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data/lib/texts/poe/the-fall-of-house-usher.txt

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+# 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-pleasureable, 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 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 grey 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 was the apparent heart that went with his
+request--which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I
+accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very
+singular summons.
+
+Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet
+I really knew little of my friend.  His reserve had been always
+excessive and habitual.  I was aware, however, that his very
+ancient family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar
+sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages,
+in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in
+repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as
+in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more
+than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties of musical
+science.  I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the
+stem of the Usher race, all time-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 grey 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 scrutinizing observer might
+have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending
+from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the
+wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen
+waters of the tarn.
+
+Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the
+house.  A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the
+Gothic archway of the hall.  A valet, of stealthy step, thence
+conducted me, in silence, through many dark and intricate
+passages in my progress to the studio of his master.  Much
+that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to
+heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken.
+While the objects around me--while the carvings of the ceilings,
+the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebony 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 rose 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
+man being before me with the companion of my early boyhood.  Yet
+the character of his face had been at all times remarkable.  A
+cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous
+beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a
+surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model,
+but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a
+finely-moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a
+want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and
+tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the
+regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not
+easily to be forgotten.  And now in the mere exaggeration of the
+prevailing character of these features, and of the expression
+they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to
+whom I spoke.  The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now
+miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even
+awed me.  The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all
+unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather
+than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect
+its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.
+
+In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an
+incoherence--an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise
+from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an
+habitual trepidancy--an excessive nervous agitation.  For
+something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by
+his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and
+by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation
+and temperament.  His action was alternately vivacious and
+sullen.  His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision
+(when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to
+that species of energetic concision--that abrupt, weighty,
+unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation--that leaden,
+self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may
+be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of
+opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.
+
+It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his
+earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to
+afford him.  He entered, at some length, into what he conceived
+to be the nature of his malady.  It was, he said, a
+constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired
+to find a remedy--a mere nervous affection, he immediately added,
+which would undoubtedly soon pass off.  It displayed itself in a
+host of unnatural sensations.  Some of these, as he detailed
+them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms,
+and the general manner of the narration had their weight.  He
+suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most
+insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of
+certain texture; the 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 grey 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 closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly
+into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive
+the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which
+darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon
+all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing
+radiation of gloom.
+
+I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours
+I thus spent alone with the master of the House of Usher.  Yet I
+should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact
+character of the studies, or of the occupations, in which he
+involved me, or led me the way.  An excited and highly
+distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all.  His
+long improvised dirges will ring for ever in my ears.  Among
+other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular
+perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of
+Von Weber.  From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy
+brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vagueness 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 the performances.  But the fervid
+facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for.
+They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the
+words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied
+himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that
+intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have
+previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of
+the highest artificial excitement.  The words of one of these
+rhapsodies I have easily remembered.  I was, perhaps, the more
+forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under
+or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and
+for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of
+the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne.  The verses,
+which were entitled "The Haunted Palace," ran very nearly, if not
+accurately, thus:
+
+
+#                            I.
+
+               In the greenest of our valleys,
+                 By good angels tenanted,
+               Once a fair and stately palace--
+                 Radiant palace--reared its head.
+               In the monarch Thought's dominion--
+                 It stood there!
+               Never seraph spread a pinion
+                 Over fabric half so fair.
+
+
+#                           II.
+
+               Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
+                 On its roof did float and flow;
+               (This--all this--was in the olden
+                 Time long ago)
+               And every gentle air that dallied,
+                 In that sweet day,
+               Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
+                 A winged 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 by 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 OEgipans, over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours.  His
+chief delight, however, was found in the perusal of an
+exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothic--the manual of
+a forgotten church--the Vigiliae Mortuorum Secundum Chorum Ecclesiae
+Maguntinae.
+
+I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work,
+and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one
+evening, having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was
+no more, he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a
+fortnight, (previously to its final interment), in one of the
+numerous vaults within the main walls of the building.  The
+worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular proceeding,
+was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute.  The brother
+had been led to his resolution (so he told me) by consideration
+of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of
+certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical
+men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial-ground
+of the family.  I will not deny that when I called to mind the
+sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon the staircase,
+on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose
+what I regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means an
+unnatural, precaution.
+
+At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the
+arrangements for the temporary entombment.  The body having been
+encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest.  The vault in which
+we placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our
+torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us
+little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp, and
+entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great
+depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which
+was my own sleeping apartment.  It had been used, apparently, in
+remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and,
+in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other
+highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor,
+and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached
+it, were carefully sheathed with copper.  The door, of massive
+iron, had been, also, similarly protected.  Its immense weight
+caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges.
+
+Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within
+this region of horror, we partially turned aside the yet
+unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the
+tenant.  A striking similitude between the brother and sister now
+first arrested my attention; and Usher, divining, perhaps, my
+thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I learned that
+the deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a
+scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them.
+Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead--for we could
+not regard her unawed.  The disease which had thus entombed the
+lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies
+of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint
+blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously
+lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death.  We
+replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having secured the door
+of iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely less gloomy
+apartments of the upper portion of the house.
+
+And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an
+observable change came over the features of the mental disorder
+of my friend.  His ordinary manner had vanished.  His ordinary
+occupations were neglected or forgotten.  He roamed from chamber
+to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step.  The
+pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more
+ghastly hue--but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone
+out.  The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no
+more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually
+characterized his utterance.  There were times, indeed, when I
+thought his unceasingly agitated mind was 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 tremor gradually pervaded my frame;
+and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of
+utterly causeless alarm.  Shaking this off with a gasp and a
+struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering
+earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, 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
+recognized it as that of Usher.  In an instant afterwards 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 lifelike velocity with which they
+flew careering from all points against each other, without
+passing away into the distance.  I say that even their exceeding
+density did not prevent our perceiving this--yet we had no
+glimpse of the moon or stars--nor was there any flashing forth of
+the lightning.  But the under surfaces of the huge masses of
+agitated vapor, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately
+around us, were glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly
+luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung
+about and enshrouded the mansion.
+
+"You must not--you shall not behold this!" said I,
+shudderingly, to Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence,
+from the window to a seat.  "These appearances, which bewilder
+you, are merely electrical phenomena not uncommon--or it may be
+that they have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the
+tarn.  Let us close this casement;--the air is chilling and
+dangerous to your frame.  Here is one of your 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 overstrained 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 therewith sturdily, he so cracked, and
+ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and
+hollow-sounding wood alarmed 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 sat 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 conquerer 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--I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic,
+and clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation.  Completely
+unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking movement
+of Usher was undisturbed.  I rushed to the chair in which he sat.
+His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole
+countenance there reigned a stony rigidity.  But, as I placed my
+hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his
+whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw
+that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if
+unconscious of my presence.  Bending closely over him, I at
+length drank in the hideous import of his words.
+
+"Not hear it?--yes, I hear it, and have heard it.
+Long--long--long--many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard
+it--yet I dared not--oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!--I
+dared not--I dared not speak!  We have put her living in
+the tomb!  Said I not that my senses were acute?  I now tell
+you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin.
+I heard them--many, many days ago--yet I dared not--I dared
+not speak!  And now--to-night--Ethelred--ha! ha!--the breaking
+of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the
+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 footsteps 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,
+their ponderous and ebony jaws.  It was the work of the
+rushing gust--but then without those doors there DID stand the
+lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher.  There
+was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter
+struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame.  For a moment
+she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold,--then,
+with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person
+of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies,
+bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he
+had anticipated.
+
+From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast.
+The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself
+crossing the old causeway.  Suddenly there shot along the path a
+wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could
+have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind
+me.  The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red
+moon which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible
+fissure of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof
+of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base.  While I
+gazed, this fissure rapidly widened--there came a fierce breath
+of the whirlwind--the entire orb of the satellite burst at once
+upon my sight--my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing
+asunder--there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the
+voice of a thousand waters--and the deep and dank tarn at my feet
+closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House of
+Usher".