THE WORKS OF EDGAR ALLEN POE
VOLUME II
The Raven Edition
[Redactor's Note--Some endnotes are by Poe and some were added by
Griswold. In this volume the notes are at the end.]
Contents:
The Purloined Letter
The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherezade
A Descent into the Maelstroem
Von Kempelen and his Discovery
Mesmeric Revelation
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
The Black Cat
The Fall of the House of Usher
Silence--a Fable
The Masque of the Red Death
The Cask of Amontillado
The Imp of the Perverse
The Island of the Fay
The Assignation
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Premature Burial
The Domain of Arnheim
Landor's Cottage
William Wilson
The Tell-Tale Heart
Berenice
Eleonora
THE PURLOINED LETTER
Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio.
_Seneca_.
At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18-, I was
enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and a meerschaum, in company
with my friend C. Auguste Dupin, in his little back library, or
book-closet, au troisieme, No. 33, Rue Dunot, Faubourg St. Germain. For
one hour at least we had maintained a profound silence; while each, to
any casual observer, might have seemed intently and exclusively occupied
with the curling eddies of smoke that oppressed the atmosphere of the
chamber. For myself, however, I was mentally discussing certain topics
which had formed matter for conversation between us at an earlier period
of the evening; I mean the affair of the Rue Morgue, and the mystery
attending the murder of Marie Roget. I looked upon it, therefore, as
something of a coincidence, when the door of our apartment was thrown
open and admitted our old acquaintance, Monsieur G--, the Prefect of the
Parisian police.
We gave him a hearty welcome; for there was nearly half as much of the
entertaining as of the contemptible about the man, and we had not seen
him for several years. We had been sitting in the dark, and Dupin now
arose for the purpose of lighting a lamp, but sat down again, without
doing so, upon G.'s saying that he had called to consult us, or rather
to ask the opinion of my friend, about some official business which had
occasioned a great deal of trouble.
"If it is any point requiring reflection," observed Dupin, as he
forebore to enkindle the wick, "we shall examine it to better purpose in
the dark."
"That is another of your odd notions," said the Prefect, who had a
fashion of calling every thing "odd" that was beyond his comprehension,
and thus lived amid an absolute legion of "oddities."
"Very true," said Dupin, as he supplied his visiter with a pipe, and
rolled towards him a comfortable chair.
"And what is the difficulty now?" I asked. "Nothing more in the
assassination way, I hope?"
"Oh no; nothing of that nature. The fact is, the business is very simple
indeed, and I make no doubt that we can manage it sufficiently well
ourselves; but then I thought Dupin would like to hear the details of
it, because it is so excessively odd."
"Simple and odd," said Dupin.
"Why, yes; and not exactly that, either. The fact is, we have all been
a good deal puzzled because the affair is so simple, and yet baffles us
altogether."
"Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing which puts you at
fault," said my friend.
"What nonsense you do talk!" replied the Prefect, laughing heartily.
"Perhaps the mystery is a little too plain," said Dupin.
"Oh, good heavens! who ever heard of such an idea?"
"A little too self-evident."
"Ha! ha! ha--ha! ha! ha!--ho! ho! ho!" roared our visiter, profoundly
amused, "oh, Dupin, you will be the death of me yet!"
"And what, after all, is the matter on hand?" I asked.
"Why, I will tell you," replied the Prefect, as he gave a long, steady
and contemplative puff, and settled himself in his chair. "I will tell
you in a few words; but, before I begin, let me caution you that this
is an affair demanding the greatest secrecy, and that I should most
probably lose the position I now hold, were it known that I confided it
to any one."
"Proceed," said I.
"Or not," said Dupin.
"Well, then; I have received personal information, from a very high
quarter, that a certain document of the last importance, has been
purloined from the royal apartments. The individual who purloined it is
known; this beyond a doubt; he was seen to take it. It is known, also,
that it still remains in his possession."
"How is this known?" asked Dupin.
"It is clearly inferred," replied the Prefect, "from the nature of the
document, and from the non-appearance of certain results which would at
once arise from its passing out of the robber's possession; that is to
say, from his employing it as he must design in the end to employ it."
"Be a little more explicit," I said.
"Well, I may venture so far as to say that the paper gives its holder
a certain power in a certain quarter where such power is immensely
valuable." The Prefect was fond of the cant of diplomacy.
"Still I do not quite understand," said Dupin.
"No? Well; the disclosure of the document to a third person, who shall
be nameless, would bring in question the honor of a personage of most
exalted station; and this fact gives the holder of the document an
ascendancy over the illustrious personage whose honor and peace are so
jeopardized."
"But this ascendancy," I interposed, "would depend upon the robber's
knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber. Who would dare--"
"The thief," said G., "is the Minister D--, who dares all things, those
unbecoming as well as those becoming a man. The method of the theft was
not less ingenious than bold. The document in question--a letter, to
be frank--had been received by the personage robbed while alone in the
royal boudoir. During its perusal she was suddenly interrupted by the
entrance of the other exalted personage from whom especially it was her
wish to conceal it. After a hurried and vain endeavor to thrust it in
a drawer, she was forced to place it, open as it was, upon a table. The
address, however, was uppermost, and, the contents thus unexposed, the
letter escaped notice. At this juncture enters the Minister D--. His
lynx eye immediately perceives the paper, recognises the handwriting
of the address, observes the confusion of the personage addressed, and
fathoms her secret. After some business transactions, hurried through in
his ordinary manner, he produces a letter somewhat similar to the one
in question, opens it, pretends to read it, and then places it in
close juxtaposition to the other. Again he converses, for some fifteen
minutes, upon the public affairs. At length, in taking leave, he takes
also from the table the letter to which he had no claim. Its rightful
owner saw, but, of course, dared not call attention to the act, in the
presence of the third personage who stood at her elbow. The minister
decamped; leaving his own letter--one of no importance--upon the table."
"Here, then," said Dupin to me, "you have precisely what you demand
to make the ascendancy complete--the robber's knowledge of the loser's
knowledge of the robber."
"Yes," replied the Prefect; "and the power thus attained has, for some
months past, been wielded, for political purposes, to a very dangerous
extent. The personage robbed is more thoroughly convinced, every day, of
the necessity of reclaiming her letter. But this, of course, cannot be
done openly. In fine, driven to despair, she has committed the matter to
me."
"Than whom," said Dupin, amid a perfect whirlwind of smoke, "no more
sagacious agent could, I suppose, be desired, or even imagined."
"You flatter me," replied the Prefect; "but it is possible that some
such opinion may have been entertained."
"It is clear," said I, "as you observe, that the letter is still in
possession of the minister; since it is this possession, and not any
employment of the letter, which bestows the power. With the employment
the power departs."
"True," said G.; "and upon this conviction I proceeded. My first care
was to make thorough search of the minister's hotel; and here my chief
embarrassment lay in the necessity of searching without his knowledge.
Beyond all things, I have been warned of the danger which would result
from giving him reason to suspect our design."
"But," said I, "you are quite au fait in these investigations. The
Parisian police have done this thing often before."
"O yes; and for this reason I did not despair. The habits of the
minister gave me, too, a great advantage. He is frequently absent from
home all night. His servants are by no means numerous. They sleep at a
distance from their master's apartment, and, being chiefly Neapolitans,
are readily made drunk. I have keys, as you know, with which I can
open any chamber or cabinet in Paris. For three months a night has
not passed, during the greater part of which I have not been engaged,
personally, in ransacking the D-- Hotel. My honor is interested, and, to
mention a great secret, the reward is enormous. So I did not abandon
the search until I had become fully satisfied that the thief is a more
astute man than myself. I fancy that I have investigated every nook and
corner of the premises in which it is possible that the paper can be
concealed."
"But is it not possible," I suggested, "that although the letter may
be in possession of the minister, as it unquestionably is, he may have
concealed it elsewhere than upon his own premises?"
"This is barely possible," said Dupin. "The present peculiar condition
of affairs at court, and especially of those intrigues in which D--
is known to be involved, would render the instant availability of the
document--its susceptibility of being produced at a moment's notice--a
point of nearly equal importance with its possession."
"Its susceptibility of being produced?" said I.
"That is to say, of being destroyed," said Dupin.
"True," I observed; "the paper is clearly then upon the premises. As for
its being upon the person of the minister, we may consider that as out
of the question."
"Entirely," said the Prefect. "He has been twice waylaid, as if by
footpads, and his person rigorously searched under my own inspection."
"You might have spared yourself this trouble," said Dupin. "D--, I
presume, is not altogether a fool, and, if not, must have anticipated
these waylayings, as a matter of course."
"Not altogether a fool," said G., "but then he's a poet, which I take to
be only one remove from a fool."
"True," said Dupin, after a long and thoughtful whiff from
his meerschaum, "although I have been guilty of certain doggrel myself."
"Suppose you detail," said I, "the particulars of your search."
"Why the fact is, we took our time, and we searched every where. I have
had long experience in these affairs. I took the entire building, room
by room; devoting the nights of a whole week to each. We examined,
first, the furniture of each apartment. We opened every possible drawer;
and I presume you know that, to a properly trained police agent, such a
thing as a secret drawer is impossible. Any man is a dolt who permits a
'secret' drawer to escape him in a search of this kind. The thing is so
plain. There is a certain amount of bulk--of space--to be accounted for
in every cabinet. Then we have accurate rules. The fiftieth part of a
line could not escape us. After the cabinets we took the chairs. The
cushions we probed with the fine long needles you have seen me employ.
From the tables we removed the tops."
"Why so?"
"Sometimes the top of a table, or other similarly arranged piece of
furniture, is removed by the person wishing to conceal an article; then
the leg is excavated, the article deposited within the cavity, and the
top replaced. The bottoms and tops of bedposts are employed in the same
way."
"But could not the cavity be detected by sounding?" I asked.
"By no means, if, when the article is deposited, a sufficient wadding
of cotton be placed around it. Besides, in our case, we were obliged to
proceed without noise."
"But you could not have removed--you could not have taken to pieces all
articles of furniture in which it would have been possible to make a
deposit in the manner you mention. A letter may be compressed into
a thin spiral roll, not differing much in shape or bulk from a large
knitting-needle, and in this form it might be inserted into the rung of
a chair, for example. You did not take to pieces all the chairs?"
"Certainly not; but we did better--we examined the rungs of every
chair in the hotel, and, indeed the jointings of every description of
furniture, by the aid of a most powerful microscope. Had there been
any traces of recent disturbance we should not have failed to detect it
instantly. A single grain of gimlet-dust, for example, would have been
as obvious as an apple. Any disorder in the glueing--any unusual gaping
in the joints--would have sufficed to insure detection."
"I presume you looked to the mirrors, between the boards and the plates,
and you probed the beds and the bed-clothes, as well as the curtains and
carpets."
"That of course; and when we had absolutely completed every particle of
the furniture in this way, then we examined the house itself. We divided
its entire surface into compartments, which we numbered, so that
none might be missed; then we scrutinized each individual square inch
throughout the premises, including the two houses immediately adjoining,
with the microscope, as before."
"The two houses adjoining!" I exclaimed; "you must have had a great deal
of trouble."
"We had; but the reward offered is prodigious!"
"You include the grounds about the houses?"
"All the grounds are paved with brick. They gave us comparatively
little trouble. We examined the moss between the bricks, and found it
undisturbed."
"You looked among D--'s papers, of course, and into the books of the
library?"
"Certainly; we opened every package and parcel; we not only opened
every book, but we turned over every leaf in each volume, not contenting
ourselves with a mere shake, according to the fashion of some of our
police officers. We also measured the thickness of every book-cover,
with the most accurate admeasurement, and applied to each the most
jealous scrutiny of the microscope. Had any of the bindings been
recently meddled with, it would have been utterly impossible that the
fact should have escaped observation. Some five or six volumes, just
from the hands of the binder, we carefully probed, longitudinally, with
the needles."
"You explored the floors beneath the carpets?"
"Beyond doubt. We removed every carpet, and examined the boards with the
microscope."
"And the paper on the walls?"
"Yes."
"You looked into the cellars?"
"We did."
"Then," I said, "you have been making a miscalculation, and the letter
is not upon the premises, as you suppose."
"I fear you are right there," said the Prefect. "And now, Dupin, what
would you advise me to do?"
"To make a thorough re-search of the premises."
"That is absolutely needless," replied G--. "I am not more sure that I
breathe than I am that the letter is not at the Hotel."
"I have no better advice to give you," said Dupin. "You have, of course,
an accurate description of the letter?"
"Oh yes!"--And here the Prefect, producing a memorandum-book proceeded
to read aloud a minute account of the internal, and especially of the
external appearance of the missing document. Soon after finishing
the perusal of this description, he took his departure, more entirely
depressed in spirits than I had ever known the good gentleman before. In
about a month afterwards he paid us another visit, and found us occupied
very nearly as before. He took a pipe and a chair and entered into some
ordinary conversation. At length I said,--
"Well, but G--, what of the purloined letter? I presume you have at
last made up your mind that there is no such thing as overreaching the
Minister?"
"Confound him, say I--yes; I made the re-examination, however, as Dupin
suggested--but it was all labor lost, as I knew it would be."
"How much was the reward offered, did you say?" asked Dupin.
"Why, a very great deal--a very liberal reward--I don't like to say how
much, precisely; but one thing I will say, that I wouldn't mind giving
my individual check for fifty thousand francs to any one who could
obtain me that letter. The fact is, it is becoming of more and more
importance every day; and the reward has been lately doubled. If it were
trebled, however, I could do no more than I have done."
"Why, yes," said Dupin, drawlingly, between the whiffs of his
meerschaum, "I really--think, G--, you have not exerted yourself--to the
utmost in this matter. You might--do a little more, I think, eh?"
"How?--in what way?'
"Why--puff, puff--you might--puff, puff--employ counsel in the
matter, eh?--puff, puff, puff. Do you remember the story they tell of
Abernethy?"
"No; hang Abernethy!"
"To be sure! hang him and welcome. But, once upon a time, a certain rich
miser conceived the design of spunging upon this Abernethy for a medical
opinion. Getting up, for this purpose, an ordinary conversation in a
private company, he insinuated his case to the physician, as that of an
imaginary individual.
"'We will suppose,' said the miser, 'that his symptoms are such and
such; now, doctor, what would you have directed him to take?'
"'Take!' said Abernethy, 'why, take advice, to be sure.'"
"But," said the Prefect, a little discomposed, "I am perfectly willing
to take advice, and to pay for it. I would really give fifty thousand
francs to any one who would aid me in the matter."
"In that case," replied Dupin, opening a drawer, and producing
a check-book, "you may as well fill me up a check for the amount
mentioned. When you have signed it, I will hand you the letter."
I was astounded. The Prefect appeared absolutely thunder-stricken.
For some minutes he remained speechless and motionless, looking
incredulously at my friend with open mouth, and eyes that seemed
starting from their sockets; then, apparently recovering himself in some
measure, he seized a pen, and after several pauses and vacant stares,
finally filled up and signed a check for fifty thousand francs, and
handed it across the table to Dupin. The latter examined it carefully
and deposited it in his pocket-book; then, unlocking an escritoire, took
thence a letter and gave it to the Prefect. This functionary grasped it
in a perfect agony of joy, opened it with a trembling hand, cast a rapid
glance at its contents, and then, scrambling and struggling to the
door, rushed at length unceremoniously from the room and from the house,
without having uttered a syllable since Dupin had requested him to fill
up the check.
When he had gone, my friend entered into some explanations.
"The Parisian police," he said, "are exceedingly able in their way.
They are persevering, ingenious, cunning, and thoroughly versed in the
knowledge which their duties seem chiefly to demand. Thus, when G--
detailed to us his made of searching the premises at the Hotel D--,
I felt entire confidence in his having made a satisfactory
investigation--so far as his labors extended."
"So far as his labors extended?" said I.
"Yes," said Dupin. "The measures adopted were not only the best of
their kind, but carried out to absolute perfection. Had the letter been
deposited within the range of their search, these fellows would, beyond
a question, have found it."
I merely laughed--but he seemed quite serious in all that he said.
"The measures, then," he continued, "were good in their kind, and well
executed; their defect lay in their being inapplicable to the case, and
to the man. A certain set of highly ingenious resources are, with the
Prefect, a sort of Procrustean bed, to which he forcibly adapts his
designs. But he perpetually errs by being too deep or too shallow, for
the matter in hand; and many a schoolboy is a better reasoner than he. I
knew one about eight years of age, whose success at guessing in the game
of 'even and odd' attracted universal admiration. This game is simple,
and is played with marbles. One player holds in his hand a number of
these toys, and demands of another whether that number is even or odd.
If the guess is right, the guesser wins one; if wrong, he loses one. The
boy to whom I allude won all the marbles of the school. Of course he
had some principle of guessing; and this lay in mere observation and
admeasurement of the astuteness of his opponents. For example, an arrant
simpleton is his opponent, and, holding up his closed hand, asks, 'are
they even or odd?' Our schoolboy replies, 'odd,' and loses; but upon the
second trial he wins, for he then says to himself, 'the simpleton
had them even upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just
sufficient to make him have them odd upon the second; I will therefore
guess odd;'--he guesses odd, and wins. Now, with a simpleton a degree
above the first, he would have reasoned thus: 'This fellow finds that in
the first instance I guessed odd, and, in the second, he will propose to
himself, upon the first impulse, a simple variation from even to odd,
as did the first simpleton; but then a second thought will suggest that
this is too simple a variation, and finally he will decide upon putting
it even as before. I will therefore guess even;'--he guesses even, and
wins. Now this mode of reasoning in the schoolboy, whom his fellows
termed 'lucky,'--what, in its last analysis, is it?"
"It is merely," I said, "an identification of the reasoner's intellect
with that of his opponent."
"It is," said Dupin; "and, upon inquiring, of the boy by what means he
effected the thorough identification in which his success consisted, I
received answer as follows: 'When I wish to find out how wise, or how
stupid, or how good, or how wicked is any one, or what are his thoughts
at the moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as
possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see
what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or
correspond with the expression.' This response of the schoolboy lies at
the bottom of all the spurious profundity which has been attributed to
Rochefoucault, to La Bougive, to Machiavelli, and to Campanella."
"And the identification," I said, "of the reasoner's intellect with that
of his opponent, depends, if I understand you aright, upon the accuracy
with which the opponent's intellect is admeasured."
"For its practical value it depends upon this," replied Dupin; "and the
Prefect and his cohort fail so frequently, first, by default of this
identification, and, secondly, by ill-admeasurement, or rather through
non-admeasurement, of the intellect with which they are engaged. They
consider only their own ideas of ingenuity; and, in searching for
anything hidden, advert only to the modes in which they would have
hidden it. They are right in this much--that their own ingenuity is a
faithful representative of that of the mass; but when the cunning of the
individual felon is diverse in character from their own, the felon foils
them, of course. This always happens when it is above their own, and
very usually when it is below. They have no variation of principle in
their investigations; at best, when urged by some unusual emergency--by
some extraordinary reward--they extend or exaggerate their old modes of
practice, without touching their principles. What, for example, in this
case of D--, has been done to vary the principle of action? What is
all this boring, and probing, and sounding, and scrutinizing with the
microscope and dividing the surface of the building into registered
square inches--what is it all but an exaggeration of the application of
the one principle or set of principles of search, which are based upon
the one set of notions regarding human ingenuity, to which the Prefect,
in the long routine of his duty, has been accustomed? Do you not see he
has taken it for granted that all men proceed to conceal a letter,--not
exactly in a gimlet hole bored in a chair-leg--but, at least, in some
out-of-the-way hole or corner suggested by the same tenor of thought
which would urge a man to secrete a letter in a gimlet-hole bored in
a chair-leg? And do you not see also, that such recherches nooks for
concealment are adapted only for ordinary occasions, and would be
adopted only by ordinary intellects; for, in all cases of concealment,
a disposal of the article concealed--a disposal of it in this recherche
manner,--is, in the very first instance, presumable and presumed; and
thus its discovery depends, not at all upon the acumen, but altogether
upon the mere care, patience, and determination of the seekers; and
where the case is of importance--or, what amounts to the same thing in
the policial eyes, when the reward is of magnitude,--the qualities in
question have never been known to fail. You will now understand what I
meant in suggesting that, had the purloined letter been hidden any where
within the limits of the Prefect's examination--in other words, had the
principle of its concealment been comprehended within the principles of
the Prefect--its discovery would have been a matter altogether beyond
question. This functionary, however, has been thoroughly mystified;
and the remote source of his defeat lies in the supposition that the
Minister is a fool, because he has acquired renown as a poet. All fools
are poets; this the Prefect feels; and he is merely guilty of a non
distributio medii in thence inferring that all poets are fools."
"But is this really the poet?" I asked. "There are two brothers, I know;
and both have attained reputation in letters. The Minister I believe has
written learnedly on the Differential Calculus. He is a mathematician,
and no poet."
"You are mistaken; I know him well; he is both. As poet and
mathematician, he would reason well; as mere mathematician, he could
not have reasoned at all, and thus would have been at the mercy of the
Prefect."
"You surprise me," I said, "by these opinions, which have been
contradicted by the voice of the world. You do not mean to set at naught
the well-digested idea of centuries. The mathematical reason has long
been regarded as the reason par excellence."
"'Il y a a parier,'" replied Dupin, quoting from Chamfort, "'que toute
idee publique, toute convention recue est une sottise, car elle a
convenue au plus grand nombre.' The mathematicians, I grant you, have
done their best to promulgate the popular error to which you allude, and
which is none the less an error for its promulgation as truth. With an
art worthy a better cause, for example, they have insinuated the term
'analysis' into application to algebra. The French are the originators
of this particular deception; but if a term is of any importance--if
words derive any value from applicability--then 'analysis' conveys
'algebra' about as much as, in Latin, 'ambitus' implies 'ambition,'
'religio' 'religion,' or 'homines honesti,' a set of honorablemen."
"You have a quarrel on hand, I see," said I, "with some of the
algebraists of Paris; but proceed."
"I dispute the availability, and thus the value, of that reason which
is cultivated in any especial form other than the abstractly logical.
I dispute, in particular, the reason educed by mathematical study. The
mathematics are the science of form and quantity; mathematical reasoning
is merely logic applied to observation upon form and quantity. The great
error lies in supposing that even the truths of what is called pure
algebra, are abstract or general truths. And this error is so egregious
that I am confounded at the universality with which it has been
received. Mathematical axioms are not axioms of general truth. What is
true of relation--of form and quantity--is often grossly false in regard
to morals, for example. In this latter science it is very usually untrue
that the aggregated parts are equal to the whole. In chemistry also the
axiom fails. In the consideration of motive it fails; for two motives,
each of a given value, have not, necessarily, a value when united, equal
to the sum of their values apart. There are numerous other mathematical
truths which are only truths within the limits of relation. But the
mathematician argues, from his finite truths, through habit, as if
they were of an absolutely general applicability--as the world indeed
imagines them to be. Bryant, in his very learned 'Mythology,' mentions
an analogous source of error, when he says that 'although the Pagan
fables are not believed, yet we forget ourselves continually, and make
inferences from them as existing realities.' With the algebraists,
however, who are Pagans themselves, the 'Pagan fables' are believed, and
the inferences are made, not so much through lapse of memory, as
through an unaccountable addling of the brains. In short, I never yet
encountered the mere mathematician who could be trusted out of equal
roots, or one who did not clandestinely hold it as a point of his faith
that x2+px was absolutely and unconditionally equal to q. Say to one of
these gentlemen, by way of experiment, if you please, that you believe
occasions may occur where x2+px is not altogether equal to q, and,
having made him understand what you mean, get out of his reach as
speedily as convenient, for, beyond doubt, he will endeavor to knock you
down.
"I mean to say," continued Dupin, while I merely laughed at his
last observations, "that if the Minister had been no more than a
mathematician, the Prefect would have been under no necessity of giving
me this check. I know him, however, as both mathematician and poet,
and my measures were adapted to his capacity, with reference to the
circumstances by which he was surrounded. I knew him as a courtier, too,
and as a bold intriguant. Such a man, I considered, could not fail to be
aware of the ordinary policial modes of action. He could not have
failed to anticipate--and events have proved that he did not fail to
anticipate--the waylayings to which he was subjected. He must have
foreseen, I reflected, the secret investigations of his premises. His
frequent absences from home at night, which were hailed by the Prefect
as certain aids to his success, I regarded only as ruses, to afford
opportunity for thorough search to the police, and thus the sooner to
impress them with the conviction to which G--, in fact, did finally
arrive--the conviction that the letter was not upon the premises. I
felt, also, that the whole train of thought, which I was at some pains
in detailing to you just now, concerning the invariable principle of
policial action in searches for articles concealed--I felt that this
whole train of thought would necessarily pass through the mind of the
Minister. It would imperatively lead him to despise all the ordinary
nooks of concealment. He could not, I reflected, be so weak as not to
see that the most intricate and remote recess of his hotel would be
as open as his commonest closets to the eyes, to the probes, to the
gimlets, and to the microscopes of the Prefect. I saw, in fine, that
he would be driven, as a matter of course, to simplicity, if not
deliberately induced to it as a matter of choice. You will remember,
perhaps, how desperately the Prefect laughed when I suggested, upon our
first interview, that it was just possible this mystery troubled him so
much on account of its being so very self-evident."
"Yes," said I, "I remember his merriment well. I really thought he would
have fallen into convulsions."
"The material world," continued Dupin, "abounds with very strict
analogies to the immaterial; and thus some color of truth has been
given to the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor, or simile, may be made
to strengthen an argument, as well as to embellish a description. The
principle of the vis inertiae, for example, seems to be identical in
physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a large
body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that
its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty, than it
is, in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more
forcible, more constant, and more eventful in their movements than those
of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed
and full of hesitation in the first few steps of their progress. Again:
have you ever noticed which of the street signs, over the shop-doors,
are the most attractive of attention?"
"I have never given the matter a thought," I said.
"There is a game of puzzles," he resumed, "which is played upon a map.
One party playing requires another to find a given word--the name of
town, river, state or empire--any word, in short, upon the motley and
perplexed surface of the chart. A novice in the game generally seeks to
embarrass his opponents by giving them the most minutely lettered names;
but the adept selects such words as stretch, in large characters, from
one end of the chart to the other. These, like the over-largely lettered
signs and placards of the street, escape observation by dint of being
excessively obvious; and here the physical oversight is precisely
analogous with the moral inapprehension by which the intellect suffers
to pass unnoticed those considerations which are too obtrusively and too
palpably self-evident. But this is a point, it appears, somewhat above
or beneath the understanding of the Prefect. He never once thought
it probable, or possible, that the Minister had deposited the letter
immediately beneath the nose of the whole world, by way of best
preventing any portion of that world from perceiving it.
"But the more I reflected upon the daring, dashing, and discriminating
ingenuity of D--; upon the fact that the document must always have been
at hand, if he intended to use it to good purpose; and upon the decisive
evidence, obtained by the Prefect, that it was not hidden within the
limits of that dignitary's ordinary search--the more satisfied I
became that, to conceal this letter, the Minister had resorted to the
comprehensive and sagacious expedient of not attempting to conceal it at
all.
"Full of these ideas, I prepared myself with a pair of green spectacles,
and called one fine morning, quite by accident, at the Ministerial
hotel. I found D-- at home, yawning, lounging, and dawdling, as usual,
and pretending to be in the last extremity of ennui. He is, perhaps,
the most really energetic human being now alive--but that is only when
nobody sees him.
"To be even with him, I complained of my weak eyes, and lamented the
necessity of the spectacles, under cover of which I cautiously and
thoroughly surveyed the whole apartment, while seemingly intent only
upon the conversation of my host.
"I paid especial attention to a large writing-table near which he sat,
and upon which lay confusedly, some miscellaneous letters and other
papers, with one or two musical instruments and a few books. Here,
however, after a long and very deliberate scrutiny, I saw nothing to
excite particular suspicion.
"At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a
trumpery fillagree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by a
dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of
the mantel-piece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments,
were five or six visiting cards and a solitary letter. This last
was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two, across the
middle--as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up
as worthless, had been altered, or stayed, in the second. It had a
large black seal, bearing the D-- cipher very conspicuously, and was
addressed, in a diminutive female hand, to D--, the minister, himself.
It was thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into
one of the uppermost divisions of the rack.
"No sooner had I glanced at this letter, than I concluded it to be
that of which I was in search. To be sure, it was, to all appearance,
radically different from the one of which the Prefect had read us so
minute a description. Here the seal was large and black, with the D--
cipher; there it was small and red, with the ducal arms of the S--
family. Here, the address, to the Minister, diminutive and feminine;
there the superscription, to a certain royal personage, was markedly
bold and decided; the size alone formed a point of correspondence. But,
then, the radicalness of these differences, which was excessive; the
dirt; the soiled and torn condition of the paper, so inconsistent with
the true methodical habits of D--, and so suggestive of a design to
delude the beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the document;
these things, together with the hyper-obtrusive situation of this
document, full in the view of every visiter, and thus exactly in
accordance with the conclusions to which I had previously arrived; these
things, I say, were strongly corroborative of suspicion, in one who came
with the intention to suspect.
"I protracted my visit as long as possible, and, while I maintained a
most animated discussion with the Minister upon a topic which I knew
well had never failed to interest and excite him, I kept my attention
really riveted upon the letter. In this examination, I committed to
memory its external appearance and arrangement in the rack; and also
fell, at length, upon a discovery which set at rest whatever trivial
doubt I might have entertained. In scrutinizing the edges of the paper,
I observed them to be more chafed than seemed necessary. They presented
the broken appearance which is manifested when a stiff paper, having
been once folded and pressed with a folder, is refolded in a reversed
direction, in the same creases or edges which had formed the original
fold. This discovery was sufficient. It was clear to me that the letter
had been turned, as a glove, inside out, re-directed, and re-sealed. I
bade the Minister good morning, and took my departure at once, leaving a
gold snuff-box upon the table.
"The next morning I called for the snuff-box, when we resumed, quite
eagerly, the conversation of the preceding day. While thus engaged,
however, a loud report, as if of a pistol, was heard immediately beneath
the windows of the hotel, and was succeeded by a series of fearful
screams, and the shoutings of a terrified mob. D-- rushed to a casement,
threw it open, and looked out. In the meantime, I stepped to the
card-rack took the letter, put it in my pocket, and replaced it by
a fac-simile, (so far as regards externals,) which I had carefully
prepared at my lodgings--imitating the D-- cipher, very readily, by
means of a seal formed of bread.
"The disturbance in the street had been occasioned by the frantic
behavior of a man with a musket. He had fired it among a crowd of women
and children. It proved, however, to have been without ball, and the
fellow was suffered to go his way as a lunatic or a drunkard. When
he had gone, D-- came from the window, whither I had followed him
immediately upon securing the object in view. Soon afterwards I bade him
farewell. The pretended lunatic was a man in my own pay."
"But what purpose had you," I asked, "in replacing the letter by a
fac-simile? Would it not have been better, at the first visit, to have
seized it openly, and departed?"
"D--," replied Dupin, "is a desperate man, and a man of nerve. His
hotel, too, is not without attendants devoted to his interests. Had
I made the wild attempt you suggest, I might never have left the
Ministerial presence alive. The good people of Paris might have heard
of me no more. But I had an object apart from these considerations. You
know my political prepossessions. In this matter, I act as a partisan of
the lady concerned. For eighteen months the Minister has had her in his
power. She has now him in hers--since, being unaware that the letter is
not in his possession, he will proceed with his exactions as if it
was. Thus will he inevitably commit himself, at once, to his political
destruction. His downfall, too, will not be more precipitate than
awkward. It is all very well to talk about the facilis descensus Averni;
but in all kinds of climbing, as Catalani said of singing, it is far
more easy to get up than to come down. In the present instance I have
no sympathy--at least no pity--for him who descends. He is that monstrum
horrendum, an unprincipled man of genius. I confess, however, that I
should like very well to know the precise character of his thoughts,
when, being defied by her whom the Prefect terms 'a certain personage'
he is reduced to opening the letter which I left for him in the
card-rack."
"How? did you put any thing particular in it?"
"Why--it did not seem altogether right to leave the interior blank--that
would have been insulting. D--, at Vienna once, did me an evil turn,
which I told him, quite good-humoredly, that I should remember. So, as
I knew he would feel some curiosity in regard to the identity of the
person who had outwitted him, I thought it a pity not to give him a
clue. He is well acquainted with my MS., and I just copied into the
middle of the blank sheet the words--
"'-- -- Un dessein si funeste, S'il n'est digne d'Atree, est digne de
Thyeste. They are to be found in Crebillon's 'Atree.'"
THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE OF SCHEHERAZADE
Truth is stranger than fiction.
OLD SAYING.
HAVING had occasion, lately, in the course of some Oriental
investigations, to consult the Tellmenow Isitsoornot, a work which (like
the Zohar of Simeon Jochaides) is scarcely known at all, even in Europe;
and which has never been quoted, to my knowledge, by any American--if
we except, perhaps, the author of the "Curiosities of American
Literature";--having had occasion, I say, to turn over some pages of the
first--mentioned very remarkable work, I was not a little astonished to
discover that the literary world has hitherto been strangely in error
respecting the fate of the vizier's daughter, Scheherazade, as that
fate is depicted in the "Arabian Nights"; and that the denouement there
given, if not altogether inaccurate, as far as it goes, is at least to
blame in not having gone very much farther.
For full information on this interesting topic, I must refer the
inquisitive reader to the "Isitsoornot" itself, but in the meantime, I
shall be pardoned for giving a summary of what I there discovered.
It will be remembered, that, in the usual version of the tales, a
certain monarch having good cause to be jealous of his queen, not only
puts her to death, but makes a vow, by his beard and the prophet, to
espouse each night the most beautiful maiden in his dominions, and the
next morning to deliver her up to the executioner.
Having fulfilled this vow for many years to the letter, and with a
religious punctuality and method that conferred great credit upon him
as a man of devout feeling and excellent sense, he was interrupted one
afternoon (no doubt at his prayers) by a visit from his grand vizier, to
whose daughter, it appears, there had occurred an idea.
Her name was Scheherazade, and her idea was, that she would either
redeem the land from the depopulating tax upon its beauty, or perish,
after the approved fashion of all heroines, in the attempt.
Accordingly, and although we do not find it to be leap-year (which
makes the sacrifice more meritorious), she deputes her father, the grand
vizier, to make an offer to the king of her hand. This hand the king
eagerly accepts--(he had intended to take it at all events, and had put
off the matter from day to day, only through fear of the vizier),--but,
in accepting it now, he gives all parties very distinctly to understand,
that, grand vizier or no grand vizier, he has not the slightest design
of giving up one iota of his vow or of his privileges. When, therefore,
the fair Scheherazade insisted upon marrying the king, and did actually
marry him despite her father's excellent advice not to do any thing of
the kind--when she would and did marry him, I say, will I, nill I, it
was with her beautiful black eyes as thoroughly open as the nature of
the case would allow.
It seems, however, that this politic damsel (who had been reading
Machiavelli, beyond doubt), had a very ingenious little plot in her
mind. On the night of the wedding, she contrived, upon I forget what
specious pretence, to have her sister occupy a couch sufficiently near
that of the royal pair to admit of easy conversation from bed to bed;
and, a little before cock-crowing, she took care to awaken the good
monarch, her husband (who bore her none the worse will because he
intended to wring her neck on the morrow),--she managed to awaken him, I
say, (although on account of a capital conscience and an easy digestion,
he slept well) by the profound interest of a story (about a rat and a
black cat, I think) which she was narrating (all in an undertone, of
course) to her sister. When the day broke, it so happened that this
history was not altogether finished, and that Scheherazade, in the
nature of things could not finish it just then, since it was high time
for her to get up and be bowstrung--a thing very little more pleasant
than hanging, only a trifle more genteel.
The king's curiosity, however, prevailing, I am sorry to say, even over
his sound religious principles, induced him for this once to postpone
the fulfilment of his vow until next morning, for the purpose and with
the hope of hearing that night how it fared in the end with the black
cat (a black cat, I think it was) and the rat.
The night having arrived, however, the lady Scheherazade not only put
the finishing stroke to the black cat and the rat (the rat was blue)
but before she well knew what she was about, found herself deep in the
intricacies of a narration, having reference (if I am not altogether
mistaken) to a pink horse (with green wings) that went, in a violent
manner, by clockwork, and was wound up with an indigo key. With this
history the king was even more profoundly interested than with the
other--and, as the day broke before its conclusion (notwithstanding
all the queen's endeavors to get through with it in time for the
bowstringing), there was again no resource but to postpone that ceremony
as before, for twenty-four hours. The next night there happened a
similar accident with a similar result; and then the next--and then
again the next; so that, in the end, the good monarch, having been
unavoidably deprived of all opportunity to keep his vow during a
period of no less than one thousand and one nights, either forgets it
altogether by the expiration of this time, or gets himself absolved of
it in the regular way, or (what is more probable) breaks it outright, as
well as the head of his father confessor. At all events, Scheherazade,
who, being lineally descended from Eve, fell heir, perhaps, to the whole
seven baskets of talk, which the latter lady, we all know, picked up
from under the trees in the garden of Eden-Scheherazade, I say, finally
triumphed, and the tariff upon beauty was repealed.
Now, this conclusion (which is that of the story as we have it upon
record) is, no doubt, excessively proper and pleasant--but alas! like
a great many pleasant things, is more pleasant than true, and I am
indebted altogether to the "Isitsoornot" for the means of correcting the
error. "Le mieux," says a French proverb, "est l'ennemi du bien," and,
in mentioning that Scheherazade had inherited the seven baskets of talk,
I should have added that she put them out at compound interest until
they amounted to seventy-seven.
"My dear sister," said she, on the thousand-and-second night, (I quote
the language of the "Isitsoornot" at this point, verbatim) "my dear
sister," said she, "now that all this little difficulty about the
bowstring has blown over, and that this odious tax is so happily
repealed, I feel that I have been guilty of great indiscretion in
withholding from you and the king (who I am sorry to say, snores--a
thing no gentleman would do) the full conclusion of Sinbad the sailor.
This person went through numerous other and more interesting adventures
than those which I related; but the truth is, I felt sleepy on the
particular night of their narration, and so was seduced into cutting
them short--a grievous piece of misconduct, for which I only trust that
Allah will forgive me. But even yet it is not too late to remedy my
great neglect--and as soon as I have given the king a pinch or two in
order to wake him up so far that he may stop making that horrible noise,
I will forthwith entertain you (and him if he pleases) with the sequel
of this very remarkable story."
Hereupon the sister of Scheherazade, as I have it from the
"Isitsoornot," expressed no very particular intensity of gratification;
but the king, having been sufficiently pinched, at length ceased
snoring, and finally said, "hum!" and then "hoo!" when the queen,
understanding these words (which are no doubt Arabic) to signify that
he was all attention, and would do his best not to snore any more--the
queen, I say, having arranged these matters to her satisfaction,
re-entered thus, at once, into the history of Sinbad the sailor:
"'At length, in my old age, [these are the words of Sinbad himself, as
retailed by Scheherazade]--'at length, in my old age, and after enjoying
many years of tranquillity at home, I became once more possessed of a
desire of visiting foreign countries; and one day, without acquainting
any of my family with my design, I packed up some bundles of such
merchandise as was most precious and least bulky, and, engaged a porter
to carry them, went with him down to the sea-shore, to await the arrival
of any chance vessel that might convey me out of the kingdom into some
region which I had not as yet explored.
"'Having deposited the packages upon the sands, we sat down beneath some
trees, and looked out into the ocean in the hope of perceiving a ship,
but during several hours we saw none whatever. At length I fancied that
I could hear a singular buzzing or humming sound; and the porter, after
listening awhile, declared that he also could distinguish it. Presently
it grew louder, and then still louder, so that we could have no doubt
that the object which caused it was approaching us. At length, on
the edge of the horizon, we discovered a black speck, which rapidly
increased in size until we made it out to be a vast monster, swimming
with a great part of its body above the surface of the sea. It came
toward us with inconceivable swiftness, throwing up huge waves of foam
around its breast, and illuminating all that part of the sea through
which it passed, with a long line of fire that extended far off into the
distance.
"'As the thing drew near we saw it very distinctly. Its length was equal
to that of three of the loftiest trees that grow, and it was as wide as
the great hall of audience in your palace, O most sublime and munificent
of the Caliphs. Its body, which was unlike that of ordinary fishes, was
as solid as a rock, and of a jetty blackness throughout all that portion
of it which floated above the water, with the exception of a narrow
blood-red streak that completely begirdled it. The belly, which floated
beneath the surface, and of which we could get only a glimpse now and
then as the monster rose and fell with the billows, was entirely covered
with metallic scales, of a color like that of the moon in misty weather.
The back was flat and nearly white, and from it there extended upwards
of six spines, about half the length of the whole body.
"'The horrible creature had no mouth that we could perceive, but, as if
to make up for this deficiency, it was provided with at least four
score of eyes, that protruded from their sockets like those of the green
dragon-fly, and were arranged all around the body in two rows, one above
the other, and parallel to the blood-red streak, which seemed to answer
the purpose of an eyebrow. Two or three of these dreadful eyes were much
larger than the others, and had the appearance of solid gold.
"'Although this beast approached us, as I have before said, with the
greatest rapidity, it must have been moved altogether by necromancy--for
it had neither fins like a fish nor web-feet like a duck, nor wings like
the seashell which is blown along in the manner of a vessel; nor yet
did it writhe itself forward as do the eels. Its head and its tail were
shaped precisely alike, only, not far from the latter, were two small
holes that served for nostrils, and through which the monster puffed
out its thick breath with prodigious violence, and with a shrieking,
disagreeable noise.
"'Our terror at beholding this hideous thing was very great, but it was
even surpassed by our astonishment, when upon getting a nearer look, we
perceived upon the creature's back a vast number of animals about the
size and shape of men, and altogether much resembling them, except that
they wore no garments (as men do), being supplied (by nature, no doubt)
with an ugly uncomfortable covering, a good deal like cloth, but fitting
so tight to the skin, as to render the poor wretches laughably awkward,
and put them apparently to severe pain. On the very tips of their heads
were certain square-looking boxes, which, at first sight, I thought
might have been intended to answer as turbans, but I soon discovered
that they were excessively heavy and solid, and I therefore concluded
they were contrivances designed, by their great weight, to keep the
heads of the animals steady and safe upon their shoulders. Around
the necks of the creatures were fastened black collars, (badges of
servitude, no doubt,) such as we keep on our dogs, only much wider
and infinitely stiffer, so that it was quite impossible for these poor
victims to move their heads in any direction without moving the body at
the same time; and thus they were doomed to perpetual contemplation of
their noses--a view puggish and snubby in a wonderful, if not positively
in an awful degree.
"'When the monster had nearly reached the shore where we stood, it
suddenly pushed out one of its eyes to a great extent, and emitted from
it a terrible flash of fire, accompanied by a dense cloud of smoke, and
a noise that I can compare to nothing but thunder. As the smoke cleared
away, we saw one of the odd man-animals standing near the head of the
large beast with a trumpet in his hand, through which (putting it to
his mouth) he presently addressed us in loud, harsh, and disagreeable
accents, that, perhaps, we should have mistaken for language, had they
not come altogether through the nose.
"'Being thus evidently spoken to, I was at a loss how to reply, as I
could in no manner understand what was said; and in this difficulty
I turned to the porter, who was near swooning through affright, and
demanded of him his opinion as to what species of monster it was, what
it wanted, and what kind of creatures those were that so swarmed
upon its back. To this the porter replied, as well as he could for
trepidation, that he had once before heard of this sea-beast; that it
was a cruel demon, with bowels of sulphur and blood of fire, created
by evil genii as the means of inflicting misery upon mankind; that the
things upon its back were vermin, such as sometimes infest cats and
dogs, only a little larger and more savage; and that these vermin had
their uses, however evil--for, through the torture they caused the beast
by their nibbling and stingings, it was goaded into that degree of wrath
which was requisite to make it roar and commit ill, and so fulfil the
vengeful and malicious designs of the wicked genii.
"This account determined me to take to my heels, and, without once even
looking behind me, I ran at full speed up into the hills, while the
porter ran equally fast, although nearly in an opposite direction, so
that, by these means, he finally made his escape with my bundles, of
which I have no doubt he took excellent care--although this is a point I
cannot determine, as I do not remember that I ever beheld him again.
"'For myself, I was so hotly pursued by a swarm of the men-vermin (who
had come to the shore in boats) that I was very soon overtaken, bound
hand and foot, and conveyed to the beast, which immediately swam out
again into the middle of the sea.
"'I now bitterly repented my folly in quitting a comfortable home to
peril my life in such adventures as this; but regret being useless, I
made the best of my condition, and exerted myself to secure the goodwill
of the man-animal that owned the trumpet, and who appeared to exercise
authority over his fellows. I succeeded so well in this endeavor that,
in a few days, the creature bestowed upon me various tokens of his
favor, and in the end even went to the trouble of teaching me the
rudiments of what it was vain enough to denominate its language; so
that, at length, I was enabled to converse with it readily, and came to
make it comprehend the ardent desire I had of seeing the world.
"'Washish squashish squeak, Sinbad, hey-diddle diddle, grunt unt
grumble, hiss, fiss, whiss,' said he to me, one day after dinner--but
I beg a thousand pardons, I had forgotten that your majesty is not
conversant with the dialect of the Cock-neighs (so the man-animals were
called; I presume because their language formed the connecting
link between that of the horse and that of the rooster). With your
permission, I will translate. 'Washish squashish,' and so forth:--that
is to say, 'I am happy to find, my dear Sinbad, that you are really a
very excellent fellow; we are now about doing a thing which is called
circumnavigating the globe; and since you are so desirous of seeing the
world, I will strain a point and give you a free passage upon back of
the beast.'"
When the Lady Scheherazade had proceeded thus far, relates the
"Isitsoornot," the king turned over from his left side to his right, and
said:
"It is, in fact, very surprising, my dear queen, that you omitted,
hitherto, these latter adventures of Sinbad. Do you know I think them
exceedingly entertaining and strange?"
The king having thus expressed himself, we are told, the fair
Scheherazade resumed her history in the following words:
"Sinbad went on in this manner with his narrative to the caliph--'I
thanked the man-animal for its kindness, and soon found myself very much
at home on the beast, which swam at a prodigious rate through the ocean;
although the surface of the latter is, in that part of the world, by
no means flat, but round like a pomegranate, so that we went--so to
say--either up hill or down hill all the time.'
"That I think, was very singular," interrupted the king.
"Nevertheless, it is quite true," replied Scheherazade.
"I have my doubts," rejoined the king; "but, pray, be so good as to go
on with the story."
"I will," said the queen. "'The beast,' continued Sinbad to the caliph,
'swam, as I have related, up hill and down hill until, at length, we
arrived at an island, many hundreds of miles in circumference, but
which, nevertheless, had been built in the middle of the sea by a colony
of little things like caterpillars'" (*1)
"Hum!" said the king.
"'Leaving this island,' said Sinbad--(for Scheherazade, it must be
understood, took no notice of her husband's ill-mannered ejaculation)
'leaving this island, we came to another where the forests were of solid
stone, and so hard that they shivered to pieces the finest-tempered axes
with which we endeavoured to cut them down."' (*2)
"Hum!" said the king, again; but Scheherazade, paying him no attention,
continued in the language of Sinbad.
"'Passing beyond this last island, we reached a country where there
was a cave that ran to the distance of thirty or forty miles within the
bowels of the earth, and that contained a greater number of far more
spacious and more magnificent palaces than are to be found in all
Damascus and Bagdad. From the roofs of these palaces there hung myriads
of gems, liked diamonds, but larger than men; and in among the streets
of towers and pyramids and temples, there flowed immense rivers as black
as ebony, and swarming with fish that had no eyes.'" (*3)
"Hum!" said the king. "'We then swam into a region of the sea where
we found a lofty mountain, down whose sides there streamed torrents of
melted metal, some of which were twelve miles wide and sixty miles long
(*4); while from an abyss on the summit, issued so vast a quantity of
ashes that the sun was entirely blotted out from the heavens, and it
became darker than the darkest midnight; so that when we were even at
the distance of a hundred and fifty miles from the mountain, it was
impossible to see the whitest object, however close we held it to our
eyes.'" (*5)
"Hum!" said the king.
"'After quitting this coast, the beast continued his voyage until we met
with a land in which the nature of things seemed reversed--for we here
saw a great lake, at the bottom of which, more than a hundred feet
beneath the surface of the water, there flourished in full leaf a forest
of tall and luxuriant trees.'" (*6)
"Hoo!" said the king.
"Some hundred miles farther on brought us to a climate where the
atmosphere was so dense as to sustain iron or steel, just as our own
does feather.'" (*7)
"Fiddle de dee," said the king.
"Proceeding still in the same direction, we presently arrived at the
most magnificent region in the whole world. Through it there meandered
a glorious river for several thousands of miles. This river was of
unspeakable depth, and of a transparency richer than that of amber.
It was from three to six miles in width; and its banks which arose on
either side to twelve hundred feet in perpendicular height, were crowned
with ever-blossoming trees and perpetual sweet-scented flowers, that
made the whole territory one gorgeous garden; but the name of this
luxuriant land was the Kingdom of Horror, and to enter it was inevitable
death'" (*8)
"Humph!" said the king.
"'We left this kingdom in great haste, and, after some days, came to
another, where we were astonished to perceive myriads of monstrous
animals with horns resembling scythes upon their heads. These hideous
beasts dig for themselves vast caverns in the soil, of a funnel shape,
and line the sides of them with, rocks, so disposed one upon the other
that they fall instantly, when trodden upon by other animals, thus
precipitating them into the monster's dens, where their blood is
immediately sucked, and their carcasses afterwards hurled contemptuously
out to an immense distance from "the caverns of death."'" (*9)
"Pooh!" said the king.
"'Continuing our progress, we perceived a district with vegetables that
grew not upon any soil but in the air. (*10) There were others that
sprang from the substance of other vegetables; (*11) others that derived
their substance from the bodies of living animals; (*12) and then again,
there were others that glowed all over with intense fire; (*13) others
that moved from place to place at pleasure, (*14) and what was still
more wonderful, we discovered flowers that lived and breathed and moved
their limbs at will and had, moreover, the detestable passion of mankind
for enslaving other creatures, and confining them in horrid and solitary
prisons until the fulfillment of appointed tasks.'" (*15)
"Pshaw!" said the king.
"'Quitting this land, we soon arrived at another in which the bees and
the birds are mathematicians of such genius and erudition, that they
give daily instructions in the science of geometry to the wise men
of the empire. The king of the place having offered a reward for the
solution of two very difficult problems, they were solved upon the
spot--the one by the bees, and the other by the birds; but the king
keeping their solution a secret, it was only after the most profound
researches and labor, and the writing of an infinity of big books,
during a long series of years, that the men-mathematicians at length
arrived at the identical solutions which had been given upon the spot by
the bees and by the birds.'" (*16)
"Oh my!" said the king.
"'We had scarcely lost sight of this empire when we found ourselves
close upon another, from whose shores there flew over our heads a flock
of fowls a mile in breadth, and two hundred and forty miles long; so
that, although they flew a mile during every minute, it required no less
than four hours for the whole flock to pass over us--in which there were
several millions of millions of fowl.'" (*17)
"Oh fy!" said the king.
"'No sooner had we got rid of these birds, which occasioned us great
annoyance, than we were terrified by the appearance of a fowl of another
kind, and infinitely larger than even the rocs which I met in my
former voyages; for it was bigger than the biggest of the domes on your
seraglio, oh, most Munificent of Caliphs. This terrible fowl had no head
that we could perceive, but was fashioned entirely of belly, which was
of a prodigious fatness and roundness, of a soft-looking substance,
smooth, shining and striped with various colors. In its talons, the
monster was bearing away to his eyrie in the heavens, a house from which
it had knocked off the roof, and in the interior of which we distinctly
saw human beings, who, beyond doubt, were in a state of frightful
despair at the horrible fate which awaited them. We shouted with all our
might, in the hope of frightening the bird into letting go of its prey,
but it merely gave a snort or puff, as if of rage and then let fall upon
our heads a heavy sack which proved to be filled with sand!'"
"Stuff!" said the king.
"'It was just after this adventure that we encountered a continent of
immense extent and prodigious solidity, but which, nevertheless, was
supported entirely upon the back of a sky-blue cow that had no fewer
than four hundred horns.'" (*18)
"That, now, I believe," said the king, "because I have read something of
the kind before, in a book."
"'We passed immediately beneath this continent, (swimming in between the
legs of the cow), and, after some hours, found ourselves in a wonderful
country indeed, which, I was informed by the man-animal, was his own
native land, inhabited by things of his own species. This elevated the
man-animal very much in my esteem, and in fact, I now began to feel
ashamed of the contemptuous familiarity with which I had treated him;
for I found that the man-animals in general were a nation of the most
powerful magicians, who lived with worms in their brain, (*19) which,
no doubt, served to stimulate them by their painful writhings and
wrigglings to the most miraculous efforts of imagination!'"
"Nonsense!" said the king.
"'Among the magicians, were domesticated several animals of very
singular kinds; for example, there was a huge horse whose bones were
iron and whose blood was boiling water. In place of corn, he had black
stones for his usual food; and yet, in spite of so hard a diet, he was
so strong and swift that he would drag a load more weighty than the
grandest temple in this city, at a rate surpassing that of the flight of
most birds.'" (*20)
"Twattle!" said the king.
"'I saw, also, among these people a hen without feathers, but bigger
than a camel; instead of flesh and bone she had iron and brick; her
blood, like that of the horse, (to whom, in fact, she was nearly
related,) was boiling water; and like him she ate nothing but wood or
black stones. This hen brought forth very frequently, a hundred chickens
in the day; and, after birth, they took up their residence for several
weeks within the stomach of their mother.'" (*21)
"Fa! lal!" said the king.
"'One of this nation of mighty conjurors created a man out of brass and
wood, and leather, and endowed him with such ingenuity that he would
have beaten at chess, all the race of mankind with the exception of the
great Caliph, Haroun Alraschid. (*22) Another of these magi constructed
(of like material) a creature that put to shame even the genius of him
who made it; for so great were its reasoning powers that, in a second,
it performed calculations of so vast an extent that they would have
required the united labor of fifty thousand fleshy men for a year. (*23)
But a still more wonderful conjuror fashioned for himself a mighty thing
that was neither man nor beast, but which had brains of lead, intermixed
with a black matter like pitch, and fingers that it employed with such
incredible speed and dexterity that it would have had no trouble in
writing out twenty thousand copies of the Koran in an hour, and this
with so exquisite a precision, that in all the copies there should not
be found one to vary from another by the breadth of the finest hair.
This thing was of prodigious strength, so that it erected or overthrew
the mightiest empires at a breath; but its powers were exercised equally
for evil and for good.'"
"Ridiculous!" said the king.
"'Among this nation of necromancers there was also one who had in his
veins the blood of the salamanders; for he made no scruple of sitting
down to smoke his chibouc in a red-hot oven until his dinner was
thoroughly roasted upon its floor. (*24) Another had the faculty of
converting the common metals into gold, without even looking at them
during the process. (*25) Another had such a delicacy of touch that he
made a wire so fine as to be invisible. (*26) Another had such quickness
of perception that he counted all the separate motions of an elastic
body, while it was springing backward and forward at the rate of nine
hundred millions of times in a second.'" (*27)
"Absurd!" said the king.
"'Another of these magicians, by means of a fluid that nobody ever yet
saw, could make the corpses of his friends brandish their arms, kick out
their legs, fight, or even get up and dance at his will. (*28) Another
had cultivated his voice to so great an extent that he could have made
himself heard from one end of the world to the other. (*29) Another had
so long an arm that he could sit down in Damascus and indite a letter
at Bagdad--or indeed at any distance whatsoever. (*30) Another commanded
the lightning to come down to him out of the heavens, and it came at his
call; and served him for a plaything when it came. Another took two
loud sounds and out of them made a silence. Another constructed a
deep darkness out of two brilliant lights. (*31) Another made ice in a
red-hot furnace. (*32) Another directed the sun to paint his portrait,
and the sun did. (*33) Another took this luminary with the moon and the
planets, and having first weighed them with scrupulous accuracy, probed
into their depths and found out the solidity of the substance of which
they were made. But the whole nation is, indeed, of so surprising a
necromantic ability, that not even their infants, nor their commonest
cats and dogs have any difficulty in seeing objects that do not exist at
all, or that for twenty millions of years before the birth of the nation
itself had been blotted out from the face of creation."' (*34)
Analogous experiments in respect to sound produce analogous results.
"Preposterous!" said the king.
"'The wives and daughters of these incomparably great and wise magi,'"
continued Scheherazade, without being in any manner disturbed by
these frequent and most ungentlemanly interruptions on the part of her
husband--"'the wives and daughters of these eminent conjurers are every
thing that is accomplished and refined; and would be every thing that is
interesting and beautiful, but for an unhappy fatality that besets them,
and from which not even the miraculous powers of their husbands and
fathers has, hitherto, been adequate to save. Some fatalities come in
certain shapes, and some in others--but this of which I speak has come
in the shape of a crotchet.'"
"A what?" said the king.
"'A crotchet'" said Scheherazade. "'One of the evil genii, who are
perpetually upon the watch to inflict ill, has put it into the heads of
these accomplished ladies that the thing which we describe as personal
beauty consists altogether in the protuberance of the region which lies
not very far below the small of the back. Perfection of loveliness, they
say, is in the direct ratio of the extent of this lump. Having been long
possessed of this idea, and bolsters being cheap in that country, the
days have long gone by since it was possible to distinguish a woman from
a dromedary-'"
"Stop!" said the king--"I can't stand that, and I won't. You have
already given me a dreadful headache with your lies. The day, too, I
perceive, is beginning to break. How long have we been married?--my
conscience is getting to be troublesome again. And then that dromedary
touch--do you take me for a fool? Upon the whole, you might as well get
up and be throttled."
These words, as I learn from the "Isitsoornot," both grieved and
astonished Scheherazade; but, as she knew the king to be a man of
scrupulous integrity, and quite unlikely to forfeit his word, she
submitted to her fate with a good grace. She derived, however, great
consolation, (during the tightening of the bowstring,) from the
reflection that much of the history remained still untold, and that the
petulance of her brute of a husband had reaped for him a most righteous
reward, in depriving him of many inconceivable adventures.
A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROeM.
The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our
ways; nor are the models that we frame any way commensurate to the
vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, which have
a depth in them greater than the well of Democritus.
Joseph Glanville.
WE had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the
old man seemed too much exhausted to speak.
"Not long ago," said he at length, "and I could have guided you on this
route as well as the youngest of my sons; but, about three years past,
there happened to me an event such as never happened to mortal man--or
at least such as no man ever survived to tell of--and the six hours of
deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up body and soul. You
suppose me a _very_ old man--but I am not. It took less than a single
day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken
my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least
exertion, and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look
over this little cliff without getting giddy?"
The "little cliff," upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown himself
down to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung over it, while
he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his elbow on its extreme
and slippery edge--this "little cliff" arose, a sheer unobstructed
precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet
from the world of crags beneath us. Nothing would have tempted me to
within half a dozen yards of its brink. In truth so deeply was I excited
by the perilous position of my companion, that I fell at full length
upon the ground, clung to the shrubs around me, and dared not even
glance upward at the sky--while I struggled in vain to divest myself of
the idea that the very foundations of the mountain were in danger from
the fury of the winds. It was long before I could reason myself into
sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the distance.
"You must get over these fancies," said the guide, "for I have brought
you here that you might have the best possible view of the scene of that
event I mentioned--and to tell you the whole story with the spot just
under your eye."
"We are now," he continued, in that particularizing manner which
distinguished him--"we are now close upon the Norwegian coast--in the
sixty-eighth degree of latitude--in the great province of Nordland--and
in the dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon whose top we sit is
Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now raise yourself up a little higher--hold on to
the grass if you feel giddy--so--and look out, beyond the belt of vapor
beneath us, into the sea."
I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore
so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer's
account of the _Mare Tenebrarum_. A panorama more deplorably desolate no
human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye
could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines
of horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but
the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against
its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. Just
opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a
distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible
a small, bleak-looking island; or, more properly, its position was
discernible through the wilderness of surge in which it was enveloped.
About two miles nearer the land, arose another of smaller size,
hideously craggy and barren, and encompassed at various intervals by a
cluster of dark rocks.
The appearance of the ocean, in the space between the more distant
island and the shore, had something very unusual about it. Although,
at the time, so strong a gale was blowing landward that a brig in the
remote offing lay to under a double-reefed trysail, and constantly
plunged her whole hull out of sight, still there was here nothing like a
regular swell, but only a short, quick, angry cross dashing of water in
every direction--as well in the teeth of the wind as otherwise. Of foam
there was little except in the immediate vicinity of the rocks.
"The island in the distance," resumed the old man, "is called by
the Norwegians Vurrgh. The one midway is Moskoe. That a mile to the
northward is Ambaaren. Yonder are Islesen, Hotholm, Keildhelm, Suarven,
and Buckholm. Farther off--between Moskoe and Vurrgh--are Otterholm,
Flimen, Sandflesen, and Stockholm. These are the true names of the
places--but why it has been thought necessary to name them at all, is
more than either you or I can understand. Do you hear anything? Do you
see any change in the water?"
We had now been about ten minutes upon the top of Helseggen, to which
we had ascended from the interior of Lofoden, so that we had caught no
glimpse of the sea until it had burst upon us from the summit. As the
old man spoke, I became aware of a loud and gradually increasing sound,
like the moaning of a vast herd of buffaloes upon an American prairie;
and at the same moment I perceived that what seamen term the _chopping_
character of the ocean beneath us, was rapidly changing into a current
which set to the eastward. Even while I gazed, this current acquired
a monstrous velocity. Each moment added to its speed--to its headlong
impetuosity. In five minutes the whole sea, as far as Vurrgh, was lashed
into ungovernable fury; but it was between Moskoe and the coast that the
main uproar held its sway. Here the vast bed of the waters, seamed
and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into
phrensied convulsion--heaving, boiling, hissing--gyrating in gigantic
and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the
eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes except in
precipitous descents.
In a few minutes more, there came over the scene another radical
alteration. The general surface grew somewhat more smooth, and the
whirlpools, one by one, disappeared, while prodigious streaks of foam
became apparent where none had been seen before. These streaks,
at length, spreading out to a great distance, and entering into
combination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the
subsided vortices, and seemed to form the germ of another more vast.
Suddenly--very suddenly--this assumed a distinct and definite existence,
in a circle of more than a mile in diameter. The edge of the whirl was
represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray; but no particle of this
slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far
as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of
water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees,
speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion,
and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half shriek, half
roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in
its agony to Heaven.
The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked. I threw
myself upon my face, and clung to the scant herbage in an excess of
nervous agitation.
"This," said I at length, to the old man--"this _can_ be nothing else
than the great whirlpool of the Maelstroem."
"So it is sometimes termed," said he. "We Norwegians call it the
Moskoe-stroem, from the island of Moskoe in the midway."
The ordinary accounts of this vortex had by no means prepared me
for what I saw. That of Jonas Ramus, which is perhaps the most
circumstantial of any, cannot impart the faintest conception either
of the magnificence, or of the horror of the scene--or of the wild
bewildering sense of _the novel_ which confounds the beholder. I am not
sure from what point of view the writer in question surveyed it, nor at
what time; but it could neither have been from the summit of Helseggen,
nor during a storm. There are some passages of his description,
nevertheless, which may be quoted for their details, although their
effect is exceedingly feeble in conveying an impression of the
spectacle.
"Between Lofoden and Moskoe," he says, "the depth of the water is
between thirty-six and forty fathoms; but on the other side, toward Ver
(Vurrgh) this depth decreases so as not to afford a convenient passage
for a vessel, without the risk of splitting on the rocks, which happens
even in the calmest weather. When it is flood, the stream runs up the
country between Lofoden and Moskoe with a boisterous rapidity; but the
roar of its impetuous ebb to the sea is scarce equalled by the loudest
and most dreadful cataracts; the noise being heard several leagues off,
and the vortices or pits are of such an extent and depth, that if a ship
comes within its attraction, it is inevitably absorbed and carried down
to the bottom, and there beat to pieces against the rocks; and when
the water relaxes, the fragments thereof are thrown up again. But these
intervals of tranquility are only at the turn of the ebb and flood,
and in calm weather, and last but a quarter of an hour, its violence
gradually returning. When the stream is most boisterous, and its fury
heightened by a storm, it is dangerous to come within a Norway mile
of it. Boats, yachts, and ships have been carried away by not guarding
against it before they were within its reach. It likewise happens
frequently, that whales come too near the stream, and are overpowered by
its violence; and then it is impossible to describe their howlings and
bellowings in their fruitless struggles to disengage themselves. A
bear once, attempting to swim from Lofoden to Moskoe, was caught by the
stream and borne down, while he roared terribly, so as to be heard on
shore. Large stocks of firs and pine trees, after being absorbed by the
current, rise again broken and torn to such a degree as if bristles grew
upon them. This plainly shows the bottom to consist of craggy rocks,
among which they are whirled to and fro. This stream is regulated by the
flux and reflux of the sea--it being constantly high and low water every
six hours. In the year 1645, early in the morning of Sexagesima Sunday,
it raged with such noise and impetuosity that the very stones of the
houses on the coast fell to the ground."
In regard to the depth of the water, I could not see how this could have
been ascertained at all in the immediate vicinity of the vortex. The
"forty fathoms" must have reference only to portions of the channel
close upon the shore either of Moskoe or Lofoden. The depth in the
centre of the Moskoe-stroem must be immeasurably greater; and no better
proof of this fact is necessary than can be obtained from even the
sidelong glance into the abyss of the whirl which may be had from the
highest crag of Helseggen. Looking down from this pinnacle upon the
howling Phlegethon below, I could not help smiling at the simplicity
with which the honest Jonas Ramus records, as a matter difficult of
belief, the anecdotes of the whales and the bears; for it appeared to
me, in fact, a self-evident thing, that the largest ship of the line in
existence, coming within the influence of that deadly attraction, could
resist it as little as a feather the hurricane, and must disappear
bodily and at once.
The attempts to account for the phenomenon--some of which, I remember,
seemed to me sufficiently plausible in perusal--now wore a very
different and unsatisfactory aspect. The idea generally received is that
this, as well as three smaller vortices among the Ferroe islands, "have
no other cause than the collision of waves rising and falling, at flux
and reflux, against a ridge of rocks and shelves, which confines the
water so that it precipitates itself like a cataract; and thus the
higher the flood rises, the deeper must the fall be, and the natural
result of all is a whirlpool or vortex, the prodigious suction of which
is sufficiently known by lesser experiments."--These are the words of
the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Kircher and others imagine that in the
centre of the channel of the Maelstroem is an abyss penetrating the
globe, and issuing in some very remote part--the Gulf of Bothnia being
somewhat decidedly named in one instance. This opinion, idle in itself,
was the one to which, as I gazed, my imagination most readily assented;
and, mentioning it to the guide, I was rather surprised to hear him say
that, although it was the view almost universally entertained of the
subject by the Norwegians, it nevertheless was not his own. As to the
former notion he confessed his inability to comprehend it; and here I
agreed with him--for, however conclusive on paper, it becomes altogether
unintelligible, and even absurd, amid the thunder of the abyss.
"You have had a good look at the whirl now," said the old man, "and if
you will creep round this crag, so as to get in its lee, and deaden
the roar of the water, I will tell you a story that will convince you I
ought to know something of the Moskoe-stroem."
I placed myself as desired, and he proceeded.
"Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner-rigged smack of about
seventy tons burthen, with which we were in the habit of fishing among
the islands beyond Moskoe, nearly to Vurrgh. In all violent eddies at
sea there is good fishing, at proper opportunities, if one has only the
courage to attempt it; but among the whole of the Lofoden coastmen, we
three were the only ones who made a regular business of going out to the
islands, as I tell you. The usual grounds are a great way lower down to
the southward. There fish can be got at all hours, without much risk,
and therefore these places are preferred. The choice spots over here
among the rocks, however, not only yield the finest variety, but in far
greater abundance; so that we often got in a single day, what the more
timid of the craft could not scrape together in a week. In fact, we made
it a matter of desperate speculation--the risk of life standing instead
of labor, and courage answering for capital.
"We kept the smack in a cove about five miles higher up the coast than
this; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take advantage of
the fifteen minutes' slack to push across the main channel of the
Moskoe-stroem, far above the pool, and then drop down upon anchorage
somewhere near Otterholm, or Sandflesen, where the eddies are not so
violent as elsewhere. Here we used to remain until nearly time for
slack-water again, when we weighed and made for home. We never set
out upon this expedition without a steady side wind for going and
coming--one that we felt sure would not fail us before our return--and
we seldom made a mis-calculation upon this point. Twice, during six
years, we were forced to stay all night at anchor on account of a dead
calm, which is a rare thing indeed just about here; and once we had to
remain on the grounds nearly a week, starving to death, owing to a
gale which blew up shortly after our arrival, and made the channel too
boisterous to be thought of. Upon this occasion we should have been
driven out to sea in spite of everything, (for the whirlpools threw us
round and round so violently, that, at length, we fouled our anchor
and dragged it) if it had not been that we drifted into one of the
innumerable cross currents--here to-day and gone to-morrow--which drove
us under the lee of Flimen, where, by good luck, we brought up.
"I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties we
encountered 'on the grounds'--it is a bad spot to be in, even in
good weather--but we made shift always to run the gauntlet of the
Moskoe-stroem itself without accident; although at times my heart has
been in my mouth when we happened to be a minute or so behind or before
the slack. The wind sometimes was not as strong as we thought it at
starting, and then we made rather less way than we could wish, while
the current rendered the smack unmanageable. My eldest brother had a son
eighteen years old, and I had two stout boys of my own. These would have
been of great assistance at such times, in using the sweeps, as well as
afterward in fishing--but, somehow, although we ran the risk ourselves,
we had not the heart to let the young ones get into the danger--for,
after all is said and done, it _was_ a horrible danger, and that is the
truth.
"It is now within a few days of three years since what I am going to
tell you occurred. It was on the tenth day of July, 18-, a day which the
people of this part of the world will never forget--for it was one
in which blew the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of
the heavens. And yet all the morning, and indeed until late in the
afternoon, there was a gentle and steady breeze from the south-west,
while the sun shone brightly, so that the oldest seaman among us could
not have foreseen what was to follow.
"The three of us--my two brothers and myself--had crossed over to the
islands about two o'clock P. M., and had soon nearly loaded the smack
with fine fish, which, we all remarked, were more plenty that day
than we had ever known them. It was just seven, _by my watch_, when we
weighed and started for home, so as to make the worst of the Stroem at
slack water, which we knew would be at eight.
"We set out with a fresh wind on our starboard quarter, and for some
time spanked along at a great rate, never dreaming of danger, for indeed
we saw not the slightest reason to apprehend it. All at once we
were taken aback by a breeze from over Helseggen. This was most
unusual--something that had never happened to us before--and I began to
feel a little uneasy, without exactly knowing why. We put the boat on
the wind, but could make no headway at all for the eddies, and I was
upon the point of proposing to return to the anchorage, when, looking
astern, we saw the whole horizon covered with a singular copper-colored
cloud that rose with the most amazing velocity.
"In the meantime the breeze that had headed us off fell away, and we
were dead becalmed, drifting about in every direction. This state of
things, however, did not last long enough to give us time to think about
it. In less than a minute the storm was upon us--in less than two the
sky was entirely overcast--and what with this and the driving spray, it
became suddenly so dark that we could not see each other in the smack.
"Such a hurricane as then blew it is folly to attempt describing. The
oldest seaman in Norway never experienced any thing like it. We had let
our sails go by the run before it cleverly took us; but, at the first
puff, both our masts went by the board as if they had been sawed
off--the mainmast taking with it my youngest brother, who had lashed
himself to it for safety.
"Our boat was the lightest feather of a thing that ever sat upon water.
It had a complete flush deck, with only a small hatch near the bow, and
this hatch it had always been our custom to batten down when about to
cross the Stroem, by way of precaution against the chopping seas. But for
this circumstance we should have foundered at once--for we lay entirely
buried for some moments. How my elder brother escaped destruction I
cannot say, for I never had an opportunity of ascertaining. For my part,
as soon as I had let the foresail run, I threw myself flat on deck,
with my feet against the narrow gunwale of the bow, and with my hands
grasping a ring-bolt near the foot of the fore-mast. It was mere
instinct that prompted me to do this--which was undoubtedly the very
best thing I could have done--for I was too much flurried to think.
"For some moments we were completely deluged, as I say, and all this
time I held my breath, and clung to the bolt. When I could stand it no
longer I raised myself upon my knees, still keeping hold with my hands,
and thus got my head clear. Presently our little boat gave herself
a shake, just as a dog does in coming out of the water, and thus rid
herself, in some measure, of the seas. I was now trying to get the
better of the stupor that had come over me, and to collect my senses so
as to see what was to be done, when I felt somebody grasp my arm. It was
my elder brother, and my heart leaped for joy, for I had made sure
that he was overboard--but the next moment all this joy was turned into
horror--for he put his mouth close to my ear, and screamed out the word
'_Moskoe-stroem!_'
"No one ever will know what my feelings were at that moment. I shook
from head to foot as if I had had the most violent fit of the ague. I
knew what he meant by that one word well enough--I knew what he wished
to make me understand. With the wind that now drove us on, we were bound
for the whirl of the Stroem, and nothing could save us!
"You perceive that in crossing the Stroem _channel_, we always went a
long way up above the whirl, even in the calmest weather, and then had
to wait and watch carefully for the slack--but now we were driving right
upon the pool itself, and in such a hurricane as this! 'To be sure,' I
thought, 'we shall get there just about the slack--there is some little
hope in that'--but in the next moment I cursed myself for being so great
a fool as to dream of hope at all. I knew very well that we were doomed,
had we been ten times a ninety-gun ship.
"By this time the first fury of the tempest had spent itself, or perhaps
we did not feel it so much, as we scudded before it, but at all events
the seas, which at first had been kept down by the wind, and lay flat
and frothing, now got up into absolute mountains. A singular change,
too, had come over the heavens. Around in every direction it was still
as black as pitch, but nearly overhead there burst out, all at once, a
circular rift of clear sky--as clear as I ever saw--and of a deep bright
blue--and through it there blazed forth the full moon with a lustre that
I never before knew her to wear. She lit up every thing about us with
the greatest distinctness--but, oh God, what a scene it was to light up!
"I now made one or two attempts to speak to my brother--but, in some
manner which I could not understand, the din had so increased that I
could not make him hear a single word, although I screamed at the top
of my voice in his ear. Presently he shook his head, looking as pale as
death, and held up one of his finger, as if to say _'listen! '_
"At first I could not make out what he meant--but soon a hideous thought
flashed upon me. I dragged my watch from its fob. It was not going. I
glanced at its face by the moonlight, and then burst into tears as I
flung it far away into the ocean. _It had run down at seven o'clock!
We were behind the time of the slack, and the whirl of the Stroem was in
full fury!_
"When a boat is well built, properly trimmed, and not deep laden, the
waves in a strong gale, when she is going large, seem always to slip
from beneath her--which appears very strange to a landsman--and this is
what is called _riding_, in sea phrase. Well, so far we had ridden the
swells very cleverly; but presently a gigantic sea happened to take us
right under the counter, and bore us with it as it rose--up--up--as
if into the sky. I would not have believed that any wave could rise so
high. And then down we came with a sweep, a slide, and a plunge,
that made me feel sick and dizzy, as if I was falling from some lofty
mountain-top in a dream. But while we were up I had thrown a quick
glance around--and that one glance was all sufficient. I saw our exact
position in an instant. The Moskoe-Stroem whirlpool was about a quarter
of a mile dead ahead--but no more like the every-day Moskoe-Stroem, than
the whirl as you now see it is like a mill-race. If I had not known
where we were, and what we had to expect, I should not have recognised
the place at all. As it was, I involuntarily closed my eyes in horror.
The lids clenched themselves together as if in a spasm.
"It could not have been more than two minutes afterward until we
suddenly felt the waves subside, and were enveloped in foam. The
boat made a sharp half turn to larboard, and then shot off in its new
direction like a thunderbolt. At the same moment the roaring noise of
the water was completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek--such a
sound as you might imagine given out by the waste-pipes of many thousand
steam-vessels, letting off their steam all together. We were now in the
belt of surf that always surrounds the whirl; and I thought, of course,
that another moment would plunge us into the abyss--down which we could
only see indistinctly on account of the amazing velocity with which we
wore borne along. The boat did not seem to sink into the water at
all, but to skim like an air-bubble upon the surface of the surge. Her
starboard side was next the whirl, and on the larboard arose the world
of ocean we had left. It stood like a huge writhing wall between us and
the horizon.
"It may appear strange, but now, when we were in the very jaws of the
gulf, I felt more composed than when we were only approaching it. Having
made up my mind to hope no more, I got rid of a great deal of that
terror which unmanned me at first. I suppose it was despair that strung
my nerves.
"It may look like boasting--but what I tell you is truth--I began to
reflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner, and how
foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my own
individual life, in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God's power.
I do believe that I blushed with shame when this idea crossed my mind.
After a little while I became possessed with the keenest curiosity about
the whirl itself. I positively felt a _wish_ to explore its depths, even
at the sacrifice I was going to make; and my principal grief was that
I should never be able to tell my old companions on shore about the
mysteries I should see. These, no doubt, were singular fancies to occupy
a man's mind in such extremity--and I have often thought since, that the
revolutions of the boat around the pool might have rendered me a little
light-headed.
"There was another circumstance which tended to restore my
self-possession; and this was the cessation of the wind, which could not
reach us in our present situation--for, as you saw yourself, the belt of
surf is considerably lower than the general bed of the ocean, and this
latter now towered above us, a high, black, mountainous ridge. If you
have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of the
confusion of mind occasioned by the wind and spray together. They
blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all power of action
or reflection. But we were now, in a great measure, rid of these
annoyances--just us death-condemned felons in prison are allowed petty
indulgences, forbidden them while their doom is yet uncertain.
"How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impossible to say.
We careered round and round for perhaps an hour, flying rather than
floating, getting gradually more and more into the middle of the surge,
and then nearer and nearer to its horrible inner edge. All this time I
had never let go of the ring-bolt. My brother was at the stern, holding
on to a small empty water-cask which had been securely lashed under the
coop of the counter, and was the only thing on deck that had not been
swept overboard when the gale first took us. As we approached the brink
of the pit he let go his hold upon this, and made for the ring, from
which, in the agony of his terror, he endeavored to force my hands, as
it was not large enough to afford us both a secure grasp. I never felt
deeper grief than when I saw him attempt this act--although I knew he
was a madman when he did it--a raving maniac through sheer fright. I did
not care, however, to contest the point with him. I knew it could make
no difference whether either of us held on at all; so I let him have the
bolt, and went astern to the cask. This there was no great difficulty
in doing; for the smack flew round steadily enough, and upon an even
keel--only swaying to and fro, with the immense sweeps and swelters of
the whirl. Scarcely had I secured myself in my new position, when we
gave a wild lurch to starboard, and rushed headlong into the abyss. I
muttered a hurried prayer to God, and thought all was over.
"As I felt the sickening sweep of the descent, I had instinctively
tightened my hold upon the barrel, and closed my eyes. For some seconds
I dared not open them--while I expected instant destruction, and
wondered that I was not already in my death-struggles with the water.
But moment after moment elapsed. I still lived. The sense of falling had
ceased; and the motion of the vessel seemed much as it had been before,
while in the belt of foam, with the exception that she now lay more
along. I took courage, and looked once again upon the scene.
"Never shall I forget the sensations of awe, horror, and admiration with
which I gazed about me. The boat appeared to be hanging, as if by
magic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel vast in
circumference, prodigious in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides
might have been mistaken for ebony, but for the bewildering rapidity
with which they spun around, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiance
they shot forth, as the rays of the full moon, from that circular rift
amid the clouds which I have already described, streamed in a flood of
golden glory along the black walls, and far away down into the inmost
recesses of the abyss.
"At first I was too much confused to observe anything accurately.
The general burst of terrific grandeur was all that I beheld. When I
recovered myself a little, however, my gaze fell instinctively downward.
In this direction I was able to obtain an unobstructed view, from the
manner in which the smack hung on the inclined surface of the pool. She
was quite upon an even keel--that is to say, her deck lay in a plane
parallel with that of the water--but this latter sloped at an angle of
more than forty-five degrees, so that we seemed to be lying upon our
beam-ends. I could not help observing, nevertheless, that I had scarcely
more difficulty in maintaining my hold and footing in this situation,
than if we had been upon a dead level; and this, I suppose, was owing to
the speed at which we revolved.
"The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom of the profound
gulf; but still I could make out nothing distinctly, on account of a
thick mist in which everything there was enveloped, and over which there
hung a magnificent rainbow, like that narrow and tottering bridge which
Mussulmen say is the only pathway between Time and Eternity. This mist,
or spray, was no doubt occasioned by the clashing of the great walls of
the funnel, as they all met together at the bottom--but the yell that
went up to the Heavens from out of that mist, I dare not attempt to
describe.
"Our first slide into the abyss itself, from the belt of foam above, had
carried us a great distance down the slope; but our farther descent
was by no means proportionate. Round and round we swept--not with
any uniform movement--but in dizzying swings and jerks, that sent
us sometimes only a few hundred yards--sometimes nearly the complete
circuit of the whirl. Our progress downward, at each revolution, was
slow, but very perceptible.
"Looking about me upon the wide waste of liquid ebony on which we were
thus borne, I perceived that our boat was not the only object in the
embrace of the whirl. Both above and below us were visible fragments of
vessels, large masses of building timber and trunks of trees, with
many smaller articles, such as pieces of house furniture, broken boxes,
barrels and staves. I have already described the unnatural curiosity
which had taken the place of my original terrors. It appeared to grow
upon me as I drew nearer and nearer to my dreadful doom. I now began to
watch, with a strange interest, the numerous things that floated in our
company. I _must_ have been delirious--for I even sought _amusement_
in speculating upon the relative velocities of their several descents
toward the foam below. 'This fir tree,' I found myself at one time
saying, 'will certainly be the next thing that takes the awful plunge
and disappears,'--and then I was disappointed to find that the wreck of
a Dutch merchant ship overtook it and went down before. At length, after
making several guesses of this nature, and being deceived in all--this
fact--the fact of my invariable miscalculation--set me upon a train of
reflection that made my limbs again tremble, and my heart beat heavily
once more.
"It was not a new terror that thus affected me, but the dawn of a more
exciting _hope_. This hope arose partly from memory, and partly from
present observation. I called to mind the great variety of buoyant
matter that strewed the coast of Lofoden, having been absorbed and
then thrown forth by the Moskoe-stroem. By far the greater number of the
articles were shattered in the most extraordinary way--so chafed
and roughened as to have the appearance of being stuck full of
splinters--but then I distinctly recollected that there were _some_ of
them which were not disfigured at all. Now I could not account for this
difference except by supposing that the roughened fragments were the
only ones which had been _completely absorbed_--that the others had
entered the whirl at so late a period of the tide, or, for some reason,
had descended so slowly after entering, that they did not reach the
bottom before the turn of the flood came, or of the ebb, as the case
might be. I conceived it possible, in either instance, that they might
thus be whirled up again to the level of the ocean, without undergoing
the fate of those which had been drawn in more early, or absorbed more
rapidly. I made, also, three important observations. The first was,
that, as a general rule, the larger the bodies were, the more rapid
their descent--the second, that, between two masses of equal extent, the
one spherical, and the other _of any other shape_, the superiority
in speed of descent was with the sphere--the third, that, between two
masses of equal size, the one cylindrical, and the other of any other
shape, the cylinder was absorbed the more slowly. Since my escape, I
have had several conversations on this subject with an old school-master
of the district; and it was from him that I learned the use of the words
'cylinder' and 'sphere.' He explained to me--although I have forgotten
the explanation--how what I observed was, in fact, the natural
consequence of the forms of the floating fragments--and showed me how it
happened that a cylinder, swimming in a vortex, offered more resistance
to its suction, and was drawn in with greater difficulty than an equally
bulky body, of any form whatever. (*1)
"There was one startling circumstance which went a great way in
enforcing these observations, and rendering me anxious to turn them to
account, and this was that, at every revolution, we passed something
like a barrel, or else the yard or the mast of a vessel, while many of
these things, which had been on our level when I first opened my eyes
upon the wonders of the whirlpool, were now high up above us, and seemed
to have moved but little from their original station.
"I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash myself securely to
the water cask upon which I now held, to cut it loose from the counter,
and to throw myself with it into the water. I attracted my brother's
attention by signs, pointed to the floating barrels that came near us,
and did everything in my power to make him understand what I was about
to do. I thought at length that he comprehended my design--but, whether
this was the case or not, he shook his head despairingly, and refused to
move from his station by the ring-bolt. It was impossible to reach him;
the emergency admitted of no delay; and so, with a bitter struggle, I
resigned him to his fate, fastened myself to the cask by means of the
lashings which secured it to the counter, and precipitated myself with
it into the sea, without another moment's hesitation.
"The result was precisely what I had hoped it might be. As it is myself
who now tell you this tale--as you see that I _did_ escape--and as you
are already in possession of the mode in which this escape was effected,
and must therefore anticipate all that I have farther to say--I will
bring my story quickly to conclusion. It might have been an hour, or
thereabout, after my quitting the smack, when, having descended to a
vast distance beneath me, it made three or four wild gyrations in rapid
succession, and, bearing my loved brother with it, plunged headlong, at
once and forever, into the chaos of foam below. The barrel to which I
was attached sunk very little farther than half the distance between the
bottom of the gulf and the spot at which I leaped overboard, before a
great change took place in the character of the whirlpool. The slope of
the sides of the vast funnel became momently less and less steep.
The gyrations of the whirl grew, gradually, less and less violent. By
degrees, the froth and the rainbow disappeared, and the bottom of the
gulf seemed slowly to uprise. The sky was clear, the winds had gone
down, and the full moon was setting radiantly in the west, when I
found myself on the surface of the ocean, in full view of the shores
of Lofoden, and above the spot where the pool of the Moskoe-stroem
_had been_. It was the hour of the slack--but the sea still heaved
in mountainous waves from the effects of the hurricane. I was borne
violently into the channel of the Stroem, and in a few minutes was
hurried down the coast into the 'grounds' of the fishermen. A boat
picked me up--exhausted from fatigue--and (now that the danger was
removed) speechless from the memory of its horror. Those who drew me on
board were my old mates and daily companions--but they knew me no more
than they would have known a traveller from the spirit-land. My hair
which had been raven-black the day before, was as white as you see
it now. They say too that the whole expression of my countenance had
changed. I told them my story--they did not believe it. I now tell it
to _you_--and I can scarcely expect you to put more faith in it than did
the merry fishermen of Lofoden."
VON KEMPELEN AND HIS DISCOVERY
AFTER THE very minute and elaborate paper by Arago, to say nothing of
the summary in 'Silliman's Journal,' with the detailed statement just
published by Lieutenant Maury, it will not be supposed, of course,
that in offering a few hurried remarks in reference to Von Kempelen's
discovery, I have any design to look at the subject in a scientific
point of view. My object is simply, in the first place, to say a few
words of Von Kempelen himself (with whom, some years ago, I had the
honor of a slight personal acquaintance), since every thing which
concerns him must necessarily, at this moment, be of interest; and, in
the second place, to look in a general way, and speculatively, at the
results of the discovery.
It may be as well, however, to premise the cursory observations which
I have to offer, by denying, very decidedly, what seems to be a
general impression (gleaned, as usual in a case of this kind, from the
newspapers), viz.: that this discovery, astounding as it unquestionably
is, is unanticipated.
By reference to the 'Diary of Sir Humphrey Davy' (Cottle and Munroe,
London, pp. 150), it will be seen at pp. 53 and 82, that this
illustrious chemist had not only conceived the idea now in question,
but had actually made no inconsiderable progress, experimentally, in the
very identical analysis now so triumphantly brought to an issue by Von
Kempelen, who although he makes not the slightest allusion to it, is,
without doubt (I say it unhesitatingly, and can prove it, if required),
indebted to the 'Diary' for at least the first hint of his own
undertaking.
The paragraph from the 'Courier and Enquirer,' which is now going the
rounds of the press, and which purports to claim the invention for a
Mr. Kissam, of Brunswick, Maine, appears to me, I confess, a little
apocryphal, for several reasons; although there is nothing either
impossible or very improbable in the statement made. I need not go into
details. My opinion of the paragraph is founded principally upon its
manner. It does not look true. Persons who are narrating facts, are
seldom so particular as Mr. Kissam seems to be, about day and date and
precise location. Besides, if Mr. Kissam actually did come upon the
discovery he says he did, at the period designated--nearly eight years
ago--how happens it that he took no steps, on the instant, to reap the
immense benefits which the merest bumpkin must have known would have
resulted to him individually, if not to the world at large, from the
discovery? It seems to me quite incredible that any man of common
understanding could have discovered what Mr. Kissam says he did, and yet
have subsequently acted so like a baby--so like an owl--as Mr. Kissam
admits that he did. By-the-way, who is Mr. Kissam? and is not the whole
paragraph in the 'Courier and Enquirer' a fabrication got up to 'make
a talk'? It must be confessed that it has an amazingly moon-hoaxy-air.
Very little dependence is to be placed upon it, in my humble opinion;
and if I were not well aware, from experience, how very easily men of
science are mystified, on points out of their usual range of inquiry,
I should be profoundly astonished at finding so eminent a chemist as
Professor Draper, discussing Mr. Kissam's (or is it Mr. Quizzem's?)
pretensions to the discovery, in so serious a tone.
But to return to the 'Diary' of Sir Humphrey Davy. This pamphlet was not
designed for the public eye, even upon the decease of the writer, as any
person at all conversant with authorship may satisfy himself at once by
the slightest inspection of the style. At page 13, for example, near the
middle, we read, in reference to his researches about the protoxide
of azote: 'In less than half a minute the respiration being continued,
diminished gradually and were succeeded by analogous to gentle pressure
on all the muscles.' That the respiration was not 'diminished,' is not
only clear by the subsequent context, but by the use of the plural,
'were.' The sentence, no doubt, was thus intended: 'In less than half
a minute, the respiration [being continued, these feelings] diminished
gradually, and were succeeded by [a sensation] analogous to gentle
pressure on all the muscles.' A hundred similar instances go to show
that the MS. so inconsiderately published, was merely a rough note-book,
meant only for the writer's own eye, but an inspection of the pamphlet
will convince almost any thinking person of the truth of my suggestion.
The fact is, Sir Humphrey Davy was about the last man in the world
to commit himself on scientific topics. Not only had he a more than
ordinary dislike to quackery, but he was morbidly afraid of appearing
empirical; so that, however fully he might have been convinced that he
was on the right track in the matter now in question, he would never
have spoken out, until he had every thing ready for the most practical
demonstration. I verily believe that his last moments would have been
rendered wretched, could he have suspected that his wishes in regard
to burning this 'Diary' (full of crude speculations) would have been
unattended to; as, it seems, they were. I say 'his wishes,' for that he
meant to include this note-book among the miscellaneous papers directed
'to be burnt,' I think there can be no manner of doubt. Whether it
escaped the flames by good fortune or by bad, yet remains to be seen.
That the passages quoted above, with the other similar ones referred to,
gave Von Kempelen the hint, I do not in the slightest degree question;
but I repeat, it yet remains to be seen whether this momentous discovery
itself (momentous under any circumstances) will be of service or
disservice to mankind at large. That Von Kempelen and his immediate
friends will reap a rich harvest, it would be folly to doubt for a
moment. They will scarcely be so weak as not to 'realize,' in time, by
large purchases of houses and land, with other property of intrinsic
value.
In the brief account of Von Kempelen which appeared in the
'Home Journal,' and has since been extensively copied, several
misapprehensions of the German original seem to have been made by the
translator, who professes to have taken the passage from a late number
of the Presburg 'Schnellpost.' 'Viele' has evidently been misconceived
(as it often is), and what the translator renders by 'sorrows,' is
probably 'lieden,' which, in its true version, 'sufferings,' would give
a totally different complexion to the whole account; but, of course,
much of this is merely guess, on my part.
Von Kempelen, however, is by no means 'a misanthrope,' in appearance, at
least, whatever he may be in fact. My acquaintance with him was casual
altogether; and I am scarcely warranted in saying that I know him
at all; but to have seen and conversed with a man of so prodigious a
notoriety as he has attained, or will attain in a few days, is not a
small matter, as times go.
'The Literary World' speaks of him, confidently, as a native of Presburg
(misled, perhaps, by the account in 'The Home Journal') but I am pleased
in being able to state positively, since I have it from his own lips,
that he was born in Utica, in the State of New York, although both his
parents, I believe, are of Presburg descent. The family is connected, in
some way, with Maelzel, of Automaton-chess-player memory. In person, he
is short and stout, with large, fat, blue eyes, sandy hair and whiskers,
a wide but pleasing mouth, fine teeth, and I think a Roman nose. There
is some defect in one of his feet. His address is frank, and his whole
manner noticeable for bonhomie. Altogether, he looks, speaks, and
acts as little like 'a misanthrope' as any man I ever saw. We were
fellow-sojouners for a week about six years ago, at Earl's Hotel, in
Providence, Rhode Island; and I presume that I conversed with him, at
various times, for some three or four hours altogether. His principal
topics were those of the day, and nothing that fell from him led me
to suspect his scientific attainments. He left the hotel before me,
intending to go to New York, and thence to Bremen; it was in the latter
city that his great discovery was first made public; or, rather, it was
there that he was first suspected of having made it. This is about all
that I personally know of the now immortal Von Kempelen; but I have
thought that even these few details would have interest for the public.
There can be little question that most of the marvellous rumors afloat
about this affair are pure inventions, entitled to about as much credit
as the story of Aladdin's lamp; and yet, in a case of this kind, as in
the case of the discoveries in California, it is clear that the truth
may be stranger than fiction. The following anecdote, at least, is so
well authenticated, that we may receive it implicitly.
Von Kempelen had never been even tolerably well off during his residence
at Bremen; and often, it was well known, he had been put to extreme
shifts in order to raise trifling sums. When the great excitement
occurred about the forgery on the house of Gutsmuth & Co., suspicion
was directed toward Von Kempelen, on account of his having purchased
a considerable property in Gasperitch Lane, and his refusing, when
questioned, to explain how he became possessed of the purchase money. He
was at length arrested, but nothing decisive appearing against him, was
in the end set at liberty. The police, however, kept a strict watch upon
his movements, and thus discovered that he left home frequently, taking
always the same road, and invariably giving his watchers the slip in the
neighborhood of that labyrinth of narrow and crooked passages known
by the flash name of the 'Dondergat.' Finally, by dint of great
perseverance, they traced him to a garret in an old house of seven
stories, in an alley called Flatzplatz,--and, coming upon him suddenly,
found him, as they imagined, in the midst of his counterfeiting
operations. His agitation is represented as so excessive that the
officers had not the slightest doubt of his guilt. After hand-cuffing
him, they searched his room, or rather rooms, for it appears he occupied
all the mansarde.
Opening into the garret where they caught him, was a closet, ten feet by
eight, fitted up with some chemical apparatus, of which the object has
not yet been ascertained. In one corner of the closet was a very small
furnace, with a glowing fire in it, and on the fire a kind of duplicate
crucible--two crucibles connected by a tube. One of these crucibles was
nearly full of lead in a state of fusion, but not reaching up to the
aperture of the tube, which was close to the brim. The other crucible
had some liquid in it, which, as the officers entered, seemed to be
furiously dissipating in vapor. They relate that, on finding himself
taken, Kempelen seized the crucibles with both hands (which were encased
in gloves that afterwards turned out to be asbestic), and threw the
contents on the tiled floor. It was now that they hand-cuffed him; and
before proceeding to ransack the premises they searched his person, but
nothing unusual was found about him, excepting a paper parcel, in his
coat-pocket, containing what was afterward ascertained to be a mixture
of antimony and some unknown substance, in nearly, but not quite, equal
proportions. All attempts at analyzing the unknown substance have,
so far, failed, but that it will ultimately be analyzed, is not to be
doubted.
Passing out of the closet with their prisoner, the officers went through
a sort of ante-chamber, in which nothing material was found, to the
chemist's sleeping-room. They here rummaged some drawers and boxes,
but discovered only a few papers, of no importance, and some good coin,
silver and gold. At length, looking under the bed, they saw a large,
common hair trunk, without hinges, hasp, or lock, and with the top lying
carelessly across the bottom portion. Upon attempting to draw this trunk
out from under the bed, they found that, with their united strength
(there were three of them, all powerful men), they 'could not stir it
one inch.' Much astonished at this, one of them crawled under the bed,
and looking into the trunk, said:
'No wonder we couldn't move it--why it's full to the brim of old bits of
brass!'
Putting his feet, now, against the wall so as to get a good purchase,
and pushing with all his force, while his companions pulled with an
theirs, the trunk, with much difficulty, was slid out from under the
bed, and its contents examined. The supposed brass with which it was
filled was all in small, smooth pieces, varying from the size of a pea
to that of a dollar; but the pieces were irregular in shape, although
more or less flat-looking, upon the whole, 'very much as lead looks when
thrown upon the ground in a molten state, and there suffered to grow
cool.' Now, not one of these officers for a moment suspected this metal
to be any thing but brass. The idea of its being gold never entered
their brains, of course; how could such a wild fancy have entered it?
And their astonishment may be well conceived, when the next day it
became known, all over Bremen, that the 'lot of brass' which they
had carted so contemptuously to the police office, without putting
themselves to the trouble of pocketing the smallest scrap, was not only
gold--real gold--but gold far finer than any employed in coinage-gold,
in fact, absolutely pure, virgin, without the slightest appreciable
alloy.
I need not go over the details of Von Kempelen's confession (as far as
it went) and release, for these are familiar to the public. That he has
actually realized, in spirit and in effect, if not to the letter, the
old chimaera of the philosopher's stone, no sane person is at liberty
to doubt. The opinions of Arago are, of course, entitled to the greatest
consideration; but he is by no means infallible; and what he says of
bismuth, in his report to the Academy, must be taken cum grano salis.
The simple truth is, that up to this period all analysis has failed; and
until Von Kempelen chooses to let us have the key to his own published
enigma, it is more than probable that the matter will remain, for years,
in statu quo. All that as yet can fairly be said to be known is, that
'Pure gold can be made at will, and very readily from lead in connection
with certain other substances, in kind and in proportions, unknown.'
Speculation, of course, is busy as to the immediate and ultimate results
of this discovery--a discovery which few thinking persons will hesitate
in referring to an increased interest in the matter of gold generally,
by the late developments in California; and this reflection brings us
inevitably to another--the exceeding inopportuneness of Von Kempelen's
analysis. If many were prevented from adventuring to California, by the
mere apprehension that gold would so materially diminish in value,
on account of its plentifulness in the mines there, as to render
the speculation of going so far in search of it a doubtful one--what
impression will be wrought now, upon the minds of those about to
emigrate, and especially upon the minds of those actually in the
mineral region, by the announcement of this astounding discovery of Von
Kempelen? a discovery which declares, in so many words, that beyond its
intrinsic worth for manufacturing purposes (whatever that worth may be),
gold now is, or at least soon will be (for it cannot be supposed that
Von Kempelen can long retain his secret), of no greater value than
lead, and of far inferior value to silver. It is, indeed, exceedingly
difficult to speculate prospectively upon the consequences of the
discovery, but one thing may be positively maintained--that the
announcement of the discovery six months ago would have had material
influence in regard to the settlement of California.
In Europe, as yet, the most noticeable results have been a rise of two
hundred per cent. in the price of lead, and nearly twenty-five per cent.
that of silver.
MESMERIC REVELATION
WHATEVER doubt may still envelop the _rationale_ of mesmerism,
its startling _facts_ are now almost universally admitted. Of these
latter, those who doubt, are your mere doubters by profession--an
unprofitable and disreputable tribe. There can be no more absolute waste
of time than the attempt to _prove_, at the present day, that man, by
mere exercise of will, can so impress his fellow, as to cast him into an
abnormal condition, of which the phenomena resemble very closely those
of _death_, or at least resemble them more nearly than they do the
phenomena of any other normal condition within our cognizance; that,
while in this state, the person so impressed employs only with effort,
and then feebly, the external organs of sense, yet perceives, with
keenly refined perception, and through channels supposed unknown,
matters beyond the scope of the physical organs; that, moreover, his
intellectual faculties are wonderfully exalted and invigorated; that his
sympathies with the person so impressing him are profound; and, finally,
that his susceptibility to the impression increases with its frequency,
while, in the same proportion, the peculiar phenomena elicited are more
extended and more _pronounced_.
I say that these--which are the laws of mesmerism in its
general features--it would be supererogation to demonstrate; nor shall I
inflict upon my readers so needless a demonstration; to-day. My purpose
at present is a very different one indeed. I am impelled, even in
the teeth of a world of prejudice, to detail without comment the very
remarkable substance of a colloquy, occurring between a sleep-waker and
myself.
I had been long in the habit of mesmerizing the person in
question, (Mr. Vankirk,) and the usual acute susceptibility and
exaltation of the mesmeric perception had supervened. For many months he
had been laboring under confirmed phthisis, the more distressing effects
of which had been relieved by my manipulations; and on the night of
Wednesday, the fifteenth instant, I was summoned to his bedside.
The invalid was suffering with acute pain in the region of the
heart, and breathed with great difficulty, having all the ordinary
symptoms of asthma. In spasms such as these he had usually found relief
from the application of mustard to the nervous centres, but to-night
this had been attempted in vain.
As I entered his room he greeted me with a cheerful smile, and
although evidently in much bodily pain, appeared to be, mentally, quite
at ease.
"I sent for you to-night," he said, "not so much to administer
to my bodily ailment, as to satisfy me concerning certain psychal
impressions which, of late, have occasioned me much anxiety and
surprise. I need not tell you how sceptical I have hitherto been on the
topic of the soul's immortality. I cannot deny that there has always
existed, as if in that very soul which I have been denying, a vague
half-sentiment of its own existence. But this half-sentiment at no
time amounted to conviction. With it my reason had nothing to do.
All attempts at logical inquiry resulted, indeed, in leaving me more
sceptical than before. I had been advised to study Cousin. I studied
him in his own works as well as in those of his European and American
echoes. The 'Charles Elwood' of Mr. Brownson, for example, was placed
in my hands. I read it with profound attention. Throughout I found it
logical, but the portions which were not _merely_ logical were unhappily
the initial arguments of the disbelieving hero of the book. In his
summing up it seemed evident to me that the reasoner had not even
succeeded in convincing himself. His end had plainly forgotten his
beginning, like the government of Trinculo. In short, I was not long in
perceiving that if man is to be intellectually convinced of his own
immortality, he will never be so convinced by the mere abstractions
which have been so long the fashion of the moralists of England, of
France, and of Germany. Abstractions may amuse and exercise, but take no
hold on the mind. Here upon earth, at least, philosophy, I am persuaded,
will always in vain call upon us to look upon qualities as things. The
will may assent--the soul--the intellect, never.
"I repeat, then, that I only half felt, and never intellectually
believed. But latterly there has been a certain deepening of the
feeling, until it has come so nearly to resemble the acquiescence of
reason, that I find it difficult to distinguish between the two. I am
enabled, too, plainly to trace this effect to the mesmeric influence.
I cannot better explain my meaning than by the hypothesis that the
mesmeric exaltation enables me to perceive a train of ratiocination
which, in my abnormal existence, convinces, but which, in full
accordance with the mesmeric phenomena, does not extend, except through
its _effect_, into my normal condition. In sleep-waking, the reasoning
and its conclusion--the cause and its effect--are present together. In
my natural state, the cause vanishing, the effect only, and perhaps only
partially, remains.
"These considerations have led me to think that some good
results might ensue from a series of well-directed questions
propounded to me while mesmerized. You have often observed the profound
self-cognizance evinced by the sleep-waker--the extensive knowledge he
displays upon all points relating to the mesmeric condition itself; and
from this self-cognizance may be deduced hints for the proper conduct of
a catechism."
I consented of course to make this experiment. A few passes
threw Mr. Vankirk into the mesmeric sleep. His breathing became
immediately more easy, and he seemed to suffer no physical uneasiness.
The following conversation then ensued:--V. in the dialogue representing
the patient, and P. myself.
_ P._ Are you asleep?
_ V._ Yes--no I would rather sleep more soundly.
_P._ [_After a few more passes._] Do you sleep now?
_V._ Yes.
_P._ How do you think your present illness will result?
_V._ [_After a long hesitation and speaking as if with effort_.] I must
die.
_P._ Does the idea of death afflict you?
_V._ [_Very quickly_.] No--no!
_P._ Are you pleased with the prospect?
_V._ If I were awake I should like to die, but now it is no matter. The
mesmeric condition is so near death as to content me.
_P._ I wish you would explain yourself, Mr. Vankirk.
_V._ I am willing to do so, but it requires more effort than I feel able
to make. You do not question me properly.
_P._ What then shall I ask?
_V._ You must begin at the beginning.
_P._ The beginning! but where is the beginning?
_V._ You know that the beginning is GOD. [_This was said in a low,
fluctuating tone, and with every sign of the most profound veneration_.]
_P._ What then is God?
_V._ [_Hesitating for many minutes._] I cannot tell.
_P._ Is not God spirit?
_V._ While I was awake I knew what you meant by "spirit," but now it
seems only a word--such for instance as truth, beauty--a quality, I
mean.
_P._ Is not God immaterial?
_V._ There is no immateriality--it is a mere word. That which is not
matter, is not at all--unless qualities are things.
_P._ Is God, then, material?
_V._ No. [_This reply startled me very much._]
_P._ What then is he?
_V._ [_After a long pause, and mutteringly._] I see--but it is a thing
difficult to tell. [_Another long pause._] He is not spirit, for
he exists. Nor is he matter, as _you understand it_. But there are
_gradations_ of matter of which man knows nothing; the grosser impelling
the finer, the finer pervading the grosser. The atmosphere, for example,
impels the electric principle, while the electric principle permeates
the atmosphere. These gradations of matter increase in rarity
or fineness, until we arrive at a matter _unparticled_--without
particles--indivisible--_one_ and here the law of impulsion and
permeation is modified. The ultimate, or unparticled matter, not only
permeates all things but impels all things--and thus _is_ all things
within itself. This matter is God. What men attempt to embody in the
word "thought," is this matter in motion.
_P._ The metaphysicians maintain that all action is reducible to motion
and thinking, and that the latter is the origin of the former.
_V._ Yes; and I now see the confusion of idea. Motion is the action
of _mind_--not of _thinking_. The unparticled matter, or God, in
quiescence, is (as nearly as we can conceive it) what men call mind. And
the power of self-movement (equivalent in effect to human volition) is,
in the unparticled matter, the result of its unity and omniprevalence;
_how_ I know not, and now clearly see that I shall never know. But the
unparticled matter, set in motion by a law, or quality, existing within
itself, is thinking.
_P._ Can you give me no more precise idea of what you term the
unparticled matter?
_V._ The matters of which man is cognizant, escape the senses in
gradation. We have, for example, a metal, a piece of wood, a drop of
water, the atmosphere, a gas, caloric, electricity, the luminiferous
ether. Now we call all these things matter, and embrace all matter in
one general definition; but in spite of this, there can be no two ideas
more essentially distinct than that which we attach to a metal, and that
which we attach to the luminiferous ether. When we reach the latter, we
feel an almost irresistible inclination to class it with spirit, or with
nihility. The only consideration which restrains us is our conception
of its atomic constitution; and here, even, we have to seek aid from
our notion of an atom, as something possessing in infinite minuteness,
solidity, palpability, weight. Destroy the idea of the atomic
constitution and we should no longer be able to regard the ether as an
entity, or at least as matter. For want of a better word we might term
it spirit. Take, now, a step beyond the luminiferous ether--conceive a
matter as much more rare than the ether, as this ether is more rare than
the metal, and we arrive at once (in spite of all the school dogmas) at
a unique mass--an unparticled matter. For although we may admit infinite
littleness in the atoms themselves, the infinitude of littleness in the
spaces between them is an absurdity. There will be a point--there will
be a degree of rarity, at which, if the atoms are sufficiently numerous,
the interspaces must vanish, and the mass absolutely coalesce. But
the consideration of the atomic constitution being now taken away, the
nature of the mass inevitably glides into what we conceive of spirit. It
is clear, however, that it is as fully matter as before. The truth is,
it is impossible to conceive spirit, since it is impossible to
imagine what is not. When we flatter ourselves that we have formed
its conception, we have merely deceived our understanding by the
consideration of infinitely rarified matter.
_P._ There seems to me an insurmountable objection to the idea
of absolute coalescence;--and that is the very slight resistance
experienced by the heavenly bodies in their revolutions through space--a
resistance now ascertained, it is true, to exist in _some_ degree, but
which is, nevertheless, so slight as to have been quite overlooked by
the sagacity even of Newton. We know that the resistance of bodies
is, chiefly, in proportion to their density. Absolute coalescence
is absolute density. Where there are no interspaces, there can be no
yielding. An ether, absolutely dense, would put an infinitely more
effectual stop to the progress of a star than would an ether of adamant
or of iron.
_V._ Your objection is answered with an ease which is nearly in the
ratio of its apparent unanswerability.--As regards the progress of the
star, it can make no difference whether the star passes through the
ether _or the ether through it_. There is no astronomical error more
unaccountable than that which reconciles the known retardation of the
comets with the idea of their passage through an ether: for, however
rare this ether be supposed, it would put a stop to all sidereal
revolution in a very far briefer period than has been admitted by those
astronomers who have endeavored to slur over a point which they found
it impossible to comprehend. The retardation actually experienced is, on
the other hand, about that which might be expected from the _friction_
of the ether in the instantaneous passage through the orb. In the one
case, the retarding force is momentary and complete within itself--in
the other it is endlessly accumulative.
_P._ But in all this--in this identification of mere matter with God--is
there nothing of irreverence? [_I was forced to repeat this question
before the sleep-waker fully comprehended my meaning_.]
_V._ Can you say _why_ matter should be less reverenced than mind? But
you forget that the matter of which I speak is, in all respects, the
very "mind" or "spirit" of the schools, so far as regards its high
capacities, and is, moreover, the "matter" of these schools at the
same time. God, with all the powers attributed to spirit, is but the
perfection of matter.
_P._ You assert, then, that the unparticled matter, in motion, is
thought?
_V._ In general, this motion is the universal thought of the universal
mind. This thought creates. All created things are but the thoughts of
God.
_P._ You say, "in general."
_V._ Yes. The universal mind is God. For new individualities, _matter_
is necessary.
_P._ But you now speak of "mind" and "matter" as do the metaphysicians.
_V._ Yes--to avoid confusion. When I say "mind," I mean the unparticled
or ultimate matter; by "matter," I intend all else.
_P._ You were saying that "for new individualities matter is necessary."
_V._ Yes; for mind, existing unincorporate, is merely God. To create
individual, thinking beings, it was necessary to incarnate portions
of the divine mind. Thus man is individualized. Divested of corporate
investiture, he were God. Now, the particular motion of the incarnated
portions of the unparticled matter is the thought of man; as the motion
of the whole is that of God.
_P._ You say that divested of the body man will be God?
_V._ [_After much hesitation._] I could not have said this; it is an
absurdity.
_P._ [_Referring to my notes._] You _did_ say that "divested of
corporate investiture man were God."
_V._ And this is true. Man thus divested _would be_ God--would be
unindividualized. But he can never be thus divested--at least never
_will be_--else we must imagine an action of God returning upon
itself--a purposeless and futile action. Man is a creature. Creatures
are thoughts of God. It is the nature of thought to be irrevocable.
_P._ I do not comprehend. You say that man will never put off the body?
_V._ I say that he will never be bodiless.
_P._ Explain.
_V._ There are two bodies--the rudimental and the complete;
corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly.
What we call "death," is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present
incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is
perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full design.
_P._ But of the worm's metamorphosis we are palpably cognizant.
_V._ _We_, certainly--but not the worm. The matter of which our
rudimental body is composed, is within the ken of the organs of that
body; or, more distinctly, our rudimental organs are adapted to the
matter of which is formed the rudimental body; but not to that of which
the ultimate is composed. The ultimate body thus escapes our rudimental
senses, and we perceive only the shell which falls, in decaying, from
the inner form; not that inner form itself; but this inner form, as
well as the shell, is appreciable by those who have already acquired the
ultimate life.
_P._ You have often said that the mesmeric state very nearly resembles
death. How is this?
_V._ When I say that it resembles death, I mean that it resembles the
ultimate life; for when I am entranced the senses of my rudimental
life are in abeyance, and I perceive external things directly,
without organs, through a medium which I shall employ in the ultimate,
unorganized life.
_P._ Unorganized?
_V._ Yes; organs are contrivances by which the individual is brought
into sensible relation with particular classes and forms of matter, to
the exclusion of other classes and forms. The organs of man are adapted
to his rudimental condition, and to that only; his ultimate condition,
being unorganized, is of unlimited comprehension in all points but
one--the nature of the volition of God--that is to say, the motion of
the unparticled matter. You will have a distinct idea of the ultimate
body by conceiving it to be entire brain. This it is _not_; but a
conception of this nature will bring you near a comprehension of what it
_is_. A luminous body imparts vibration to the luminiferous ether.
The vibrations generate similar ones within the retina; these again
communicate similar ones to the optic nerve. The nerve conveys similar
ones to the brain; the brain, also, similar ones to the unparticled
matter which permeates it. The motion of this latter is thought, of
which perception is the first undulation. This is the mode by which the
mind of the rudimental life communicates with the external world; and
this external world is, to the rudimental life, limited, through the
idiosyncrasy of its organs. But in the ultimate, unorganized life, the
external world reaches the whole body, (which is of a substance having
affinity to brain, as I have said,) with no other intervention than that
of an infinitely rarer ether than even the luminiferous; and to this
ether--in unison with it--the whole body vibrates, setting in motion
the unparticled matter which permeates it. It is to the absence of
idiosyncratic organs, therefore, that we must attribute the nearly
unlimited perception of the ultimate life. To rudimental beings, organs
are the cages necessary to confine them until fledged.
_P._ You speak of rudimental "beings." Are there other rudimental
thinking beings than man?
_V._ The multitudinous conglomeration of rare matter into nebulae,
planets, suns, and other bodies which are neither nebulae, suns,
nor planets, is for the sole purpose of supplying _pabulum_ for the
idiosyncrasy of the organs of an infinity of rudimental beings. But for
the necessity of the rudimental, prior to the ultimate life, there
would have been no bodies such as these. Each of these is tenanted by a
distinct variety of organic, rudimental, thinking creatures. In all,
the organs vary with the features of the place tenanted. At death,
or metamorphosis, these creatures, enjoying the ultimate
life--immortality--and cognizant of all secrets but _the one_, act all
things and pass everywhere by mere volition:--indwelling, not the stars,
which to us seem the sole palpabilities, and for the accommodation
of which we blindly deem space created--but that SPACE itself--that
infinity of which the truly substantive vastness swallows up the
star-shadows--blotting them out as non-entities from the perception of
the angels.
_P._ You say that "but for the _necessity_ of the rudimental life" there
would have been no stars. But why this necessity?
_V._ In the inorganic life, as well as in the inorganic matter
generally, there is nothing to impede the action of one simple _unique_
law--the Divine Volition. With the view of producing impediment, the
organic life and matter, (complex, substantial, and law-encumbered,)
were contrived.
_P._ But again--why need this impediment have been produced?
_V._ The result of law inviolate is perfection--right--negative
happiness. The result of law violate is imperfection, wrong, positive
pain. Through the impediments afforded by the number, complexity, and
substantiality of the laws of organic life and matter, the violation of
law is rendered, to a certain extent, practicable. Thus pain, which in
the inorganic life is impossible, is possible in the organic.
_P._ But to what good end is pain thus rendered possible?
_V._ All things are either good or bad by comparison. A sufficient
analysis will show that pleasure, in all cases, is but the contrast of
pain. _Positive_ pleasure is a mere idea. To be happy at any one point
we must have suffered at the same. Never to suffer would have been never
to have been blessed. But it has been shown that, in the inorganic
life, pain cannot be thus the necessity for the organic. The pain of the
primitive life of Earth, is the sole basis of the bliss of the ultimate
life in Heaven.
_P._ Still, there is one of your expressions which I find it impossible
to comprehend--"the truly _substantive_ vastness of infinity."
_V._ This, probably, is because you have no sufficiently generic
conception of the term "_substance_" itself. We must not regard it as a
quality, but as a sentiment:--it is the perception, in thinking beings,
of the adaptation of matter to their organization. There are many things
on the Earth, which would be nihility to the inhabitants of Venus--many
things visible and tangible in Venus, which we could not be brought
to appreciate as existing at all. But to the inorganic beings--to the
angels--the whole of the unparticled matter is substance--that is
to say, the whole of what we term "space" is to them the truest
substantiality;--the stars, meantime, through what we consider their
materiality, escaping the angelic sense, just in proportion as the
unparticled matter, through what we consider its immateriality, eludes
the organic.
As the sleep-waker pronounced these latter words, in a feeble tone,
I observed on his countenance a singular expression, which somewhat
alarmed me, and induced me to awake him at once. No sooner had I done
this, than, with a bright smile irradiating all his features, he fell
back upon his pillow and expired. I noticed that in less than a minute
afterward his corpse had all the stern rigidity of stone. His brow was
of the coldness of ice. Thus, ordinarily, should it have appeared, only
after long pressure from Azrael's hand. Had the sleep-waker, indeed,
during the latter portion of his discourse, been addressing me from out
the region of the shadows?
THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR
OF course I shall not pretend to consider it any matter for wonder, that
the extraordinary case of M. Valdemar has excited discussion. It would
have been a miracle had it not-especially under the circumstances.
Through the desire of all parties concerned, to keep the affair from the
public, at least for the present, or until we had farther opportunities
for investigation--through our endeavors to effect this--a garbled or
exaggerated account made its way into society, and became the source of
many unpleasant misrepresentations, and, very naturally, of a great deal
of disbelief.
It is now rendered necessary that I give the facts--as far as I
comprehend them myself. They are, succinctly, these:
My attention, for the last three years, had been repeatedly drawn to
the subject of Mesmerism; and, about nine months ago it occurred to me,
quite suddenly, that in the series of experiments made hitherto, there
had been a very remarkable and most unaccountable omission:--no person
had as yet been mesmerized in articulo mortis. It remained to be seen,
first, whether, in such condition, there existed in the patient any
susceptibility to the magnetic influence; secondly, whether, if any
existed, it was impaired or increased by the condition; thirdly, to what
extent, or for how long a period, the encroachments of Death might be
arrested by the process. There were other points to be ascertained,
but these most excited my curiosity--the last in especial, from the
immensely important character of its consequences.
In looking around me for some subject by whose means I might test these
particulars, I was brought to think of my friend, M. Ernest Valdemar,
the well-known compiler of the "Bibliotheca Forensica," and author
(under the nom de plume of Issachar Marx) of the Polish versions of
"Wallenstein" and "Gargantua." M. Valdemar, who has resided principally
at Harlaem, N.Y., since the year 1839, is (or was) particularly
noticeable for the extreme spareness of his person--his lower limbs much
resembling those of John Randolph; and, also, for the whiteness of his
whiskers, in violent contrast to the blackness of his hair--the latter,
in consequence, being very generally mistaken for a wig. His temperament
was markedly nervous, and rendered him a good subject for mesmeric
experiment. On two or three occasions I had put him to sleep with little
difficulty, but was disappointed in other results which his peculiar
constitution had naturally led me to anticipate. His will was at no
period positively, or thoroughly, under my control, and in regard to
clairvoyance, I could accomplish with him nothing to be relied upon. I
always attributed my failure at these points to the disordered state of
his health. For some months previous to my becoming acquainted with
him, his physicians had declared him in a confirmed phthisis. It was his
custom, indeed, to speak calmly of his approaching dissolution, as of a
matter neither to be avoided nor regretted.
When the ideas to which I have alluded first occurred to me, it was
of course very natural that I should think of M. Valdemar. I knew the
steady philosophy of the man too well to apprehend any scruples
from him; and he had no relatives in America who would be likely to
interfere. I spoke to him frankly upon the subject; and, to my surprise,
his interest seemed vividly excited. I say to my surprise, for, although
he had always yielded his person freely to my experiments, he had never
before given me any tokens of sympathy with what I did. His disease was
if that character which would admit of exact calculation in respect
to the epoch of its termination in death; and it was finally arranged
between us that he would send for me about twenty-four hours before the
period announced by his physicians as that of his decease.
It is now rather more than seven months since I received, from M.
Valdemar himself, the subjoined note:
My DEAR P---,
You may as well come now. D--and F--are agreed that I cannot hold out
beyond to-morrow midnight; and I think they have hit the time very
nearly.
VALDEMAR
I received this note within half an hour after it was written, and in
fifteen minutes more I was in the dying man's chamber. I had not seen
him for ten days, and was appalled by the fearful alteration which the
brief interval had wrought in him. His face wore a leaden hue; the eyes
were utterly lustreless; and the emaciation was so extreme that the
skin had been broken through by the cheek-bones. His expectoration was
excessive. The pulse was barely perceptible. He retained, nevertheless,
in a very remarkable manner, both his mental power and a certain degree
of physical strength. He spoke with distinctness--took some palliative
medicines without aid--and, when I entered the room, was occupied in
penciling memoranda in a pocket-book. He was propped up in the bed by
pillows. Doctors D---- and F---- were in attendance.
After pressing Valdemar's hand, I took these gentlemen aside, and
obtained from them a minute account of the patient's condition. The left
lung had been for eighteen months in a semi-osseous or cartilaginous
state, and was, of course, entirely useless for all purposes of
vitality. The right, in its upper portion, was also partially, if
not thoroughly, ossified, while the lower region was merely a mass
of purulent tubercles, running one into another. Several extensive
perforations existed; and, at one point, permanent adhesion to the
ribs had taken place. These appearances in the right lobe were of
comparatively recent date. The ossification had proceeded with very
unusual rapidity; no sign of it had discovered a month before, and
the adhesion had only been observed during the three previous days.
Independently of the phthisis, the patient was suspected of aneurism
of the aorta; but on this point the osseous symptoms rendered an exact
diagnosis impossible. It was the opinion of both physicians that M.
Valdemar would die about midnight on the morrow (Sunday). It was then
seven o'clock on Saturday evening.
On quitting the invalid's bed-side to hold conversation with myself,
Doctors D--and F--had bidden him a final farewell. It had not been their
intention to return; but, at my request, they agreed to look in upon the
patient about ten the next night.
When they had gone, I spoke freely with M. Valdemar on the subject
of his approaching dissolution, as well as, more particularly, of the
experiment proposed. He still professed himself quite willing and even
anxious to have it made, and urged me to commence it at once. A male and
a female nurse were in attendance; but I did not feel myself altogether
at liberty to engage in a task of this character with no more reliable
witnesses than these people, in case of sudden accident, might prove.
I therefore postponed operations until about eight the next night, when
the arrival of a medical student with whom I had some acquaintance, (Mr.
Theodore L--l,) relieved me from farther embarrassment. It had been my
design, originally, to wait for the physicians; but I was induced to
proceed, first, by the urgent entreaties of M. Valdemar, and secondly,
by my conviction that I had not a moment to lose, as he was evidently
sinking fast.
Mr. L--l was so kind as to accede to my desire that he would take notes
of all that occurred, and it is from his memoranda that what I now have
to relate is, for the most part, either condensed or copied verbatim.
It wanted about five minutes of eight when, taking the patient's hand, I
begged him to state, as distinctly as he could, to Mr. L--l, whether he
(M. Valdemar) was entirely willing that I should make the experiment of
mesmerizing him in his then condition.
He replied feebly, yet quite audibly, "Yes, I wish to be. I fear you
have mesmerized"--adding immediately afterwards, "deferred it too long."
While he spoke thus, I commenced the passes which I had already found
most effectual in subduing him. He was evidently influenced with the
first lateral stroke of my hand across his forehead; but although I
exerted all my powers, no farther perceptible effect was induced
until some minutes after ten o'clock, when Doctors D-- and F-- called,
according to appointment. I explained to them, in a few words, what I
designed, and as they opposed no objection, saying that the patient was
already in the death agony, I proceeded without hesitation--exchanging,
however, the lateral passes for downward ones, and directing my gaze
entirely into the right eye of the sufferer.
By this time his pulse was imperceptible and his breathing was
stertorous, and at intervals of half a minute.
This condition was nearly unaltered for a quarter of an hour. At the
expiration of this period, however, a natural although a very deep
sigh escaped the bosom of the dying man, and the stertorous breathing
ceased--that is to say, its stertorousness was no longer apparent; the
intervals were undiminished. The patient's extremities were of an icy
coldness.
At five minutes before eleven I perceived unequivocal signs of the
mesmeric influence. The glassy roll of the eye was changed for that
expression of uneasy inward examination which is never seen except in
cases of sleep-waking, and which it is quite impossible to mistake.
With a few rapid lateral passes I made the lids quiver, as in incipient
sleep, and with a few more I closed them altogether. I was not
satisfied, however, with this, but continued the manipulations
vigorously, and with the fullest exertion of the will, until I had
completely stiffened the limbs of the slumberer, after placing them in
a seemingly easy position. The legs were at full length; the arms were
nearly so, and reposed on the bed at a moderate distance from the loin.
The head was very slightly elevated.
When I had accomplished this, it was fully midnight, and I requested
the gentlemen present to examine M. Valdemar's condition. After a few
experiments, they admitted him to be an unusually perfect state of
mesmeric trance. The curiosity of both the physicians was greatly
excited. Dr. D---- resolved at once to remain with the patient all
night, while Dr. F---- took leave with a promise to return at daybreak.
Mr. L--l and the nurses remained.
We left M. Valdemar entirely undisturbed until about three o'clock in
the morning, when I approached him and found him in precisely the same
condition as when Dr. F--went away--that is to say, he lay in the
same position; the pulse was imperceptible; the breathing was gentle
(scarcely noticeable, unless through the application of a mirror to the
lips); the eyes were closed naturally; and the limbs were as rigid and
as cold as marble. Still, the general appearance was certainly not that
of death.
As I approached M. Valdemar I made a kind of half effort to influence
his right arm into pursuit of my own, as I passed the latter gently
to and fro above his person. In such experiments with this patient had
never perfectly succeeded before, and assuredly I had little thought of
succeeding now; but to my astonishment, his arm very readily, although
feebly, followed every direction I assigned it with mine. I determined
to hazard a few words of conversation.
"M. Valdemar," I said, "are you asleep?" He made no answer, but I
perceived a tremor about the lips, and was thus induced to repeat the
question, again and again. At its third repetition, his whole frame was
agitated by a very slight shivering; the eyelids unclosed themselves so
far as to display a white line of the ball; the lips moved sluggishly,
and from between them, in a barely audible whisper, issued the words:
"Yes;--asleep now. Do not wake me!--let me die so!"
I here felt the limbs and found them as rigid as ever. The right arm,
as before, obeyed the direction of my hand. I questioned the sleep-waker
again:
"Do you still feel pain in the breast, M. Valdemar?"
The answer now was immediate, but even less audible than before: "No
pain--I am dying."
I did not think it advisable to disturb him farther just then, and
nothing more was said or done until the arrival of Dr. F--, who came a
little before sunrise, and expressed unbounded astonishment at finding
the patient still alive. After feeling the pulse and applying a mirror
to the lips, he requested me to speak to the sleep-waker again. I did
so, saying:
"M. Valdemar, do you still sleep?"
As before, some minutes elapsed ere a reply was made; and during the
interval the dying man seemed to be collecting his energies to speak.
At my fourth repetition of the question, he said very faintly, almost
inaudibly:
"Yes; still asleep--dying."
It was now the opinion, or rather the wish, of the physicians, that
M. Valdemar should be suffered to remain undisturbed in his present
apparently tranquil condition, until death should supervene--and this,
it was generally agreed, must now take place within a few minutes. I
concluded, however, to speak to him once more, and merely repeated my
previous question.
While I spoke, there came a marked change over the countenance of
the sleep-waker. The eyes rolled themselves slowly open, the pupils
disappearing upwardly; the skin generally assumed a cadaverous hue,
resembling not so much parchment as white paper; and the circular hectic
spots which, hitherto, had been strongly defined in the centre of each
cheek, went out at once. I use this expression, because the
suddenness of their departure put me in mind of nothing so much as the
extinguishment of a candle by a puff of the breath. The upper lip,
at the same time, writhed itself away from the teeth, which it had
previously covered completely; while the lower jaw fell with an audible
jerk, leaving the mouth widely extended, and disclosing in full view the
swollen and blackened tongue. I presume that no member of the party
then present had been unaccustomed to death-bed horrors; but so hideous
beyond conception was the appearance of M. Valdemar at this moment, that
there was a general shrinking back from the region of the bed.
I now feel that I have reached a point of this narrative at which every
reader will be startled into positive disbelief. It is my business,
however, simply to proceed.
There was no longer the faintest sign of vitality in M. Valdemar; and
concluding him to be dead, we were consigning him to the charge of the
nurses, when a strong vibratory motion was observable in the tongue.
This continued for perhaps a minute. At the expiration of this period,
there issued from the distended and motionless jaws a voice--such as it
would be madness in me to attempt describing. There are, indeed, two or
three epithets which might be considered as applicable to it in part; I
might say, for example, that the sound was harsh, and broken and hollow;
but the hideous whole is indescribable, for the simple reason that no
similar sounds have ever jarred upon the ear of humanity. There were two
particulars, nevertheless, which I thought then, and still think, might
fairly be stated as characteristic of the intonation--as well adapted to
convey some idea of its unearthly peculiarity. In the first place, the
voice seemed to reach our ears--at least mine--from a vast distance,
or from some deep cavern within the earth. In the second place, it
impressed me (I fear, indeed, that it will be impossible to make myself
comprehended) as gelatinous or glutinous matters impress the sense of
touch.
I have spoken both of "sound" and of "voice." I mean to say that
the sound was one of distinct--of even wonderfully, thrillingly
distinct--syllabification. M. Valdemar spoke--obviously in reply to the
question I had propounded to him a few minutes before. I had asked him,
it will be remembered, if he still slept. He now said:
"Yes;--no;--I have been sleeping--and now--now--I am dead."
No person present even affected to deny, or attempted to repress, the
unutterable, shuddering horror which these few words, thus uttered, were
so well calculated to convey. Mr. L--l (the student) swooned. The nurses
immediately left the chamber, and could not be induced to return. My own
impressions I would not pretend to render intelligible to the reader.
For nearly an hour, we busied ourselves, silently--without the utterance
of a word--in endeavors to revive Mr. L--l. When he came to himself,
we addressed ourselves again to an investigation of M. Valdemar's
condition.
It remained in all respects as I have last described it, with the
exception that the mirror no longer afforded evidence of respiration. An
attempt to draw blood from the arm failed. I should mention, too, that
this limb was no farther subject to my will. I endeavored in vain to
make it follow the direction of my hand. The only real indication,
indeed, of the mesmeric influence, was now found in the vibratory
movement of the tongue, whenever I addressed M. Valdemar a question.
He seemed to be making an effort to reply, but had no longer sufficient
volition. To queries put to him by any other person than myself he
seemed utterly insensible--although I endeavored to place each member
of the company in mesmeric rapport with him. I believe that I have now
related all that is necessary to an understanding of the sleep-waker's
state at this epoch. Other nurses were procured; and at ten o'clock I
left the house in company with the two physicians and Mr. L--l.
In the afternoon we all called again to see the patient. His condition
remained precisely the same. We had now some discussion as to the
propriety and feasibility of awakening him; but we had little difficulty
in agreeing that no good purpose would be served by so doing. It was
evident that, so far, death (or what is usually termed death) had been
arrested by the mesmeric process. It seemed clear to us all that to
awaken M. Valdemar would be merely to insure his instant, or at least
his speedy dissolution.
From this period until the close of last week--an interval of nearly
seven months--we continued to make daily calls at M. Valdemar's house,
accompanied, now and then, by medical and other friends. All this time
the sleeper-waker remained exactly as I have last described him. The
nurses' attentions were continual.
It was on Friday last that we finally resolved to make the experiment
of awakening or attempting to awaken him; and it is the (perhaps)
unfortunate result of this latter experiment which has given rise to
so much discussion in private circles--to so much of what I cannot help
thinking unwarranted popular feeling.
For the purpose of relieving M. Valdemar from the mesmeric trance, I
made use of the customary passes. These, for a time, were unsuccessful.
The first indication of revival was afforded by a partial descent of the
iris. It was observed, as especially remarkable, that this lowering
of the pupil was accompanied by the profuse out-flowing of a yellowish
ichor (from beneath the lids) of a pungent and highly offensive odor.
It was now suggested that I should attempt to influence the patient's
arm, as heretofore. I made the attempt and failed. Dr. F--then intimated
a desire to have me put a question. I did so, as follows:
"M. Valdemar, can you explain to us what are your feelings or wishes
now?"
There was an instant return of the hectic circles on the cheeks; the
tongue quivered, or rather rolled violently in the mouth (although the
jaws and lips remained rigid as before;) and at length the same hideous
voice which I have already described, broke forth:
"For God's sake!--quick!--quick!--put me to sleep--or, quick!--waken
me!--quick!--I say to you that I am dead!"
I was thoroughly unnerved, and for an instant remained undecided what to
do. At first I made an endeavor to re-compose the patient; but, failing
in this through total abeyance of the will, I retraced my steps and as
earnestly struggled to awaken him. In this attempt I soon saw that I
should be successful--or at least I soon fancied that my success would
be complete--and I am sure that all in the room were prepared to see the
patient awaken.
For what really occurred, however, it is quite impossible that any human
being could have been prepared.
As I rapidly made the mesmeric passes, amid ejaculations of "dead!
dead!" absolutely bursting from the tongue and not from the lips of the
sufferer, his whole frame at once--within the space of a single minute,
or even less, shrunk--crumbled--absolutely rotted away beneath my hands.
Upon the bed, before that whole company, there lay a nearly liquid mass
of loathsome--of detestable putridity.
THE BLACK CAT.
FOR the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I
neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it,
in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I
not--and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day
I would unburthen my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before
the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of
mere household events. In their consequences, these events have
terrified--have tortured--have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to
expound them. To me, they have presented little but Horror--to many
they will seem less terrible than _barroques_. Hereafter, perhaps,
some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the
common-place--some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less
excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I
detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very
natural causes and effects.
From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my
disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make
me the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was
indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent
most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing
them. This peculiarity of character grew with my growth, and in my
manhood, I derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure. To
those who have cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious
dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the nature or the
intensity of the gratification thus derivable. There is something in the
unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly
to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry
friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere _Man_.
I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not
uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she
lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We
had birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and _a cat_.
This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black,
and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his intelligence,
my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition,
made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all
black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever _serious_ upon
this point--and I mention the matter at all for no better reason than
that it happens, just now, to be remembered.
Pluto--this was the cat's name--was my favorite pet and playmate. I
alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house. It
was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me
through the streets.
Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which
my general temperament and character--through the instrumentality of the
Fiend Intemperance--had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical
alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more
irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself
to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her
personal violence. My pets, of course, were made to feel the change
in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them. For
Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from
maltreating him, as I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the
monkey, or even the dog, when by accident, or through affection, they
came in my way. But my disease grew upon me--for what disease is like
Alcohol!--and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and
consequently somewhat peevish--even Pluto began to experience the
effects of my ill temper.
One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about
town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in
his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with
his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself
no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my
body and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every
fibre of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened
it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of
its eyes from the socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the
damnable atrocity.
When reason returned with the morning--when I had slept off the fumes of
the night's debauch--I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of
remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it was, at best,
a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I again
plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed.
In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket of the lost eye
presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer appeared
to suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual, but, as might be
expected, fled in extreme terror at my approach. I had so much of my
old heart left, as to be at first grieved by this evident dislike on
the part of a creature which had once so loved me. But this feeling
soon gave place to irritation. And then came, as if to my final and
irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of this spirit
philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives,
than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the
human heart--one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments,
which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred
times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other
reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual
inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which
is _Law_, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit
of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this
unfathomable longing of the soul _to vex itself_--to offer violence to
its own nature--to do wrong for the wrong's sake only--that urged me to
continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the
unoffending brute. One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about
its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree;--hung it with the
tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my
heart;--hung it _because_ I knew that it had loved me, and _because_
I felt it had given me no reason of offence;--hung it _because_ I knew
that in so doing I was committing a sin--a deadly sin that would
so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it--if such a thing wore
possible--even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most
Merciful and Most Terrible God.
On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was aroused
from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames.
The whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that my wife,
a servant, and myself, made our escape from the conflagration. The
destruction was complete. My entire worldly wealth was swallowed up, and
I resigned myself thenceforward to despair.
I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause
and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity. But I am detailing a
chain of facts--and wish not to leave even a possible link imperfect.
On the day succeeding the fire, I visited the ruins. The walls, with
one exception, had fallen in. This exception was found in a compartment
wall, not very thick, which stood about the middle of the house, and
against which had rested the head of my bed. The plastering had here,
in great measure, resisted the action of the fire--a fact which I
attributed to its having been recently spread. About this wall a
dense crowd were collected, and many persons seemed to be examining a
particular portion of it with very minute and eager attention. The
words "strange!" "singular!" and other similar expressions, excited my
curiosity. I approached and saw, as if graven in _bas relief_ upon the
white surface, the figure of a gigantic _cat_. The impression was given
with an accuracy truly marvellous. There was a rope about the animal's
neck.
When I first beheld this apparition--for I could scarcely regard it as
less--my wonder and my terror were extreme. But at length reflection
came to my aid. The cat, I remembered, had been hung in a garden
adjacent to the house. Upon the alarm of fire, this garden had been
immediately filled by the crowd--by some one of whom the animal must
have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window, into my
chamber. This had probably been done with the view of arousing me
from sleep. The falling of other walls had compressed the victim of my
cruelty into the substance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of
which, with the flames, and the _ammonia_ from the carcass, had then
accomplished the portraiture as I saw it.
Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to my
conscience, for the startling fact just detailed, it did not the less
fail to make a deep impression upon my fancy. For months I could not rid
myself of the phantasm of the cat; and, during this period, there came
back into my spirit a half-sentiment that seemed, but was not, remorse.
I went so far as to regret the loss of the animal, and to look about me,
among the vile haunts which I now habitually frequented, for another pet
of the same species, and of somewhat similar appearance, with which to
supply its place.
One night as I sat, half stupified, in a den of more than infamy, my
attention was suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon
the head of one of the immense hogsheads of Gin, or of Rum, which
constituted the chief furniture of the apartment. I had been looking
steadily at the top of this hogshead for some minutes, and what now
caused me surprise was the fact that I had not sooner perceived the
object thereupon. I approached it, and touched it with my hand. It was
a black cat--a very large one--fully as large as Pluto, and closely
resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a white hair upon
any portion of his body; but this cat had a large, although indefinite
splotch of white, covering nearly the whole region of the breast. Upon
my touching him, he immediately arose, purred loudly, rubbed against my
hand, and appeared delighted with my notice. This, then, was the very
creature of which I was in search. I at once offered to purchase it
of the landlord; but this person made no claim to it--knew nothing of
it--had never seen it before.
I continued my caresses, and, when I prepared to go home, the animal
evinced a disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to do so;
occasionally stooping and patting it as I proceeded. When it reached
the house it domesticated itself at once, and became immediately a great
favorite with my wife.
For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This
was just the reverse of what I had anticipated; but--I know not how
or why it was--its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and
annoyed. By slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose
into the bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature; a certain sense
of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty, preventing
me from physically abusing it. I did not, for some weeks, strike, or
otherwise violently ill use it; but gradually--very gradually--I came
to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its
odious presence, as from the breath of a pestilence.
What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on
the morning after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had been
deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however, only endeared
it to my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed, in a high degree,
that humanity of feeling which had once been my distinguishing trait,
and the source of many of my simplest and purest pleasures.
With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed
to increase. It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which it would
be difficult to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat, it would
crouch beneath my chair, or spring upon my knees, covering me with its
loathsome caresses. If I arose to walk it would get between my feet and
thus nearly throw me down, or, fastening its long and sharp claws in my
dress, clamber, in this manner, to my breast. At such times, although
I longed to destroy it with a blow, I was yet withheld from so doing,
partly by a memory of my former crime, but chiefly--let me confess it at
once--by absolute dread of the beast.
This dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil--and yet I should be
at a loss how otherwise to define it. I am almost ashamed to own--yes,
even in this felon's cell, I am almost ashamed to own--that the terror
and horror with which the animal inspired me, had been heightened by one
of the merest chimaeras it would be possible to conceive. My wife had
called my attention, more than once, to the character of the mark of
white hair, of which I have spoken, and which constituted the sole
visible difference between the strange beast and the one I had
destroyed. The reader will remember that this mark, although large, had
been originally very indefinite; but, by slow degrees--degrees nearly
imperceptible, and which for a long time my Reason struggled to reject
as fanciful--it had, at length, assumed a rigorous distinctness of
outline. It was now the representation of an object that I shudder to
name--and for this, above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have
rid myself of the monster _had I dared_--it was now, I say, the image
of a hideous--of a ghastly thing--of the GALLOWS!--oh, mournful and
terrible engine of Horror and of Crime--of Agony and of Death!
And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity.
And _a brute beast _--whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed--_a
brute beast_ to work out for _me_--for me a man, fashioned in the image
of the High God--so much of insufferable wo! Alas! neither by day nor
by night knew I the blessing of Rest any more! During the former the
creature left me no moment alone; and, in the latter, I started, hourly,
from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of _the thing_
upon my face, and its vast weight--an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no
power to shake off--incumbent eternally upon my _heart!_
Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant
of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole
intimates--the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of
my usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind;
while, from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury
to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas!
was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers.
One day she accompanied me, upon some household errand, into the cellar
of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit. The cat
followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong,
exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my
wrath, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a
blow at the animal which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal
had it descended as I wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of
my wife. Goaded, by the interference, into a rage more than demoniacal,
I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She
fell dead upon the spot, without a groan.
This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and with
entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. I knew that I
could not remove it from the house, either by day or by night, without
the risk of being observed by the neighbors. Many projects entered
my mind. At one period I thought of cutting the corpse into minute
fragments, and destroying them by fire. At another, I resolved to dig
a grave for it in the floor of the cellar. Again, I deliberated about
casting it in the well in the yard--about packing it in a box, as if
merchandize, with the usual arrangements, and so getting a porter to
take it from the house. Finally I hit upon what I considered a far
better expedient than either of these. I determined to wall it up in the
cellar--as the monks of the middle ages are recorded to have walled up
their victims.
For a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted. Its walls were
loosely constructed, and had lately been plastered throughout with a
rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had prevented from
hardening. Moreover, in one of the walls was a projection, caused by
a false chimney, or fireplace, that had been filled up, and made to
resemble the red of the cellar. I made no doubt that I could readily
displace the bricks at this point, insert the corpse, and wall the whole
up as before, so that no eye could detect any thing suspicious. And in
this calculation I was not deceived. By means of a crow-bar I easily
dislodged the bricks, and, having carefully deposited the body against
the inner wall, I propped it in that position, while, with little
trouble, I re-laid the whole structure as it originally stood. Having
procured mortar, sand, and hair, with every possible precaution, I
prepared a plaster which could not be distinguished from the old, and
with this I very carefully went over the new brickwork. When I had
finished, I felt satisfied that all was right. The wall did not present
the slightest appearance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on
the floor was picked up with the minutest care. I looked around
triumphantly, and said to myself--"Here at least, then, my labor has not
been in vain."
My next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause of so
much wretchedness; for I had, at length, firmly resolved to put it to
death. Had I been able to meet with it, at the moment, there could have
been no doubt of its fate; but it appeared that the crafty animal had
been alarmed at the violence of my previous anger, and forebore to
present itself in my present mood. It is impossible to describe, or to
imagine, the deep, the blissful sense of relief which the absence of the
detested creature occasioned in my bosom. It did not make its
appearance during the night--and thus for one night at least, since its
introduction into the house, I soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, slept
even with the burden of murder upon my soul!
The second and the third day passed, and still my tormentor came not.
Once again I breathed as a freeman. The monster, in terror, had fled the
premises forever! I should behold it no more! My happiness was supreme!
The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. Some few inquiries
had been made, but these had been readily answered. Even a search had
been instituted--but of course nothing was to be discovered. I looked
upon my future felicity as secured.
Upon the fourth day of the assassination, a party of the police came,
very unexpectedly, into the house, and proceeded again to make rigorous
investigation of the premises. Secure, however, in the inscrutability of
my place of concealment, I felt no embarrassment whatever. The officers
bade me accompany them in their search. They left no nook or corner
unexplored. At length, for the third or fourth time, they descended into
the cellar. I quivered not in a muscle. My heart beat calmly as that of
one who slumbers in innocence. I walked the cellar from end to end. I
folded my arms upon my bosom, and roamed easily to and fro. The police
were thoroughly satisfied and prepared to depart. The glee at my heart
was too strong to be restrained. I burned to say if but one word, by
way of triumph, and to render doubly sure their assurance of my
guiltlessness.
"Gentlemen," I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, "I delight
to have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health, and a little
more courtesy. By the bye, gentlemen, this--this is a very well
constructed house." [In the rabid desire to say something easily, I
scarcely knew what I uttered at all.]--"I may say an _excellently_ well
constructed house. These walls are you going, gentlemen?--these walls
are solidly put together;" and here, through the mere phrenzy of
bravado, I rapped heavily, with a cane which I held in my hand, upon
that very portion of the brick-work behind which stood the corpse of the
wife of my bosom.
But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the Arch-Fiend! No
sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence, than I was
answered by a voice from within the tomb!--by a cry, at first muffled
and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into
one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman--a
howl--a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as
might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the
dammed in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation.
Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to
the opposite wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained
motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a dozen
stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already
greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of
the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye
of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder,
and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled
the monster up within the tomb!
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
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 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 was the
apparent _heart_ that went with his request--which allowed me no
room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still
considered a very singular summons.
Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really
knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and
habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been
noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament,
displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and
manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive
charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps
even more than to the orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of
musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the
stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no
period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay
in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and
very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered,
while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of
the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while
speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long
lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other--it was this
deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating
transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which
had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title
of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the "House
of Usher"--an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the
peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish
experiment--that of looking down within the tarn--had been to deepen the
first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness
of the rapid increase of my superstition--for why should I not so term
it?--served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have
long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a
basis. And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again
uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there
grew in my mind a strange fancy--a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I
but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed
me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that
about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar
to themselves and their immediate vicinity--an atmosphere which had
no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the
decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn--a pestilent and
mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
Shaking off from my spirit what _must_ have been a dream, I scanned more
narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed
to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been
great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine
tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any
extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and
there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect
adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual
stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality
of old wood-work which has rotted for long years in some neglected
vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond
this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little
token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might
have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the
roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag
direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A
servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of
the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence,
through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the _studio_
of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know
not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already
spoken. While the objects around me--while the carvings of the ceilings,
the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors,
and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were
but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my
infancy--while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all
this--I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which
ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the
physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled
expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with
trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered
me into the presence of his master.
The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows
were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black
oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams
of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellissed panes,
and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects
around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles
of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling.
Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse,
comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments
lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I
felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and
irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.
Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at
full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in
it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality--of the constrained
effort of the _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 eye, above all things
startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to
grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated
rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect
its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence--an
inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble
and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy--an excessive
nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been
prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain
boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical
conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and
sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the
animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic
concision--that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding
enunciation--that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated
guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the
irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense
excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest
desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He
entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his
malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one
for which he despaired to find a remedy--a mere nervous affection, he
immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed
itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed
them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and
the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much
from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone
endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors
of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint
light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed
instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.
To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. "I shall
perish," said he, "I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus,
and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future,
not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought
of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this
intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger,
except in its absolute effect--in terror. In this unnerved--in this
pitiable condition--I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive
when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the
grim phantasm, FEAR."
I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal
hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was
enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling
which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured
forth--in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed
in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated--an influence which some
peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had,
by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit--an effect
which the _physique_ of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn
into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the
_morale_ of his existence.
He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the
peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more
natural and far more palpable origin--to the severe and 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 endeavors to
alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or
I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking
guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more
unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did
I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which
darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all
objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation
of gloom.
I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus
spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in
any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies,
or of the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the way. An
excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over
all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears. Among
other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and
amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the
paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch
by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly,
because I shuddered knowing not why;--from these paintings (vivid as
their images now are before me) I would in vain endeavor to educe more
than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely
written words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs,
he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted an idea, that
mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at least--in the circumstances then
surrounding me--there arose out of the pure abstractions which the
hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvass, an intensity of
intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation
of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli.
One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so
rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although
feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely
long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and
without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design
served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding
depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any
portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of
light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout,
and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendor.
I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which
rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of
certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow
limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave
birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances.
But the fervid _facility_ of his _impromptus_ could not be so accounted
for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the
words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself
with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental
collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded
as observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial
excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily
remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it, as
he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I
fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness
on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her
throne. The verses, which were entitled "The Haunted Palace," ran very
nearly, if not accurately, thus:
I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace--
Radiant palace--reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion--
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
II.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This--all this--was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.
III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-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.
* Watson, Dr. Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop of
Landaff.--See "Chemical Essays," vol v.
Our books--the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of
the mental existence of the invalid--were, as might be supposed, in
strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over
such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset; the Belphegor of
Machiavelli; the Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage
of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean
D'Indagine, and of De la Chambre; the Journey into the Blue Distance of
Tieck; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favorite volume was
a small octavo edition of the _Directorium Inquisitorium_, by the
Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in Pomponius Mela,
about the old African Satyrs and OEgipans, over which Usher would sit
dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the perusal
of an exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothic--the manual of
a forgotten church--the _Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae
Maguntinae_.
I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its
probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having
informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his
intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, (previously to its
final interment,) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls
of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular
proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The
brother had been led to his resolution (so he told me) by consideration
of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain
obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the
remote and exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will
not deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the
person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of my arrival at
the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a
harmless, and by no means an unnatural, precaution.
At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for
the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two alone
bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had
been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive
atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation) was small,
damp, and entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great
depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my
own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal
times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a
place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substance,
as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway
through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The
door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected. Its immense
weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon its
hinges.
Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of
horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin,
and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between
the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher,
divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which
I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that
sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between
them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead--for we could
not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady in
the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly
cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and
the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is
so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having
secured the door of iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely
less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house.
And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change
came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His
ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or
forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and
objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible,
a more ghastly hue--but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone
out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a
tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized
his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly
agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which
he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was obliged
to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I
beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the
profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was
no wonder that his condition terrified--that it infected me. I felt
creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of
his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.
It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the
seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the
donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came
not near my couch--while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to
reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavored to
believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering
influence of the gloomy furniture of the room--of the dark and tattered
draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising
tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily
about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An
irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there
sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking
this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows,
and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber,
harkened--I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted
me--to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses
of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by an
intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on
my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the
night), and endeavored to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into
which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.
I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an
adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognised it as
that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch,
at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual,
cadaverously wan--but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in
his eyes--an evidently restrained _hysteria_ in his whole demeanor. His
air appalled me--but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had
so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.
"And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having stared about
him for some moments in silence--"you have not then seen it?--but, stay!
you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he
hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm.
The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet.
It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one
wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently
collected its force in our vicinity; for there were frequent and violent
alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding density of
the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of the house)
did not prevent our perceiving the life-like velocity with which they
flew careering from all points against each other, without passing
away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density did
not prevent our perceiving this--yet we had no glimpse of the moon or
stars--nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the
under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapor, as well as all
terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural
light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation
which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.
"You must not--you shall not behold this!" said I, shudderingly, to
Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a seat.
"These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena
not uncommon--or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in
the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement;--the air is
chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your favorite
romances. I will read, and you shall listen;--and so we will pass away
this terrible night together."
The antique volume which I had taken up was the "Mad Trist" of Sir
Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favorite of Usher's more in sad
jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and
unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty
and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book
immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement
which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history
of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness
of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed, by the
wild overstrained air of vivacity with which he harkened, or apparently
harkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have congratulated
myself upon the success of my design.
I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred,
the hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for peaceable admission
into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by
force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run thus:
"And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now
mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had
drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in sooth,
was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the rain upon his
shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace
outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of the
door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith sturdily, he so
cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and
hollow-sounding wood alarummed and reverberated throughout the forest."
At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment, paused;
for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited
fancy had deceived me)--it appeared to me that, from some very remote
portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might
have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled
and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which
Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond doubt,
the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for, amid the
rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary commingled
noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing,
surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the
story:
"But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore
enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but,
in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanor, and
of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a
floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass
with this legend enwritten--
Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;
Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;
And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon,
which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so
horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to
close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like
whereof was never before heard."
Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild
amazement--for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance,
I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I
found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh,
protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound--the exact
counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's
unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.
Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and
most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations,
in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained
sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the
sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that
he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange
alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his
demeanor. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought
round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber;
and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw
that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had
dropped upon his breast--yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the
wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile.
The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this idea--for he
rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway.
Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir
Launcelot, which thus proceeded:
"And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the
dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up
of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of
the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement
of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth t
feet upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing
sound."
No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than--as if a shield
of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of
silver--I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous,
yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to
my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I
rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly
before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony
rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a
strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his
lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur,
as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length
drank in the hideous import of his words.
"Not hear it?--yes, I hear it, and _have_ heard it.
Long--long--long--many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard
it--yet I dared not--oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!--I dared
not--I _dared_ not speak! _We have put her living in the tomb!_ Said I
not that my senses were acute? I _now_ tell you that I heard her first
feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them--many,
many days ago--yet I dared not--_I dared not speak!_ And
now--to-night--Ethelred--ha! ha!--the breaking of the hermit's door,
and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!--say,
rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of
her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault!
Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurryin
my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not
distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!"--here
he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if
in the effort he were giving up his soul--"_Madman! I tell you that she
now stands without the door!_"
As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found
the potency of a spell--the huge antique pannels to which the speaker
pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony
jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust--but then without those doors
there _did_ stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline
of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some
bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment
she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold--then,
with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her
brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the
floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm
was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old
causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned
to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house
and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full,
setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once
barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending
from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While
I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened--there came a fierce breath of
the whirlwind--the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my
sight--my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder--there
was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand
waters--and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and
silently over the fragments of the "_House of Usher_."
SILENCE--A FABLE
ALCMAN. The mountain pinnacles slumber; valleys, crags and
caves are silent.
"LISTEN to me," said the Demon as he placed his hand upon my head. "The
region of which I speak is a dreary region in Libya, by the borders of
the river Zaire. And there is no quiet there, nor silence.
"The waters of the river have a saffron and sickly hue; and they flow
not onwards to the sea, but palpitate forever and forever beneath the
red eye of the sun with a tumultuous and convulsive motion. For many
miles on either side of the river's oozy bed is a pale desert of
gigantic water-lilies. They sigh one unto the other in that solitude,
and stretch towards the heaven their long and ghastly necks, and nod to
and fro their everlasting heads. And there is an indistinct murmur which
cometh out from among them like the rushing of subterrene water. And
they sigh one unto the other.
"But there is a boundary to their realm--the boundary of the dark,
horrible, lofty forest. There, like the waves about the Hebrides, the
low underwood is agitated continually. But there is no wind throughout
the heaven. And the tall primeval trees rock eternally hither and
thither with a crashing and mighty sound. And from their high summits,
one by one, drop everlasting dews. And at the roots strange poisonous
flowers lie writhing in perturbed slumber. And overhead, with a rustling
and loud noise, the gray clouds rush westwardly forever, until they
roll, a cataract, over the fiery wall of the horizon. But there is no
wind throughout the heaven. And by the shores of the river Zaire there
is neither quiet nor silence.
"It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having
fallen, it was blood. And I stood in the morass among the tall and the
rain fell upon my head--and the lilies sighed one unto the other in the
solemnity of their desolation.
"And, all at once, the moon arose through the thin ghastly mist, and was
crimson in color. And mine eyes fell upon a huge gray rock which stood
by the shore of the river, and was lighted by the light of the moon. And
the rock was gray, and ghastly, and tall,--and the rock was gray. Upon
its front were characters engraven in the stone; and I walked through
the morass of water-lilies, until I came close unto the shore, that I
might read the characters upon the stone. But I could not decypher them.
And I was going back into the morass, when the moon shone with a
fuller red, and I turned and looked again upon the rock, and upon the
characters;--and the characters were DESOLATION.
"And I looked upwards, and there stood a man upon the summit of the
rock; and I hid myself among the water-lilies that I might discover the
actions of the man. And the man was tall and stately in form, and was
wrapped up from his shoulders to his feet in the toga of old Rome. And
the outlines of his figure were indistinct--but his features were the
features of a deity; for the mantle of the night, and of the mist, and
of the moon, and of the dew, had left uncovered the features of his
face. And his brow was lofty with thought, and his eye wild with care;
and, in the few furrows upon his cheek I read the fables of sorrow, and
weariness, and disgust with mankind, and a longing after solitude.
"And the man sat upon the rock, and leaned his head upon his hand, and
looked out upon the desolation. He looked down into the low unquiet
shrubbery, and up into the tall primeval trees, and up higher at the
rustling heaven, and into the crimson moon. And I lay close within
shelter of the lilies, and observed the actions of the man. And the
man trembled in the solitude;--but the night waned, and he sat upon the
rock.
"And the man turned his attention from the heaven, and looked out upon
the dreary river Zaire, and upon the yellow ghastly waters, and upon the
pale legions of the water-lilies. And the man listened to the sighs of
the water-lilies, and to the murmur that came up from among them. And I
lay close within my covert and observed the actions of the man. And the
man trembled in the solitude;--but the night waned and he sat upon the
rock.
"Then I went down into the recesses of the morass, and waded afar in
among the wilderness of the lilies, and called unto the hippopotami
which dwelt among the fens in the recesses of the morass. And the
hippopotami heard my call, and came, with the behemoth, unto the foot
of the rock, and roared loudly and fearfully beneath the moon. And I lay
close within my covert and observed the actions of the man. And the man
trembled in the solitude;--but the night waned and he sat upon the rock.
"Then I cursed the elements with the curse of tumult; and a frightful
tempest gathered in the heaven where, before, there had been no wind.
And the heaven became livid with the violence of the tempest--and the
rain beat upon the head of the man--and the floods of the river came
down--and the river was tormented into foam--and the water-lilies
shrieked within their beds--and the forest crumbled before the wind--and
the thunder rolled--and the lightning fell--and the rock rocked to its
foundation. And I lay close within my covert and observed the actions of
the man. And the man trembled in the solitude;--but the night waned and
he sat upon the rock.
"Then I grew angry and cursed, with the curse of silence, the river,
and the lilies, and the wind, and the forest, and the heaven, and the
thunder, and the sighs of the water-lilies. And they became accursed,
and were still. And the moon ceased to totter up its pathway to
heaven--and the thunder died away--and the lightning did not flash--and
the clouds hung motionless--and the waters sunk to their level and
remained--and the trees ceased to rock--and the water-lilies sighed no
more--and the murmur was heard no longer from among them, nor any shadow
of sound throughout the vast illimitable desert. And I looked upon the
characters of the rock, and they were changed;--and the characters were
SILENCE.
"And mine eyes fell upon the countenance of the man, and his countenance
was wan with terror. And, hurriedly, he raised his head from his hand,
and stood forth upon the rock and listened. But there was no voice
throughout the vast illimitable desert, and the characters upon the rock
were SILENCE. And the man shuddered, and turned his face away, and fled
afar off, in haste, so that I beheld him no more."
Now there are fine tales in the volumes of the Magi--in the iron-bound,
melancholy volumes of the Magi. Therein, I say, are glorious histories
of the Heaven, and of the Earth, and of the mighty sea--and of the Genii
that over-ruled the sea, and the earth, and the lofty heaven. There was
much lore too in the sayings which were said by the Sybils; and holy,
holy things were heard of old by the dim leaves that trembled around
Dodona--but, as Allah liveth, that fable which the Demon told me as
he sat by my side in the shadow of the tomb, I hold to be the most
wonderful of all! And as the Demon made an end of his story, he fell
back within the cavity of the tomb and laughed. And I could not laugh
with the Demon, and he cursed me because I could not laugh. And the lynx
which dwelleth forever in the tomb, came out therefrom, and lay down at
the feet of the Demon, and looked at him steadily in the face.
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH.
THE "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever
been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal--the
redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden
dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The
scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim,
were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy
of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of
the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.
But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his
dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand
hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of
his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his
castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the
creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and
lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers,
having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts.
They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden
impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply
provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to
contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime
it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the
appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori,
there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty,
there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red
Death."
It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion,
and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince
Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most
unusual magnificence.
It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the
rooms in which it was held. There were seven--an imperial suite. In many
palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the
folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that
the view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the case was
very different; as might have been expected from the duke's love of the
bizarre. The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision
embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at
every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To the
right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic
window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of
the suite. These windows were of stained glass whose color varied in
accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber
into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for
example, in blue--and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber
was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were
purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the casements. The
fourth was furnished and lighted with orange--the fifth with white--the
sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black
velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls,
falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But
in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with
the decorations. The panes here were scarlet--a deep blood color. Now in
no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid
the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or
depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from
lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors
that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy
tripod, bearing a brazier of fire that protected its rays through the
tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced
a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or
black chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark
hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and
produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered,
that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its
precincts at all.
It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western
wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a
dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit
of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the
brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and
exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at
each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained
to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound;
and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a
brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the
clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the
more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in
confused reverie or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased,
a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at
each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made
whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock
should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse of
sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of
the Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of the clock,
and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as
before.
But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel.
The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colors and
effects. He disregarded the decora of mere fashion. His plans were bold
and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There are
some who would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not.
It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure that he was
not.
He had directed, in great part, the moveable embellishments of the seven
chambers, upon occasion of this great fete; and it was his own guiding
taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they
were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and
phantasm--much of what has been since seen in "Hernani." There were
arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were
delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There was much of the
beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the
terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.
To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of
dreams. And these--the dreams--writhed in and about, taking hue from the
rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo
of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in
the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is
silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they
stand. But the echoes of the chime die away--they have endured but an
instant--and a light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as they
depart. And now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe
to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many-tinted
windows through which stream the rays from the tripods. But to the
chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of
the maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows a
ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of the
sable drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet,
there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly
emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more
remote gaieties of the other apartments.
But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat
feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at
length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And then
the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers
were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before.
But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the
clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, with
more of time, into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who
revelled. And thus, too, it happened, perhaps, that before the last
echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many
individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the
presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no
single individual before. And the rumor of this new presence having
spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the
whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and
surprise--then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust.
In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be
supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation.
In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; but
the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds
of even the prince's indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts
of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with
the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are
matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed
now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger
neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and
shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The
mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the
countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have
had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been
endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around. But the mummer
had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was
dabbled in blood--and his broad brow, with all the features of the face,
was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.
When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image (which
with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role,
stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, in
the first moment with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste;
but, in the next, his brow reddened with rage.