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 tell 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! One of his eyes resembled that 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, so 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 had 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 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 single dim ray, like the
thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and 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 now--have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?--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 eye. 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 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
neighbor! 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 anything 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 neighbor 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 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. Why would
they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observation 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!

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed!--tear up the planks!--here, here!--it is the beating of his hideous
heart!"

Ler a versão de Clarisse Lispector, em português

Impia tortorum longas 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 in 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 immovable 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 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 superened; all sensations
appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and 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 was 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 afterwards (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 endeavours 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 endeavour 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 endeavour 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 auto-da-fes, 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 rumours
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 afterwards 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--endeavouring
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 vapour, 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 than the mere dimensions of my dungeon? But my soul took a wild interest in trifles, and I busied myself in
endeavours 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 colours seemed faded and blurred, as if from the effects of a damp atmosphere. I now noticed the floor,
too, which was of stone. In the centre 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 it 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 cognisance 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 rumour as the Ultima Thule of all their punishments. The plunge into this pit I had avoided by the
merest of accidents, and 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 oscillations 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
odour 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 I 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 its
terrifically wide sweep (some thirty feet or more) and the hissing vigour 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 very 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, O, 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 razor-like 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 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 annointed 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 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 tumultously 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 eyes 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 endeavoured, 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 colours seemed blurred
and indefinite. These colours had now assumed, and were momentarily assuming, a startling and most intense brilliancy, that
give 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. O for a voice to speak!--oh, horror!--oh, any horror but this! With a shriek I
rushed from the margin and buried my face in my hands--weeping bitterly.

The heat rapidly increased, and once again I looked up, shuddering as if with a fit of the 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 not have 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 FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
Sitot qu'on le touche il resonne.
--De Beranger.

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 eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of
decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the
after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday life-the hideous dropping off 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 eye-like 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 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 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-honoured 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 vapour, 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 scrutinising
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 trellised 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 ennuye 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 eve, 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 odours 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 long-continued 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
endeavours 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 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 cars. 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 endeavour 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 canvas, 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 splendour.

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 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 odour went away.

III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-tuned 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.

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'Indagine, and of De la Chambre; the Journey into the Blue Distance of
Tieck; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favourite volume was a small octavo edition of the Directorium Inquisitorum,
by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and
AEgipans, 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 Vigilae 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 stair case, 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 toll, 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 labouring 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 endeavoured 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 tremour 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, hearkened--I know not why, except
that an instinctive spirit prompted me--to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long
intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense 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 endeavoured 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 demeanour. 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 vapour, 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 favourite 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 favourite 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
over-strained air of vivacity with which he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have
congratulated myself upon the success of my design.

I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where 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 there-with sturdily, he so cracked, and
ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarumed 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 demeanour, 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 the 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 demeanour.
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 fell 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 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.

"Now 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 clangour 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 panels to which
the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, 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.My heart grew sick--on account of the dampness of the catacombs. I hastened to make an end of my labour. I forcedthe last stone into its position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I reërected the old rampart of bones. For the half of acentury no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat.

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 wi 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."

-THE END-

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 definitely 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 skillful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could.

It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted
me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting party-striped dress,
and his head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see him that I thought I should never have done
wringing his hand.

I said to him: "My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkably well you are looking to-day! 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 roquelaure 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 honour 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 webwork 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 embedded 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 upward 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 roquelaure.

"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 within 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 Fortunate, uplifting his dull torch, endeavored to pry into the depth 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 the 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 labours 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 masonwork, 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 clamoured. I reëchoed--I aided--I surpassed them in volume and in strength. I did
this, and the clamourer 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! 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, Montresor!"

"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.

Prosa / Poesia / Edgar Allan Poe / Jorge Luís Borges

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