pardon me, my dear sir, (here his tone of
voice dropped to the very spirit of cordiality,) pardon me for my uncharitable laughter. You appeared
so utterly astonished. Besides, some things are so completely ludicrous, that a man must laugh or die.
To die laughing, must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths! Sir Thomas More—a very fine man
was Sir Thomas More—Sir Thomas More died laughing, you remember. Also in the Absurdities of
Ravisius Textor, there is a long list of characters who came to the same magnificent end. Do you
know, however," continued he musingly, "that at Sparta (which is now Palæ; ochori,) at Sparta, I say,
to the west of the citadel, among a chaos of scarcely visible ruins, is a kind of socle, upon which are
still legible the letters AAEM. They are undoubtedly part of PEAAEMA. Now, at Sparta were a
thousand temples and shrines to a thousand different divinities. How exceedingly strange that the altar
of Laughter should have survived all the others! But in the present instance," he resumed, with a
singular alteration of voice and manner, "I have no right to be merry at your expense. You might well
have been amazed. Europe cannot produce anything so fine as this, my little regal cabinet. My other
apartments are by no means of the same order—mere ultras of fashionable insipidity. This is better
than fashion—is it not? Yet this has but to be seen to become the rage—that is, with those who could
afford it at the cost of their entire patrimony. I have guarded, however, against any such profanation.
With one exception, you are the only human being besides myself and my valet, who has been
admitted within the mysteries of these imperial precincts, since they have been bedizzened as you
see!"
I bowed in acknowledgment—for the overpowering sense of splendor and perfume, and music,
together with the unexpected eccentricity of his address and manner, prevented me from expressing, in
words, my appreciation of what I might have construed into a compliment.
"Here," he resumed, arising and leaning on my arm as he sauntered around the apartment, "here
are paintings from the Greeks to Cimabue, and from Cimabue to the present hour. Many are chosen, as
you see, with little deference to the opinions of Virtu. They are all, however, fitting tapestry for a
chamber such as this. Here, too, are some chefs d'oeuvre of the unknown great; and here, unfinished
designs by men, celebrated in their day, whose very names the perspicacity of the academies has left
to silence and to me. What think you," said he, turning abruptly as he spoke—"what think you of this
Madonna della Pieta?"
"It is Guido's own!" I said, with all the enthusiasm of my nature, for I had been poring intently
over its surpassing loveliness. "It is Guido's own!—how could you have obtained it?—she is
undoubtedly in painting what the Venus is in sculpture."
"Ha!" said he thoughtfully, "the Venus—the beautiful Venus?—the Venus of the Medici?—she of
the diminutive head and the gilded hair? Part of the left arm (here his voice dropped so as to be heard
with difficulty,) and all the right, are restorations; and in the coquetry of that right arm lies, I think, the
quintessence of all affectation. Give me the Canova! The Apollo, too, is a copy—there can be no
doubt of it—blind fool that I am, who cannot behold the boasted inspiration of the Apollo! I cannot
help—pity me!—I cannot help preferring the Antinous. Was it not Socrates who said that the statuary
found his statue in the block of marble? Then Michael Angelo was by no means original in his couplet
—
'Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto
Che un marmo solo in se non circunscriva.'"
It has been, or should be remarked, that, in the manner of the true gentleman, we are always aware
of a difference from the bearing of the vulgar, without being at once precisely able to determine in
what such difference consists. Allowing the remark to have applied in its full force to the outward
demeanor of my acquaintance, I felt it, on that eventful morning, still more fully applicable to his
moral temperament and character. Nor can I better define that peculiarity of spirit which seemed to
place him so essentially apart from all other human beings, than by calling it a habit of intense and
continual thought, pervading even his most trivial actions—intruding upon his moments of dalliance—
and interweaving itself with his very flashes of merriment—like adders which writhe from out the
eyes of the grinning masks in the cornices around the temples of Persepolis.
I could not help, however, repeatedly observing, through the mingled tone of levity and solemnity
with which he rapidly descanted upon matters of little importance, a certain air of trepidation—a
degree of nervous unction in action and in speech—an unquiet excitability of manner which appeared
to me at all times unaccountable, and upon some occasions even filled me with alarm. Frequently, too,
pausing in the middle of a sentence whose commencement he had apparently forgotten, he seemed to
be listening in the deepest attention, as if either in momentary expectation of a visiter, or to sounds
which must have had existence in his imagination alone.
It was during one of these reveries or pauses of apparent abstraction, that, in turning over a page
of the poet and scholar Politian's beautiful tragedy "The Orfeo," (the first native Italian tragedy,)
which lay near me upon an ottoman, I discovered a passage underlined in pencil. It was a passage
towards the end of the third act—a passage of the most heart-stirring excitement—a passage which,
although tainted with impurity, no man shall read without a thrill of novel emotion—no woman
without a sigh. The whole page was blotted with fresh tears; and, upon the opposite interleaf, were
the following English lines, written in a hand so very different from the peculiar characters of my
acquaintance, that I had some difficulty in recognising it as his own:—
Thou wast that all to me, love, For which my soul did pine— A green isle in the sea, love, A
fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers; And all the flowers were mine.
Ah, dream too bright to last! Ah, starry Hope, that didst arise But to be overcast! A voice from
out the Future cries, "Onward!"—but o'er the Past (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies, Mute—
motionless—aghast! For alas! alas! with me The light of life is o'er. "No more—no more—no
more," (Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the shore,) Shall bloom the
thunder-blasted tree, Or the stricken eagle soar! Now all my hours are trances; And all my
nightly dreams Are where the dark eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams, In what ethereal
dances, By what Italian streams. Alas! for that accursed time They bore thee o'er the billow,
From Love to titled age and crime, And an unholy pillow!— From me, and from our misty clime,
Where weeps the silver willow!
That these lines were written in English—a language with which I had not believed their author
acquainted—afforded me little matter for surprise. I was too well aware of the extent of his
acquirements, and of the singular pleasure he took in concealing them from observation, to be
astonished at any similar discovery; but the place of date, I must confess, occasioned me no little
amazement. It had been originally written London, and afterwards carefully overscored—not,
however, so effectually as to conceal the word from a scrutinizing eye. I say, this occasioned me no
little amazement; for I well remember that, in a former conversation with a friend, I particularly
inquired if he had at any time met in London the Marchesa di Mentoni, (who for some years previous
to her marriage had resided in that city,) when his answer, if I mistake not, gave me to understand that
he had never visited the metropolis of Great Britain. I might as well here mention, that I have more
than once heard, (without, of course, giving credit to a report involving so many improbabilities,) that
the person of whom I speak, was not only by birth, but in education, an Englishman.
"There is one painting," said he, without being aware of my notice of the tragedy—"there is still
one painting which you have not seen." And throwing aside a drapery, he discovered a full-length
portrait of the Marchesa Aphrodite.
Human art could have done no more in the delineation of her superhuman beauty. The same
ethereal figure which stood before me the preceding night upon the steps of the Ducal Palace, stood
before me once again. But in the expression of the countenance, which was beaming all over with
smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible anomaly!) that fitful stain of melancholy which will ever
be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful. Her right arm lay folded over her bosom.
With her left she pointed downward to a curiously fashioned vase. One small, fairy foot, alone
visible, barely touched the earth; and, scarcely discernible in the brilliant atmosphere which seemed
to encircle and enshrine her loveliness, floated a pair of the most delicately imagined wings. My
glance fell from the painting to the figure of my friend, and the vigorous words of Chapman's Bussy
D'Ambois, quivered instinctively upon my lips:
"He is up there like a Roman statue! He will stand till Death hath made him marble!"
"Come," he said at length, turning towards a table of richly enamelled and massive silver, upon
which were a few goblets fantastically stained, together with two large Etruscan vases, fashioned in
the same extraordinary model as that in the foreground of the portrait, and filled with what I supposed
to be Johannisberger. "Come," he said, abruptly, "let us drink! It is early—but let us drink. It is indeed
early," he continued, musingly, as a cherub with a heavy golden hammer made the apartment ring with
the first hour after sunrise: "It is indeed early—but what matters it? let us drink! Let us pour out an
offering to yon solemn sun which these gaudy lamps and censers are so eager to subdue!" And, having
made me pledge him in a bumper, he swallowed in rapid succession several goblets of the wine.
"To dream," he continued, resuming the tone of his desultory conversation, as he held up to the
rich light of a censer one of the magnificent vases—"to dream has been the business of my life. I have
therefore framed for myself, as you see, a bower of dreams. In the heart of Venice could I have
erected a better? You behold around you, it is true, a medley of architectural embellishments. The
chastity of Ionia is offended by antediluvian devices, and the sphynxes of Egypt are outstretched upon
carpets of gold. Yet the effect is incongruous to the timid alone. Proprieties of place, and especially
of time, are the bugbears which terrify mankind from the contemplation of the magnificent. Once I was
myself a decorist; but that sublimation of folly has palled upon my soul. All this is now the fitter for
my purpose. Like these arabesque censers, my spirit is writhing in fire, and the delirium of this scene
is fashioning me for the wilder visions of that land of real dreams whither I am now rapidly
departing." He here paused abruptly, bent his head to his bosom, and seemed to listen to a sound
which I could not hear. At length, erecting his frame, he looked upwards, and ejaculated the lines of
the Bishop of Chichester:
"Stay for me there! I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale."
In the next instant, confessing the power of the wine, he threw himself at full-length upon an
ottoman.
A quick step was now heard upon the staircase, and a loud knock at the door rapidly succeeded. I
was hastening to anticipate a second disturbance, when a page of Mentoni's household burst into the
room, and faltered out, in a voice choking with emotion, the incoherent words, "My mistress!—my
mistress!—Poisoned!—poisoned! Oh, beautiful—oh, beautiful Aphrodite!"
Bewildered, I flew to the ottoman, and endeavored to arouse the sleeper to a sense of the startling
intelligence. But his limbs were rigid—his lips were livid—his lately beaming eyes were riveted in
death. I staggered back towards the table—my hand fell upon a cracked and blackened goblet—and a
consciousness of the entire and terrible truth flashed suddenly over my soul.
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 unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was
permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence—the dread sentence of death—
was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial
voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of
revolution—perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill wheel. This only for a brief
period; for presently I heard no more. Yet, for a while, I saw; but with how terrible an exaggeration! I
saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white—whiter than the sheet upon which
I trace these words—and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of
firmness—of immoveable resolution—of stern contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees of
what to me was Fate, were still issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I
saw them fashion the syllables of my name; and I shuddered because no sound succeeded. I saw, too,
for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable
draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment. And then my vision fell upon the seven tall
candles upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white and slender angels
who would save me; but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt
every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms
became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help.
And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must
be in the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full
appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the
judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames
went out utterly; the blackness of darkness supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a
mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, night were the universe.
I had swooned; but still will not say that all of consciousness was lost. What of it there remained I
will not attempt to define, or even to describe; yet all was not lost. In the deepest slumber—no! In
delirium—no! In a swoon—no! In death—no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no
immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of
some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we
have dreamed. In the return to life from the swoon there are two stages; first, that of the sense of
mental or spiritual; secondly, that of the sense of physical, existence. It seems probable that if, upon
reaching the second stage, we could recall the impressions of the first, we should find these
impressions eloquent in memories of the gulf beyond. And that gulf is—what? How at least shall we
distinguish its shadows from those of the tomb? But if the impressions of what I have termed the first
stage, are not, at will, recalled, yet, after long interval, do they not come unbidden, while we marvel
whence they come? He who has never swooned, is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly
familiar faces in coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad visions that the
many may not view; is not he who ponders over the perfume of some novel flower—is not he whose
brain grows bewildered with the meaning of some musical cadence which has never before arrested
his attention.
Amid frequent and thoughtful endeavors to remember; amid earnest struggles to regather some
token of the state of seeming nothingness into which my soul had lapsed, there have been moments
when I have dreamed of success; there have been brief, very brief periods when I have conjured up
remembrances which the lucid reason of a later epoch assures me could have had reference only to
that condition of seeming unconsciousness. These shadows of memory tell, indistinctly, of tall figures
that lifted and bore me in silence down—down—still down—till a hideous dizziness oppressed me
at the mere idea of the interminableness of the descent. They tell also of a vague horror at my heart,
on account of that heart's unnatural stillness. Then comes a sense of sudden motionlessness throughout
all things; as if those who bore me (a ghastly train!) had outrun, in their descent, the limits of the
limitless, and paused from the wearisomeness of their toil. After this I call to mind flatness and
dampness; and then all is madness—the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden
things.
Very suddenly there came back to my soul motion and sound—the tumultuous motion of the heart,
and, in my ears, the sound of its beating. Then a pause in which all is blank. Then again sound, and
motion, and touch—a tingling sensation pervading my frame. Then the mere consciousness of
existence, without thought—a condition which lasted long. Then, very suddenly, thought, and
shuddering terror, and earnest endeavor to comprehend my true state. Then a strong desire to lapse
into insensibility. Then a rushing revival of soul and a successful effort to move. And now a full
memory of the trial, of the judges, of the sable draperies, of the sentence, of the sickness, of the
swoon. Then entire forgetfulness of all that followed; of all that a later day and much earnestness of
endeavor have enabled me vaguely to recall.
So far, I had not opened my eyes. I felt that I lay upon my back, unbound. I reached out my hand,
and it fell heavily upon something damp and hard. There I suffered it to remain for many minutes,
while I strove to imagine where and what I could be. I longed, yet dared not to employ my vision. I
dreaded the first glance at objects around me. It was not that I feared to look upon things horrible, but
that I grew aghast lest there should be nothing to see. At length, with a wild desperation at heart, I
quickly unclosed my eyes. My worst thoughts, then, were confirmed. The blackness of eternal night
encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle
me. The atmosphere was intolerably close. I still lay quietly, and made effort to exercise my reason. I
brought to mind the inquisitorial proceedings, and attempted from that point to deduce my real
condition. The sentence had passed; and it appeared to me that a very long interval of time had since
elapsed. Yet not for a moment did I suppose myself actually dead. Such a supposition,
notwithstanding what we read in fiction, is altogether inconsistent with real existence;—but where
and in what state was I? The condemned to death, I knew, perished usually at the autos-da-fe, and one
of these had been held on the very night of the day of my trial. Had I been remanded to my dungeon, to
await the next sacrifice, which would not take place for many months? This I at once saw could not
be. Victims had been in immediate demand. Moreover, my dungeon, as well as all the condemned
cells at Toledo, had stone floors, and light was not altogether excluded.
A fearful idea now suddenly drove the blood in torrents upon my heart, and for a brief period, I
once more relapsed into insensibility. Upon recovering, I at once started to my feet, trembling
convulsively in every fibre. I thrust my arms wildly above and around me in all directions. I felt
nothing; yet dreaded to move a step, lest I should be impeded by the walls of a tomb. Perspiration
burst from every pore, and stood in cold big beads upon my forehead. The agony of suspense grew at
length intolerable, and I cautiously moved forward, with my arms extended, and my eyes straining
from their sockets, in the hope of catching some faint ray of light. I proceeded for many paces; but still
all was blackness and vacancy. I breathed more freely. It seemed evident that mine was not, at least,
the most hideous of fates.
And now, as I still continued to step cautiously onward, there came thronging upon my
recollection a thousand vague rumors of the horrors of Toledo. Of the dungeons there had been strange
things narrated—fables I had always deemed them—but yet strange, and too ghastly to repeat, save in
a whisper. Was I left to perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness; or what fate,
perhaps even more fearful, awaited me? That the result would be death, and a death of more than
customary bitterness, I knew too well the character of my judges to doubt. The mode and the hour
were all that occupied or distracted me.
My outstretched hands at length encountered some solid obstruction. It was a wall, seemingly of
stone masonry—very smooth, slimy, and cold. I followed it up; stepping with all the careful distrust
with which certain antique narratives had inspired me. This process, however, afforded me no means
of ascertaining the dimensions of my dungeon; as I might make its circuit, and return to the point
whence I set out, without being aware of the fact; so perfectly uniform seemed the wall. I therefore
sought the knife which had been in my pocket, when led into the inquisitorial chamber; but it was
gone; my clothes had been exchanged for a wrapper of coarse serge. I had thought of forcing the blade
in some minute crevice of the masonry, so as to identify my point of departure. The difficulty,
nevertheless, was but trivial; although, in the disorder of my fancy, it seemed at first insuperable. I
tore a part of the hem from the robe and placed the fragment at full length, and at right angles to the
wall. In groping my way around the prison, I could not fail to encounter this rag upon completing the
circuit. So, at least I thought: but I had not counted upon the extent of the dungeon, or upon my own
weakness. The ground was moist and slippery. I staggered onward for some time, when I stumbled
and fell. My excessive fatigue induced me to remain prostrate; and sleep soon overtook me as I lay.
Upon awaking, and stretching forth an arm, I found beside me a loaf and a pitcher with water. I
was too much exhausted to reflect upon this circumstance, but ate and drank with avidity. Shortly
afterward, I resumed my tour around the prison, and with much toil came at last upon the fragment of
the serge. Up to the period when I fell I had counted fifty-two paces, and upon resuming my walk, I
had counted forty-eight more;—when I arrived at the rag. There were in all, then, a hundred paces;
and, admitting two paces to the yard, I presumed the dungeon to be fifty yards in circuit. I had met,
however, with many angles in the wall, and thus I could form no guess at the shape of the vault; for
vault I could not help supposing it to be.
I had little object—certainly no hope—in these researches; but a vague curiosity prompted me to
continue them. Quitting the wall, I resolved to cross the area of the enclosure. At first I proceeded
with extreme caution, for the floor, although seemingly of solid material, was treacherous with slime.
At length, however, I took courage, and did not hesitate to step firmly; endeavoring to cross in as
direct a line as possible. I had advanced some ten or twelve paces in this manner, when the remnant
of the torn hem of my robe became entangled between my legs. I stepped on it, and fell violently on
my face.
In the confusion attending my fall, I did not immediately apprehend a somewhat startling
circumstance, which yet, in a few seconds afterward, and while I still lay prostrate, arrested my
attention. It was this—my chin rested upon the floor of the prison, but my lips and the upper portion of
my head, although seemingly at a less elevation than the chin, touched nothing. At the same time my
forehead seemed bathed in a clammy vapor, and the peculiar smell of decayed fungus arose to my
nostrils. I put forward my arm, and shuddered to find that I had fallen at the very brink of a circular
pit, whose extent, of course, I had no means of ascertaining at the moment. Groping about the masonry
just below the margin, I succeeded in dislodging a small fragment, and let it fall into the abyss. For
many seconds I hearkened to its reverberations as it dashed against the sides of the chasm in its
descent; at length there was a sullen plunge into water, succeeded by loud echoes. At the same
moment there came a sound resembling the quick opening, and as rapid closing of a door overhead,
while a faint gleam of light flashed suddenly through the gloom, and as suddenly faded away.
I saw clearly the doom which had been prepared for me, and congratulated myself upon the timely
accident by which I had escaped. Another step before my fall, and the world had seen me no more.
And the death just avoided, was of that very character which I had regarded as fabulous and frivolous
in the tales respecting the Inquisition. To the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with
its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors. I had been reserved for the
latter. By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice,
and had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me.
Shaking in every limb, I groped my way back to the wall; resolving there to perish rather than risk
the terrors of the wells, of which my imagination now pictured many in various positions about the
dungeon. In other conditions of mind I might have had courage to end my misery at once by a plunge
into one of these abysses; but now I was the veriest of cowards. Neither could I forget what I had
read of these pits—that the sudden extinction of life formed no part of their most horrible plan.
Agitation of spirit kept me awake for many long hours; but at length I again slumbered. Upon
arousing, I found by my side, as before, a loaf and a pitcher of water. A burning thirst consumed me,
and I emptied the vessel at a draught. It must have been drugged; for scarcely had I drunk, before I
became irresistibly drowsy. A deep sleep fell upon me—a sleep like that of death. How long it lasted
of course, I know not; but when, once again, I unclosed my eyes, the objects around me were visible.
By a wild sulphurous lustre, the origin of which I could not at first determine, I was enabled to see the
extent and aspect of the prison.
In its size I had been greatly mistaken. The whole circuit of its walls did not exceed twenty-five
yards. For some minutes this fact occasioned me a world of vain trouble; vain indeed! for what could
be of less importance, under the terrible circumstances which environed me, then the mere
dimensions of my dungeon? But my soul took a wild interest in trifles, and I busied myself in
endeavors to account for the error I had committed in my measurement. The truth at length flashed
upon me. In my first attempt at exploration I had counted fifty-two paces, up to the period when I fell;
I must then have been within a pace or two of the fragment of serge; in fact, I had nearly performed the
circuit of the vault. I then slept, and upon awaking, I must have returned upon my steps—thus
supposing the circuit nearly double what it actually was. My confusion of mind prevented me from
observing that I began my tour with the wall to the left, and ended it with the wall to the right.
I had been deceived, too, in respect to the shape of the enclosure. In feeling my way I had found
many angles, and thus deduced an idea of great irregularity; so potent is the effect of total darkness
upon one arousing from lethargy or sleep! The angles were simply those of a few slight depressions,
or niches, at odd intervals. The general shape of the prison was square. What I had taken for masonry
seemed now to be iron, or some other metal, in huge plates, whose sutures or joints occasioned the
depression. The entire surface of this metallic enclosure was rudely daubed in all the hideous and
repulsive devices to which the charnel superstition of the monks has given rise. The figures of fiends
in aspects of menace, with skeleton forms, and other more really fearful images, overspread and
disfigured the walls. I observed that the outlines of these monstrosities were sufficiently distinct, but
that the colors seemed faded and blurred, as if from the effects of a damp atmosphere. I now noticed
the floor, too, which was of stone. In the centre yawned the circular pit from whose jaws I had
escaped; but it was the only one in the dungeon.
All this I saw indistinctly and by much effort: for my personal condition had been greatly changed
during slumber. I now lay upon my back, and at full length, on a species of low framework of wood.
To this I was securely bound by a long strap resembling a surcingle. It passed in many convolutions
about my limbs and body, leaving at liberty only my head, and my left arm to such extent that I could,
by dint of much exertion, supply myself with food from an earthen dish which lay by my side on the
floor. I saw, to my horror, that the pitcher had been removed. I say to my horror; for I was consumed
with intolerable thirst. This thirst it appeared to be the design of my persecutors to stimulate: for the
food in the dish was meat pungently seasoned.
Looking upward, I surveyed the ceiling of my prison. It was some thirty or forty feet overhead,
and constructed much as the side walls. In one of its panels a very singular figure riveted my whole
attention. It was the painted figure of Time as he is commonly represented, save that, in lieu of a
scythe, he held what, at a casual glance, I supposed to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum such
as we see on antique clocks. There was something, however, in the appearance of this machine which
caused me to regard it more attentively. While I gazed directly upward at it (for its position was
immediately over my own) I fancied that I saw it in motion. In an instant afterward the fancy was
confirmed. Its sweep was brief, and of course slow. I watched it for some minutes, somewhat in fear,
but more in wonder. Wearied at length with observing its dull movement, I turned my eyes upon the
other objects in the cell.
A slight noise attracted my notice, and, looking to the floor, I saw several enormous rats
traversing it. They had issued from the well, which lay just within view to my right. Even then, while
I gazed, they came up in troops, hurriedly, with ravenous eyes, allured by the scent of the meat. From
this it required much effort and attention to scare them away.
It might have been half an hour, perhaps even an hour, (for I could take but imperfect note of time)
before I again cast my eyes upward. What I then saw confounded and amazed me. The sweep of the
pendulum had increased in extent by nearly a yard. As a natural consequence, its velocity was also
much greater. But what mainly disturbed me was the idea that had perceptibly descended. I now
observed—with what horror it is needless to say—that its nether extremity was formed of a crescent
of glittering steel, about a foot in length from horn to horn; the horns upward, and the under edge
evidently as keen as that of a razor. Like a razor also, it seemed massy and heavy, tapering from the
edge into a solid and broad structure above. It was appended to a weighty rod of brass, and the whole
hissed as it swung through the air.
I could no longer doubt the doom prepared for me by monkish ingenuity in torture. My cognizance
of the pit had become known to the inquisitorial agents—the pit whose horrors had been destined for
so bold a recusant as myself—the pit, typical of hell, and regarded by rumor as the Ultima Thule of
all their punishments. The plunge into this pit I had avoided by the merest of accidents, I knew that
surprise, or entrapment into torment, formed an important portion of all the grotesquerie of these
dungeon deaths. Having failed to fall, it was no part of the demon plan to hurl me into the abyss; and
thus (there being no alternative) a different and a milder destruction awaited me. Milder! I half smiled
in my agony as I thought of such application of such a term.
What boots it to tell of the long, long hours of horror more than mortal, during which I counted the
rushing vibrations of the steel! Inch by inch—line by line—with a descent only appreciable at
intervals that seemed ages—down and still down it came! Days passed—it might have been that many
days passed—ere it swept so closely over me as to fan me with its acrid breath. The odor of the
sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils. I prayed—I wearied heaven with my prayer for its more
speedy descent. I grew frantically mad, and struggled to force myself upward against the sweep of the
fearful scimitar. And then I fell suddenly calm, and lay smiling at the glittering death, as a child at
some rare bauble.
There was another interval of utter insensibility; it was brief; for, upon again lapsing into life
there had been no perceptible descent in the pendulum. But it might have been long; for I knew there
were demons who took note of my swoon, and who could have arrested the vibration at pleasure.
Upon my recovery, too, I felt very—oh, inexpressibly sick and weak, as if through long inanition.
Even amid the agonies of that period, the human nature craved food. With painful effort I outstretched
my left arm as far as my bonds permitted, and took possession of the small remnant which had been
spared me by the rats. As I put a portion of it within my lips, there rushed to my mind a half formed
thought of joy—of hope. Yet what business had I with hope? It was, as I say, a half formed thought—
man has many such which are never completed. I felt that it was of joy—of hope; but felt also that it
had perished in its formation. In vain I struggled to perfect—to regain it. Long suffering had nearly
annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind. I was an imbecile—an idiot.
The vibration of the pendulum was at right angles to my length. I saw that the crescent was
designed to cross the region of the heart. It would fray the serge of my robe—it would return and
repeat its operations—again—and again. Notwithstanding terrifically wide sweep (some thirty feet or
more) and the hissing vigor of its descent, sufficient to sunder these very walls of iron, still the
fraying of my robe would be all that, for several minutes, it would accomplish. And at this thought I
paused. I dared not go farther than this reflection. I dwelt upon it with a pertinacity of attention—as if,
in so dwelling, I could arrest here the descent of the steel. I forced myself to ponder upon the sound of
the crescent as it should pass across the garment—upon the peculiar thrilling sensation which the
friction of cloth produces on the nerves. I pondered upon all this frivolity until my teeth were on edge.
Down—steadily down it crept. I took a frenzied pleasure in contrasting its downward with its
lateral velocity. To the right—to the left—far and wide—with the shriek of a damned spirit; to my
heart with the stealthy pace of the tiger! I alternately laughed and howled as the one or the other idea
grew predominant.
Down—certainly, relentlessly down! It vibrated within three inches of my bosom! I struggled
violently, furiously, to free my left arm. This was free only from the elbow to the hand. I could reach
the latter, from the platter beside me, to my mouth, with great effort, but no farther. Could I have
broken the fastenings above the elbow, I would have seized and attempted to arrest the pendulum. I
might as well have attempted to arrest an avalanche!
Down—still unceasingly—still inevitably down! I gasped and struggled at each vibration. I
shrunk convulsively at its every sweep. My eyes followed its outward or upward whirls with the
eagerness of the most unmeaning despair; they closed themselves spasmodically at the descent,
although death would have been a relief, oh! how unspeakable! Still I quivered in every nerve to think
how slight a sinking of the machinery would precipitate that keen, glistening axe upon my bosom. It
was hope that prompted the nerve to quiver—the frame to shrink. It was hope—the hope that triumphs
on the rack—that whispers to the death-condemned even in the dungeons of the Inquisition.
I saw that some ten or twelve vibrations would bring the steel in actual contact with my robe, and
with this observation there suddenly came over my spirit all the keen, collected calmness of despair.
For the first time during many hours—or perhaps days—I thought. It now occurred to me that the
bandage, or surcingle, which enveloped me, was unique. I was tied by no separate cord. The first
stroke of the razorlike crescent athwart any portion of the band, would so detach it that it might be
unwound from my person by means of my left hand. But how fearful, in that case, the proximity of the
steel! The result of the slightest struggle how deadly! Was it likely, moreover, that the minions of the
torturer had not foreseen and provided for this possibility! Was it probable that the bandage crossed
my bosom in the track of the pendulum? Dreading to find my faint, and, as it seemed, my last hope
frustrated, I so far elevated my head as to obtain a distinct view of my breast. The surcingle
enveloped my limbs and body close in all directions—save in the path of the destroying crescent.
Scarcely had I dropped my head back into its original position, when there flashed upon my mind
what I cannot better describe than as the unformed half of that idea of deliverance to which I have
previously alluded, and of which a moiety only floated indeterminately through my brain when I
raised food to my burning lips. The whole thought was now present—feeble, scarcely sane, scarcely
definite,—but still entire. I proceeded at once, with the nervous energy of despair, to attempt its
execution.
For many hours the immediate vicinity of the low framework upon which I lay, had been literally
swarming with rats. They were wild, bold, ravenous; their red eyes glaring upon me as if they waited
but for motionlessness on my part to make me their prey. "To what food," I thought, "have they been
accustomed in the well?"
They had devoured, in spite of all my efforts to prevent them, all but a small remnant of the
contents of the dish. I had fallen into an habitual see-saw, or wave of the hand about the platter: and,
at length, the unconscious uniformity of the movement deprived it of effect. In their voracity the
vermin frequently fastened their sharp fangs in my fingers. With the particles of the oily and spicy
viand which now remained, I thoroughly rubbed the bandage wherever I could reach it; then, raising
my hand from the floor, I lay breathlessly still.
At first the ravenous animals were startled and terrified at the change—at the cessation of
movement. They shrank alarmedly back; many sought the well. But this was only for a moment. I had
not counted in vain upon their voracity. Observing that I remained without motion, one or two of the
boldest leaped upon the frame-work, and smelt at the surcingle. This seemed the signal for a general
rush. Forth from the well they hurried in fresh troops. They clung to the wood—they overran it, and
leaped in hundreds upon my person. The measured movement of the pendulum disturbed them not at
all. Avoiding its strokes they busied themselves with the anointed bandage. They pressed—they
swarmed upon me in ever accumulating heaps. They writhed upon my throat; their cold lips sought my
own; I was half stifled by their thronging pressure; disgust, for which the world has no name, swelled
my bosom, and chilled, with a heavy clamminess, my heart. Yet one minute, and I felt that the struggle
would be over. Plainly I perceived the loosening of the bandage. I knew that in more than one place it
must be already severed. With a more than human resolution I lay still.
Nor had I erred in my calculations—nor had I endured in vain. I at length felt that I was free. The
surcingle hung in ribands from my body. But the stroke of the pendulum already pressed upon my
bosom. It had divided the serge of the robe. It had cut through the linen beneath. Twice again it swung,
and a sharp sense of pain shot through every nerve. But the moment of escape had arrived. At a wave
of my hand my deliverers hurried tumultuously away. With a steady movement—cautious, sidelong,
shrinking, and slow—I slid from the embrace of the bandage and beyond the reach of the scimitar. For
the moment, at least, I was free.
Free!—and in the grasp of the Inquisition! I had scarcely stepped from my wooden bed of horror
upon the stone floor of the prison, when the motion of the hellish machine ceased and I beheld it
drawn up, by some invisible force, through the ceiling. This was a lesson which I took desperately to
heart. My every motion was undoubtedly watched. Free!—I had but escaped death in one form of
agony, to be delivered unto worse than death in some other. With that thought I rolled my eves
nervously around on the barriers of iron that hemmed me in. Something unusual—some change which,
at first, I could not appreciate distinctly—it was obvious, had taken place in the apartment. For many
minutes of a dreamy and trembling abstraction, I busied myself in vain, unconnected conjecture.
During this period, I became aware, for the first time, of the origin of the sulphurous light which
illumined the cell. It proceeded from a fissure, about half an inch in width, extending entirely around
the prison at the base of the walls, which thus appeared, and were, completely separated from the
floor. I endeavored, but of course in vain, to look through the aperture.
As I arose from the attempt, the mystery of the alteration in the chamber broke at once upon my
understanding. I have observed that, although the outlines of the figures upon the walls were
sufficiently distinct, yet the colors seemed blurred and indefinite. These colors had now assumed, and
were momentarily assuming, a startling and most intense brilliancy, that gave to the spectral and
fiendish portraitures an aspect that might have thrilled even firmer nerves than my own. Demon eyes,
of a wild and ghastly vivacity, glared upon me in a thousand directions, where none had been visible
before, and gleamed with the lurid lustre of a fire that I could not force my imagination to regard as
unreal.
Unreal!—Even while I breathed there came to my nostrils the breath of the vapour of heated iron!
A suffocating odour pervaded the prison! A deeper glow settled each moment in the eyes that glared
at my agonies! A richer tint of crimson diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood. I panted! I
gasped for breath! There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors—oh! most unrelenting! oh!
most demoniac of men! I shrank from the glowing metal to the centre of the cell. Amid the thought of
the fiery destruction that impended, the idea of the coolness of the well came over my soul like balm.
I rushed to its deadly brink. I threw my straining vision below. The glare from the enkindled roof
illumined its inmost recesses. Yet, for a wild moment, did my spirit refuse to comprehend the meaning
of what I saw. At length it forced—it wrestled its way into my soul—it burned itself in upon my
shuddering reason.—Oh! for a voice to speak!—oh! horror!—oh! any horror but this! With a shriek, I
rushed from the margin, and buried my face in my hands—weeping bitterly.
The heat rapidly increased, and once again I looked up, shuddering as with a fit of the ague. There
had been a second change in the cell—and now the change was obviously in the form. As before, it
was in vain that I, at first, endeavoured to appreciate or understand what was taking place. But not
long was I left in doubt. The Inquisitorial vengeance had been hurried by my two-fold escape, and
there was to be no more dallying with the King of Terrors. The room had been square. I saw that two
of its iron angles were now acute—two, consequently, obtuse. The fearful difference quickly
increased with a low rumbling or moaning sound. In an instant the apartment had shifted its form into
that of a lozenge. But the alteration stopped not here-I neither hoped nor desired it to stop. I could
have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "Death," I said, "any death but
that of the pit!" Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to
urge me? Could I resist its glow? or, if even that, could I withstand its pressure? And now, flatter and
flatter grew the lozenge, with a rapidity that left me no time for contemplation. Its centre, and of
course, its greatest width, came just over the yawning gulf. I shrank back—but the closing walls
pressed me resistlessly onward. At length for my seared and writhing body there was no longer an
inch of foothold on the firm floor of the prison. I struggled no more, but the agony of my soul found
vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair. I felt that I tottered upon the brink—I averted my
eyes—
There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast 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 that of General Lasalle. The French army had
entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.
THE PREMATURE BURIAL
THERE are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely
horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction. These the mere romanticist must eschew, if he do not
wish to offend or to disgust. They are with propriety handled only when the severity and majesty of
Truth sanctify and sustain them. We thrill, for example, with the most intense of "pleasurable pain"
over the accounts of the Passage of the Beresina, of the Earthquake at Lisbon, of the Plague at London,
of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, or of the stifling of the hundred and twenty-three prisoners in the
Black Hole at Calcutta. But in these accounts it is the fact——it is the reality——it is the history
which excites. As inventions, we should regard them with simple abhorrence.
I have mentioned some few of the more prominent and august calamities on record; but in these it
is the extent, not less than the character of the calamity, which so vividly impresses the fancy. I need
not remind the reader that, from the long and weird catalogue of human miseries, I might have
selected many individual instances more replete with essential suffering than any of these vast
generalities of disaster. The true wretchedness, indeed—the ultimate woe——is particular, not
diffuse. That the ghastly extremes of agony are endured by man the unit, and never by man the mass
——for this let us thank a merciful God!
To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these extremes which has ever
fallen to the lot of mere mortality. That it has frequently, very frequently, so fallen will scarcely be
denied by those who think. The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and
vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? We know that there are
diseases in which occur total cessations of all the apparent functions of vitality, and yet in which
these cessations are merely suspensions, properly so called. They are only temporary pauses in the
incomprehensible mechanism. A certain period elapses, and some unseen mysterious principle again
sets in motion the magic pinions and the wizard wheels. The silver cord was not for ever loosed, nor
the golden bowl irreparably broken. But where, meantime, was the soul?
Apart, however, from the inevitable conclusion, a priori that such causes must produce such
effects——that the well-known occurrence of such cases of suspended animation must naturally give
rise, now and then, to premature interments—apart from this consideration, we have the direct
testimony of medical and ordinary experience to prove that a vast number of such interments have
actually taken place. I might refer at once, if necessary to a hundred well authenticated instances. One
of very remarkable character, and of which the circumstances may be fresh in the memory of some of
my readers, occurred, not very long ago, in the neighboring city of Baltimore, where it occasioned a
painful, intense, and widely-extended excitement. The wife of one of the most respectable citizens—a
lawyer of eminence and a member of Congress—was seized with a sudden and unaccountable illness,
which completely baffled the skill of her physicians. After much suffering she died, or was supposed
to die. No one suspected, indeed, or had reason to suspect, that she was not actually dead. She
presented all the ordinary appearances of death. The face assumed the usual pinched and sunken
outline. The lips were of the usual marble pallor. The eyes were lustreless. There was no warmth.
Pulsation had ceased. For three days the body was preserved unburied, during which it had acquired
a stony rigidity. The funeral, in short, was hastened, on account of the rapid advance of what was
supposed to be decomposition.
The lady was deposited in her family vault, which, for three subsequent years, was undisturbed.
At the expiration of this term it was opened for the reception of a sarcophagus;——but, alas! how
fearful a shock awaited the husband, who, personally, threw open the door! As its portals swung
outwardly back, some white-apparelled object fell rattling within his arms. It was the skeleton of his
wife in her yet unmoulded shroud.
A careful investigation rendered it evident that she had revived within two days after her
entombment; that her struggles within the coffin had caused it to fall from a ledge, or shelf to the floor,
where it was so broken as to permit her escape. A lamp which had been accidentally left, full of oil,
within the tomb, was found empty; it might have been exhausted, however, by evaporation. On the
uttermost of the steps which led down into the dread chamber was a large fragment of the coffin, with
which, it seemed, that she had endeavored to arrest attention by striking the iron door. While thus
occupied, she probably swooned, or possibly died, through sheer terror; and, in failing, her shroud
became entangled in some iron—work which projected interiorly. Thus she remained, and thus she
rotted, erect.
In the year 1810, a case of living inhumation happened in France, attended with circumstances
which go far to warrant the assertion that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction. The heroine of the
story was a Mademoiselle Victorine Lafourcade, a young girl of illustrious family, of wealth, and of
great personal beauty. Among her numerous suitors was Julien Bossuet, a poor litterateur, or
journalist of Paris. His talents and general amiability had recommended him to the notice of the
heiress, by whom he seems to have been truly beloved; but her pride of birth decided her, finally, to
reject him, and to wed a Monsieur Renelle, a banker and a diplomatist of some eminence. After
marriage, however, this gentleman neglected, and, perhaps, even more positively ill-treated her.
Having passed with him some wretched years, she died,——at least her condition so closely
resembled death as to deceive every one who saw her. She was buried——not in a vault, but in an
ordinary grave in the village of her nativity. Filled with despair, and still inflamed by the memory of a
profound attachment, the lover journeys from the capital to the remote province in which the village
lies, with the romantic purpose of disinterring the corpse, and possessing himself of its luxuriant
tresses. He reaches the grave. At midnight he unearths the coffin, opens it, and is in the act of
detaching the hair, when he is arrested by the unclosing of the beloved eyes. In fact, the lady had been
buried alive. Vitality had not altogether departed, and she was aroused by the caresses of her lover
from the lethargy which had been mistaken for death. He bore her frantically to his lodgings in the
village. He employed certain powerful restoratives suggested by no little medical learning. In fine,
she revived. She recognized her preserver. She remained with him until, by slow degrees, she fully
recovered her original health. Her woman's heart was not adamant, and this last lesson of love
sufficed to soften it. She bestowed it upon Bossuet. She returned no more to her husband, but,
concealing from him her resurrection, fled with her lover to America. Twenty years afterward, the
two returned to France, in the persuasion that time had so greatly altered the lady's appearance that
her friends would be unable to recognize her. They were mistaken, however, for, at the first meeting,
Monsieur Renelle did actually recognize and make claim to his wife. This claim she resisted, and a
judicial tribunal sustained her in her resistance, deciding that the peculiar circumstances, with the
long lapse of years, had extinguished, not only equitably, but legally, the authority of the husband.
The "Chirurgical Journal" of Leipsic—a periodical of high authority and merit, which some
American bookseller would do well to translate and republish, records in a late number a very
distressing event of the character in question.
An officer of artillery, a man of gigantic stature and of robust health, being thrown from an
unmanageable horse, received a very severe contusion upon the head, which rendered him insensible
at once; the skull was slightly fractured, but no immediate danger was apprehended. Trepanning was
accomplished successfully. He was bled, and many other of the ordinary means of relief were
adopted. Gradually, however, he fell into a more and more hopeless state of stupor, and, finally, it
was thought that he died.
The weather was warm, and he was buried with indecent haste in one of the public cemeteries.
His funeral took place on Thursday. On the Sunday following, the grounds of the cemetery were, as
usual, much thronged with visiters, and about noon an intense excitement was created by the
declaration of a peasant that, while sitting upon the grave of the officer, he had distinctly felt a
commotion of the earth, as if occasioned by some one struggling beneath. At first little attention was
paid to the man's asseveration; but his evident terror, and the dogged obstinacy with which he
persisted in his story, had at length their natural effect upon the crowd. Spades were hurriedly
procured, and the grave, which was shamefully shallow, was in a few minutes so far thrown open that
the head of its occupant appeared. He was then seemingly dead; but he sat nearly erect within his
coffin, the lid of which, in his furious struggles, he had partially uplifted.
He was forthwith conveyed to the nearest hospital, and there pronounced to be still living,
although in an asphytic condition. After some hours he revived, recognized individuals of his
acquaintance, and, in broken sentences spoke of his agonies in the grave.
From what he related, it was clear that he must have been conscious of life for more than an hour,
while inhumed, before lapsing into insensibility. The grave was carelessly and loosely filled with an
exceedingly porous soil; and thus some air was necessarily admitted. He heard the footsteps of the
crowd overhead, and endeavored to make himself heard in turn. It was the tumult within the grounds
of the cemetery, he said, which appeared to awaken him from a deep sleep, but no sooner was he
awake than he became fully aware of the awful horrors of his position.
This patient, it is recorded, was doing well and seemed to be in a fair way of ultimate recovery,
but fell a victim to the quackeries of medical experiment. The galvanic battery was applied, and he
suddenly expired in one of those ecstatic paroxysms which, occasionally, it superinduces.
The mention of the galvanic battery, nevertheless, recalls to my memory a well known and very
extraordinary case in point, where its action proved the means of restoring to animation a young
attorney of London, who had been interred for two days. This occurred in 1831, and created, at the
time, a very profound sensation wherever it was made the subject of converse.
The patient, Mr. Edward Stapleton, had died, apparently of typhus fever, accompanied with some
anomalous symptoms which had excited the curiosity of his medical attendants. Upon his seeming
decease, his friends were requested to sanction a post-mortem examination, but declined to permit it.
As often happens, when such refusals are made, the practitioners resolved to disinter the body and
dissect it at leisure, in private. Arrangements were easily effected with some of the numerous corps
of body-snatchers, with which London abounds; and, upon the third night after the funeral, the
supposed corpse was unearthed from a grave eight feet deep, and deposited in the opening chamber of
one of the private hospitals.
An incision of some extent had been actually made in the abdomen, when the fresh and undecayed
appearance of the subject suggested an application of the battery. One experiment succeeded another,
and the customary effects supervened, with nothing to characterize them in any respect, except, upon
one or two occasions, a more than ordinary degree of life-likeness in the convulsive action.
It grew late. The day was about to dawn; and it was thought expedient, at length, to proceed at
once to the dissection. A student, however, was especially desirous of testing a theory of his own, and
insisted upon applying the battery to one of the pectoral muscles. A rough gash was made, and a wire
hastily brought in contact, when the patient, with a hurried but quite unconvulsive movement, arose
from the table, stepped into the middle of the floor, gazed about him uneasily for a few seconds, and
then—spoke. What he said was unintelligible, but words were uttered; the syllabification was
distinct. Having spoken, he fell heavily to the floor.
For some moments all were paralyzed with awe—but the urgency of the case soon restored them
their presence of mind. It was seen that Mr. Stapleton was alive, although in a swoon. Upon
exhibition of ether he revived and was rapidly restored to health, and to the society of his friends—
from whom, however, all knowledge of his resuscitation was withheld, until a relapse was no longer
to be apprehended. Their wonder—their rapturous astonishment—may be conceived.
The most thrilling peculiarity of this incident, nevertheless, is involved in what Mr. S. himself
asserts. He declares that at no period was he altogether insensible—that, dully and confusedly, he
was aware of everything which happened to him, from the moment in which he was pronounced dead
by his physicians, to that in which he fell swooning to the floor of the hospital. "I am alive," were the
uncomprehended words which, upon recognizing the locality of the dissecting-room, he had
endeavored, in his extremity, to utter.
It were an easy matter to multiply such histories as these—but I forbear—for, indeed, we have no
need of such to establish the fact that premature interments occur. When we reflect how very rarely,
from the nature of the case, we have it in our power to detect them, we must admit that they may
frequently occur without our cognizance. Scarcely, in truth, is a graveyard ever encroached upon, for
any purpose, to any great extent, that skeletons are not found in postures which suggest the most
fearful of suspicions.
Fearful indeed the suspicion—but more fearful the doom! It may be asserted, without hesitation,
that no event is so terribly well adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress,
as is burial before death. The unendurable oppression of the lungs—the stifling fumes from the damp
earth—the clinging to the death garments—the rigid embrace of the narrow house—the blackness of
the absolute Night—the silence like a sea that overwhelms—the unseen but palpable presence of the
Conqueror Worm—these things, with the thoughts of the air and grass above, with memory of dear
friends who would fly to save us if but informed of our fate, and with consciousness that of this fate
they can never be informed—that our hopeless portion is that of the really dead—these
considerations, I say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates, a degree of appalling and intolerable
horror from which the most daring imagination must recoil. We know of nothing so agonizing upon
Earth—we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell. And thus all
narratives upon this topic have an interest profound; an interest, nevertheless, which, through the
sacred awe of the topic itself, very properly and very peculiarly depends upon our conviction of the
truth of the matter narrated. What I have now to tell is of my own actual knowledge—of my own
positive and personal experience.
For several years I had been subject to attacks of the singular disorder which physicians have
agreed to term catalepsy, in default of a more definitive title. Although both the immediate and the
predisposing causes, and even the actual diagnosis, of this disease are still mysterious, its obvious
and apparent character is sufficiently well understood. Its variations seem to be chiefly of degree.
Sometimes the patient lies, for a day only, or even for a shorter period, in a species of exaggerated
lethargy. He is senseless and externally motionless; but the pulsation of the heart is still faintly
perceptible; some traces of warmth remain; a slight color lingers within the centre of the cheek; and,
upon application of a mirror to the lips, we can detect a torpid, unequal, and vacillating action of the
lungs. Then again the duration of the trance is for weeks—even for months; while the closest scrutiny,
and the most rigorous medical tests, fail to establish any material distinction between the state of the
sufferer and what we conceive of absolute death. Very usually he is saved from premature interment
solely by the knowledge of his friends that he has been previously subject to catalepsy, by the
consequent suspicion excited, and, above all, by the non-appearance of decay. The advances of the
malady are, luckily, gradual. The first manifestations, although marked, are unequivocal. The fits
grow successively more and more distinctive, and endure each for a longer term than the preceding.
In this lies the principal security from inhumation. The unfortunate whose first attack should be of the
extreme character which is occasionally seen, would almost inevitably be consigned alive to the
tomb.
My own case differed in no important particular from those mentioned in medical books.
Sometimes, without any apparent cause, I sank, little by little, into a condition of hemi-syncope, or
half swoon; and, in this condition, without pain, without ability to stir, or, strictly speaking, to think,
but with a dull lethargic consciousness of life and of the presence of those who surrounded my bed, I
remained, until the crisis of the disease restored me, suddenly, to perfect sensation. At other times I
was quickly and impetuously smitten. I grew sick, and numb, and chilly, and dizzy, and so fell
prostrate at once. Then, for weeks, all was void, and black, and silent, and Nothing became the
universe. Total annihilation could be no more. From these latter attacks I awoke, however, with a
gradation slow in proportion to the suddenness of the seizure. Just as the day dawns to the friendless
and houseless beggar who roams the streets throughout the long desolate winter night—just so tardily
—just so wearily—just so cheerily came back the light of the Soul to me.
Apart from the tendency to trance, however, my general health appeared to be good; nor could I
perceive that it was at all affected by the one prevalent malady—unless, indeed, an idiosyncrasy in
my ordinary sleep may be looked upon as superinduced. Upon awaking from slumber, I could never
gain, at once, thorough possession of my senses, and always remained, for many minutes, in much
bewilderment and perplexity;—the mental faculties in general, but the memory in especial, being in a
condition of absolute abeyance.
In all that I endured there was no physical suffering but of moral distress an infinitude. My fancy
grew charnel, I talked "of worms, of tombs, and epitaphs." I was lost in reveries of death, and the
idea of premature burial held continual possession of my brain. The ghastly Danger to which I was
subjected haunted me day and night. In the former, the torture of meditation was excessive—in the
latter, supreme. When the grim Darkness overspread the Earth, then, with every horror of thought, I
shook—shook as the quivering plumes upon the hearse. When Nature could endure wakefulness no
longer, it was with a struggle that I consented to sleep—for I shuddered to reflect that, upon awaking,
I might find myself the tenant of a grave. And when, finally, I sank into slumber, it was only to rush at
once into a world of phantasms, above which, with vast, sable, overshadowing wing, hovered,
predominant, the one sepulchral Idea.
From the innumerable images of gloom which thus oppressed me in dreams, I select for record but
a solitary vision. Methought I was immersed in a cataleptic trance of more than usual duration and
profundity. Suddenly there came an icy hand upon my forehead, and an impatient, gibbering voice
whispered the word "Arise!" within my ear.
I sat erect. The darkness was total. I could not see the figure of him who had aroused me. I could
call to mind neither the period at which I had fallen into the trance, nor the locality in which I then lay.
While I remained motionless, and busied in endeavors to collect my thought, the cold hand grasped
me fiercely by the wrist, shaking it petulantly, while the gibbering voice said again:
"Arise! did I not bid thee arise?"
"And who," I demanded, "art thou?"
"I have no name in the regions which I inhabit," replied the voice, mournfully; "I was mortal, but
am fiend. I was merciless, but am pitiful. Thou dost feel that I shudder.—My teeth chatter as I speak,
yet it is not with the chilliness of the night—of the night without end. But this hideousness is
insufferable. How canst thou tranquilly sleep? I cannot rest for the cry of these great agonies. These
sights are more than I can bear. Get thee up! Come with me into the outer Night, and let me unfold to
thee the graves. Is not this a spectacle of woe?—Behold!"
I looked; and the unseen figure, which still grasped me by the wrist, had caused to be thrown open
the graves of all mankind, and from each issued the faint phosphoric radiance of decay, so that I could
see into the innermost recesses, and there view the shrouded bodies in their sad and solemn slumbers
with the worm. But alas! the real sleepers were fewer, by many millions, than those who slumbered
not at all; and there was a feeble struggling; and there was a general sad unrest; and from out the
depths of the countless pits there came a melancholy rustling from the garments of the buried. And of
those who seemed tranquilly to repose, I saw that a vast number had changed, in a greater or less
degree, the rigid and uneasy position in which they had originally been entombed. And the voice
again said to me as I gazed:
"Is it not—oh! is it not a pitiful sight?"—but, before I could find words to reply, the figure had
ceased to grasp my wrist, the phosphoric lights expired, and the graves were closed with a sudden
violence, while from out them arose a tumult of despairing cries, saying again: "Is it not—O, God, is
it not a very pitiful sight?"
Phantasies such as these, presenting themselves at night, extended their terrific influence far into
my waking hours. My nerves became thoroughly unstrung, and I fell a prey to perpetual horror. I
hesitated to ride, or to walk, or to indulge in any exercise that would carry me from home. In fact, I no
longer dared trust myself out of the immediate presence of those who were aware of my proneness to
catalepsy, lest, falling into one of my usual fits, I should be buried before my real condition could be
ascertained. I doubted the care, the fidelity of my dearest friends. I dreaded that, in some trance of
more than customary duration, they might be prevailed upon to regard me as irrecoverable. I even
went so far as to fear that, as I occasioned much trouble, they might be glad to consider any very
protracted attack as sufficient excuse for getting rid of me altogether. It was in vain they endeavored
to reassure me by the most solemn promises. I exacted the most sacred oaths, that under no
circumstances they would bury me until decomposition had so materially advanced as to render
farther preservation impossible. And, even then, my mortal terrors would listen to no reason—would
accept no consolation. I entered into a series of elaborate precautions. Among other things, I had the
family vault so remodelled as to admit of being readily opened from within. The slightest pressure
upon a long lever that extended far into the tomb would cause the iron portal to fly back. There were
arrangements also for the free admission of air and light, and convenient receptacles for food and
water, within immediate reach of the coffin intended for my reception. This coffin was warmly and
softly padded, and was provided with a lid, fashioned upon the principle of the vault-door, with the
addition of springs so contrived that the feeblest movement of the body would be sufficient to set it at
liberty. Besides all this, there was suspended from the roof of the tomb, a large bell, the rope of
which, it was designed, should extend through a hole in the coffin, and so be fastened to one of the
hands of the corpse. But, alas? what avails the vigilance against the Destiny of man? Not even these
well-contrived securities sufficed to save from the uttermost agonies of living inhumation, a wretch to
these agonies foredoomed!
There arrived an epoch—as often before there had arrived—in which I found myself emerging
from total unconsciousness into the first feeble and indefinite sense of existence. Slowly—with a
tortoise gradation—approached the faint gray dawn of the psychal day. A torpid uneasiness. An
apathetic endurance of dull pain. No care—no hope—no effort. Then, after a long interval, a ringing
in the ears; then, after a lapse still longer, a prickling or tingling sensation in the extremities; then a
seemingly eternal period of pleasurable quiescence, during which the awakening feelings are
struggling into thought; then a brief re-sinking into non-entity; then a sudden recovery. At length the
slight quivering of an eyelid, and immediately thereupon, an electric shock of a terror, deadly and
indefinite, which sends the blood in torrents from the temples to the heart. And now the first positive
effort to think. And now the first endeavor to remember. And now a partial and evanescent success.
And now the memory has so far regained its dominion, that, in some measure, I am cognizant of my
state. I feel that I am not awaking from ordinary sleep. I recollect that I have been subject to catalepsy.
And now, at last, as if by the rush of an ocean, my shuddering spirit is overwhelmed by the one grim
Danger—by the one spectral and ever-prevalent idea.
For some minutes after this fancy possessed me, I remained without motion. And why? I could not
summon courage to move. I dared not make the effort which was to satisfy me of my fate—and yet
there was something at my heart which whispered me it was sure. Despair—such as no other species
of wretchedness ever calls into being—despair alone urged me, after long irresolution, to uplift the
heavy lids of my eyes. I uplifted them. It was dark—all dark. I knew that the fit was over. I knew that
the crisis of my disorder had long passed. I knew that I had now fully recovered the use of my visual
faculties—and yet it was dark—all dark—the intense and utter raylessness of the Night that endureth
for evermore.
I endeavored to shriek; and my lips and my parched tongue moved convulsively together in the
attempt—but no voice issued from the cavernous lungs, which oppressed as if by the weight of some
incumbent mountain, gasped and palpitated, with the heart, at every elaborate and struggling
inspiration.
The movement of the jaws, in this effort to cry aloud, showed me that they were bound up, as is
usual with the dead. I felt, too, that I lay upon some hard substance, and by something similar my sides
were, also, closely compressed. So far, I had not ventured to stir any of my limbs—but now I
violently threw up my arms, which had been lying at length, with the wrists crossed. They struck a
solid wooden substance, which extended above my person at an elevation of not more than six inches
from my face. I could no longer doubt that I reposed within a coffin at last.
And now, amid all my infinite miseries, came sweetly the cherub Hope—for I thought of my
precautions. I writhed, and made spasmodic exertions to force open the lid: it would not move. I felt
my wrists for the bell-rope: it was not to be found. And now the Comforter fled for ever, and a still
sterner Despair reigned triumphant; for I could not help perceiving the absence of the paddings which
I had so carefully prepared—and then, too, there came suddenly to my nostrils the strong peculiar
odor of moist earth. The conclusion was irresistible. I was not within the vault. I had fallen into a
trance while absent from home—while among strangers—when, or how, I could not remember—and
it was they who had buried me as a dog—nailed up in some common coffin—and thrust deep, deep,
and for ever, into some ordinary and nameless grave.
As this awful conviction forced itself, thus, into the innermost chambers of my soul, I once again
struggled to cry aloud. And in this second endeavor I succeeded. A long, wild, and continuous shriek,
or yell of agony, resounded through the realms of the subterranean Night.
"Hillo! hillo, there!" said a gruff voice, in reply.
"What the devil's the matter now!" said a second.
"Get out o' that!" said a third.
"What do you mean by yowling in that ere kind of style, like a cattymount?" said a fourth; and
hereupon I was seized and shaken without ceremony, for several minutes, by a junto of very roughlooking individuals. They did not arouse me from my slumber—for I was wide awake when I
screamed—but they restored me to the full possession of my memory.
This adventure occurred near Richmond, in Virginia. Accompanied by a friend, I had proceeded,
upon a gunning expedition, some miles down the banks of the James River. Night approached, and we
were overtaken by a storm. The cabin of a small sloop lying at anchor in the stream, and laden with
garden mould, afforded us the only available shelter. We made the best of it, and passed the night on
board. I slept in one of the only two berths in the vessel—and the berths of a sloop of sixty or twenty
tons need scarcely be described. That which I occupied had no bedding of any kind. Its extreme width
was eighteen inches. The distance of its bottom from the deck overhead was precisely the same. I
found it a matter of exceeding difficulty to squeeze myself in. Nevertheless, I slept soundly, and the
whole of my vision—for it was no dream, and no nightmare—arose naturally from the circumstances
of my position—from my ordinary bias of thought—and from the difficulty, to which I have alluded,
of collecting my senses, and especially of regaining my memory, for a long time after awaking from
slumber. The men who shook me were the crew of the sloop, and some laborers engaged to unload it.
From the load itself came the earthly smell. The bandage about the jaws was a silk handkerchief in
which I had bound up my head, in default of my customary nightcap.
The tortures endured, however, were indubitably quite equal for the time, to those of actual
sepulture. They were fearfully—they were inconceivably hideous; but out of Evil proceeded Good;
for their very excess wrought in my spirit an inevitable revulsion. My soul acquired tone—acquired
temper. I went abroad. I took vigorous exercise. I breathed the free air of Heaven. I thought upon other
subjects than Death. I discarded my medical books. "Buchan" I burned. I read no "Night Thoughts"—
no fustian about churchyards—no bugaboo tales—such as this. In short, I became a new man, and
lived a man's life. From that memorable night, I dismissed forever my charnel apprehensions, and
with them vanished the cataleptic disorder, of which, perhaps, they had been less the consequence
than the cause.
There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may
assume the semblance of a Hell—but the imagination of man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity
its every cavern. Alas! the grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful
—but, like the Demons in whose company Afrasiab made his voyage down the Oxus, they must sleep,
or they will devour us—they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish.
THE DOMAIN OF ARNHEIM
The garden like a lady fair was cut,
That lay as if she slumbered in delight,
And to the open skies her eyes did shut.
The azure fields of Heaven were 'sembled right
In a large round, set with the flowers of light.
The flowers de luce, and the round sparks of dew.
That hung upon their azure leaves did shew
Like twinkling stars that sparkle in the evening blue.
Giles Fletcher.
FROM his cradle to his grave a gale of prosperity bore my friend Ellison along. Nor do I use the
word prosperity in its mere worldly sense. I mean it as synonymous with happiness. The person of
whom I speak seemed born for the purpose of foreshadowing the doctrines of Turgot, Price, Priestley,
and Condorcet—of exemplifying by individual instance what has been deemed the chimera of the
perfectionists. In the brief existence of Ellison I fancy that I have seen refuted the dogma, that in man's
very nature lies some hidden principle, the antagonist of bliss. An anxious examination of his career
has given me to understand that in general, from the violation of a few simple laws of humanity arises
the wretchedness of mankind—that as a species we have in our possession the as yet unwrought
elements of content—and that, even now, in the present darkness and madness of all thought on the
great question of the social condition, it is not impossible that man, the individual, under certain
unusual and highly fortuitous conditions, may be happy.
With opinions such as these my young friend, too, was fully imbued, and thus it is worthy of
observation that the uninterrupted enjoyment which distinguished his life was, in great measure, the
result of preconcert. It is indeed evident that with less of the instinctive philosophy which, now and
then, stands so well in the stead of experience, Mr. Ellison would have found himself precipitated, by
the very extraordinary success of his life, into the common vortex of unhappiness which yawns for
those of pre-eminent endowments. But it is by no means my object to pen an essay on happiness. The
ideas of my friend may be summed up in a few words. He admitted but four elementary principles, or
more strictly, conditions of bliss. That which he considered chief was (strange to say!) the simple and
purely physical one of free exercise in the open air. "The health," he said, "attainable by other means
is scarcely worth the name." He instanced the ecstasies of the fox-hunter, and pointed to the tillers of
the earth, the only people who, as a class, can be fairly considered happier than others. His second
condition was the love of woman. His third, and most difficult of realization, was the contempt of
ambition. His fourth was an object of unceasing pursuit; and he held that, other things being equal, the
extent of attainable happiness was in proportion to the spirituality of this object.
Ellison was remarkable in the continuous profusion of good gifts lavished upon him by fortune. In
personal grace and beauty he exceeded all men. His intellect was of that order to which the
acquisition of knowledge is less a labor than an intuition and a necessity. His family was one of the
most illustrious of the empire. His bride was the loveliest and most devoted of women. His
possessions had been always ample; but on the attainment of his majority, it was discovered that one
of those extraordinary freaks of fate had been played in his behalf which startle the whole social
world amid which they occur, and seldom fail radically to alter the moral constitution of those who
are their objects.
It appears that about a hundred years before Mr. Ellison's coming of age, there had died, in a
remote province, one Mr. Seabright Ellison. This gentleman had amassed a princely fortune, and,
having no immediate connections, conceived the whim of suffering his wealth to accumulate for a
century after his decease. Minutely and sagaciously directing the various modes of investment, he
bequeathed the aggregate amount to the nearest of blood, bearing the name of Ellison, who should be
alive at the end of the hundred years. Many attempts had been made to set aside this singular bequest;
their ex post facto character rendered them abortive; but the attention of a jealous government was
aroused, and a legislative act finally obtained, forbidding all similar accumulations. This act,
however, did not prevent young Ellison from entering into possession, on his twenty-first birthday, as
the heir of his ancestor Seabright, of a fortune of four hundred and fifty millions of dollars.
When it had become known that such was the enormous wealth inherited, there were, of course,
many speculations as to the mode of its disposal. The magnitude and the immediate availability of the
sum bewildered all who thought on the topic. The possessor of any appreciable amount of money
might have been imagined to perform any one of a thousand things. With riches merely surpassing
those of any citizen, it would have been easy to suppose him engaging to supreme excess in the
fashionable extravagances of his time—or busying himself with political intrigue—or aiming at
ministerial power—or purchasing increase of nobility—or collecting large museums of virtu—or
playing the munificent patron of letters, of science, of art—or endowing, and bestowing his name
upon extensive institutions of charity. But for the inconceivable wealth in the actual possession of the
heir, these objects and all ordinary objects were felt to afford too limited a field. Recourse was had
to figures, and these but sufficed to confound. It was seen that, even at three per cent., the annual
income of the inheritance amounted to no less than thirteen millions and five hundred thousand
dollars; which was one million and one hundred and twenty-five thousand per month; or thirty-six
thousand nine hundred and eighty-six per day; or one thousand five hundred and forty-one per hour; or
six and twenty dollars for every minute that flew. Thus the usual track of supposition was thoroughly
broken up. Men knew not what to imagine. There were some who even conceived that Mr. Ellison
would divest himself of at least one-half of his fortune, as of utterly superfluous opulence—enriching
whole troops of his relatives by division of his superabundance. To the nearest of these he did, in
fact, abandon the very unusual wealth which was his own before the inheritance.
I was not surprised, however, to perceive that he had long made up his mind on a point which had
occasioned so much discussion to his friends. Nor was I greatly astonished at the nature of his
decision. In regard to individual charities he had satisfied his conscience. In the possibility of any
improvement, properly so called, being effected by man himself in the general condition of man, he
had (I am sorry to confess it) little faith. Upon the whole, whether happily or unhappily, he was
thrown back, in very great measure, upon self.
In the widest and noblest sense he was a poet. He comprehended, moreover, the true character, the
august aims, the supreme majesty and dignity of the poetic sentiment. The fullest, if not the sole proper
satisfaction of this sentiment he instinctively felt to lie in the creation of novel forms of beauty. Some
peculiarities, either in his early education, or in the nature of his intellect, had tinged with what is
termed materialism all his ethical speculations; and it was this bias, perhaps, which led him to
believe that the most advantageous at least, if not the sole legitimate field for the poetic exercise, lies
in the creation of novel moods of purely physical loveliness. Thus it happened he became neither
musician nor poet—if we use this latter term in its every-day acceptation. Or it might have been that
he neglected to become either, merely in pursuance of his idea that in contempt of ambition is to be
found one of the essential principles of happiness on earth. Is it not indeed, possible that, while a high
order of genius is necessarily ambitious, the highest is above that which is termed ambition? And may
it not thus happen that many far greater than Milton have contentedly remained "mute and inglorious?"
I believe that the world has never seen—and that, unless through some series of accidents goading the
noblest order of mind into distasteful exertion, the world will never see—that full extent of
triumphant execution, in the richer domains of art, of which the human nature is absolutely capable.
Ellison became neither musician nor poet; although no man lived more profoundly enamored of
music and poetry. Under other circumstances than those which invested him, it is not impossible that
he would have become a painter. Sculpture, although in its nature rigorously poetical was too limited
in its extent and consequences, to have occupied, at any time, much of his attention. And I have now
mentioned all the provinces in which the common understanding of the poetic sentiment has declared
it capable of expatiating. But Ellison maintained that the richest, the truest, and most natural, if not
altogether the most extensive province, had been unaccountably neglected. No definition had spoken
of the landscape-gardener as of the poet; yet it seemed to my friend that the creation of the landscapegarden offered to the proper Muse the most magnificent of opportunities. Here, indeed, was the fairest
field for the display of imagination in the endless combining of forms of novel beauty; the elements to
enter into combination being, by a vast superiority, the most glorious which the earth could afford. In
the multiform and multicolor of the flowers and the trees, he recognised the most direct and energetic
efforts of Nature at physical loveliness. And in the direction or concentration of this effort—or, more
properly, in its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth—he perceived that he should
be employing the best means—laboring to the greatest advantage—in the fulfilment, not only of his
own destiny as poet, but of the august purposes for which the Deity had implanted the poetic sentiment
in man.
"Its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth." In his explanation of this
phraseology, Mr. Ellison did much toward solving what has always seemed to me an enigma:—I
mean the fact (which none but the ignorant dispute) that no such combination of scenery exists in
nature as the painter of genius may produce. No such paradises are to be found in reality as have
glowed on the canvas of Claude. In the most enchanting of natural landscapes, there will always be
found a defect or an excess—many excesses and defects. While the component parts may defy,
individually, the highest skill of the artist, the arrangement of these parts will always be susceptible
of improvement. In short, no position can be attained on the wide surface of the natural earth, from
which an artistical eye, looking steadily, will not find matter of offence in what is termed the
"composition" of the landscape. And yet how unintelligible is this! In all other matters we are justly
instructed to regard nature as supreme. With her details we shrink from competition. Who shall
presume to imitate the colors of the tulip, or to improve the proportions of the lily of the valley? The
criticism which says, of sculpture or portraiture, that here nature is to be exalted or idealized rather
than imitated, is in error. No pictorial or sculptural combinations of points of human liveliness do
more than approach the living and breathing beauty. In landscape alone is the principle of the critic
true; and, having felt its truth here, it is but the headlong spirit of generalization which has led him to
pronounce it true throughout all the domains of art. Having, I say, felt its truth here; for the feeling is
no affectation or chimera. The mathematics afford no more absolute demonstrations than the
sentiments of his art yields the artist. He not only believes, but positively knows, that such and such
apparently arbitrary arrangements of matter constitute and alone constitute the true beauty. His
reasons, however, have not yet been matured into expression. It remains for a more profound analysis
than the world has yet seen, fully to investigate and express them. Nevertheless he is confirmed in his
instinctive opinions by the voice of all his brethren. Let a "composition" be defective; let an
emendation be wrought in its mere arrangement of form; let this emendation be submitted to every
artist in the world; by each will its necessity be admitted. And even far more than this:—in remedy of
the defective composition, each insulated member of the fraternity would have suggested the identical
emendation.
I repeat that in landscape arrangements alone is the physical nature susceptible of exaltation, and
that, therefore, her susceptibility of improvement at this one point, was a mystery I had been unable to
solve. My own thoughts on the subject had rested in the idea that the primitive intention of nature
would have so arranged the earth's surface as to have fulfilled at all points man's sense of perfection
in the beautiful, the sublime, or the picturesque; but that this primitive intention had been frustrated by
the known geological disturbances—disturbances of form and color—grouping, in the correction or
allaying of which lies the soul of art. The force of this idea was much weakened, however, by the
necessity which it involved of considering the disturbances abnormal and unadapted to any purpose.
It was Ellison who suggested that they were prognostic of death. He thus explained:—Admit the
earthly immortality of man to have been the first intention. We have then the primitive arrangement of
the earth's surface adapted to his blissful estate, as not existent but designed. The disturbances were
the preparations for his subsequently conceived deathful condition.
"Now," said my friend, "what we regard as exaltation of the landscape may be really such, as
respects only the moral or human point of view. Each alteration of the natural scenery may possibly
effect a blemish in the picture, if we can suppose this picture viewed at large—in mass—from some
point distant from the earth's surface, although not beyond the limits of its atmosphere. It is easily
understood that what might improve a closely scrutinized detail, may at the same time injure a general
or more distantly observed effect. There may be a class of beings, human once, but now invisible to
humanity, to whom, from afar, our disorder may seem order—our unpicturesqueness picturesque, in a
word, the earth-angels, for whose scrutiny more especially than our own, and for whose death-refined
appreciation of the beautiful, may have been set in array by God the wide landscape-gardens of the
hemispheres."
In the course of discussion, my friend quoted some passages from a writer on landscapegardening who has been supposed to have well treated his theme:
"There are properly but two styles of landscape-gardening, the natural and the artificial. One
seeks to recall the original beauty of the country, by adapting its means to the surrounding scenery,
cultivating trees in harmony with the hills or plain of the neighboring land; detecting and bringing into
practice those nice relations of size, proportion, and color which, hid from the common observer, are
revealed everywhere to the experienced student of nature. The result of the natural style of gardening,
is seen rather in the absence of all defects and incongruities—in the prevalence of a healthy harmony
and order—than in the creation of any special wonders or miracles. The artificial style has as many
varieties as there are different tastes to gratify. It has a certain general relation to the various styles of
building. There are the stately avenues and retirements of Versailles; Italian terraces; and a various
mixed old English style, which bears some relation to the domestic Gothic or English Elizabethan
architecture. Whatever may be said against the abuses of the artificial landscape-gardening, a mixture
of pure art in a garden scene adds to it a great beauty. This is partly pleasing to the eye, by the show
of order and design, and partly moral. A terrace, with an old moss-covered balustrade, calls up at
once to the eye the fair forms that have passed there in other days. The slightest exhibition of art is an
evidence of care and human interest."
"From what I have already observed," said Ellison, "you will understand that I reject the idea,
here expressed, of recalling the original beauty of the country. The original beauty is never so great as
that which may be introduced. Of course, every thing depends on the selection of a spot with
capabilities. What is said about detecting and bringing into practice nice relations of size, proportion,
and color, is one of those mere vaguenesses of speech which serve to veil inaccuracy of thought. The
phrase quoted may mean any thing, or nothing, and guides in no degree. That the true result of the
natural style of gardening is seen rather in the absence of all defects and incongruities than in the
creation of any special wonders or miracles, is a proposition better suited to the grovelling
apprehension of the herd than to the fervid dreams of the man of genius. The negative merit suggested
appertains to that hobbling criticism which, in letters, would elevate Addison into apotheosis. In
truth, while that virtue which consists in the mere avoidance of vice appeals directly to the
understanding, and can thus be circumscribed in rule, the loftier virtue, which flames in creation, can
be apprehended in its results alone. Rule applies but to the merits of denial—to the excellencies
which refrain. Beyond these, the critical art can but suggest. We may be instructed to build a "Cato,"
but we are in vain told how to conceive a Parthenon or an "Inferno." The thing done, however; the
wonder accomplished; and the capacity for apprehension becomes universal. The sophists of the
negative school who, through inability to create, have scoffed at creation, are now found the loudest
in applause. What, in its chrysalis condition of principle, affronted their demure reason, never fails,
in its maturity of accomplishment, to extort admiration from their instinct of beauty.
"The author's observations on the artificial style," continued Ellison, "are less objectionable. A
mixture of pure art in a garden scene adds to it a great beauty. This is just; as also is the reference to
the sense of human interest. The principle expressed is incontrovertible—but there may be something
beyond it. There may be an object in keeping with the principle—an object unattainable by the means
ordinarily possessed by individuals, yet which, if attained, would lend a charm to the landscapegarden far surpassing that which a sense of merely human interest could bestow. A poet, having very
unusual pecuniary resources, might, while retaining the necessary idea of art or culture, or, as our
author expresses it, of interest, so imbue his designs at once with extent and novelty of beauty, as to
convey the sentiment of spiritual interference. It will be seen that, in bringing about such result, he
secures all the advantages of interest or design, while relieving his work of the harshness or
technicality of the worldly art. In the most rugged of wildernesses—in the most savage of the scenes
of pure nature—there is apparent the art of a creator; yet this art is apparent to reflection only; in no
respect has it the obvious force of a feeling. Now let us suppose this sense of the Almighty design to
be one step depressed—to be brought into something like harmony or consistency with the sense of
human art—to form an intermedium between the two:—let us imagine, for example, a landscape
whose combined vastness and definitiveness—whose united beauty, magnificence, and strangeness,
shall convey the idea of care, or culture, or superintendence, on the part of beings superior, yet akin to
humanity—then the sentiment of interest is preserved, while the art intervolved is made to assume the
air of an intermediate or secondary nature—a nature which is not God, nor an emanation from God,
but which still is nature in the sense of the handiwork of the angels that hover between man and God."
It was in devoting his enormous wealth to the embodiment of a vision such as this—in the free
exercise in the open air ensured by the personal superintendence of his plans—in the unceasing object
which these plans afforded—in the high spirituality of the object—in the contempt of ambition which
it enabled him truly to feel—in the perennial springs with which it gratified, without possibility of
satiating, that one master passion of his soul, the thirst for beauty, above all, it was in the sympathy of
a woman, not unwomanly, whose loveliness and love enveloped his existence in the purple
atmosphere of Paradise, that Ellison thought to find, and found, exemption from the ordinary cares of
humanity, with a far greater amount of positive happiness than ever glowed in the rapt day-dreams of
De Stael.
I despair of conveying to the reader any distinct conception of the marvels which my friend did
actually accomplish. I wish to describe, but am disheartened by the difficulty of description, and
hesitate between detail and generality. Perhaps the better course will be to unite the two in their
extremes.
Mr. Ellison's first step regarded, of course, the choice of a locality, and scarcely had he
commenced thinking on this point, when the luxuriant nature of the Pacific Islands arrested his
attention. In fact, he had made up his mind for a voyage to the South Seas, when a night's reflection
induced him to abandon the idea. "Were I misanthropic," he said, "such a locale would suit me. The
thoroughness of its insulation and seclusion, and the difficulty of ingress and egress, would in such
case be the charm of charms; but as yet I am not Timon. I wish the composure but not the depression
of solitude. There must remain with me a certain control over the extent and duration of my repose.
There will be frequent hours in which I shall need, too, the sympathy of the poetic in what I have
done. Let me seek, then, a spot not far from a populous city—whose vicinity, also, will best enable
me to execute my plans."
In search of a suitable place so situated, Ellison travelled for several years, and I was permitted
to accompany him. A thousand spots with which I was enraptured he rejected without hesitation, for
reasons which satisfied me, in the end, that he was right. We came at length to an elevated table-land
of wonderful fertility and beauty, affording a panoramic prospect very little less in extent than that of
Aetna, and, in Ellison's opinion as well as my own, surpassing the far-famed view from that mountain
in all the true elements of the picturesque.
"I am aware," said the traveller, as he drew a sigh of deep delight after gazing on this scene,
entranced, for nearly an hour, "I know that here, in my circumstances, nine-tenths of the most
fastidious of men would rest content. This panorama is indeed glorious, and I should rejoice in it but
for the excess of its glory. The taste of all the architects I have ever known leads them, for the sake of
'prospect,' to put up buildings on hill-tops. The error is obvious. Grandeur in any of its moods, but
especially in that of extent, startles, excites—and then fatigues, depresses. For the occasional scene
nothing can be better—for the constant view nothing worse. And, in the constant view, the most
objectionable phase of grandeur is that of extent; the worst phase of extent, that of distance. It is at
war with the sentiment and with the sense of seclusion—the sentiment and sense which we seek to
humor in 'retiring to the country.' In looking from the summit of a mountain we cannot help feeling
abroad in the world. The heart-sick avoid distant prospects as a pestilence."
It was not until toward the close of the fourth year of our search that we found a locality with
which Ellison professed himself satisfied. It is, of course, needless to say where was the locality. The
late death of my friend, in causing his domain to be thrown open to certain classes of visiters, has
given to Arnheim a species of secret and subdued if not solemn celebrity, similar in kind, although
infinitely superior in degree, to that which so long distinguished Fonthill.
The usual approach to Arnheim was by the river. The visiter left the city in the early morning.
During the forenoon he passed between shores of a tranquil and domestic beauty, on which grazed
innumerable sheep, their white fleeces spotting the vivid green of rolling meadows. By degrees the
idea of cultivation subsided into that of merely pastoral care. This slowly became merged in a sense
of retirement—this again in a consciousness of solitude. As the evening approached, the channel grew
more narrow, the banks more and more precipitous; and these latter were clothed in rich, more
profuse, and more sombre foliage. The water increased in transparency. The stream took a thousand
turns, so that at no moment could its gleaming surface be seen for a greater distance than a furlong. At
every instant the vessel seemed imprisoned within an enchanted circle, having insuperable and
impenetrable walls of foliage, a roof of ultramarine satin, and no floor—the keel balancing itself with
admirable nicety on that of a phantom bark which, by some accident having been turned upside down,
floated in constant company with the substantial one, for the purpose of sustaining it. The channel now
became a gorge—although the term is somewhat inapplicable, and I employ it merely because the
language has no word which better represents the most striking—not the most distinctive—feature of
the scene. The character of gorge was maintained only in the height and parallelism of the shores; it
was lost altogether in their other traits. The walls of the ravine (through which the clear water still
tranquilly flowed) arose to an elevation of a hundred and occasionally of a hundred and fifty feet, and
inclined so much toward each other as, in a great measure, to shut out the light of day; while the long
plume-like moss which depended densely from the intertwining shrubberies overhead, gave the whole
chasm an air of funereal gloom. The windings became more frequent and intricate, and seemed often
as if returning in upon themselves, so that the voyager had long lost all idea of direction. He was,
moreover, enwrapt in an exquisite sense of the strange. The thought of nature still remained, but her
character seemed to have undergone modification, there was a weird symmetry, a thrilling uniformity,
a wizard propriety in these her works. Not a dead branch—not a withered leaf—not a stray pebble—
not a patch of the brown earth was anywhere visible. The crystal water welled up against the clean
granite, or the unblemished moss, with a sharpness of outline that delighted while it bewildered the
eye.
Having threaded the mazes of this channel for some hours, the gloom deepening every moment, a
sharp and unexpected turn of the vessel brought it suddenly, as if dropped from heaven, into a circular
basin of very considerable extent when compared with the width of the gorge. It was about two
hundred yards in diameter, and girt in at all points but one—that immediately fronting the vessel as it
entered—by hills equal in general height to the walls of the chasm, although of a thoroughly different
character. Their sides sloped from the water's edge at an angle of some forty-five degrees, and they
were clothed from base to summit—not a perceptible point escaping—in a drapery of the most
gorgeous flower-blossoms; scarcely a green leaf being visible among the sea of odorous and
fluctuating color. This basin was of great depth, but so transparent was the water that the bottom,
which seemed to consist of a thick mass of small round alabaster pebbles, was distinctly visible by
glimpses—that is to say, whenever the eye could permit itself not to see, far down in the inverted
heaven, the duplicate blooming of the hills. On these latter there were no trees, nor even shrubs of any
size. The impressions wrought on the observer were those of richness, warmth, color, quietude,
uniformity, softness, delicacy, daintiness, voluptuousness, and a miraculous extremeness of culture
that suggested dreams of a new race of fairies, laborious, tasteful, magnificent, and fastidious; but as
the eye traced upward the myriad-tinted slope, from its sharp junction with the water to its vague
termination amid the folds of overhanging cloud, it became, indeed, difficult not to fancy a panoramic
cataract of rubies, sapphires, opals, and golden onyxes, rolling silently out of the sky.
The visiter, shooting suddenly into this bay from out the gloom of the ravine, is delighted but
astounded by the full orb of the declining sun, which he had supposed to be already far below the
horizon, but which now confronts him, and forms the sole termination of an otherwise limitless vista
seen through another chasm-like rift in the hills.
But here the voyager quits the vessel which has borne him so far, and descends into a light canoe
of ivory, stained with arabesque devices in vivid scarlet, both within and without. The poop and beak
of this boat arise high above the water, with sharp points, so that the general form is that of an
irregular crescent. It lies on the surface of the bay with the proud grace of a swan. On its ermined
floor reposes a single feathery paddle of satin-wood; but no oarsmen or attendant is to be seen. The
guest is bidden to be of good cheer—that the fates will take care of him. The larger vessel
disappears, and he is left alone in the canoe, which lies apparently motionless in the middle of the
lake. While he considers what course to pursue, however, he becomes aware of a gentle movement in
the fairy bark. It slowly swings itself around until its prow points toward the sun. It advances with a
gentle but gradually accelerated velocity, while the slight ripples it creates seem to break about the
ivory side in divinest melody-seem to offer the only possible explanation of the soothing yet
melancholy music for whose unseen origin the bewildered voyager looks around him in vain.
The canoe steadily proceeds, and the rocky gate of the vista is approached, so that its depths can
be more distinctly seen. To the right arise a chain of lofty hills rudely and luxuriantly wooded. It is
observed, however, that the trait of exquisite cleanness where the bank dips into the water, still
prevails. There is not one token of the usual river debris. To the left the character of the scene is
softer and more obviously artificial. Here the bank slopes upward from the stream in a very gentle
ascent, forming a broad sward of grass of a texture resembling nothing so much as velvet, and of a
brilliancy of green which would bear comparison with the tint of the purest emerald. This plateau
varies in width from ten to three hundred yards; reaching from the river-bank to a wall, fifty feet high,
which extends, in an infinity of curves, but following the general direction of the river, until lost in the
distance to the westward. This wall is of one continuous rock, and has been formed by cutting
perpendicularly the once rugged precipice of the stream's southern bank, but no trace of the labor has
been suffered to remain. The chiselled stone has the hue of ages, and is profusely overhung and
overspread with the ivy, the coral honeysuckle, the eglantine, and the clematis. The uniformity of the
top and bottom lines of the wall is fully relieved by occasional trees of gigantic height, growing
singly or in small groups, both along the plateau and in the domain behind the wall, but in close
proximity to it; so that frequent limbs (of the black walnut especially) reach over and dip their
pendent extremities into the water. Farther back within the domain, the vision is impeded by an
impenetrable screen of foliage.
These things are observed during the canoe's gradual approach to what I have called the gate of
the vista. On drawing nearer to this, however, its chasm-like appearance vanishes; a new outlet from
the bay is discovered to the left—in which direction the wall is also seen to sweep, still following
the general course of the stream. Down this new opening the eye cannot penetrate very far; for the
stream, accompanied by the wall, still bends to the left, until both are swallowed up by the leaves.
The boat, nevertheless, glides magically into the winding channel; and here the shore opposite the
wall is found to resemble that opposite the wall in the straight vista. Lofty hills, rising occasionally
into mountains, and covered with vegetation in wild luxuriance, still shut in the scene.
Floating gently onward, but with a velocity slightly augmented, the voyager, after many short
turns, finds his progress apparently barred by a gigantic gate or rather door of burnished gold,
elaborately carved and fretted, and reflecting the direct rays of the now fast-sinking sun with an
effulgence that seems to wreath the whole surrounding forest in flames. This gate is inserted in the
lofty wall; which here appears to cross the river at right angles. In a few moments, however, it is seen
that the main body of the water still sweeps in a gentle and extensive curve to the left, the wall
following it as before, while a stream of considerable volume, diverging from the principal one,
makes its way, with a slight ripple, under the door, and is thus hidden from sight. The canoe falls into
the lesser channel and approaches the gate. Its ponderous wings are slowly and musically expanded.
The boat glides between them, and commences a rapid descent into a vast amphitheatre entirely begirt
with purple mountains, whose bases are laved by a gleaming river throughout the full extent of their
circuit. Meantime the whole Paradise of Arnheim bursts upon the view. There is a gush of entrancing
melody; there is an oppressive sense of strange sweet odor,—there is a dream-like intermingling to
the eye of tall slender Eastern trees—bosky shrubberies—flocks of golden and crimson birds—lilyfringed lakes—meadows of violets, tulips, poppies, hyacinths, and tuberoses—long intertangled lines
of silver streamlets—and, upspringing confusedly from amid all, a mass of semi-Gothic, semiSaracenic architecture sustaining itself by miracle in mid-air, glittering in the red sunlight with a
hundred oriels, minarets, and pinnacles; and seeming the phantom handiwork, conjointly, of the
Sylphs, of the Fairies, of the Genii and of the Gnomes.
LANDOR'S COTTAGE
A Pendant to "The Domain of Arnheim"
DURING A pedestrian trip last summer, through one or two of the river counties of New York, I
found myself, as the day declined, somewhat embarrassed about the road I was pursuing. The land
undulated very remarkably; and my path, for the last hour, had wound about and about so confusedly,
in its effort to keep in the valleys, that I no longer knew in what direction lay the sweet village of B
——, where I had determined to stop for the night. The sun had scarcely shone—strictly speaking—
during the day, which nevertheless, had been unpleasantly warm. A smoky mist, resembling that of the
Indian summer, enveloped all things, and of course, added to my uncertainty. Not that I cared much
about the matter. If I did not hit upon the village before sunset, or even before dark, it was more than
possible that a little Dutch farmhouse, or something of that kind, would soon make its appearance—
although, in fact, the neighborhood (perhaps on account of being more picturesque than fertile) was
very sparsely inhabited. At all events, with my knapsack for a pillow, and my hound as a sentry, a
bivouac in the open air was just the thing which would have amused me. I sauntered on, therefore,
quite at ease—Ponto taking charge of my gun—until at length, just as I had begun to consider whether
the numerous little glades that led hither and thither, were intended to be paths at all, I was conducted
by one of them into an unquestionable carriage track. There could be no mistaking it. The traces of
light wheels were evident; and although the tall shrubberies and overgrown undergrowth met
overhead, there was no obstruction whatever below, even to the passage of a Virginian mountain
wagon—the most aspiring vehicle, I take it, of its kind. The road, however, except in being open
through the wood—if wood be not too weighty a name for such an assemblage of light trees—and
except in the particulars of evident wheel-tracks—bore no resemblance to any road I had before seen.
The tracks of which I speak were but faintly perceptible—having been impressed upon the firm, yet
pleasantly moist surface of—what looked more like green Genoese velvet than any thing else. It was
grass, clearly—but grass such as we seldom see out of England—so short, so thick, so even, and so
vivid in color. Not a single impediment lay in the wheel-route—not even a chip or dead twig. The
stones that once obstructed the way had been carefully placed—not thrown-along the sides of the
lane, so as to define its boundaries at bottom with a kind of half-precise, half-negligent, and wholly
picturesque definition. Clumps of wild flowers grew everywhere, luxuriantly, in the interspaces.
What to make of all this, of course I knew not. Here was art undoubtedly—that did not surprise
me—all roads, in the ordinary sense, are works of art; nor can I say that there was much to wonder at
in the mere excess of art manifested; all that seemed to have been done, might have been done here—
with such natural "capabilities" (as they have it in the books on Landscape Gardening)—with very
little labor and expense. No; it was not the amount but the character of the art which caused me to take
a seat on one of the blossomy stones and gaze up and down this fairy-like avenue for half an hour or
more in bewildered admiration. One thing became more and more evident the longer I gazed: an
artist, and one with a most scrupulous eye for form, had superintended all these arrangements. The
greatest care had been taken to preserve a due medium between the neat and graceful on the one hand,
and the pittoresque, in the true sense of the Italian term, on the other. There were few straight, and no
long uninterrupted lines. The same effect of curvature or of color appeared twice, usually, but not
oftener, at any one point of view. Everywhere was variety in uniformity. It was a piece of
"composition," in which the most fastidiously critical taste could scarcely have suggested an
emendation.
I had turned to the right as I entered this road, and now, arising, I continued in the same direction.
The path was so serpentine, that at no moment could I trace its course for more than two or three
paces in advance. Its character did not undergo any material change.
Presently the murmur of water fell gently upon my ear—and in a few moments afterward, as I
turned with the road somewhat more abruptly than hitherto, I became aware that a building of some
kind lay at the foot of a gentle declivity just before me. I could see nothing distinctly on account of the
mist which occupied all the little valley below. A gentle breeze, however, now arose, as the sun was
about descending; and while I remained standing on the brow of the slope, the fog gradually became
dissipated into wreaths, and so floated over the scene.
As it came fully into view—thus gradually as I describe it—piece by piece, here a tree, there a
glimpse of water, and here again the summit of a chimney, I could scarcely help fancying that the
whole was one of the ingenious illusions sometimes exhibited under the name of "vanishing pictures."
By the time, however, that the fog had thoroughly disappeared, the sun had made its way down
behind the gentle hills, and thence, as if with a slight chassez to the south, had come again fully into
sight, glaring with a purplish lustre through a chasm that entered the valley from the west. Suddenly,
therefore—and as if by the hand of magic—this whole valley and every thing in it became brilliantly
visible.
The first coup d'oeil, as the sun slid into the position described, impressed me very much as I
have been impressed, when a boy, by the concluding scene of some well-arranged theatrical spectacle
or melodrama. Not even the monstrosity of color was wanting; for the sunlight came out through the
chasm, tinted all orange and purple; while the vivid green of the grass in the valley was reflected
more or less upon all objects from the curtain of vapor that still hung overhead, as if loth to take its
total departure from a scene so enchantingly beautiful.
The little vale into which I thus peered down from under the fog canopy could not have been more
than four hundred yards long; while in breadth it varied from fifty to one hundred and fifty or perhaps
two hundred. It was most narrow at its northern extremity, opening out as it tended southwardly, but
with no very precise regularity. The widest portion was within eighty yards of the southern extreme.
The slopes which encompassed the vale could not fairly be called hills, unless at their northern face.
Here a precipitous ledge of granite arose to a height of some ninety feet; and, as I have mentioned, the
valley at this point was not more than fifty feet wide; but as the visiter proceeded southwardly from
the cliff, he found on his right hand and on his left, declivities at once less high, less precipitous, and
less rocky. All, in a word, sloped and softened to the south; and yet the whole vale was engirdled by
eminences, more or less high, except at two points. One of these I have already spoken of. It lay
considerably to the north of west, and was where the setting sun made its way, as I have before
described, into the amphitheatre, through a cleanly cut natural cleft in the granite embankment; this
fissure might have been ten yards wide at its widest point, so far as the eye could trace it. It seemed to
lead up, up like a natural causeway, into the recesses of unexplored mountains and forests. The other
opening was directly at the southern end of the vale. Here, generally, the slopes were nothing more
than gentle inclinations, extending from east to west about one hundred and fifty yards. In the middle
of this extent was a depression, level with the ordinary floor of the valley. As regards vegetation, as
well as in respect to every thing else, the scene softened and sloped to the south. To the north—on the
craggy precipice—a few paces from the verge—up sprang the magnificent trunks of numerous
hickories, black walnuts, and chestnuts, interspersed with occasional oak, and the strong lateral
branches thrown out by the walnuts especially, spread far over the edge of the cliff. Proceeding
southwardly, the explorer saw, at first, the same class of trees, but less and less lofty and Salvatorish
in character; then he saw the gentler elm, succeeded by the sassafras and locust—these again by the
softer linden, red-bud, catalpa, and maple—these yet again by still more graceful and more modest
varieties. The whole face of the southern declivity was covered with wild shrubbery alone—an
occasional silver willow or white poplar excepted. In the bottom of the valley itself—(for it must be
borne in mind that the vegetation hitherto mentioned grew only on the cliffs or hillsides)—were to be
seen three insulated trees. One was an elm of fine size and exquisite form: it stood guard over the
southern gate of the vale. Another was a hickory, much larger than the elm, and altogether a much finer
tree, although both were exceedingly beautiful: it seemed to have taken charge of the northwestern
entrance, springing from a group of rocks in the very jaws of the ravine, and throwing its graceful
body, at an angle of nearly forty-five degrees, far out into the sunshine of the amphitheatre. About
thirty yards east of this tree stood, however, the pride of the valley, and beyond all question the most
magnificent tree I have ever seen, unless, perhaps, among the cypresses of the Itchiatuckanee. It was a
triple-stemmed tulip-tree—the Liriodendron Tulipiferum—one of the natural order of magnolias. Its
three trunks separated from the parent at about three feet from the soil, and diverging very slightly and
gradually, were not more than four feet apart at the point where the largest stem shot out into foliage:
this was at an elevation of about eighty feet. The whole height of the principal division was one
hundred and twenty feet. Nothing can surpass in beauty the form, or the glossy, vivid green of the
leaves of the tulip-tree. In the present instance they were fully eight inches wide; but their glory was
altogether eclipsed by the gorgeous splendor of the profuse blossoms. Conceive, closely congregated,
a million of the largest and most resplendent tulips! Only thus can the reader get any idea of the
picture I would convey. And then the stately grace of the clean, delicately-granulated columnar stems,
the largest four feet in diameter, at twenty from the ground. The innumerable blossoms, mingling with
those of other trees scarcely less beautiful, although infinitely less majestic, filled the valley with
more than Arabian perfumes.
The general floor of the amphitheatre was grass of the same character as that I had found in the
road; if anything, more deliciously soft, thick, velvety, and miraculously green. It was hard to
conceive how all this beauty had been attained.
I have spoken of two openings into the vale. From the one to the northwest issued a rivulet, which
came, gently murmuring and slightly foaming, down the ravine, until it dashed against the group of
rocks out of which sprang the insulated hickory. Here, after encircling the tree, it passed on a little to
the north of east, leaving the tulip tree some twenty feet to the south, and making no decided alteration
in its course until it came near the midway between the eastern and western boundaries of the valley.
At this point, after a series of sweeps, it turned off at right angles and pursued a generally southern
direction meandering as it went—until it became lost in a small lake of irregular figure (although
roughly oval), that lay gleaming near the lower extremity of the vale. This lakelet was, perhaps, a
hundred yards in diameter at its widest part. No crystal could be clearer than its waters. Its bottom,
which could be distinctly seen, consisted altogether, of pebbles brilliantly white. Its banks, of the
emerald grass already described, rounded, rather than sloped, off into the clear heaven below; and so
clear was this heaven, so perfectly, at times, did it reflect all objects above it, that where the true
bank ended and where the mimic one commenced, it was a point of no little difficulty to determine.
The trout, and some other varieties of fish, with which this pond seemed to be almost inconveniently
crowded, had all the appearance of veritable flying-fish. It was almost impossible to believe that they
were not absolutely suspended in the air. A light birch canoe that lay placidly on the water, was
reflected in its minutest fibres with a fidelity unsurpassed by the most exquisitely polished mirror. A
small island, fairly laughing with flowers in full bloom, and affording little more space than just
enough for a picturesque little building, seemingly a fowl-house—arose from the lake not far from its
northern shore—to which it was connected by means of an inconceivably light-looking and yet very
primitive bridge. It was formed of a single, broad and thick plank of the tulip wood. This was forty
feet long, and spanned the interval between shore and shore with a slight but very perceptible arch,
preventing all oscillation. From the southern extreme of the lake issued a continuation of the rivulet,
which, after meandering for, perhaps, thirty yards, finally passed through the "depression" (already
described) in the middle of the southern declivity, and tumbling down a sheer precipice of a hundred
feet, made its devious and unnoticed way to the Hudson.
The lake was deep—at some points thirty feet—but the rivulet seldom exceeded three, while its
greatest width was about eight. Its bottom and banks were as those of the pond—if a defect could
have been attributed, in point of picturesqueness, it was that of excessive neatness.
The expanse of the green turf was relieved, here and there, by an occasional showy shrub, such as
the hydrangea, or the common snowball, or the aromatic seringa; or, more frequently, by a clump of
geraniums blossoming gorgeously in great varieties. These latter grew in pots which were carefully
buried in the soil, so as to give the plants the appearance of being indigenous. Besides all this, the
lawn's velvet was exquisitely spotted with sheep—a considerable flock of which roamed about the
vale, in company with three tamed deer, and a vast number of brilliantly-plumed ducks. A very large
mastiff seemed to be in vigilant attendance upon these animals, each and all.
Along the eastern and western cliffs—where, toward the upper portion of the amphitheatre, the
boundaries were more or less precipitous—grew ivy in great profusion—so that only here and there
could even a glimpse of the naked rock be obtained. The northern precipice, in like manner, was
almost entirely clothed by grape-vines of rare luxuriance; some springing from the soil at the base of
the cliff, and others from ledges on its face.
The slight elevation which formed the lower boundary of this little domain, was crowned by a
neat stone wall, of sufficient height to prevent the escape of the deer. Nothing of the fence kind was
observable elsewhere; for nowhere else was an artificial enclosure needed:—any stray sheep, for
example, which should attempt to make its way out of the vale by means of the ravine, would find its
progress arrested, after a few yards' advance, by the precipitous ledge of rock over which tumbled
the cascade that had arrested my attention as I first drew near the domain. In short, the only ingress or
egress was through a gate occupying a rocky pass in the road, a few paces below the point at which I
stopped to reconnoitre the scene.
I have described the brook as meandering very irregularly through the whole of its course. Its two
general directions, as I have said, were first from west to east, and then from north to south. At the
turn, the stream, sweeping backward, made an almost circular loop, so as to form a peninsula which
was very nearly an island, and which included about the sixteenth of an acre. On this peninsula stood
a dwelling-house—and when I say that this house, like the infernal terrace seen by Vathek, "etait d'une
architecture inconnue dans les annales de la terre," I mean, merely, that its tout ensemble struck me
with the keenest sense of combined novelty and propriety—in a word, of poetry—(for, than in the
words just employed, I could scarcely give, of poetry in the abstract, a more rigorous definition)—
and I do not mean that merely outre was perceptible in any respect.
In fact nothing could well be more simple—more utterly unpretending than this cottage. Its
marvellous effect lay altogether in its artistic arrangement as a picture. I could have fancied, while I
looked at it, that some eminent landscape-painter had built it with his brush.
The point of view from which I first saw the valley, was not altogether, although it was nearly, the
best point from which to survey the house. I will therefore describe it as I afterwards saw it—from a
position on the stone wall at the southern extreme of the amphitheatre.
The main building was about twenty-four feet long and sixteen broad—certainly not more. Its total
height, from the ground to the apex of the roof, could not have exceeded eighteen feet. To the west end
of this structure was attached one about a third smaller in all its proportions:—the line of its front
standing back about two yards from that of the larger house, and the line of its roof, of course, being
considerably depressed below that of the roof adjoining. At right angles to these buildings, and from
the rear of the main one—not exactly in the middle—extended a third compartment, very small—
being, in general, one-third less than the western wing. The roofs of the two larger were very steep—
sweeping down from the ridge-beam with a long concave curve, and extending at least four feet
beyond the walls in front, so as to form the roofs of two piazzas. These latter roofs, of course, needed
no support; but as they had the air of needing it, slight and perfectly plain pillars were inserted at the
corners alone. The roof of the northern wing was merely an extension of a portion of the main roof.
Between the chief building and western wing arose a very tall and rather slender square chimney of
hard Dutch bricks, alternately black and red:—a slight cornice of projecting bricks at the top. Over
the gables the roofs also projected very much:—in the main building about four feet to the east and
two to the west. The principal door was not exactly in the main division, being a little to the east—
while the two windows were to the west. These latter did not extend to the floor, but were much
longer and narrower than usual—they had single shutters like doors—the panes were of lozenge form,
but quite large. The door itself had its upper half of glass, also in lozenge panes—a movable shutter
secured it at night. The door to the west wing was in its gable, and quite simple—a single window
looked out to the south. There was no external door to the north wing, and it also had only one
window to the east.
The blank wall of the eastern gable was relieved by stairs (with a balustrade) running diagonally
across it—the ascent being from the south. Under cover of the widely projecting eave these steps
gave access to a door leading to the garret, or rather loft—for it was lighted only by a single window
to the north, and seemed to have been intended as a store-room.
The piazzas of the main building and western wing had no floors, as is usual; but at the doors and
at each window, large, flat irregular slabs of granite lay imbedded in the delicious turf, affording
comfortable footing in all weather. Excellent paths of the same material—not nicely adapted, but with
the velvety sod filling frequent intervals between the stones, led hither and thither from the house, to a
crystal spring about five paces off, to the road, or to one or two out-houses that lay to the north,
beyond the brook, and were thoroughly concealed by a few locusts and catalpas.
Not more than six steps from the main door of the cottage stood the dead trunk of a fantastic peartree, so clothed from head to foot in the gorgeous bignonia blossoms that one required no little
scrutiny to determine what manner of sweet thing it could be. From various arms of this tree hung
cages of different kinds. In one, a large wicker cylinder with a ring at top, revelled a mocking bird; in
another an oriole; in a third the impudent bobolink—while three or four more delicate prisons were
loudly vocal with canaries.
The pillars of the piazza were enwreathed in jasmine and sweet honeysuckle; while from the
angle formed by the main structure and its west wing, in front, sprang a grape-vine of unexampled
luxuriance. Scorning all restraint, it had clambered first to the lower roof—then to the higher; and
along the ridge of this latter it continued to writhe on, throwing out tendrils to the right and left, until
at length it fairly attained the east gable, and fell trailing over the stairs.
The whole house, with its wings, was constructed of the old-fashioned Dutch shingles—broad,
and with unrounded corners. It is a peculiarity of this material to give houses built of it the
appearance of being wider at bottom than at top—after the manner of Egyptian architecture; and in the
present instance, this exceedingly picturesque effect was aided by numerous pots of gorgeous flowers
that almost encompassed the base of the buildings.
The shingles were painted a dull gray; and the happiness with which this neutral tint melted into
the vivid green of the tulip tree leaves that partially overshadowed the cottage, can readily be
conceived by an artist.
From the position near the stone wall, as described, the buildings were seen at great advantage—
for the southeastern angle was thrown forward—so that the eye took in at once the whole of the two
fronts, with the picturesque eastern gable, and at the same time obtained just a sufficient glimpse of
the northern wing, with parts of a pretty roof to the spring-house, and nearly half of a light bridge that
spanned the brook in the near vicinity of the main buildings.
I did not remain very long on the brow of the hill, although long enough to make a thorough survey
of the scene at my feet. It was clear that I had wandered from the road to the village, and I had thus
good traveller's excuse to open the gate before me, and inquire my way, at all events; so, without
more ado, I proceeded.
The road, after passing the gate, seemed to lie upon a natural ledge, sloping gradually down along
the face of the north-eastern cliffs. It led me on to the foot of the northern precipice, and thence over
the bridge, round by the eastern gable to the front door. In this progress, I took notice that no sight of
the out-houses could be obtained.
As I turned the corner of the gable, the mastiff bounded towards me in stern silence, but with the
eye and the whole air of a tiger. I held him out my hand, however, in token of amity—and I never yet
knew the dog who was proof against such an appeal to his courtesy. He not only shut his mouth and
wagged his tail, but absolutely offered me his paw—afterward extending his civilities to Ponto.
As no bell was discernible, I rapped with my stick against the door, which stood half open.
Instantly a figure advanced to the threshold—that of a young woman about twenty-eight years of age—
slender, or rather slight, and somewhat above the medium height. As she approached, with a certain
modest decision of step altogether indescribable. I said to myself, "Surely here I have found the
perfection of natural, in contradistinction from artificial grace." The second impression which she
made on me, but by far the more vivid of the two, was that of enthusiasm. So intense an expression of
romance, perhaps I should call it, or of unworldliness, as that which gleamed from her deep-set eyes,
had never so sunk into my heart of hearts before. I know not how it is, but this peculiar expression of
the eye, wreathing itself occasionally into the lips, is the most powerful, if not absolutely the sole
spell, which rivets my interest in woman. "Romance," provided my readers fully comprehended what
I would here imply by the word—"romance" and "womanliness" seem to me convertible terms: and,
after all, what man truly loves in woman, is simply her womanhood. The eyes of Annie (I heard some
one from the interior call her "Annie, darling!") were "spiritual grey;" her hair, a light chestnut: this is
all I had time to observe of her.
At her most courteous of invitations, I entered—passing first into a tolerably wide vestibule.
Having come mainly to observe, I took notice that to my right as I stepped in, was a window, such as
those in front of the house; to the left, a door leading into the principal room; while, opposite me, an
open door enabled me to see a small apartment, just the size of the vestibule, arranged as a study, and
having a large bow window looking out to the north.
Passing into the parlor, I found myself with Mr. Landor—for this, I afterwards found, was his
name. He was civil, even cordial in his manner, but just then, I was more intent on observing the
arrangements of the dwelling which had so much interested me, than the personal appearance of the
tenant.
The north wing, I now saw, was a bed-chamber, its door opened into the parlor. West of this door
was a single window, looking toward the brook. At the west end of the parlor, were a fireplace, and a
door leading into the west wing—probably a kitchen.
Nothing could be more rigorously simple than the furniture of the parlor. On the floor was an
ingrain carpet, of excellent texture—a white ground, spotted with small circular green figures. At the
windows were curtains of snowy white jaconet muslin: they were tolerably full, and hung decisively,
perhaps rather formally in sharp, parallel plaits to the floor—just to the floor. The walls were
prepared with a French paper of great delicacy, a silver ground, with a faint green cord running zigzag throughout. Its expanse was relieved merely by three of Julien's exquisite lithographs a trois
crayons, fastened to the wall without frames. One of these drawings was a scene of Oriental luxury,
or rather voluptuousness; another was a "carnival piece," spirited beyond compare; the third was a
Greek female head—a face so divinely beautiful, and yet of an expression so provokingly
indeterminate, never before arrested my attention.
The more substantial furniture consisted of a round table, a few chairs (including a large rockingchair), and a sofa, or rather "settee;" its material was plain maple painted a creamy white, slightly
interstriped with green; the seat of cane. The chairs and table were "to match," but the forms of all
had evidently been designed by the same brain which planned "the grounds;" it is impossible to
conceive anything more graceful.
On the table were a few books, a large, square, crystal bottle of some novel perfume, a plain
ground-glass astral (not solar) lamp with an Italian shade, and a large vase of resplendently-blooming
flowers. Flowers, indeed, of gorgeous colours and delicate odour formed the sole mere decoration of
the apartment. The fire-place was nearly filled with a vase of brilliant geranium. On a triangular shelf
in each angle of the room stood also a similar vase, varied only as to its lovely contents. One or two
smaller bouquets adorned the mantel, and late violets clustered about the open windows.
It is not the purpose of this work to do more than give in detail, a picture of Mr. Landor's
residence—as I found it. How he made it what it was—and why—with some particulars of Mr.
Landor himself—may, possibly form the subject of another article.
WILLIAM WILSON
What say of it? what say of CONSCIENCE grim, That spectre in my path?
Chamberlayne's Pharronida.
LET me call myself, for the present, William Wilson. The fair page now lying before me need not
be sullied with my real appellation. This has been already too much an object for the scorn—for the
horror—for the detestation of my race. To the uttermost regions of the globe have not the indignant
winds bruited its unparalleled infamy? Oh, outcast of all outcasts most abandoned!—to the earth art
thou not forever dead? to its honors, to its flowers, to its golden aspirations?—and a cloud, dense,
dismal, and limitless, does it not hang eternally between thy hopes and heaven?
I would not, if I could, here or to-day, embody a record of my later years of unspeakable misery,
and unpardonable crime. This epoch—these later years—took unto themselves a sudden elevation in
turpitude, whose origin alone it is my present purpose to assign. Men usually grow base by degrees.
From me, in an instant, all virtue dropped bodily as a mantle. From comparatively trivial wickedness
I passed, with the stride of a giant, into more than the enormities of an Elah-Gabalus. What chance—
what one event brought this evil thing to pass, bear with me while I relate. Death approaches; and the
shadow which foreruns him has thrown a softening influence over my spirit. I long, in passing through
the dim valley, for the sympathy—I had nearly said for the pity—of my fellow men. I would fain have
them believe that I have been, in some measure, the slave of circumstances beyond human control. I
would wish them to seek out for me, in the details I am about to give, some little oasis of fatality amid
a wilderness of error. I would have them allow—what they cannot refrain from allowing—that,
although temptation may have erewhile existed as great, man was never thus, at least, tempted before
—certainly, never thus fell. And is it therefore that he has never thus suffered? Have I not indeed been
living in a dream? And am I not now dying a victim to the horror and the mystery of the wildest of all
sublunary visions?
I am the descendant of a race whose imaginative and easily excitable temperament has at all times
rendered them remarkable; and, in my earliest infancy, I gave evidence of having fully inherited the
family character. As I advanced in years it was more strongly developed; becoming, for many
reasons, a cause of serious disquietude to my friends, and of positive injury to myself. I grew selfwilled, addicted to the wildest caprices, and a prey to the most ungovernable passions. Weak-minded,
and beset with constitutional infirmities akin to my own, my parents could do but little to check the
evil propensities which distinguished me. Some feeble and ill-directed efforts resulted in complete
failure on their part, and, of course, in total triumph on mine. Thenceforward my voice was a
household law; and at an age when few children have abandoned their leading-strings, I was left to
the guidance of my own will, and became, in all but name, the master of my own actions.
My earliest recollections of a school-life, are connected with a large, rambling, Elizabethan
house, in a misty-looking village of England, where were a vast number of gigantic and gnarled trees,
and where all the houses were excessively ancient. In truth, it was a dream-like and spirit-soothing
place, that venerable old town. At this moment, in fancy, I feel the refreshing chilliness of its deeplyshadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew with undefinable
delight, at the deep hollow note of the church-bell, breaking, each hour, with sullen and sudden roar,
upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in which the fretted Gothic steeple lay imbedded and
asleep.
It gives me, perhaps, as much of pleasure as I can now in any manner experience, to dwell upon
minute recollections of the school and its concerns. Steeped in misery as I am—misery, alas! only too
real—I shall be pardoned for seeking relief, however slight and temporary, in the weakness of a few
rambling details. These, moreover, utterly trivial, and even ridiculous in themselves, assume, to my
fancy, adventitious importance, as connected with a period and a locality when and where I recognise
the first ambiguous monitions of the destiny which afterwards so fully overshadowed me. Let me then
remember.
The house, I have said, was old and irregular. The grounds were extensive, and a high and solid
brick wall, topped with a bed of mortar and broken glass, encompassed the whole. This prison-like
rampart formed the limit of our domain; beyond it we saw but thrice a week—once every Saturday
afternoon, when, attended by two ushers, we were permitted to take brief walks in a body through
some of the neighbouring fields—and twice during Sunday, when we were paraded in the same
formal manner to the morning and evening service in the one church of the village. Of this church the
principal of our school was pastor. With how deep a spirit of wonder and perplexity was I wont to
regard him from our remote pew in the gallery, as, with step solemn and slow, he ascended the pulpit!
This reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy and so clerically
flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so vast,—-could this be he who, of late, with
sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand, the Draconian laws of the
academy? Oh, gigantic paradox, too utterly monstrous for solution!
At an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a more ponderous gate. It was riveted and studded
with iron bolts, and surmounted with jagged iron spikes. What impressions of deep awe did it
inspire! It was never opened save for the three periodical egressions and ingressions already
mentioned; then, in every creak of its mighty hinges, we found a plenitude of mystery—a world of
matter for solemn remark, or for more solemn meditation.
The extensive enclosure was irregular in form, having many capacious recesses. Of these, three or
four of the largest constituted the play-ground. It was level, and covered with fine hard gravel. I well
remember it had no trees, nor benches, nor anything similar within it. Of course it was in the rear of
the house. In front lay a small parterre, planted with box and other shrubs; but through this sacred
division we passed only upon rare occasions indeed—such as a first advent to school or final
departure thence, or perhaps, when a parent or friend having called for us, we joyfully took our way
home for the Christmas or Midsummer holy-days.
But the house!—how quaint an old building was this!—to me how veritably a palace of
enchantment! There was really no end to its windings—to its incomprehensible subdivisions. It was
difficult, at any given time, to say with certainty upon which of its two stories one happened to be.
From each room to every other there were sure to be found three or four steps either in ascent or
descent. Then the lateral branches were innumerable—inconceivable—and so returning in upon
themselves, that our most exact ideas in regard to the whole mansion were not very far different from
those with which we pondered upon infinity. During the five years of my residence here, I was never
able to ascertain with precision, in what remote locality lay the little sleeping apartment assigned to
myself and some eighteen or twenty other scholars.
The school-room was the largest in the house—I could not help thinking, in the world. It was very
long, narrow, and dismally low, with pointed Gothic windows and a ceiling of oak. In a remote and
terror-inspiring angle was a square enclosure of eight or ten feet, comprising the sanctum, "during
hours," of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. It was a solid structure, with massy door, sooner
than open which in the absence of the "Dominic," we would all have willingly perished by the peine
forte et dure. In other angles were two other similar boxes, far less reverenced, indeed, but still
greatly matters of awe. One of these was the pulpit of the "classical" usher, one of the "English and
mathematical." Interspersed about the room, crossing and recrossing in endless irregularity, were
innumerable benches and desks, black, ancient, and time-worn, piled desperately with muchbethumbed books, and so beseamed with initial letters, names at full length, grotesque figures, and
other multiplied efforts of the knife, as to have entirely lost what little of original form might have
been their portion in days long departed. A huge bucket with water stood at one extremity of the room,
and a clock of stupendous dimensions at the other.
Encompassed by the massy walls of this venerable academy, I passed, yet not in tedium or
disgust, the years of the third lustrum of my life. The teeming brain of childhood requires no external
world of incident to occupy or amuse it; and the apparently dismal monotony of a school was replete
with more intense excitement than my riper youth has derived from luxury, or my full manhood from
crime. Yet I must believe that my first mental development had in it much of the uncommon—even
much of the outre. Upon mankind at large the events of very early existence rarely leave in mature age
any definite impression. All is gray shadow—a weak and irregular remembrance—an indistinct
regathering of feeble pleasures and phantasmagoric pains. With me this is not so. In childhood I must
have felt with the energy of a man what I now find stamped upon memory in lines as vivid, as deep,
and as durable as the exergues of the Carthaginian medals.
Yet in fact—in the fact of the world's view—how little was there to remember! The morning's
awakening, the nightly summons to bed; the connings, the recitations; the periodical half-holidays, and
perambulations; the play-ground, with its broils, its pastimes, its intrigues;—these, by a mental
sorcery long forgotten, were made to involve a wilderness of sensation, a world of rich incident, an
universe of varied emotion, of excitement the most passionate and spirit-stirring. "Oh, le bon temps,
que ce siecle de fer!"
In truth, the ardor, the enthusiasm, and the imperiousness of my disposition, soon rendered me a
marked character among my schoolmates, and by slow, but natural gradations, gave me an ascendancy
over all not greatly older than myself;—over all with a single exception. This exception was found in
the person of a scholar, who, although no relation, bore the same Christian and surname as myself;—a
circumstance, in fact, little remarkable; for, notwithstanding a noble descent, mine was one of those
everyday appellations which seem, by prescriptive right, to have been, time out of mind, the common
property of the mob. In this narrative I have therefore designated myself as William Wilson,—a
fictitious title not very dissimilar to the real. My namesake alone, of those who in school phraseology
constituted "our set," presumed to compete with me in the studies of the class—in the sports and
broils of the play-ground—to refuse implicit belief in my assertions, and submission to my will—
indeed, to interfere with my arbitrary dictation in any respect whatsoever. If there is on earth a
supreme and unqualified despotism, it is the despotism of a master mind in boyhood over the less
energetic spirits of its companions.
Wilson's rebellion was to me a source of the greatest embarrassment;—the more so as, in spite of
the bravado with which in public I made a point of treating him and his pretensions, I secretly felt that
I feared him, and could not help thinking the equality which he maintained so easily with myself, a
proof of his true superiority; since not to be overcome cost me a perpetual struggle. Yet this
superiority—even this equality—was in truth acknowledged by no one but myself; our associates, by
some unaccountable blindness, seemed not even to suspect it. Indeed, his competition, his resistance,
and especially his impertinent and dogged interference with my purposes, were not more pointed than
private. He appeared to be destitute alike of the ambition which urged, and of the passionate energy
of mind which enabled me to excel. In his rivalry he might have been supposed actuated solely by a
whimsical desire to thwart, astonish, or mortify myself; although there were times when I could not
help observing, with a feeling made up of wonder, abasement, and pique, that he mingled with his
injuries, his insults, or his contradictions, a certain most inappropriate, and assuredly most
unwelcome affectionateness of manner. I could only conceive this singular behavior to arise from a
consummate self-conceit assuming the vulgar airs of patronage and protection.
Perhaps it was this latter trait in Wilson's conduct, conjoined with our identity of name, and the
mere accident of our having entered the school upon the same day, which set afloat the notion that we
were brothers, among the senior classes in the academy. These do not usually inquire with much
strictness into the affairs of their juniors. I have before said, or should have said, that Wilson was not,
in the most remote degree, connected with my family. But assuredly if we had been brothers we must
have been twins; for, after leaving Dr. Bransby's, I casually learned that my namesake was born on the
nineteenth of January, 1813—and this is a somewhat remarkable coincidence; for the day is precisely
that of my own nativity.
It may seem strange that in spite of the continual anxiety occasioned me by the rivalry of Wilson,
and his intolerable spirit of contradiction, I could not bring myself to hate him altogether. We had, to
be sure, nearly every day a quarrel in which, yielding me publicly the palm of victory, he, in some
manner, contrived to make me feel that it was he who had deserved it; yet a sense of pride on my part,
and a veritable dignity on his own, kept us always upon what are called "speaking terms," while there
were many points of strong congeniality in our tempers, operating to awake me in a sentiment which
our position alone, perhaps, prevented from ripening into friendship. It is difficult, indeed, to define,
or even to describe, my real feelings towards him. They formed a motley and heterogeneous
admixture;—some petulant animosity, which was not yet hatred, some esteem, more respect, much
fear, with a world of uneasy curiosity. To the moralist it will be unnecessary to say, in addition, that
Wilson and myself were the most inseparable of companions.
It was no doubt the anomalous state of affairs existing between us, which turned all my attacks
upon him, (and they were many, either open or covert) into the channel of banter or practical joke
(giving pain while assuming the aspect of mere fun) rather than into a more serious and determined
hostility. But my endeavours on this head were by no means uniformly successful, even when my
plans were the most wittily concocted; for my namesake had much about him, in character, of that
unassuming and quiet austerity which, while enjoying the poignancy of its own jokes, has no heel of
Achilles in itself, and absolutely refuses to be laughed at. I could find, indeed, but one vulnerable
point, and that, lying in a personal peculiarity, arising, perhaps, from constitutional disease, would
have been spared by any antagonist less at his wit's end than myself;—my rival had a weakness in the
faucal or guttural organs, which precluded him from raising his voice at any time above a very low
whisper. Of this defect I did not fail to take what poor advantage lay in my power.
Wilson's retaliations in kind were many; and there was one form of his practical wit that disturbed
me beyond measure. How his sagacity first discovered at all that so petty a thing would vex me, is a
question I never could solve; but, having discovered, he habitually practised the annoyance. I had
always felt aversion to my uncourtly patronymic, and its very common, if not plebeian praenomen.
The words were venom in my ears; and when, upon the day of my arrival, a second William Wilson
came also to the academy, I felt angry with him for bearing the name, and doubly disgusted with the
name because a stranger bore it, who would be the cause of its twofold repetition, who would be
constantly in my presence, and whose concerns, in the ordinary routine of the school business, must
inevitably, on account of the detestable coincidence, be often confounded with my own.
The feeling of vexation thus engendered grew stronger with every circumstance tending to show
resemblance, moral or physical, between my rival and myself. I had not then discovered the
remarkable fact that we were of the same age; but I saw that we were of the same height, and I
perceived that we were even singularly alike in general contour of person and outline of feature. I
was galled, too, by the rumor touching a relationship, which had grown current in the upper forms. In
a word, nothing could more seriously disturb me, (although I scrupulously concealed such
disturbance,) than any allusion to a similarity of mind, person, or condition existing between us. But,
in truth, I had no reason to believe that (with the exception of the matter of relationship, and in the
case of Wilson himself,) this similarity had ever been made a subject of comment, or even observed
at all by our schoolfellows. That he observed it in all its bearings, and as fixedly as I, was apparent;
but that he could discover in such circumstances so fruitful a field of annoyance, can only be
attributed, as I said before, to his more than ordinary penetration.
His cue, which was to perfect an imitation of myself, lay both in words and in actions; and most
admirably did he play his part. My dress it was an easy matter to copy; my gait and general manner
were, without difficulty, appropriated; in spite of his constitutional defect, even my voice did not
escape him. My louder tones were, of course, unattempted, but then the key, it was identical; and his
singular whisper, it grew the very echo of my own.
How greatly this most exquisite portraiture harassed me, (for it could not justly be termed a
caricature,) I will not now venture to describe. I had but one consolation—in the fact that the
imitation, apparently, was noticed by myself alone, and that I had to endure only the knowing and
strangely sarcastic smiles of my namesake himself. Satisfied with having produced in my bosom the
intended effect, he seemed to chuckle in secret over the sting he had inflicted, and was
characteristically disregardful of the public applause which the success of his witty endeavours might
have so easily elicited. That the school, indeed, did not feel his design, perceive its accomplishment,
and participate in his sneer, was, for many anxious months, a riddle I could not resolve. Perhaps the
gradation of his copy rendered it not so readily perceptible; or, more possibly, I owed my security to
the master air of the copyist, who, disdaining the letter, (which in a painting is all the obtuse can see,)
gave but the full spirit of his original for my individual contemplation and chagrin.
I have already more than once spoken of the disgusting air of patronage which he assumed toward
me, and of his frequent officious interference with my will. This interference often took the
ungracious character of advice; advice not openly given, but hinted or insinuated. I received it with a
repugnance which gained strength as I grew in years. Yet, at this distant day, let me do him the simple
justice to acknowledge that I can recall no occasion when the suggestions of my rival were on the
side of those errors or follies so usual to his immature age and seeming inexperience; that his moral
sense, at least, if not his general talents and worldly wisdom, was far keener than my own; and that I
might, to-day, have been a better, and thus a happier man, had I less frequently rejected the counsels
embodied in those meaning whispers which I then but too cordially hated and too bitterly despised.
As it was, I at length grew restive in the extreme under his distasteful supervision, and daily
resented more and more openly what I considered his intolerable arrogance. I have said that, in the
first years of our connexion as schoolmates, my feelings in regard to him might have been easily
ripened into friendship: but, in the latter months of my residence at the academy, although the intrusion
of his ordinary manner had, beyond doubt, in some measure, abated, my sentiments, in nearly similar
proportion, partook very much of positive hatred. Upon one occasion he saw this, I think, and
afterwards avoided, or made a show of avoiding me.
It was about the same period, if I remember aright, that, in an altercation of violence with him, in
which he was more than usually thrown off his guard, and spoke and acted with an openness of
demeanor rather foreign to his nature, I discovered, or fancied I discovered, in his accent, his air, and
general appearance, a something which first startled, and then deeply interested me, by bringing to
mind dim visions of my earliest infancy—wild, confused and thronging memories of a time when
memory herself was yet unborn. I cannot better describe the sensation which oppressed me than by
saying that I could with difficulty shake off the belief of my having been acquainted with the being
who stood before me, at some epoch very long ago—some point of the past even infinitely remote.
The delusion, however, faded rapidly as it came; and I mention it at all but to define the day of the last
conversation I there held with my singular namesake.
The huge old house, with its countless subdivisions, had several large chambers communicating
with each other, where slept the greater number of the students. There were, however, (as must
necessarily happen in a building so awkwardly planned,) many little nooks or recesses, the odds and
ends of the structure; and these the economic ingenuity of Dr. Bransby had also fitted up as
dormitories; although, being the merest closets, they were capable of accommodating but a single
individual. One of these small apartments was occupied by Wilson.
One night, about the close of my fifth year at the school, and immediately after the altercation just
mentioned, finding every one wrapped in sleep, I arose from bed, and, lamp in hand, stole through a
wilderness of narrow passages from my own bedroom to that of my rival. I had long been plotting one
of those ill-natured pieces of practical wit at his expense in which I had hitherto been so uniformly
unsuccessful. It was my intention, now, to put my scheme in operation, and I resolved to make him
feel the whole extent of the malice with which I was imbued. Having reached his closet, I noiselessly
entered, leaving the lamp, with a shade over it, on the outside. I advanced a step, and listened to the
sound of his tranquil breathing. Assured of his being asleep, I returned, took the light, and with it
again approached the bed. Close curtains were around it, which, in the prosecution of my plan, I
slowly and quietly withdrew, when the bright rays fell vividly upon the sleeper, and my eyes, at the
same moment, upon his countenance. I looked;—and a numbness, an iciness of feeling instantly
pervaded my frame. My breast heaved, my knees tottered, my whole spirit became possessed with an
objectless yet intolerable horror. Gasping for breath, I lowered the lamp in still nearer proximity to
the face. Were these—these the lineaments of William Wilson? I saw, indeed, that they were his, but I
shook as if with a fit of the ague in fancying they were not. What was there about them to confound me
in this manner? I gazed;—while my brain reeled with a multitude of incoherent thoughts. Not thus he
appeared—assuredly not thus—in the vivacity of his waking hours. The same name! the same contour
of person! the same day of arrival at the academy! And then his dogged and meaningless imitation of
my gait, my voice, my habits, and my manner! Was it, in truth, within the bounds of human possibility,
that what I now saw was the result, merely, of the habitual practice of this sarcastic imitation? Awestricken, and with a creeping shudder, I extinguished the lamp, passed silently from the chamber, and
left, at once, the halls of that old academy, never to enter them again.
After a lapse of some months, spent at home in mere idleness, I found myself a student at Eton.
The brief interval had been sufficient to enfeeble my remembrance of the events at Dr. Bransby's, or
at least to effect a material change in the nature of the feelings with which I remembered them. The
truth—the tragedy—of the drama was no more. I could now find room to doubt the evidence of my
senses; and seldom called up the subject at all but with wonder at extent of human credulity, and a
smile at the vivid force of the imagination which I hereditarily possessed. Neither was this species of
scepticism likely to be diminished by the character of the life I led at Eton. The vortex of thoughtless
folly into which I there so immediately and so recklessly plunged, washed away all but the froth of
my past hours, engulfed at once every solid or serious impression, and left to memory only the veriest
levities of a former existence.
I do not wish, however, to trace the course of my miserable profligacy here—a profligacy which
set at defiance the laws, while it eluded the vigilance of the institution. Three years of folly, passed
without profit, had but given me rooted habits of vice, and added, in a somewhat unusual degree, to
my bodily stature, when, after a week of soulless dissipation, I invited a small party of the most
dissolute students to a secret carousal in my chambers. We met at a late hour of the night; for our
debaucheries were to be faithfully protracted until morning. The wine flowed freely, and there were
not wanting other and perhaps more dangerous seductions; so that the gray dawn had already faintly
appeared in the east, while our delirious extravagance was at its height. Madly flushed with cards and
intoxication, I was in the act of insisting upon a toast of more than wonted profanity, when my
attention was suddenly diverted by the violent, although partial unclosing of the door of the apartment,
and by the eager voice of a servant from without. He said that some person, apparently in great haste,
demanded to speak with me in the hall.
Wildly excited with wine, the unexpected interruption rather delighted than surprised me. I
staggered forward at once, and a few steps brought me to the vestibule of the building. In this low and
small room there hung no lamp; and now no light at all was admitted, save that of the exceedingly
feeble dawn which made its way through the semi-circular window. As I put my foot over the
threshold, I became aware of the figure of a youth about my own height, and habited in a white
kerseymere morning frock, cut in the novel fashion of the one I myself wore at the moment. This the
faint light enabled me to perceive; but the features of his face I could not distinguish. Upon my
entering he strode hurriedly up to me, and, seizing me by the arm with a gesture of petulant
impatience, whispered the words "William Wilson!" in my ear.
I grew perfectly sober in an instant. There was that in the manner of the stranger, and in the
tremulous shake of his uplifted finger, as he held it between my eyes and the light, which filled me
with unqualified amazement; but it was not this which had so violently moved me. It was the
pregnancy of solemn admonition in the singular, low, hissing utterance; and, above all, it was the
character, the tone, the key, of those few, simple, and familiar, yet whispered syllables, which came
with a thousand thronging memories of bygone days, and struck upon my soul with the shock of a
galvanic battery. Ere I could recover the use of my senses he was gone.
Although this event failed not of a vivid effect upon my disordered imagination, yet was it
evanescent as vivid. For some weeks, indeed, I busied myself in earnest inquiry, or was wrapped in a
cloud of morbid speculation. I did not pretend to disguise from my perception the identity of the
singular individual who thus perseveringly interfered with my affairs, and harassed me with his
insinuated counsel. But who and what was this Wilson?—and whence came he?—and what were his
purposes? Upon neither of these points could I be satisfied; merely ascertaining, in regard to him, that
a sudden accident in his family had caused his removal from Dr. Bransby's academy on the afternoon
of the day in which I myself had eloped. But in a brief period I ceased to think upon the subject; my
attention being all absorbed in a contemplated departure for Oxford. Thither I soon went; the
uncalculating vanity of my parents furnishing me with an outfit and annual establishment, which would
enable me to indulge at will in the luxury already so dear to my heart,—to vie in profuseness of
expenditure with the haughtiest heirs of the wealthiest earldoms in Great Britain.
Excited by such appliances to vice, my constitutional temperament broke forth with redoubled
ardor, and I spurned even the common restraints of decency in the mad infatuation of my revels. But it
were absurd to pause in the detail of my extravagance. Let it suffice, that among spendthrifts I outHeroded Herod, and that, giving name to a multitude of novel follies, I added no brief appendix to the
long catalogue of vices then usual in the most dissolute university of Europe.
It could hardly be credited, however, that I had, even here, so utterly fallen from the gentlemanly
estate, as to seek acquaintance with the vilest arts of the gambler by profession, and, having become
an adept in his despicable science, to practise it habitually as a means of increasing my already
enormous income at the expense of the weak-minded among my fellow-collegians. Such,
nevertheless, was the fact. And the very enormity of this offence against all manly and honourable
sentiment proved, beyond doubt, the main if not the sole reason of the impunity with which it was
committed. Who, indeed, among my most abandoned associates, would not rather have disputed the
clearest evidence of his senses, than have suspected of such courses, the gay, the frank, the generous
William Wilson—the noblest and most liberal commoner at Oxford—him whose follies (said his
parasites) were but the follies of youth and unbridled fancy—whose errors but inimitable whim—
whose darkest vice but a careless and dashing extravagance?
I had been now two years successfully busied in this way, when there came to the university a
young parvenu nobleman, Glendinning—rich, said report, as Herodes Atticus—his riches, too, as
easily acquired. I soon found him of weak intellect, and, of course, marked him as a fitting subject for
my skill. I frequently engaged him in play, and contrived, with the gambler's usual art, to let him win
considerable sums, the more effectually to entangle him in my snares. At length, my schemes being
ripe, I met him (with the full intention that this meeting should be final and decisive) at the chambers
of a fellow-commoner, (Mr. Preston,) equally intimate with both, but who, to do him Justice,
entertained not even a remote suspicion of my design. To give to this a better colouring, I had
contrived to have assembled a party of some eight or ten, and was solicitously careful that the
introduction of cards should appear accidental, and originate in the proposal of my contemplated
dupe himself. To be brief upon a vile topic, none of the low finesse was omitted, so customary upon
similar occasions that it is a just matter for wonder how any are still found so besotted as to fall its
victim.
We had protracted our sitting far into the night, and I had at length effected the manoeuvre of
getting Glendinning as my sole antagonist. The game, too, was my favorite ecarte! The rest of the
company, interested in the extent of our play, had abandoned their own cards, and were standing
around us as spectators. The parvenu, who had been induced by my artifices in the early part of the
evening, to drink deeply, now shuffled, dealt, or played, with a wild nervousness of manner for which
his intoxication, I thought, might partially, but could not altogether account. In a very short period he
had become my debtor to a large amount, when, having taken a long draught of port, he did precisely
what I had been coolly anticipating—he proposed to double our already extravagant stakes. With a
well-feigned show of reluctance, and not until after my repeated refusal had seduced him into some
angry words which gave a color of pique to my compliance, did I finally comply. The result, of
course, did but prove how entirely the prey was in my toils; in less than an hour he had quadrupled
his debt. For some time his countenance had been losing the florid tinge lent it by the wine; but now,
to my astonishment, I perceived that it had grown to a pallor truly fearful. I say to my astonishment.
Glendinning had been represented to my eager inquiries as immeasurably wealthy; and the sums
which he had as yet lost, although in themselves vast, could not, I supposed, very seriously annoy,
much less so violently affect him. That he was overcome by the wine just swallowed, was the idea
which most readily presented itself; and, rather with a view to the preservation of my own character
in the eyes of my associates, than from any less interested motive, I was about to insist, peremptorily,
upon a discontinuance of the play, when some expressions at my elbow from among the company, and
an ejaculation evincing utter despair on the part of Glendinning, gave me to understand that I had
effected his total ruin under circumstances which, rendering him an object for the pity of all, should
have protected him from the ill offices even of a fiend.
What now might have been my conduct it is difficult to say. The pitiable condition of my dupe had
thrown an air of embarrassed gloom over all; and, for some moments, a profound silence was
maintained, during which I could not help feeling my cheeks tingle with the many burning glances of
scorn or reproach cast upon me by the less abandoned of the party. I will even own that an intolerable
weight of anxiety was for a brief instant lifted from my bosom by the sudden and extraordinary
interruption which ensued. The wide, heavy folding doors of the apartment were all at once thrown
open, to their full extent, with a vigorous and rushing impetuosity that extinguished, as if by magic,
every candle in the room. Their light, in dying, enabled us just to perceive that a stranger had entered,
about my own height, and closely muffled in a cloak. The darkness, however, was now total; and we
could only feel that he was standing in our midst. Before any one of us could recover from the
extreme astonishment into which this rudeness had thrown all, we heard the voice of the intruder.
"Gentlemen," he said, in a low, distinct, and never-to-be-forgotten whisper which thrilled to the
very marrow of my bones, "Gentlemen, I make no apology for this behaviour, because in thus
behaving, I am but fulfilling a duty. You are, beyond doubt, uninformed of the true character of the
person who has to-night won at ecarte a large sum of money from Lord Glendinning. I will therefore
put you upon an expeditious and decisive plan of obtaining this very necessary information. Please to
examine, at your leisure, the inner linings of the cuff of his left sleeve, and the several little packages
which may be found in the somewhat capacious pockets of his embroidered morning wrapper."
While he spoke, so profound was the stillness that one might have heard a pin drop upon the floor.
In ceasing, he departed at once, and as abruptly as he had entered. Can I—shall I describe my
sensations?—must I say that I felt all the horrors of the damned? Most assuredly I had little time given
for reflection. Many hands roughly seized me upon the spot, and lights were immediately reprocured.
A search ensued. In the lining of my sleeve were found all the court cards essential in ecarte, and, in
the pockets of my wrapper, a number of packs, facsimiles of those used at our sittings, with the single
exception that mine were of the species called, technically, arrondees; the honours being slightly
convex at the ends, the lower cards slightly convex at the sides. In this disposition, the dupe who cuts,
as customary, at the length of the pack, will invariably find that he cuts his antagonist an honor; while
the gambler, cutting at the breadth, will, as certainly, cut nothing for his victim which may count in the
records of the game.
Any burst of indignation upon this discovery would have affected me less than the silent contempt,
or the sarcastic composure, with which it was received.
"Mr. Wilson," said our host, stooping to remove from beneath his feet an exceedingly luxurious
cloak of rare furs, "Mr. Wilson, this is your property." (The weather was cold; and, upon quitting my
own room, I had thrown a cloak over my dressing wrapper, putting it off upon reaching the scene of
play.) "I presume it is supererogatory to seek here (eyeing the folds of the garment with a bitter smile)
for any farther evidence of your skill. Indeed, we have had enough. You will see the necessity, I hope,
of quitting Oxford—at all events, of quitting instantly my chambers."
Abased, humbled to the dust as I then was, it is probable that I should have resented this galling
language by immediate personal violence, had not my whole attention been at the moment arrested by
a fact of the most startling character. The cloak which I had worn was of a rare description of fur;
how rare, how extravagantly costly, I shall not venture to say. Its fashion, too, was of my own
fantastic invention; for I was fastidious to an absurd degree of coxcombry, in matters of this frivolous
nature. When, therefore, Mr. Preston reached me that which he had picked up upon the floor, and near
the folding doors of the apartment, it was with an astonishment nearly bordering upon terror, that I
perceived my own already hanging on my arm, (where I had no doubt unwittingly placed it,) and that
the one presented me was but its exact counterpart in every, in even the minutest possible particular.
The singular being who had so disastrously exposed me, had been muffled, I remembered, in a cloak;
and none had been worn at all by any of the members of our party with the exception of myself.
Retaining some presence of mind, I took the one offered me by Preston; placed it, unnoticed, over my
own; left the apartment with a resolute scowl of defiance; and, next morning ere dawn of day,
commenced a hurried journey from Oxford to the continent, in a perfect agony of horror and of shame.
I fled in vain. My evil destiny pursued me as if in exultation, and proved, indeed, that the exercise
of its mysterious dominion had as yet only begun. Scarcely had I set foot in Paris ere I had fresh
evidence of the detestable interest taken by this Wilson in my concerns. Years flew, while I
experienced no relief. Villain!—at Rome, with how untimely, yet with how spectral an officiousness,
stepped he in between me and my ambition! At Vienna, too—at Berlin—and at Moscow! Where, in
truth, had I not bitter cause to curse him within my heart? From his inscrutable tyranny did I at length
flee, panic-stricken, as from a pestilence; and to the very ends of the earth I fled in vain.
And again, and again, in secret communion with my own spirit, would I demand the questions
"Who is he?—whence came he?—and what are his objects?" But no answer was there found. And
then I scrutinized, with a minute scrutiny, the forms, and the methods, and the leading traits of his
impertinent supervision. But even here there was very little upon which to base a conjecture. It was
noticeable, indeed, that, in no one of the multiplied instances in which he had of late crossed my path,
had he so crossed it except to frustrate those schemes, or to disturb those actions, which, if fully
carried out, might have resulted in bitter mischief. Poor justification this, in truth, for an authority so
imperiously assumed! Poor indemnity for natural rights of self-agency so pertinaciously, so insultingly
denied!
I had also been forced to notice that my tormentor, for a very long period of time, (while
scrupulously and with miraculous dexterity maintaining his whim of an identity of apparel with
myself,) had so contrived it, in the execution of his varied interference with my will, that I saw not, at
any moment, the features of his face. Be Wilson what he might, this, at least, was but the veriest of
affectation, or of folly. Could he, for an instant, have supposed that, in my admonisher at Eton—in the
destroyer of my honor at Oxford,—in him who thwarted my ambition at Rome, my revenge at Paris,
my passionate love at Naples, or what he falsely termed my avarice in Egypt,—that in this, my archenemy and evil genius, could fail to recognise the William Wilson of my school boy days,—the
namesake, the companion, the rival,—the hated and dreaded rival at Dr. Bransby's? Impossible!—But
let me hasten to the last eventful scene of the drama.
Thus far I had succumbed supinely to this imperious domination. The sentiment of deep awe with
which I habitually regarded the elevated character, the majestic wisdom, the apparent omnipresence
and omnipotence of Wilson, added to a feeling of even terror, with which certain other traits in his
nature and assumptions inspired me, had operated, hitherto, to impress me with an idea of my own
utter weakness and helplessness, and to suggest an implicit, although bitterly reluctant submission to
his arbitrary will. But, of late days, I had given myself up entirely to wine; and its maddening
influence upon my hereditary temper rendered me more and more impatient of control. I began to
murmur,—to hesitate,—to resist. And was it only fancy which induced me to believe that, with the
increase of my own firmness, that of my tormentor underwent a proportional diminution? Be this as it
may, I now began to feel the inspiration of a burning hope, and at length nurtured in my secret thoughts
a stern and desperate resolution that I would submit no longer to be enslaved.
It was at Rome, during the Carnival of 18—, that I attended a masquerade in the palazzo of the
Neapolitan Duke Di Broglio. I had indulged more freely than usual in the excesses of the wine-table;
and now the suffocating atmosphere of the crowded rooms irritated me beyond endurance. The
difficulty, too, of forcing my way through the mazes of the company contributed not a little to the
ruffling of my temper; for I was anxiously seeking, (let me not say with what unworthy motive) the
young, the gay, the beautiful wife of the aged and doting Di Broglio. With a too unscrupulous
confidence she had previously communicated to me the secret of the costume in which she would be
habited, and now, having caught a glimpse of her person, I was hurrying to make my way into her
presence.—At this moment I felt a light hand placed upon my shoulder, and that ever-remembered,
low, damnable whisper within my ear.
In an absolute phrenzy of wrath, I turned at once upon him who had thus interrupted me, and
seized him violently by the collar. He was attired, as I had expected, in a costume altogether similar
to my own; wearing a Spanish cloak of blue velvet, begirt about the waist with a crimson belt
sustaining a rapier. A mask of black silk entirely covered his face.
"Scoundrel!" I said, in a voice husky with rage, while every syllable I uttered seemed as new fuel
to my fury, "scoundrel! impostor! accursed villain! you shall not—you shall not dog me unto death!
Follow me, or I stab you where you stand!"—and I broke my way from the ball-room into a small
ante-chamber adjoining—dragging him unresistingly with me as I went.
Upon entering, I thrust him furiously from me. He staggered against the wall, while I closed the
door with an oath, and commanded him to draw. He hesitated but for an instant; then, with a slight
sigh, drew in silence, and put himself upon his defence.
The contest was brief indeed. I was frantic with every species of wild excitement, and felt within
my single arm the energy and power of a multitude. In a few seconds I forced him by sheer strength
against the wainscoting, and thus, getting him at mercy, plunged my sword, with brute ferocity,
repeatedly through and through his bosom.
At that instant some person tried the latch of the door. I hastened to prevent an intrusion, and then
immediately returned to my dying antagonist. But what human language can adequately portray that
astonishment, that horror which possessed me at the spectacle then presented to view? The brief
moment in which I averted my eyes had been sufficient to produce, apparently, a material change in
the arrangements at the upper or farther end of the room. A large mirror,—so at first it seemed to me
in my confusion—now stood where none had been perceptible before; and, as I stepped up to it in
extremity of terror, mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced to
meet me with a feeble and tottering gait.
Thus it appeared, I say, but was not. It was my antagonist—it was Wilson, who then stood before
me in the agonies of his dissolution. His mask and cloak lay, where he had thrown them, upon the
floor. Not a thread in all his raiment—not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments of his face
which was not, even in the most absolute identity, mine own!
It was Wilson; but he spoke no longer in a whisper, and I could have fancied that I myself was
speaking while he said:
"You have conquered, and I yield. Yet, henceforward art thou also dead—dead to the World, to
Heaven and to Hope! In me didst thou exist—and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own,
how utterly thou hast murdered thyself."
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 disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the
sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell.
How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole
story.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day
and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged
me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this!
He had the eye of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood
ran cold; and so by degrees—very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and
thus rid myself of the eye forever.
Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me.
You should have seen how wisely I proceeded—with what caution—with what foresight—with what
dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I
killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it—oh so
gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all
closed, closed, that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to
see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly—very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the
old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see
him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! would a madman have been so wise as this? And then, when my head
was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously—oh, so cautiously—cautiously (for the hinges
creaked)—I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for
seven long nights—every night just at midnight—but I found the eye always closed; and so it was
impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And every
morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling
him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he has passed the night. So you see he would have
been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him
while he slept.
Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch's minute hand
moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers—of
my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the
door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the
idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think
that I drew back—but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters
were close fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I knew that he could not see the opening of the
door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.
I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin
fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out—"Who's there?"
I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I
did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening;—just as I have done, night after
night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.
Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of
pain or of grief—oh, no!—it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when
overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world
slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that
distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled
at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in
the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless,
but could not. He had been saying to himself—"It is nothing but the wind in the chimney—it is only a
mouse crossing the floor," or "It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp." Yes, he had been
trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain; because
Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim.
And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel—although he
neither saw nor heard—to feel the presence of my head within the room.
When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a
little—a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it—you cannot imagine how stealthily,
stealthily—until, at length a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and
fell full upon the vulture eye.
It was open—wide, wide open—and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect
distinctness—all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but
I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct,
precisely upon the damned spot.
And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense?—
now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in
cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as
the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.
But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried
how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eve. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased.
It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man's terror must have been
extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment!—do you mark me well I have told you that I am
nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house,
so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained
and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new
anxiety seized me—the sound would be heard by a neighbour! The old man's hour had come! With a
loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once—once only. In an
instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the
deed so far done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did
not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I
removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the
heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eye would
trouble me no more.
If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took
for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I
dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.
I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between the
scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye—not even his—
could have detected any thing wrong. There was nothing to wash out—no stain of any kind—no
blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had caught all—ha! ha!
When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clock—still dark as midnight. As the bell
sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart,—
for what had I now to fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect
suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbour during the night; suspicion
of foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the
officers) had been deputed to search the premises.
I smiled,—for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own
in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house.
I bade them search—search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures,
secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired
them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph,
placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.
The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat,
and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale
and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still
chatted. The ringing became more distinct:—It continued and became more distinct: I talked more
freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definiteness—until, at length, I found that
the noise was not within my ears.
No doubt I now grew very pale;—but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the
sound increased—and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound—much such a sound as a
watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath—and yet the officers heard it not. I talked
more quickly—more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in
a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be
gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the
men—but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed—I raved—I swore! I
swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over
all and continually increased. It grew louder—louder—louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly,
and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God!—no, no! They heard!—they suspected!—
they knew!—they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything
was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those
hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now—again!—hark! louder!
louder! louder! louder!
"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed!—tear up the planks! here, here!—It
is the beating of his hideous heart!"
BERENICE
Dicebant mihi sodales, si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum forelevatas.
—Ebn Zaiat.
MISERY is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as
the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch—as distinct too, yet as intimately blended.
Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of
unloveliness?—from the covenant of peace, a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a
consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the
anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are, have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.
My baptismal name is Egaeus; that of my family I will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the
land more time-honored than my gloomy, gray, hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race of
visionaries; and in many striking particulars—in the character of the family mansion—in the frescos
of the chief saloon—in the tapestries of the dormitories—in the chiselling of some buttresses in the
armory—but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings—in the fashion of the library chamber
—and, lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library's contents—there is more than sufficient
evidence to warrant the belief.
The recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber, and with its volumes—of
which latter I will say no more. Here died my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness to
say that I had not lived before—that the soul has no previous existence. You deny it?—let us not argue
the matter. Convinced myself, I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance of aerial
forms—of spiritual and meaning eyes—of sounds, musical yet sad—a remembrance which will not
be excluded; a memory like a shadow—vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady; and like a shadow, too,
in the impossibility of my getting rid of it while the sunlight of my reason shall exist.
In that chamber was I born. Thus awaking from the long night of what seemed, but was not,
nonentity, at once into the very regions of fairy land—into a palace of imagination—into the wild
dominions of monastic thought and erudition—it is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled
and ardent eye—that I loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie; but it
is singular that as years rolled away, and the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of my
fathers—it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life—wonderful how total
an inversion took place in the character of my commonest thought. The realities of the world affected
me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn, not the
material of my every-day existence, but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.
Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls. Yet differently we
grew—I, ill of health, and buried in gloom—she, agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy; hers,
the ramble on the hill-side—mine the studies of the cloister; I, living within my own heart, and
addicted, body and soul, to the most intense and painful meditation—she, roaming carelessly through
life, with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours.
Berenice!—I call upon her name—Berenice!—and from the gray ruins of memory a thousand
tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! Ah, vividly is her image before me now, as in the
early days of her light-heartedness and joy! Oh, gorgeous yet fantastic beauty! Oh, sylph amid the
shrubberies of Arnheim! Oh, Naiad among its fountains! And then—then all is mystery and terror, and
a tale which should not be told. Disease—a fatal disease, fell like the simoon upon her frame; and,
even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of change swept over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and
her character, and, in a manner the most subtle and terrible, disturbing even the identity of her person!
Alas! the destroyer came and went!—and the victim—where is she? I knew her not—or knew her no
longer as Berenice.
Among the numerous train of maladies superinduced by that fatal and primary one which effected
a revolution of so horrible a kind in the moral and physical being of my cousin, may be mentioned as
the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating in
trance itself—trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner of
recovery was in most instances, startlingly abrupt. In the mean time my own disease—for I have been
told that I should call it by no other appellation—my own disease, then, grew rapidly upon me, and
assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel and extraordinary form—hourly and momently
gaining vigor—and at length obtaining over me the most incomprehensible ascendancy. This
monomania, if I must so term it, consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties of the mind in
metaphysical science termed the attentive. It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I
fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an
adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation
(not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most
ordinary objects of the universe.
To muse for long unwearied hours, with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the
margin, or in the typography of a book; to become absorbed, for the better part of a summer's day, in a
quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry or upon the floor; to lose myself, for an entire night, in
watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire; to dream away whole days over the
perfume of a flower; to repeat, monotonously, some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent
repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind; to lose all sense of motion or physical
existence, by means of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in: such were a
few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties,
not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to anything like analysis or
explanation.
Yet let me not be misapprehended. The undue, earnest, and morbid attention thus excited by
objects in their own nature frivolous, must not be confounded in character with that ruminating
propensity common to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination.
It was not even, as might be at first supposed, an extreme condition, or exaggeration of such
propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different. In the one instance, the dreamer, or
enthusiast, being interested by an object usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object
in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the conclusion of a day
dream often replete with luxury, he finds the incitamentum, or first cause of his musings, entirely
vanished and forgotten. In my case, the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming,
through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal importance. Few deductions, if
any, were made; and those few pertinaciously returning in upon the original object as a centre. The
meditations were never pleasurable; and, at the termination of the reverie, the first cause, so far from
being out of sight, had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing
feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of mind more particularly exercised were, with me, as I
have said before, the attentive, and are, with the day-dreamer, the speculative.
My books, at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to irritate the disorder, partook, it will be
perceived, largely, in their imaginative and inconsequential nature, of the characteristic qualities of
the disorder itself. I well remember, among others, the treatise of the noble Italian, Coelius Secundus
Curio, "De Amplitudine Beati Regni Dei;" St. Austin's great work, the "City of God;" and Tertullian's
"De Carne Christi," in which the paradoxical sentence "Mortuus est Dei filius; credible est quia
ineptum est: et sepultus resurrexit; certum est quia impossibile est," occupied my undivided time,
for many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation.
Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only by trivial things, my reason bore
resemblance to that ocean-crag spoken of by Ptolemy Hephestion, which steadily resisting the attacks
of human violence, and the fiercer fury of the waters and the winds, trembled only to the touch of the
flower called Asphodel. And although, to a careless thinker, it might appear a matter beyond doubt,
that the alteration produced by her unhappy malady, in the moral condition of Berenice, would afford
me many objects for the exercise of that intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been at
some trouble in explaining, yet such was not in any degree the case. In the lucid intervals of my
infirmity, her calamity, indeed, gave me pain, and, taking deeply to heart that total wreck of her fair
and gentle life, I did not fail to ponder, frequently and bitterly, upon the wonder-working means by
which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook not
of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such as would have occurred, under similar
circumstances, to the ordinary mass of mankind. True to its own character, my disorder revelled in the
less important but more startling changes wrought in the physical frame of Berenice—in the singular
and most appalling distortion of her personal identity.
During the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surely I had never loved her. In the
strange anomaly of my existence, feelings with me, had never been of the heart, and my passions
always were of the mind. Through the gray of the early morning—among the trellised shadows of the
forest at noonday—and in the silence of my library at night—she had flitted by my eyes, and I had
seen her—not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as the Berenice of a dream; not as a being of
the earth, earthy, but as the abstraction of such a being; not as a thing to admire, but to analyze; not as
an object of love, but as the theme of the most abstruse although desultory speculation. And now—
now I shuddered in her presence, and grew pale at her approach; yet, bitterly lamenting her fallen and
desolate condition, I called to mind that she had loved me long, and, in an evil moment, I spoke to her
of marriage.
And at length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon an afternoon in the winter
of the year—one of those unseasonably warm, calm, and misty days which are the nurse of the
beautiful Halcyon ,—I sat, (and sat, as I thought, alone,) in the inner apartment of the library. But,
uplifting my eyes, I saw that Berenice stood before me.
Was it my own excited imagination—or the misty influence of the atmosphere—or the uncertain
twilight of the chamber—or the gray draperies which fell around her figure—that caused in it so
vacillating and indistinct an outline? I could not tell. She spoke no word; and I—not for worlds could
I have uttered a syllable. An icy chill ran through my frame; a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed
me; a consuming curiosity pervaded my soul; and sinking back upon the chair, I remained for some
time breathless and motionless, with my eyes riveted upon her person. Alas! its emaciation was
excessive, and not one vestige of the former being lurked in any single line of the contour. My burning
glances at length fell upon the face.
The forehead was high, and very pale, and singularly placid; and the once jetty hair fell partially
over it, and overshadowed the hollow temples with innumerable ringlets, now of a vivid yellow, and
jarring discordantly, in their fantastic character, with the reigning melancholy of the countenance. The
eyes were lifeless, and lustreless, and seemingly pupilless, and I shrank involuntarily from their
glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted; and in a smile of peculiar
meaning, the teeth of the changed Berenice disclosed themselves slowly to my view. Would to God
that I had never beheld them, or that, having done so, I had died!
The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, I found that my cousin had departed from the
chamber. But from the disordered chamber of my brain, had not, alas! departed, and would not be
driven away, the white and ghastly spectrum of the teeth. Not a speck on their surface—not a shade
on their enamel—not an indenture in their edges—but what that period of her smile had sufficed to
brand in upon my memory. I saw them now even more unequivocally than I beheld them then. The
teeth!—the teeth!—they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me;
long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of
their first terrible development. Then came the full fury of my monomania, and I struggled in vain
against its strange and irresistible influence. In the multiplied objects of the external world I had no
thoughts but for the teeth. For these I longed with a phrenzied desire. All other matters and all
different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They—they alone were present to
the mental eye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I held them
in every light. I turned them in every attitude. I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon their
peculiarities. I pondered upon their conformation. I mused upon the alteration in their nature. I
shuddered as I assigned to them in imagination a sensitive and sentient power, and even when
unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression. Of Mademoiselle Salle it has been well said,
"Que tous ses pas etaient des sentiments," and of Berenice I more seriously believed que toutes ses
dents etaient des idees. Des idees!—ah here was the idiotic thought that destroyed me! Des idees!—
ah therefore it was that I coveted them so madly! I felt that their possession could alone ever restore
me to peace, in giving me back to reason.
And the evening closed in upon me thus—and then the darkness came, and tarried, and went—and
the day again dawned—and the mists of a second night were now gathering around—and still I sat
motionless in that solitary room—and still I sat buried in meditation—and still the phantasma of the
teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy, as, with the most vivid hideous distinctness, it floated about
amid the changing lights and shadows of the chamber. At length there broke in upon my dreams a cry
as of horror and dismay; and thereunto, after a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled voices,
intermingled with many low moanings of sorrow or of pain. I arose from my seat, and throwing open
one of the doors of the library, saw standing out in the ante-chamber a servant maiden, all in tears,
who told me that Berenice was—no more! She had been seized with epilepsy in the early morning,
and now, at the closing in of the night, the grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations for
the burial were completed.
I found myself sitting in the library, and again sitting there alone. It seemed that I had newly
awakened from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well
aware, that since the setting of the sun, Berenice had been interred. But of that dreary period which
intervened I had no positive, at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was replete with
horror—horror more horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a
fearful page in the record my existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, and unintelligible
recollections. I strived to decypher them, but in vain; while ever and anon, like the spirit of a
departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I had
done a deed—what was it? I asked myself the question aloud, and the whispering echoes of the
chamber answered me,—"what was it?"
On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a little box. It was of no remarkable
character, and I had seen it frequently before, for it was the property of the family physician; but how
came it there, upon my table, and why did I shudder in regarding it? These things were in no manner
to be accounted for, and my eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a book, and to a sentence
underscored therein. The words were the singular but simple ones of the poet Ebn Zaiat:—"Dicebant
mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas." Why then, as
I perused them, did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end, and the blood of my body become
congealed within my veins?
There came a light tap at the library door—and, pale as the tenant of a tomb, a menial entered
upon tiptoe. His looks were wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and
very low. What said he?—some broken sentences I heard. He told of a wild cry disturbing the silence
of the night—of the gathering together of the household—of a search in the direction of the sound; and
then his tones grew thrillingly distinct as he whispered me of a violated grave—of a disfigured body
enshrouded, yet still breathing—still palpitating—still alive!
He pointed to garments;—they were muddy and clotted with gore. I spoke not, and he took me
gently by the hand: it was indented with the impress of human nails. He directed my attention to some
object against the wall. I looked at it for some minutes: it was a spade. With a shriek I bounded to the
table, and grasped the box that lay upon it. But I could not force it open; and in my tremor, it slipped
from my hands, and fell heavily, and burst into pieces; and from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled
out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking
substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.
ELEONORA
Sub conservatione formae specificae salva anima.
Raymond Lully.
I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but
the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence—whether much
that is glorious—whether all that is profound—does not spring from disease of thought—from moods
of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many
things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of
eternity, and thrill, in awakening, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In
snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge
which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light
ineffable," and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum,
quid in eo esset exploraturi."
We will say, then, that I am mad. I grant, at least, that there are two distinct conditions of my
mental existence—the condition of a lucid reason, not to be disputed, and belonging to the memory of
events forming the first epoch of my life—and a condition of shadow and doubt, appertaining to the
present, and to the recollection of what constitutes the second great era of my being. Therefore, what I
shall tell of the earlier period, believe; and to what I may relate of the later time, give only such
credit as may seem due, or doubt it altogether, or, if doubt it ye cannot, then play unto its riddle the
Oedipus.
She whom I loved in youth, and of whom I now pen calmly and distinctly these remembrances,
was the sole daughter of the only sister of my mother long departed. Eleonora was the name of my
cousin. We had always dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of the Many-Colored
Grass. No unguided footstep ever came upon that vale; for it lay away up among a range of giant hills
that hung beetling around about it, shutting out the sunlight from its sweetest recesses. No path was
trodden in its vicinity; and, to reach our happy home, there was need of putting back, with force, the
foliage of many thousands of forest trees, and of crushing to death the glories of many millions of
fragrant flowers. Thus it was that we lived all alone, knowing nothing of the world without the valley
—I, and my cousin, and her mother.
From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain, there crept
out a narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of Eleonora; and, winding stealthily about
in mazy courses, it passed away, at length, through a shadowy gorge, among hills still dimmer than
those whence it had issued. We called it the "River of Silence"; for there seemed to be a hushing
influence in its flow. No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the pearly
pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom, stirred not at all, but lay in a
motionless content, each in its own old station, shining on gloriously forever.
The margin of the river, and of the many dazzling rivulets that glided through devious ways into its
channel, as well as the spaces that extended from the margins away down into the depths of the
streams until they reached the bed of pebbles at the bottom,—these spots, not less than the whole
surface of the valley, from the river to the mountains that girdled it in, were carpeted all by a soft
green grass, thick, short, perfectly even, and vanilla-perfumed, but so besprinkled throughout with the
yellow buttercup, the white daisy, the purple violet, and the ruby-red asphodel, that its exceeding
beauty spoke to our hearts in loud tones, of the love and of the glory of God.
And, here and there, in groves about this grass, like wildernesses of dreams, sprang up fantastic
trees, whose tall slender stems stood not upright, but slanted gracefully toward the light that peered at
noon-day into the centre of the valley. Their mark was speckled with the vivid alternate splendor of
ebony and silver, and was smoother than all save the cheeks of Eleonora; so that, but for the brilliant
green of the huge leaves that spread from their summits in long, tremulous lines, dallying with the
Zephyrs, one might have fancied them giant serpents of Syria doing homage to their sovereign the Sun.
Hand in hand about this valley, for fifteen years, roamed I with Eleonora before Love entered
within our hearts. It was one evening at the close of the third lustrum of her life, and of the fourth of
my own, that we sat, locked in each other's embrace, beneath the serpent-like trees, and looked down
within the water of the River of Silence at our images therein. We spoke no words during the rest of
that sweet day, and our words even upon the morrow were tremulous and few. We had drawn the God
Eros from that wave, and now we felt that he had enkindled within us the fiery souls of our
forefathers. The passions which had for centuries distinguished our race, came thronging with the
fancies for which they had been equally noted, and together breathed a delirious bliss over the Valley
of the Many-Colored Grass. A change fell upon all things. Strange, brilliant flowers, star-shaped,
burn out upon the trees where no flowers had been known before. The tints of the green carpet
deepened; and when, one by one, the white daisies shrank away, there sprang up in place of them, ten
by ten of the ruby-red asphodel. And life arose in our paths; for the tall flamingo, hitherto unseen,
with all gay glowing birds, flaunted his scarlet plumage before us. The golden and silver fish haunted
the river, out of the bosom of which issued, little by little, a murmur that swelled, at length, into a
lulling melody more divine than that of the harp of Aeolus-sweeter than all save the voice of
Eleonora. And now, too, a voluminous cloud, which we had long watched in the regions of Hesper,
floated out thence, all gorgeous in crimson and gold, and settling in peace above us, sank, day by day,
lower and lower, until its edges rested upon the tops of the mountains, turning all their dimness into
magnificence, and shutting us up, as if forever, within a magic prison-house of grandeur and of glory.
The loveliness of Eleonora was that of the Seraphim; but she was a maiden artless and innocent
as the brief life she had led among the flowers. No guile disguised the fervor of love which animated
her heart, and she examined with me its inmost recesses as we walked together in the Valley of the
Many-Colored Grass, and discoursed of the mighty changes which had lately taken place therein.
At length, having spoken one day, in tears, of the last sad change which must befall Humanity, she
thenceforward dwelt only upon this one sorrowful theme, interweaving it into all our converse, as, in
the songs of the bard of Schiraz, the same images are found occurring, again and again, in every
impressive variation of phrase.
She had seen that the finger of Death was upon her bosom—that, like the ephemeron, she had been
made perfect in loveliness only to die; but the terrors of the grave to her lay solely in a consideration
which she revealed to me, one evening at twilight, by the banks of the River of Silence. She grieved
to think that, having entombed her in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass, I would quit forever its
happy recesses, transferring the love which now was so passionately her own to some maiden of the
outer and everyday world. And, then and there, I threw myself hurriedly at the feet of Eleonora, and
offered up a vow, to herself and to Heaven, that I would never bind myself in marriage to any
daughter of Earth—that I would in no manner prove recreant to her dear memory, or to the memory of
the devout affection with which she had blessed me. And I called the Mighty Ruler of the Universe to
witness the pious solemnity of my vow. And the curse which I invoked of Him and of her, a saint in
Helusion should I prove traitorous to that promise, involved a penalty the exceeding great horror of
which will not permit me to make record of it here. And the bright eyes of Eleonora grew brighter at
my words; and she sighed as if a deadly burthen had been taken from her breast; and she trembled and
very bitterly wept; but she made acceptance of the vow, (for what was she but a child?) and it made
easy to her the bed of her death. And she said to me, not many days afterward, tranquilly dying, that,
because of what I had done for the comfort of her spirit she would watch over me in that spirit when
departed, and, if so it were permitted her return to me visibly in the watches of the night; but, if this
thing were, indeed, beyond the power of the souls in Paradise, that she would, at least, give me
frequent indications of her presence, sighing upon me in the evening winds, or filling the air which I
breathed with perfume from the censers of the angels. And, with these words upon her lips, she
yielded up her innocent life, putting an end to the first epoch of my own.
Thus far I have faithfully said. But as I pass the barrier in Time's path, formed by the death of my
beloved, and proceed with the second era of my existence, I feel that a shadow gathers over my brain,
and I mistrust the perfect sanity of the record. But let me on.—Years dragged themselves along
heavily, and still I dwelled within the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass; but a second change had
come upon all things. The star-shaped flowers shrank into the stems of the trees, and appeared no
more. The tints of the green carpet faded; and, one by one, the ruby-red asphodels withered away; and
there sprang up, in place of them, ten by ten, dark, eye-like violets, that writhed uneasily and were
ever encumbered with dew. And Life departed from our paths; for the tall flamingo flaunted no longer
his scarlet plumage before us, but flew sadly from the vale into the hills, with all the gay glowing
birds that had arrived in his company. And the golden and silver fish swam down through the gorge at
the lower end of our domain and bedecked the sweet river never again. And the lulling melody that
had been softer than the wind-harp of Aeolus, and more divine than all save the voice of Eleonora, it
died little by little away, in murmurs growing lower and lower, until the stream returned, at length,
utterly, into the solemnity of its original silence. And then, lastly, the voluminous cloud uprose, and,
abandoning the tops of the mountains to the dimness of old, fell back into the regions of Hesper, and
took away all its manifold golden and gorgeous glories from the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass.
Yet the promises of Eleonora were not forgotten; for I heard the sounds of the swinging of the
censers of the angels; and streams of a holy perfume floated ever and ever about the valley; and at
lone hours, when my heart beat heavily, the winds that bathed my brow came unto me laden with soft
sighs; and indistinct murmurs filled often the night air, and once—oh, but once only! I was awakened
from a slumber, like the slumber of death, by the pressing of spiritual lips upon my own.
But the void within my heart refused, even thus, to be filled. I longed for the love which had
before filled it to overflowing. At length the valley pained me through its memories of Eleonora, and I
left it for ever for the vanities and the turbulent triumphs of the world.
I found myself within a strange city, where all things might have served to blot from recollection
the sweet dreams I had dreamed so long in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. The pomps and
pageantries of a stately court, and the mad clangor of arms, and the radiant loveliness of women,
bewildered and intoxicated my brain. But as yet my soul had proved true to its vows, and the
indications of the presence of Eleonora were still given me in the silent hours of the night. Suddenly
these manifestations they ceased, and the world grew dark before mine eyes, and I stood aghast at the
burning thoughts which possessed, at the terrible temptations which beset me; for there came from
some far, far distant and unknown land, into the gay court of the king I served, a maiden to whose
beauty my whole recreant heart yielded at once—at whose footstool I bowed down without a
struggle, in the most ardent, in the most abject worship of love. What, indeed, was my passion for the
young girl of the valley in comparison with the fervor, and the delirium, and the spirit-lifting ecstasy
of adoration with which I poured out my whole soul in tears at the feet of the ethereal Ermengarde?—
Oh, bright was the seraph Ermengarde! and in that knowledge I had room for none other.—Oh, divine
was the angel Ermengarde! and as I looked down into the depths of her memorial eyes, I thought only
of them—and of her.
I wedded;—nor dreaded the curse I had invoked; and its bitterness was not visited upon me. And
once—but once again in the silence of the night; there came through my lattice the soft sighs which
had forsaken me; and they modelled themselves into familiar and sweet voice, saying:
"Sleep in peace!—for the Spirit of Love reigneth and ruleth, and, in taking to thy passionate heart
her who is Ermengarde, thou art absolved, for reasons which shall be made known to thee in Heaven,
of thy vows unto Eleonora."
LIGEIA
And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor?
For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield himself
to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.—Joseph
Glanvill.
I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted
with the lady Ligeia. Long years have since elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much suffering.
Or, perhaps, I cannot now bring these points to mind, because, in truth, the character of my beloved,
her rare learning, her singular yet placid cast of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of
her low musical language, made their way into my heart by paces so steadily and stealthily
progressive that they have been unnoticed and unknown. Yet I believe that I met her first and most
frequently in some large, old, decaying city near the Rhine. Of her family—I have surely heard her
speak. That it is of a remotely ancient date cannot be doubted. Ligeia! Ligeia! in studies of a nature
more than all else adapted to deaden impressions of the outward world, it is by that sweet word alone
—by Ligeia—that I bring before mine eyes in fancy the image of her who is no more. And now, while
I write, a recollection flashes upon me that I have never known the paternal name of her who was my
friend and my betrothed, and who became the partner of my studies, and finally the wife of my bosom.
Was it a playful charge on the part of my Ligeia? or was it a test of my strength of affection, that I
should institute no inquiries upon this point? or was it rather a caprice of my own—a wildly romantic
offering on the shrine of the most passionate devotion? I but indistinctly recall the fact itself—what
wonder that I have utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended it? And, indeed, if
ever she, the wan and the misty-winged Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt, presided, as they tell, over
marriages ill-omened, then most surely she presided over mine.
There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory falls me not. It is the person of Ligeia. In
stature she was tall, somewhat slender, and, in her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain
attempt to portray the majesty, the quiet ease, of her demeanor, or the incomprehensible lightness and
elasticity of her footfall. She came and departed as a shadow. I was never made aware of her
entrance into my closed study save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she placed her
marble hand upon my shoulder. In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. It was the radiance of
an opium-dream—an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which
hovered vision about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of that
regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the classical labors of the heathen.
"There is no exquisite beauty," says Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and genera
of beauty, "without some strangeness in the proportion." Yet, although I saw that the features of Ligeia
were not of a classic regularity—although I perceived that her loveliness was indeed "exquisite," and
felt that there was much of "strangeness" pervading it, yet I have tried in vain to detect the irregularity
and to trace home my own perception of "the strange." I examined the contour of the lofty and pale
forehead—it was faultless—how cold indeed that word when applied to a majesty so divine!—the
skin rivalling the purest ivory, the commanding extent and repose, the gentle prominence of the
regions above the temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant and naturally-curling
tresses, setting forth the full force of the Homeric epithet, "hyacinthine!" I looked at the delicate
outlines of the nose—and nowhere but in the graceful medallions of the Hebrews had I beheld a
similar perfection. There were the same luxurious smoothness of surface, the same scarcely
perceptible tendency to the aquiline, the same harmoniously curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I
regarded the sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all things heavenly—the magnificent turn
of the short upper lip—the soft, voluptuous slumber of the under—the dimples which sported, and the
color which spoke—the teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy almost startling, every ray of the holy
light which fell upon them in her serene and placid, yet most exultingly radiant of all smiles. I
scrutinized the formation of the chin—and here, too, I found the gentleness of breadth, the softness and
the majesty, the fullness and the spirituality, of the Greek—the contour which the god Apollo revealed
but in a dream, to Cleomenes, the son of the Athenian. And then I peered into the large eyes of Ligeia.
For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique. It might have been, too, that in these eyes of
my beloved lay the secret to which Lord Verulam alludes. They were, I must believe, far larger than
the ordinary eyes of our own race. They were even fuller than the fullest of the gazelle eyes of the
tribe of the valley of Nourjahad. Yet it was only at intervals—in moments of intense excitement—that
this peculiarity became more than slightly noticeable in Ligeia. And at such moments was her beauty
—in my heated fancy thus it appeared perhaps—the beauty of beings either above or apart from the
earth—the beauty of the fabulous Houri of the Turk. The hue of the orbs was the most brilliant of
black, and, far over them, hung jetty lashes of great length. The brows, slightly irregular in outline,
had the same tint. The "strangeness," however, which I found in the eyes, was of a nature distinct from
the formation, or the color, or the brilliancy of the features, and must, after all, be referred to the
expression. Ah, word of no meaning! behind whose vast latitude of mere sound we intrench our
ignorance of so much of the spiritual. The expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How for long hours have I
pondered upon it! How have I, through the whole of a midsummer night, struggled to fathom it! What
was it—that something more profound than the well of Democritus—which lay far within the pupils
of my beloved? What was it? I was possessed with a passion to discover. Those eyes! those large,
those shining, those divine orbs! they became to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of
astrologers.
There is no point, among the many incomprehensible anomalies of the science of mind, more
thrillingly exciting than the fact—never, I believe, noticed in the schools—that, in our endeavors to
recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of
remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember. And thus how frequently, in my intense
scrutiny of Ligeia's eyes, have I felt approaching the full knowledge of their expression—felt it
approaching—yet not quite be mine—and so at length entirely depart! And (strange, oh strangest
mystery of all!) I found, in the commonest objects of the universe, a circle of analogies to that
expression. I mean to say that, subsequently to the period when Ligeia's beauty passed into my spirit,
there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived, from many existences in the material world, a sentiment such
as I felt always aroused within me by her large and luminous orbs. Yet not the more could I define that
sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey
of a rapidly-growing vine—in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of
running water. I have felt it in the ocean; in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in the glances of
unusually aged people. And there are one or two stars in heaven—(one especially, a star of the sixth
magnitude, double and changeable, to be found near the large star in Lyra) in a telescopic scrutiny of
which I have been made aware of the feeling. I have been filled with it by certain sounds from
stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from books. Among innumerable other
instances, I well remember something in a volume of Joseph Glanvill, which (perhaps merely from its
quaintness—who shall say?) never failed to inspire me with the sentiment;—"And the will therein
lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great
will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto
death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will."
Length of years, and subsequent reflection, have enabled me to trace, indeed, some remote
connection between this passage in the English moralist and a portion of the character of Ligeia. An
intensity in thought, action, or speech, was possibly, in her, a result, or at least an index, of that
gigantic volition which, during our long intercourse, failed to give other and more immediate
evidence of its existence. Of all the women whom I have ever known, she, the outwardly calm, the
ever-placid Ligeia, was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern passion. And of
such passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once
so delighted and appalled me—by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness and placidity
of her very low voice—and by the fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her
manner of utterance) of the wild words which she habitually uttered.
I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia: it was immense—such as I have never known in woman.
In the classical tongues was she deeply proficient, and as far as my own acquaintance extended in
regard to the modern dialects of Europe, I have never known her at fault. Indeed upon any theme of
the most admired, because simply the most abstruse of the boasted erudition of the academy, have I
ever found Ligeia at fault? How singularly—how thrillingly, this one point in the nature of my wife
has forced itself, at this late period only, upon my attention! I said her knowledge was such as I have
never known in woman—but where breathes the man who has traversed, and successfully, all the
wide areas of moral, physical, and mathematical science? I saw not then what I now clearly perceive,
that the acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic, were astounding; yet I was sufficiently aware of her
infinite supremacy to resign myself, with a child-like confidence, to her guidance through the chaotic
world of metaphysical investigation at which I was most busily occupied during the earlier years of
our marriage. With how vast a triumph—with how vivid a delight—with how much of all that is
ethereal in hope—did I feel, as she bent over me in studies but little sought—but less known—that
delicious vista by slow degrees expanding before me, down whose long, gorgeous, and all untrodden
path, I might at length pass onward to the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious not to be forbidden!
How poignant, then, must have been the grief with which, after some years, I beheld my wellgrounded expectations take wings to themselves and fly away! Without Ligeia I was but as a child
groping benighted. Her presence, her readings alone, rendered vividly luminous the many mysteries
of the transcendentalism in which we were immersed. Wanting the radiant lustre of her eyes, letters,
lambent and golden, grew duller than Saturnian lead. And now those eyes shone less and less
frequently upon the pages over which I pored. Ligeia grew ill. The wild eyes blazed with a too—too
glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became of the transparent waxen hue of the grave, and the blue
veins upon the lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the gentle emotion. I saw
that she must die—and I struggled desperately in spirit with the grim Azrael. And the struggles of the
passionate wife were, to my astonishment, even more energetic than my own. There had been much in
her stern nature to impress me with the belief that, to her, death would have come without its terrors;
—but not so. Words are impotent to convey any just idea of the fierceness of resistance with which
she wrestled with the Shadow. I groaned in anguish at the pitiable spectacle. I would have soothed—I
would have reasoned; but, in the intensity of her wild desire for life,—for life—but for life—solace
and reason were the uttermost folly. Yet not until the last instance, amid the most convulsive writhings
of her fierce spirit, was shaken the external placidity of her demeanor. Her voice grew more gentle—
grew more low—yet I would not wish to dwell upon the wild meaning of the quietly uttered words.
My brain reeled as I hearkened entranced, to a melody more than mortal—to assumptions and
aspirations which mortality had never before known.
That she loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been easily aware that, in a bosom
such as hers, love would have reigned no ordinary passion. But in death only, was I fully impressed
with the strength of her affection. For long hours, detaining my hand, would she pour out before me
the overflowing of a heart whose more than passionate devotion amounted to idolatry. How had I
deserved to be so blessed by such confessions?—how had I deserved to be so cursed with the
removal of my beloved in the hour of her making them, But upon this subject I cannot bear to dilate.
Let me say only, that in Ligeia's more than womanly abandonment to a love, alas! all unmerited, all
unworthily bestowed, I at length recognized the principle of her longing with so wildly earnest a
desire for the life which was now fleeing so rapidly away. It is this wild longing—it is this eager
vehemence of desire for life—but for life—that I have no power to portray—no utterance capable of
expressing.
At high noon of the night in which she departed, beckoning me, peremptorily, to her side, she bade
me repeat certain verses composed by herself not many days before. I obeyed her.—They were these:
Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly;
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Wo!
That motley drama!—oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased forever more,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness and more of Sin
And Horror the soul of the plot.
But see, amid the mimic rout,
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Out—out are the lights—out all!
And over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
"O God!" half shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending her arms aloft with a spasmodic
movement, as I made an end of these lines—"O God! O Divine Father!—shall these things be
undeviatingly so?—shall this Conqueror be not once conquered? Are we not part and parcel in Thee?
Who—who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor
unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will."
And now, as if exhausted with emotion, she suffered her white arms to fall, and returned solemnly
to her bed of death. And as she breathed her last sighs, there came mingled with them a low murmur
from her lips. I bent to them my ear and distinguished, again, the concluding words of the passage in
Glanvill—"Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the
weakness of his feeble will."
She died;—and I, crushed into the very dust with sorrow, could no longer endure the lonely
desolation of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city by the Rhine. I had no lack of what the world
calls wealth. Ligeia had brought me far more, very far more than ordinarily falls to the lot of mortals.
After a few months, therefore, of weary and aimless wandering, I purchased, and put in some repair,
an abbey, which I shall not name, in one of the wildest and least frequented portions of fair England.
The gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building, the almost savage aspect of the domain, the many
melancholy and time-honored memories connected with both, had much in unison with the feelings of
utter abandonment which had driven me into that remote and unsocial region of the country. Yet
although the external abbey, with its verdant decay hanging about it, suffered but little alteration, I
gave way, with a child-like perversity, and perchance with a faint hope of alleviating my sorrows, to
a display of more than regal magnificence within.—For such follies, even in childhood, I had imbibed
a taste and now they came back to me as if in the dotage of grief. Alas, I feel how much even of
incipient madness might have been discovered in the gorgeous and fantastic draperies, in the solemn
carvings of Egypt, in the wild cornices and furniture, in the Bedlam patterns of the carpets of tufted
gold! I had become a bounden slave in the trammels of opium, and my labors and my orders had taken
a coloring from my dreams. But these absurdities must not pause to detail. Let me speak only of that
one chamber, ever accursed, whither in a moment of mental alienation, I led from the altar as my
bride—as the successor of the unforgotten Ligeia—the fair-haired and blue-eyed Lady Rowena
Trevanion, of Tremaine.
There is no individual portion of the architecture and decoration of that bridal chamber which is
not now visibly before me. Where were the souls of the haughty family of the bride, when, through
thirst of gold, they permitted to pass the threshold of an apartment so bedecked, a maiden and a
daughter so beloved? I have said that I minutely remember the details of the chamber—yet I am sadly
forgetful on topics of deep moment—and here there was no system, no keeping, in the fantastic
display, to take hold upon the memory. The room lay in a high turret of the castellated abbey, was
pentagonal in shape, and of capacious size. Occupying the whole southern face of the pentagon was
the sole window—an immense sheet of unbroken glass from Venice—a single pane, and tinted of a
leaden hue, so that the rays of either the sun or moon, passing through it, fell with a ghastly lustre on
the objects within. Over the upper portion of this huge window, extended the trellice-work of an aged
vine, which clambered up the massy walls of the turret. The ceiling, of gloomy-looking oak, was
excessively lofty, vaulted, and elaborately fretted with the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a
semi-Gothic, semi-Druidical device. From out the most central recess of this melancholy vaulting,
depended, by a single chain of gold with long links, a huge censer of the same metal, Saracenic in
pattern, and with many perforations so contrived that there writhed in and out of them, as if endued
with a serpent vitality, a continual succession of parti-colored fires.
Some few ottomans and golden candelabra, of Eastern figure, were in various stations about—and
there was the couch, too—bridal couch—of an Indian model, and low, and sculptured of solid ebony,
with a pall-like canopy above. In each of the angles of the chamber stood on end a gigantic
sarcophagus of black granite, from the tombs of the kings over against Luxor, with their aged lids full
of immemorial sculpture. But in the draping of the apartment lay, alas! the chief phantasy of all. The
lofty walls, gigantic in height—even unproportionably so—were hung from summit to foot, in vast
folds, with a heavy and massive-looking tapestry—tapestry of a material which was found alike as a
carpet on the floor, as a covering for the ottomans and the ebony bed, as a canopy for the bed, and as
the gorgeous volutes of the curtains which partially shaded the window. The material was the richest
cloth of gold. It was spotted all over, at irregular intervals, with arabesque figures, about a foot in
diameter, and wrought upon the cloth in patterns of the most jetty black. But these figures partook of
the true character of the arabesque only when regarded from a single point of view. By a contrivance
now common, and indeed traceable to a very remote period of antiquity, they were made changeable
in aspect. To one entering the room, they bore the appearance of simple monstrosities; but upon a
farther advance, this appearance gradually departed; and step by step, as the visitor moved his station
in the chamber, he saw himself surrounded by an endless succession of the ghastly forms which
belong to the superstition of the Norman, or arise in the guilty slumbers of the monk. The
phantasmagoric effect was vastly heightened by the artificial introduction of a strong continual current
of wind behind the draperies—giving a hideous and uneasy animation to the whole.
In halls such as these—in a bridal chamber such as this—I passed, with the Lady of Tremaine, the
unhallowed hours of the first month of our marriage—passed them with but little disquietude. That my
wife dreaded the fierce moodiness of my temper—that she shunned me and loved me but little—I
could not help perceiving; but it gave me rather pleasure than otherwise. I loathed her with a hatred
belonging more to demon than to man. My memory flew back, (oh, with what intensity of regret!) to
Ligeia, the beloved, the august, the beautiful, the entombed. I revelled in recollections of her purity, of
her wisdom, of her lofty, her ethereal nature, of her passionate, her idolatrous love. Now, then, did my
spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the fires of her own. In the excitement of my opium
dreams (for I was habitually fettered in the shackles of the drug) I would call aloud upon her name,
during the silence of the night, or among the sheltered recesses of the glens by day, as if, through the
wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the consuming ardor of my longing for the departed, I could
restore her to the pathway she had abandoned—ah, could it be forever?—upon the earth.
About the commencement of the second month of the marriage, the Lady Rowena was attacked
with sudden illness, from which her recovery was slow. The fever which consumed her rendered her
nights uneasy; and in her perturbed state of half-slumber, she spoke of sounds, and of motions, in and
about the chamber of the turret, which I concluded had no origin save in the distemper of her fancy, or
perhaps in the phantasmagoric influences of the chamber itself. She became at length convalescent—
finally well. Yet but a brief period elapsed, ere a second more violent disorder again threw her upon
a bed of suffering; and from this attack her frame, at all times feeble, never altogether recovered. Her
illnesses were, after this epoch, of alarming character, and of more alarming recurrence, defying alike
the knowledge and the great exertions of her physicians. With the increase of the chronic disease
which had thus, apparently, taken too sure hold upon her constitution to be eradicated by human
means, I could not fall to observe a similar increase in the nervous irritation of her temperament, and
in her excitability by trivial causes of fear. She spoke again, and now more frequently and
pertinaciously, of the sounds—of the slight sounds—and of the unusual motions among the tapestries,
to which she had formerly alluded.
One night, near the closing in of September, she pressed this distressing subject with more than
usual emphasis upon my attention. She had just awakened from an unquiet slumber, and I had been
watching, with feelings half of anxiety, half of vague terror, the workings of her emaciated
countenance. I sat by the side of her ebony bed, upon one of the ottomans of India. She partly arose,
and spoke, in an earnest low whisper, of sounds which she then heard, but which I could not hear—of
motions which she then saw, but which I could not perceive. The wind was rushing hurriedly behind
the tapestries, and I wished to show her (what, let me confess it, I could not all believe) that those
almost inarticulate breathings, and those very gentle variations of the figures upon the wall, were but
the natural effects of that customary rushing of the wind. But a deadly pallor, overspreading her face,
had proved to me that my exertions to reassure her would be fruitless. She appeared to be fainting,
and no attendants were within call. I remembered where was deposited a decanter of light wine
which had been ordered by her physicians, and hastened across the chamber to procure it. But, as I
stepped beneath the light of the censer, two circumstances of a startling nature attracted my attention. I
had felt that some palpable although invisible object had passed lightly by my person; and I saw that
there lay upon the golden carpet, in the very middle of the rich lustre thrown from the censer, a
shadow—a faint, indefinite shadow of angelic aspect—such as might be fancied for the shadow of a
shade. But I was wild with the excitement of an immoderate dose of opium, and heeded these things
but little, nor spoke of them to Rowena. Having found the wine, I recrossed the chamber, and poured
out a gobletful, which I held to the lips of the fainting lady. She had now partially recovered,
however, and took the vessel herself, while I sank upon an ottoman near me, with my eyes fastened
upon her person. It was then that I became distinctly aware of a gentle footfall upon the carpet, and
near the couch; and in a second thereafter, as Rowena was in the act of raising the wine to her lips, I
saw, or may have dreamed that I saw, fall within the goblet, as if from some invisible spring in the
atmosphere of the room, three or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby colored fluid. If this I saw—
not so Rowena. She swallowed the wine unhesitatingly, and I forbore to speak to her of a
circumstance which must, after all, I considered, have been but the suggestion of a vivid imagination,
rendered morbidly active by the terror of the lady, by the opium, and by the hour.
Yet I cannot conceal it from my own perception that, immediately subsequent to the fall of the
ruby-drops, a rapid change for the worse took place in the disorder of my wife; so that, on the third
subsequent night, the hands of her menials prepared her for the tomb, and on the fourth, I sat alone,
with her shrouded body, in that fantastic chamber which had received her as my bride.—Wild
visions, opium-engendered, flitted, shadow-like, before me. I gazed with unquiet eye upon the
sarcophagi in the angles of the room, upon the varying figures of the drapery, and upon the writhing of
the parti-colored fires in the censer overhead. My eyes then fell, as I called to mind the circumstances
of a former night, to the spot beneath the glare of the censer where I had seen the faint traces of the
shadow. It was there, however, no longer; and breathing with greater freedom, I turned my glances to
the pallid and rigid figure upon the bed. Then rushed upon me a thousand memories of Ligeia—and
then came back upon my heart, with the turbulent violence of a flood, the whole of that unutterable wo
with which I had regarded her thus enshrouded. The night waned; and still, with a bosom full of bitter
thoughts of the one only and supremely beloved, I remained gazing upon the body of Rowena.
It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier, or later, for I had taken no note of time, when a
sob, low, gentle, but very distinct, startled me from my revery.—I felt that it came from the bed of
ebony—the bed of death. I listened in an agony of superstitious terror—but there was no repetition of
the sound. I strained my vision to detect any motion in the corpse—but there was not the slightest
perceptible. Yet I could not have been deceived. I had heard the noise, however faint, and my soul
was awakened within me. I resolutely and perseveringly kept my attention riveted upon the body.
Many minutes elapsed before any circumstance occurred tending to throw light upon the mystery. At
length it became evident that a slight, a very feeble, and barely noticeable tinge of color had flushed
up within the cheeks, and along the sunken small veins of the eyelids. Through a species of
unutterable horror and awe, for which the language of mortality has no sufficiently energetic
expression, I felt my heart cease to beat, my limbs grow rigid where I sat. Yet a sense of duty finally
operated to restore my self-possession. I could no longer doubt that we had been precipitate in our
preparations—that Rowena still lived. It was necessary that some immediate exertion be made; yet
turret was altogether apart from the portion of the abbey tenanted by the servants—there were none
within call—I had no means of summoning them to my aid without leaving the room for many minutes
—and this I could not venture to do. I therefore struggled alone in my endeavors to call back the spirit
ill hovering. In a short period it was certain, however, that a relapse had taken place; the color
disappeared from both eyelid and cheek, leaving a wanness even more than that of marble; the lips
became doubly shrivelled and pinched up in the ghastly expression of death; a repulsive clamminess
and coldness overspread rapidly the surface of the body; and all the usual rigorous illness
immediately supervened. I fell back with a shudder upon the couch from which I had been so
startlingly aroused, and again gave myself up to passionate waking visions of Ligeia.
An hour thus elapsed when (could it be possible?) I was a second time aware of some vague
sound issuing from the region of the bed. I listened—in extremity of horror. The sound came again—it
was a sigh. Rushing to the corpse, I saw—distinctly saw—a tremor upon the lips. In a minute
afterward they relaxed, disclosing a bright line of the pearly teeth. Amazement now struggled in my
bosom with the profound awe which had hitherto reigned there alone. I felt that my vision grew dim,
that my reason wandered; and it was only by a violent effort that I at length succeeded in nerving
myself to the task which duty thus once more had pointed out. There was now a partial glow upon the
forehead and upon the cheek and throat; a perceptible warmth pervaded the whole frame; there was
even a slight pulsation at the heart. The lady lived; and with redoubled ardor I betook myself to the
task of restoration. I chafed and bathed the temples and the hands, and used every exertion which
experience, and no little medical reading, could suggest. But in vain. Suddenly, the color fled, the
pulsation ceased, the lips resumed the expression of the dead, and, in an instant afterward, the whole
body took upon itself the icy chilliness, the livid hue, the intense rigidity, the sunken outline, and all
the loathsome peculiarities of that which has been, for many days, a tenant of the tomb.
And again I sunk into visions of Ligeia—and again, (what marvel that I shudder while I write,)
again there reached my ears a low sob from the region of the ebony bed. But why shall I minutely
detail the unspeakable horrors of that night? Why shall I pause to relate how, time after time, until
near the period of the gray dawn, this hideous drama of revivification was repeated; how each terrific
relapse was only into a sterner and apparently more irredeemable death; how each agony wore the
aspect of a struggle with some invisible foe; and how each struggle was succeeded by I know not
what of wild change in the personal appearance of the corpse? Let me hurry to a conclusion.
The greater part of the fearful night had worn away, and she who had been dead, once again
stirred—and now more vigorously than hitherto, although arousing from a dissolution more appalling
in its utter hopelessness than any. I had long ceased to struggle or to move, and remained sitting
rigidly upon the ottoman, a helpless prey to a whirl of violent emotions, of which extreme awe was
perhaps the least terrible, the least consuming. The corpse, I repeat, stirred, and now more vigorously
than before. The hues of life flushed up with unwonted energy into the countenance—the limbs
relaxed—and, save that the eyelids were yet pressed heavily together, and that the bandages and
draperies of the grave still imparted their charnel character to the figure, I might have dreamed that
Rowena had indeed shaken off, utterly, the fetters of Death. But if this idea was not, even then,
altogether adopted, I could at least doubt no longer, when, arising from the bed, tottering, with feeble
steps, with closed eyes, and with the manner of one bewildered in a dream, the thing that was
enshrouded advanced boldly and palpably into the middle of the apartment.
I trembled not—I stirred not—for a crowd of unutterable fancies connected with the air, the
stature, the demeanor of the figure, rushing hurriedly through my brain, had paralyzed—had chilled
me into stone. I stirred not—but gazed upon the apparition. There was a mad disorder in my thoughts
—a tumult unappeasable. Could it, indeed, be the living Rowena who confronted me? Could it indeed
be Rowena at all—the fair-haired, the blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine? Why, why
should I doubt it? The bandage lay heavily about the mouth—but then might it not be the mouth of the
breathing Lady of Tremaine? And the cheeks-there were the roses as in her noon of life—yes, these
might indeed be the fair cheeks of the living Lady of Tremaine. And the chin, with its dimples, as in
health, might it not be hers?—but had she then grown taller since her malady? What inexpressible
madness seized me with that thought? One bound, and I had reached her feet! Shrinking from my
touch, she let fall from her head, unloosened, the ghastly cerements which had confined it, and there
streamed forth, into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber, huge masses of long and dishevelled hair;
it was blacker than the raven wings of the midnight! And now slowly opened the eyes of the figure
which stood before me. "Here then, at least," I shrieked aloud, "can I never—can I never be mistaken
—these are the full, and the black, and the wild eyes—of my lost love—of the lady—of the LADY
LIGEIA."
MORELLA
Itself, by itself, solely, one everlasting, and single.
PLATO: SYMPOS.
WITH a feeling of deep yet most singular affection I regarded my friend Morella. Thrown by
accident into her society many years ago, my soul from our first meeting, burned with fires it had
never before known; but the fires were not of Eros, and bitter and tormenting to my spirit was the
gradual conviction that I could in no manner define their unusual meaning or regulate their vague
intensity. Yet we met; and fate bound us together at the altar, and I never spoke of passion nor thought
of love. She, however, shunned society, and, attaching herself to me alone rendered me happy. It is a
happiness to wonder; it is a happiness to dream.
Morella's erudition was profound. As I hope to live, her talents were of no common order—her
powers of mind were gigantic. I felt this, and, in many matters, became her pupil. I soon, however,
found that, perhaps on account of her Presburg education, she placed before me a number of those
mystical writings which are usually considered the mere dross of the early German literature. These,
for what reason I could not imagine, were her favourite and constant study—and that in process of
time they became my own, should be attributed to the simple but effectual influence of habit and
example.
In all this, if I err not, my reason had little to do. My convictions, or I forget myself, were in no
manner acted upon by the ideal, nor was any tincture of the mysticism which I read to be discovered,
unless I am greatly mistaken, either in my deeds or in my thoughts. Persuaded of this, I abandoned
myself implicitly to the guidance of my wife, and entered with an unflinching heart into the intricacies
of her studies. And then—then, when poring over forbidden pages, I felt a forbidden spirit enkindling
within me—would Morella place her cold hand upon my own, and rake up from the ashes of a dead
philosophy some low, singular words, whose strange meaning burned themselves in upon my memory.
And then, hour after hour, would I linger by her side, and dwell upon the music of her voice, until at
length its melody was tainted with terror, and there fell a shadow upon my soul, and I grew pale, and
shuddered inwardly at those too unearthly tones. And thus, joy suddenly faded into horror, and the
most beautiful became the most hideous, as Hinnon became Ge-Henna.
It is unnecessary to state the exact character of those disquisitions which, growing out of the
volumes I have mentioned, formed, for so long a time, almost the sole conversation of Morella and
myself. By the learned in what might be termed theological morality they will be readily conceived,
and by the unlearned they would, at all events, be little understood. The wild Pantheism of Fichte; the
modified Paliggenedia of the Pythagoreans; and, above all, the doctrines of Identity as urged by
Schelling, were generally the points of discussion presenting the most of beauty to the imaginative
Morella. That identity which is termed personal, Mr. Locke, I think, truly defines to consist in the
saneness of rational being. And since by person we understand an intelligent essence having reason,
and since there is a consciousness which always accompanies thinking, it is this which makes us all
to be that which we call ourselves, thereby distinguishing us from other beings that think, and giving
us our personal identity. But the principium indivduationis, the notion of that identity which at death is
or is not lost for ever, was to me, at all times, a consideration of intense interest; not more from the
perplexing and exciting nature of its consequences, than from the marked and agitated manner in
which Morella mentioned them.
But, indeed, the time had now arrived when the mystery of my wife's manner oppressed me as a
spell. I could no longer bear the touch of her wan fingers, nor the low tone of her musical language,
nor the lustre of her melancholy eyes. And she knew all this, but did not upbraid; she seemed
conscious of my weakness or my folly, and, smiling, called it fate. She seemed also conscious of a
cause, to me unknown, for the gradual alienation of my regard; but she gave me no hint or token of its
nature. Yet was she woman, and pined away daily. In time the crimson spot settled steadily upon the
cheek, and the blue veins upon the pale forehead became prominent; and one instant my nature melted
into pity, but in, next I met the glance of her meaning eyes, and then my soul sickened and became
giddy with the giddiness of one who gazes downward into some dreary and unfathomable abyss.
Shall I then say that I longed with an earnest and consuming desire for the moment of Morella's
decease? I did; but the fragile spirit clung to its tenement of clay for many days, for many weeks and
irksome months, until my tortured nerves obtained the mastery over my mind, and I grew furious
through delay, and, with the heart of a fiend, cursed the days and the hours and the bitter moments,
which seemed to lengthen and lengthen as her gentle life declined, like shadows in the dying of the
day.
But one autumnal evening, when the winds lay still in heaven, Morella called me to her bedside.
There was a dim mist over all the earth, and a warm glow upon the waters, and amid the rich October
leaves of the forest, a rainbow from the firmament had surely fallen.
"It is a day of days," she said, as I approached; "a day of all days either to live or die. It is a fair
day for the sons of earth and life—ah, more fair for the daughters of heaven and death!"
I kissed her forehead, and she continued:
"I am dying, yet shall I live."
"Morella!"
"The days have never been when thou couldst love me—but her whom in life thou didst abhor, in
death thou shalt adore."
"Morella!"
"I repeat I am dying. But within me is a pledge of that affection—ah, how little!—which thou
didst feel for me, Morella. And when my spirit departs shall the child live—thy child and mine,
Morella's. But thy days shall be days of sorrow—that sorrow which is the most lasting of
impressions, as the cypress is the most enduring of trees. For the hours of thy happiness are over and
joy is not gathered twice in a life, as the roses of Paestum twice in a year. Thou shalt no longer, then,
play the Teian with time, but, being ignorant of the myrtle and the vine, thou shalt bear about with thee
thy shroud on the earth, as do the Moslemin at Mecca."
"Morella!" I cried, "Morella! how knowest thou this?" but she turned away her face upon the
pillow and a slight tremor coming over her limbs, she thus died, and I heard her voice no more.
Yet, as she had foretold, her child, to which in dying she had given birth, which breathed not until
the mother breathed no more, her child, a daughter, lived. And she grew strangely in stature and
intellect, and was the perfect resemblance of her who had departed, and I loved her with a love more
fervent than I had believed it possible to feel for any denizen of earth.
But, ere long the heaven of this pure affection became darkened, and gloom, and horror, and grief
swept over it in clouds. I said the child grew strangely in stature and intelligence. Strange, indeed,
was her rapid increase in bodily size, but terrible, oh! terrible were the tumultuous thoughts which
crowded upon me while watching the development of her mental being. Could it be otherwise, when I
daily discovered in the conceptions of the child the adult powers and faculties of the woman? when
the lessons of experience fell from the lips of infancy? and when the wisdom or the passions of
maturity I found hourly gleaming from its full and speculative eye? When, I say, all this became
evident to my appalled senses, when I could no longer hide it from my soul, nor throw it off from
those perceptions which trembled to receive it, is it to be wondered at that suspicions, of a nature
fearful and exciting, crept in upon my spirit, or that my thoughts fell back aghast upon the wild tales
and thrilling theories of the entombed Morella? I snatched from the scrutiny of the world a being
whom destiny compelled me to adore, and in the rigorous seclusion of my home, watched with an
agonizing anxiety over all which concerned the beloved.
And as years rolled away, and I gazed day after day upon her holy, and mild, and eloquent face,
and poured over her maturing form, day after day did I discover new points of resemblance in the
child to her mother, the melancholy and the dead. And hourly grew darker these shadows of
similitude, and more full, and more definite, and more perplexing, and more hideously terrible in their
aspect. For that her smile was like her mother's I could bear; but then I shuddered at its too perfect
identity, that her eyes were like Morella's I could endure; but then they, too, often looked down into
the depths of my soul with Morella's own intense and bewildering meaning. And in the contour of the
high forehead, and in the ringlets of the silken hair, and in the wan fingers which buried themselves
therein, and in the sad musical tones of her speech, and above all—oh, above all, in the phrases and
expressions of the dead on the lips of the loved and the living, I found food for consuming thought and
horror, for a worm that would not die.
Thus passed away two lustra of her life, and as yet my daughter remained nameless upon the
earth. "My child," and "my love," were the designations usually prompted by a father's affection, and
the rigid seclusion of her days precluded all other intercourse. Morella's name died with her at her
death. Of the mother I had never spoken to the daughter, it was impossible to speak. Indeed, during the
brief period of her existence, the latter had received no impressions from the outward world, save
such as might have been afforded by the narrow limits of her privacy. But at length the ceremony of
baptism presented to my mind, in its unnerved and agitated condition, a present deliverance from the
terrors of my destiny. And at the baptismal font I hesitated for a name. And many titles of the wise and
beautiful, of old and modern times, of my own and foreign lands, came thronging to my lips, with
many, many fair titles of the gentle, and the happy, and the good. What prompted me then to disturb the
memory of the buried dead? What demon urged me to breathe that sound, which in its very
recollection was wont to make ebb the purple blood in torrents from the temples to the heart? What
fiend spoke from the recesses of my soul, when amid those dim aisles, and in the silence of the night, I
whispered within the ears of the holy man the syllables—Morella? What more than fiend convulsed
the features of my child, and overspread them with hues of death, as starting at that scarcely audible
sound, she turned her glassy eyes from the earth to heaven, and falling prostrate on the black slabs of
our ancestral vault, responded—"I am here!"
Distinct, coldly, calmly distinct, fell those few simple sounds within my ear, and thence like
molten lead rolled hissingly into my brain. Years—years may pass away, but the memory of that
epoch never. Nor was I indeed ignorant of the flowers and the vine—but the hemlock and the cypress
overshadowed me night and day. And I kept no reckoning of time or place, and the stars of my fate
faded from heaven, and therefore the earth grew dark, and its figures passed by me like flitting
shadows, and among them all I beheld only—Morella. The winds of the firmament breathed but one
sound within my ears, and the ripples upon the sea murmured evermore—Morella. But she died; and
with my own hands I bore her to the tomb; and I laughed with a long and bitter laugh as I found no
traces of the first in the channel where I laid the second.—Morella.
A TALE OF THE RAGGED MOUNTAINS
DURING the fall of the year 1827, while residing near Charlottesville, Virginia, I casually made
the acquaintance of Mr. Augustus Bedloe. This young gentleman was remarkable in every respect, and
excited in me a profound interest and curiosity. I found it impossible to comprehend him either in his
moral or his physical relations. Of his family I could obtain no satisfactory account. Whence he came,
I never ascertained. Even about his age—although I call him a young gentleman—there was something
which perplexed me in no little degree. He certainly seemed young—and he made a point of speaking
about his youth—yet there were moments when I should have had little trouble in imagining him a
hundred years of age. But in no regard was he more peculiar than in his personal appearance. He was
singularly tall and thin. He stooped much. His limbs were exceedingly long and emaciated. His
forehead was broad and low. His complexion was absolutely bloodless. His mouth was large and
flexible, and his teeth were more wildly uneven, although sound, than I had ever before seen teeth in a
human head. The expression of his smile, however, was by no means unpleasing, as might be
supposed; but it had no variation whatever. It was one of profound melancholy—of a phaseless and
unceasing gloom. His eyes were abnormally large, and round like those of a cat. The pupils, too, upon
any accession or diminution of light, underwent contraction or dilation, just such as is observed in the
feline tribe. In moments of excitement the orbs grew bright to a degree almost inconceivable; seeming
to emit luminous rays, not of a reflected but of an intrinsic lustre, as does a candle or the sun; yet their
ordinary condition was so totally vapid, filmy, and dull as to convey the idea of the eyes of a longinterred corpse.
These peculiarities of person appeared to cause him much annoyance, and he was continually
alluding to them in a sort of half explanatory, half apologetic strain, which, when I first heard it,
impressed me very painfully. I soon, however, grew accustomed to it, and my uneasiness wore off. It
seemed to be his design rather to insinuate than directly to assert that, physically, he had not always
been what he was—that a long series of neuralgic attacks had reduced him from a condition of more
than usual personal beauty, to that which I saw. For many years past he had been attended by a
physician, named Templeton—an old gentleman, perhaps seventy years of age—whom he had first
encountered at Saratoga, and from whose attention, while there, he either received, or fancied that he
received, great benefit. The result was that Bedloe, who was wealthy, had made an arrangement with
Dr. Templeton, by which the latter, in consideration of a liberal annual allowance, had consented to
devote his time and medical experience exclusively to the care of the invalid.
Doctor Templeton had been a traveller in his younger days, and at Paris had become a convert, in
great measure, to the doctrines of Mesmer. It was altogether by means of magnetic remedies that he
had succeeded in alleviating the acute pains of his patient; and this success had very naturally
inspired the latter with a certain degree of confidence in the opinions from which the remedies had
been educed. The Doctor, however, like all enthusiasts, had struggled hard to make a thorough convert
of his pupil, and finally so far gained his point as to induce the sufferer to submit to numerous
experiments. By a frequent repetition of these, a result had arisen, which of late days has become so
common as to attract little or no attention, but which, at the period of which I write, had very rarely
been known in America. I mean to say, that between Doctor Templeton and Bedloe there had grown
up, little by little, a very distinct and strongly marked rapport, or magnetic relation. I am not prepared
to assert, however, that this rapport extended beyond the limits of the simple sleep-producing power,
but this power itself had attained great intensity. At the first attempt to induce the magnetic
somnolency, the mesmerist entirely failed. In the fifth or sixth he succeeded very partially, and after
long continued effort. Only at the twelfth was the triumph complete. After this the will of the patient
succumbed rapidly to that of the physician, so that, when I first became acquainted with the two, sleep
was brought about almost instantaneously by the mere volition of the operator, even when the invalid
was unaware of his presence. It is only now, in the year 1845, when similar miracles are witnessed
daily by thousands, that I dare venture to record this apparent impossibility as a matter of serious fact.
The temperature of Bedloe was, in the highest degree sensitive, excitable, enthusiastic. His
imagination was singularly vigorous and creative; and no doubt it derived additional force from the
habitual use of morphine, which he swallowed in great quantity, and without which he would have
found it impossible to exist. It was his practice to take a very large dose of it immediately after
breakfast each morning—or, rather, immediately after a cup of strong coffee, for he ate nothing in the
forenoon—and then set forth alone, or attended only by a dog, upon a long ramble among the chain of
wild and dreary hills that lie westward and southward of Charlottesville, and are there dignified by
the title of the Ragged Mountains.
Upon a dim, warm, misty day, toward the close of November, and during the strange interregnum
of the seasons which in America is termed the Indian Summer, Mr. Bedloe departed as usual for the
hills. The day passed, and still he did not return.
About eight o'clock at night, having become seriously alarmed at his protracted absence, we were
about setting out in search of him, when he unexpectedly made his appearance, in health no worse
than usual, and in rather more than ordinary spirits. The account which he gave of his expedition, and
of the events which had detained him, was a singular one indeed.
"You will remember," said he, "that it was about nine in the morning when I left Charlottesville. I
bent my steps immediately to the mountains, and, about ten, entered a gorge which was entirely new to
me. I followed the windings of this pass with much interest. The scenery which presented itself on all
sides, although scarcely entitled to be called grand, had about it an indescribable and to me a
delicious aspect of dreary desolation. The solitude seemed absolutely virgin. I could not help
believing that the green sods and the gray rocks upon which I trod had been trodden never before by
the foot of a human being. So entirely secluded, and in fact inaccessible, except through a series of
accidents, is the entrance of the ravine, that it is by no means impossible that I was indeed the first
adventurer—the very first and sole adventurer who had ever penetrated its recesses.
"The thick and peculiar mist, or smoke, which distinguishes the Indian Summer, and which now
hung heavily over all objects, served, no doubt, to deepen the vague impressions which these objects
created. So dense was this pleasant fog that I could at no time see more than a dozen yards of the path
before me. This path was excessively sinuous, and as the sun could not be seen, I soon lost all idea of
the direction in which I journeyed. In the meantime the morphine had its customary effect—that of
enduing all the external world with an intensity of interest. In the quivering of a leaf—in the hue of a
blade of grass—in the shape of a trefoil—in the humming of a bee—in the gleaming of a dew-drop—
in the breathing of the wind—in the faint odors that came from the forest—there came a whole
universe of suggestion—a gay and motley train of rhapsodical and immethodical thought.
"Busied in this, I walked on for several hours, during which the mist deepened around me to so
great an extent that at length I was reduced to an absolute groping of the way. And now an
indescribable uneasiness possessed me—a species of nervous hesitation and tremor. I feared to tread,
lest I should be precipitated into some abyss. I remembered, too, strange stories told about these
Ragged Hills, and of the uncouth and fierce races of men who tenanted their groves and caverns. A
thousand vague fancies oppressed and disconcerted me—fancies the more distressing because vague.
Very suddenly my attention was arrested by the loud beating of a drum.
"My amazement was, of course, extreme. A drum in these hills was a thing unknown. I could not
have been more surprised at the sound of the trump of the Archangel. But a new and still more
astounding source of interest and perplexity arose. There came a wild rattling or jingling sound, as if
of a bunch of large keys, and upon the instant a dusky-visaged and half-naked man rushed past me
with a shriek. He came so close to my person that I felt his hot breath upon my face. He bore in one
hand an instrument composed of an assemblage of steel rings, and shook them vigorously as he ran.
Scarcely had he disappeared in the mist before, panting after him, with open mouth and glaring eyes,
there darted a huge beast. I could not be mistaken in its character. It was a hyena.
"The sight of this monster rather relieved than heightened my terrors—for I now made sure that I
dreamed, and endeavored to arouse myself to waking consciousness. I stepped boldly and briskly
forward. I rubbed my eyes. I called aloud. I pinched my limbs. A small spring of water presented
itself to my view, and here, stooping, I bathed my hands and my head and neck. This seemed to
dissipate the equivocal sensations which had hitherto annoyed me. I arose, as I thought, a new man,
and proceeded steadily and complacently on my unknown way.
"At length, quite overcome by exertion, and by a certain oppressive closeness of the atmosphere, I
seated myself beneath a tree. Presently there came a feeble gleam of sunshine, and the shadow of the
leaves of the tree fell faintly but definitely upon the grass. At this shadow I gazed wonderingly for
many minutes. Its character stupefied me with astonishment. I looked upward. The tree was a palm.
"I now arose hurriedly, and in a state of fearful agitation—for the fancy that I dreamed would
serve me no longer. I saw—I felt that I had perfect command of my senses—and these senses now
brought to my soul a world of novel and singular sensation. The heat became all at once intolerable.
A strange odor loaded the breeze. A low, continuous murmur, like that arising from a full, but gently
flowing river, came to my ears, intermingled with the peculiar hum of multitudinous human voices.
"While I listened in an extremity of astonishment which I need not attempt to describe, a strong
and brief gust of wind bore off the incumbent fog as if by the wand of an enchanter.
"I found myself at the foot of a high mountain, and looking down into a vast plain, through which
wound a majestic river. On the margin of this river stood an Eastern-looking city, such as we read of
in the Arabian Tales, but of a character even more singular than any there described. From my
position, which was far above the level of the town, I could perceive its every nook and corner, as if
delineated on a map. The streets seemed innumerable, and crossed each other irregularly in all
directions, but were rather long winding alleys than streets, and absolutely swarmed with inhabitants.
The houses were wildly picturesque. On every hand was a wilderness of balconies, of verandas, of
minarets, of shrines, and fantastically carved oriels. Bazaars abounded; and in these were displayed
rich wares in infinite variety and profusion—silks, muslins, the most dazzling cutlery, the most
magnificent jewels and gems. Besides these things, were seen, on all sides, banners and palanquins,
litters with stately dames close veiled, elephants gorgeously caparisoned, idols grotesquely hewn,
drums, banners, and gongs, spears, silver and gilded maces. And amid the crowd, and the clamor, and
the general intricacy and confusion—amid the million of black and yellow men, turbaned and robed,
and of flowing beard, there roamed a countless multitude of holy filleted bulls, while vast legions of
the filthy but sacred ape clambered, chattering and shrieking, about the cornices of the mosques, or
clung to the minarets and oriels. From the swarming streets to the banks of the river, there descended
innumerable flights of steps leading to bathing places, while the river itself seemed to force a passage
with difficulty through the vast fleets of deeply—burthened ships that far and wide encountered its
surface. Beyond the limits of the city arose, in frequent majestic groups, the palm and the cocoa, with
other gigantic and weird trees of vast age, and here and there might be seen a field of rice, the
thatched hut of a peasant, a tank, a stray temple, a gypsy camp, or a solitary graceful maiden taking her
way, with a pitcher upon her head, to the banks of the magnificent river.
"You will say now, of course, that I dreamed; but not so. What I saw—what I heard—what I felt
—what I thought—had about it nothing of the unmistakable idiosyncrasy of the dream. All was
rigorously self-consistent. At first, doubting that I was really awake, I entered into a series of tests,
which soon convinced me that I really was. Now, when one dreams, and, in the dream, suspects that
he dreams, the suspicion never fails to confirm itself, and the sleeper is almost immediately aroused.
Thus Novalis errs not in saying that 'we are near waking when we dream that we dream.' Had the
vision occurred to me as I describe it, without my suspecting it as a dream, then a dream it might
absolutely have been, but, occurring as it did, and suspected and tested as it was, I am forced to class
it among other phenomena."
"In this I am not sure that you are wrong," observed Dr. Templeton, "but proceed. You arose and
descended into the city."
"I arose," continued Bedloe, regarding the Doctor with an air of profound astonishment "I arose,
as you say, and descended into the city. On my way I fell in with an immense populace, crowding
through every avenue, all in the same direction, and exhibiting in every action the wildest excitement.
Very suddenly, and by some inconceivable impulse, I became intensely imbued with personal interest
in what was going on. I seemed to feel that I had an important part to play, without exactly
understanding what it was. Against the crowd which environed me, however, I experienced a deep
sentiment of animosity. I shrank from amid them, and, swiftly, by a circuitous path, reached and
entered the city. Here all was the wildest tumult and contention. A small party of men, clad in
garments half-Indian, half-European, and officered by gentlemen in a uniform partly British, were
engaged, at great odds, with the swarming rabble of the alleys. I joined the weaker party, arming
myself with the weapons of a fallen officer, and fighting I knew not whom with the nervous ferocity of
despair. We were soon overpowered by numbers, and driven to seek refuge in a species of kiosk.
Here we barricaded ourselves, and, for the present were secure. From a loop-hole near the summit of
the kiosk, I perceived a vast crowd, in furious agitation, surrounding and assaulting a gay palace that
overhung the river. Presently, from an upper window of this place, there descended an effeminatelooking person, by means of a string made of the turbans of his attendants. A boat was at hand, in
which he escaped to the opposite bank of the river.
"And now a new object took possession of my soul. I spoke a few hurried but energetic words to
my companions, and, having succeeded in gaining over a few of them to my purpose made a frantic
sally from the kiosk. We rushed amid the crowd that surrounded it. They retreated, at first, before us.
They rallied, fought madly, and retreated again. In the mean time we were borne far from the kiosk,
and became bewildered and entangled among the narrow streets of tall, overhanging houses, into the
recesses of which the sun had never been able to shine. The rabble pressed impetuously upon us,
harrassing us with their spears, and overwhelming us with flights of arrows. These latter were very
remarkable, and resembled in some respects the writhing creese of the Malay. They were made to
imitate the body of a creeping serpent, and were long and black, with a poisoned barb. One of them
struck me upon the right temple. I reeled and fell. An instantaneous and dreadful sickness seized me. I
struggled—I gasped—I died." "You will hardly persist now," said I smiling, "that the whole of your
adventure was not a dream. You are not prepared to maintain that you are dead?"
When I said these words, I of course expected some lively sally from Bedloe in reply, but, to my
astonishment, he hesitated, trembled, became fearfully pallid, and remained silent. I looked toward
Templeton. He sat erect and rigid in his chair—his teeth chattered, and his eyes were starting from
their sockets. "Proceed!" he at length said hoarsely to Bedloe.
"For many minutes," continued the latter, "my sole sentiment—my sole feeling—was that of
darkness and nonentity, with the consciousness of death. At length there seemed to pass a violent and
sudden shock through my so