p321-014 TALES BY EDGAR A. POE. THE GOLD-BUG.

What ho! what ho! this fellow is dancing mad!
He hath been bitten by the Tarantula.
All in the Wrong.

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Many years ago, I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William
Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenot family, and had once
been wealthy; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to
want. To avoid the mortification consequent upon his disasters,
he left New Orleans, the city of his forefathers, and took up his
residence at Sullivan's Island, near Charleston, South Carolina.

This Island is a very singular one. It consists of little else
than the sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its breadth at
no point exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the
main land by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through
a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marshhen.
The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least
dwarfish. No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the
western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands, and where are
some miserable frame buildings, tenanted, during summer, by the
fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed,
the bristly palmetto; but the whole island, with the exception of
this western point, and a line of hard, white beach on the sea-coast,
is covered with a dense undergrowth of the sweet myrtle,

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so much prized by the horticulturists of England. The shrub
here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and forms
an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with its fragrance.

In the inmost recesses of this coppice, not far from the eastern
or more remote end of the island, Legrand had built himself a
small hut, which he occupied when I first, by mere accident,
made his acquaintance. This soon ripened into friendship—for
there was much in the recluse to excite interest and esteem. I
found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected
with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate
enthusiasm and melancholy. He had with him many books,
but rarely employed them. His chief amusements were gunning
and fishing, or sauntering along the beach and through the
myrtles, in quest of shells or entomological specimens;—his collection
of the latter might have been envied by a Swammerdamm.
In these excursions he was usually accompanied by an old negro,
called Jupiter, who had been manumitted before the reverses of
the family, but who could be induced, neither by threats nor by
promises, to abandon what he considered his right of attendance
upon the footsteps of his young “Massa Will.” It is not improbable
that the relatives of Legrand, conceiving him to be somewhat
unsettled in intellect, had contrived to instil this obstinacy
into Jupiter, with a view to the supervision and guardianship of
the wanderer.

The winters in the latitude of Sullivan's Island are seldom
very severe, and in the fall of the year it is a rare event indeed
when a fire is considered necessary. About the middle of October,
18—, there occurred, however, a day of remarkable chilliness.
Just before sunset I scrambled my way through the evergreens
to the hut of my friend, whom I had not visited for several
weeks—my residence being, at that time, in Charleston, a distance
of nine miles from the Island, while the facilities of passage
and re-passage were very far behind those of the present day.
Upon reaching the hut I rapped, as was my custom, and getting
no reply, sought for the key where I knew it was secreted, unlocked
the door and went in. A fine fire was blazing upon the
hearth. It was a novelty, and by no means an ungrateful one. I

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threw off an overcoat, took an arm-chair by the crackling logs,
and awaited patiently the arrival of my hosts.

Soon after dark they arrived, and gave me a most cordial welcome.
Jupiter, grinning from ear to ear, bustled about to prepare
some marsh-hens for supper. Legrand was in one of his
fits—how else shall I term them?—of enthusiasm. He had
found an unknown bivalve, forming a new genus, and, more than
this, he had hunted down and secured, with Jupiter's assistance,
a scarabœus which he believed to be totally new, but in respect
to which he wished to have my opinion on the morrow.

“And why not to-night?” I asked, rubbing my hands over
the blaze, and wishing the whole tribe of scarabœi at the devil

“Ah, if I had only known you were here!” said Legrand,
“but it's so long since I saw you; and how could I foresee that
you would pay me a visit this very night of all others? As I
was coming home I met Lieutenant G—, from the fort, and,
very foolishly, I lent him the bug; so it will be impossible for
you to see it until the morning. Stay here to-night, and I will send
Jup down for it at sunrise. It is the loveliest thing in creation!”

“What?—sunrise?”

“Nonsense! no!—the bug. It is of a brilliant gold color—
about the size of a large hickory-nut—with two jet black spots
near one extremity of the back, and another, somewhat longer, at
the other. The antennœ are—”

“Dey aint no tin in him, Massa Will, I keep a tellin on you,”
here interrupted Jupiter; “de bug is a goole bug, solid, ebery
bit of him, inside and all, sep him wing—neber feel half so hebby
a bug in my life.”

“Well, suppose it is, Jup,” replied Legrand, somewhat more
earnestly, it seemed to me, than the case demanded, “is that any
reason for your letting the birds burn? The color”—here he
turned to me—“is really almost enough to warrant Jupiter's
idea. You never saw a more brilliant metallic lustre than the
scales emit—but of this you cannot judge till to-morrow. In the
mean time I can give you some idea of the shape.” Saying this,
he seated himself at a small table, on which were a pen and ink,
but no paper. He looked for some in a drawer, but found none.

“Never mind,” said he at length, “this will answer;” and he

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drew from his waistcoat pocket a scrap of what I took to be very
dirty foolscap, and made upon it a rough drawing with the pen.
While he did this, I retained my seat by the fire, for I was still
chilly. When the design was complete, he handed it to me without
rising. As I received it, a loud growl was heard, succeeded
by a scratching at the door. Jupiter opened it, and a large Newfoundland,
belonging to Legrand, rushed in, leaped upon my
shoulders, and loaded me with caresses; for I had shown him
much attention during previous visits. When his gambols were
over, I looked at the paper, and, to speak the truth, found myself
not a little puzzled at what my friend had depicted.

“Well!” I said, after contemplating it for some minutes, “this
is a strange scarabœus, I must confess: new to me: never saw
anything like it before—unless it was a skull, or a death's-head—
which it more nearly resembles than anything else that has come
under my observation.”

“A death's-head!” echoed Legrand—“Oh—yes—well, it has
something of that appearance upon paper, no doubt. The two
upper black spots look like eyes, eh? and the longer one at the
bottom like a mouth—and then the shape of the whole is oval.”

“Perhaps so,” said I; “but, Legrand, I fear you are no artist.
I must wait until I see the beetle itself, if I am to form any idea
of its personal appearance.”

“Well, I don't know,” said he, a little nettled, “I draw tolerably—
should do it at least—have had good masters, and flatter
myself that I am not quite a blockhead.”

“But, my dear fellow, you are joking then,” said I, “this is a
very passable skull—indeed, I may say that it is a very excellent
skull, according to the vulgar notions about such specimens of
physiology—and your scarabœus must be the queerest scarabœus
in the world if it resembles it. Why, we may get up a very
thrilling bit of superstition upon this hint. I presume you will
call the bug scarabœus caput hominis, or something of that kind—
there are many similar titles in the Natural Histories. But where
are the antennœ you spoke of?”

“The antennœ!” said Legrand, who seemed to be getting unaccountably
warm upon the subject; “I am sure you must see

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the antennœ. I made them as distinct as they are in the original
insect, and I presume that is sufficient.”

“Well, well,” I said, “perhaps you have—still I don't see
them;” and I handed him the paper without additional remark,
not wishing to ruffle his temper; but I was much surprised at
the turn affairs had taken; his ill humor puzzled me—and, as for
the drawing of the beetle, there were positively no antennœ visible,
and the whole did bear a very close resemblance to the ordinary
cuts of a death's-head.

He received the paper very peevishly, and was about to crumple
it, apparently to throw it in the fire, when a casual glance at
the design seemed suddenly to rivet his attention. In an instant
his face grew violently red—in another as excessively pale. For
some minutes he continued to scrutinize the drawing minutely
where he sat. At length he arose, took a candle from the table,
and proceeded to seat himself upon a sea-chest in the farthest
corner of the room. Here again he made an anxious examination
of the paper; turning it in all directions. He said nothing,
however, and his conduct greatly astonished me; yet I thought
it prudent not to exacerbate the growing moodiness of his temper
by any comment. Presently he took from his coat pocket a wallet,
placed the paper carefully in it, and deposited both in a writing-desk,
which he locked. He now grew more composed in his
demeanor; but his original air of enthusiasm had quite disappeared.
Yet he seemed not so much sulky as abstracted. As
the evening wore away he became more and more absorbed in
reverie, from which no sallies of mine could arouse him. It had
been my intention to pass the night at the hut, as I had frequently
done before, but, seeing my host in this mood, I deemed it proper
to take leave. He did not press me to remain, but, as I departed,
he shook my hand with even more than his usual cordiality.

It was about a month after this (and during the interval I had
seen nothing of Legrand) when I received a visit, at Charleston,
from his man, Jupiter. I had never seen the good old negro look
so dispirited, and I feared that some serious disaster had befallen
my friend.

“Well, Jup,” said I, “what is the matter now?—how is your
master?”

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“Why, to speak de troof, massa, him not so berry well as
mought be.”

“Not well! I am truly sorry to hear it. What does he complain
of?”

“Dar! dat's it!—him neber plain of notin—but him berry
sick for all dat.”

“Very sick, Jupiter!—why didn't you say so at once? Is he
confined to bed?”

“No, dat he aint!—he aint find nowhar—dat's just whar de shoe
pinch—my mind is got to be berry hebby bout poor Massa Will.”

“Jupiter, I should like to understand what it is you are talking
about. You say your master is sick. Hasn't he told you what
ails him?”

“Why, massa, taint worf while for to git mad about de matter—
Massa Will say noffin at all aint de matter wid him—but
den what make him go about looking dis here way, wid he head
down and he soldiers up, and as white as a gose? And den he
keep a syphon all de time—”

“Keeps a what, Jupiter?”

“Keeps a syphon wid de figgurs on de slate—de queerest figgurs
I ebber did see. Ise gittin to be skeered, I tell you. Hab for
to keep mighty tight eye pon him noovers. Todder day he gib
me slip fore de sun up and was gone de whole ob de blessed day.
I had a big stick ready cut for to gib him deuced good beating
when he did come—but Ise sich a fool dat I hadn't de heart arter
all—he look so berry poorly.”

“Eh?—what?—ah yes!—upon the whole I think you had better
not be too severe with the poor fellow—don't flog him, Jupiter—
he can't very well stand it—but can you form no idea of what
has occasioned this illness, or rather this change of conduct?
Has anything unpleasant happened since I saw you?”

“No, massa, dey aint bin noffin onpleasant since den—'twas
fore den I'm feared—'twas de berry day you was dare.”

“How? what do you mean?”

“Why, massa, I mean de bug—dare now.”

“The what?”

“De bug—I'm berry sartain dat Massa Will bin bit somewhere
bout de head by dat goole-bug.”

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“And what cause have you, Jupiter, for such a supposition?”

“Claws enuff, massa, and mouff too. I nebber did see sieh a
deuced bug—he kick and he bite ebery ting what cum near
him. Massa Will cotch him fuss, but had for to let him go gin
mighty quick, I tell you—den was de time he must ha got de
bite. I did n't like de look ob de bug mouff, myself, no how, so I
would n't take hold ob him wid my finger, but I cotch him wid
a piece ob paper dat I found. I rap him up in de paper and
stuff piece ob it in he mouff—dat was de way.”

“And you think, then, that your master was really bitten by
the beetle, and that the bite made him sick?”

“I do n't tink noffin about it—I nose it. What make him
dream bout de goole so much, if taint cause he bit by de goole-bug?
Ise heerd bout dem goole-bugs fore dis.”

“But how do you know he dreams about gold?”

“How I know? why cause he talk about it in he sleep—dat's
how I nose.”

“Well, Jup, perhaps you are right; but to what fortunate circumstance
am I to attribute the honor of a visit from you to-day?”

“What de matter, massa?”

“Did you bring any message from Mr. Legrand?”

“No, massa, I bring dis here pissel;” and here Jupiter handed
me a note which ran thus:

My Dear—

Why have I not seen you for so long a time? I hope you have
not been so foolish as to take offence at any little brusquerie of
mine; but no, that is improbable.

Since I saw you I have had great cause for anxiety. I have
something to tell you, yet scarcely know how to tell it, or whether
I should tell it at all.

I have not been quite well for some days past, and poor old
Jup annoys me, almost beyond endurance, by his well-meant attentions.
Would you believe it?—he had prepared a huge stick,
the other day, with which to chastise me for giving him the slip,
and spending the day, solus, among the hills on the main land.
I verily believe that my ill looks alone saved me a flogging.

I have made no addition to my cabinet since we met.

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If you can, in any way, make it convenient, come over with
Jupiter. Do come. I wish to see you to-night, upon business of
importance. I assure you that it is of the highest importance.

Ever yours,
William Legrand.

There was something in the tone of this note which gave me
great uneasiness. Its whole style differed materially from that
of Legrand. What could he be dreaming of? What new crotchet
possessed his excitable brain? What “business of the highest
importance” could he possibly have to transact? Jupiter's
account of him boded no good. I dreaded lest the continued
pressure of misfortune had, at length, fairly unsettled the reason
of my friend. Without a moment's hesitation, therefore, I prepared
to accompany the negro.

Upon reaching the wharf, I noticed a scythe and three spades,
all apparently new, lying in the bottom of the boat in which we
were to embark.

“What is the meaning of all this, Jup?” I inquired.

“Him syfe, massa, and spade.”

“Very true; but what are they doing here?”

“Him de syfe and de spade what Massa Will sis pon my buying
for him in de town, and de debbils own lot of money I had to
gib for em.”

“But what, in the name of all that is mysterious, is your
'Massa Will' going to do with scythes and spades?”

“Dat's more dan I know, and debbil take me if I don't blieve
'tis more dan he know, too. But it's all cum ob de bug.”

Finding that no satisfaction was to be obtained of Jupiter,
whose whole intellect seemed to be absorbed by “de bug,” I now
stepped into the boat and made sail. With a fair and strong
breeze we soon ran into the little cove to the northward of Fort
Moultrie, and a walk of some two miles brought us to the hut.
It was about three in the afternoon when we arrived. Legrand
had been awaiting us in eager expectation. He grasped my hand
with a nervous empressement which alarmed me and strengthened
the suspicions already entertained. His countenance was pale
even to ghastliness, and his deep-set eyes glared with unnatural
lustre. After some inquiries respecting his health, I asked him,

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not knowing what better to say, if he had yet obtained the scarab
œus from Lieutenant G—.

“Oh, yes,” he replied, coloring violently, “I got it from him
the next morning. Nothing should tempt me to part with that
scarabœus. Do you know that Jupiter is quite right about it?”

“In what way?” I asked, with a sad foreboding at heart.

“In supposing it to be a bug of real gold.” He said this with
an air of profound seriousness, and I felt inexpressibly shocked.

“This bug is to make my fortune,” he continued, with a triumphant
smile, “to reinstate me in my family possessions. Is it
any wonder, then, that I prize it? Since Fortune has thought fit
to bestow it upon me, I have only to use it properly and I shall
arrive at the gold of which it is the index. Jupiter, bring me
that scarabœus!”

“What! de bug, massa? I'd rudder not go fer trubble dat
bug—you mus git him for your own self.” Hereupon Legrand
arose, with a grave and stately air, and brought me the beetle
from a glass case in which it was enclosed. It was a beautiful
scarabœus, and, at that time, unknown to naturalists—of course a
great prize in a scientific point of view. There were two round,
black spots near one extremity of the back, and a long one near
the other. The scales were exceedingly hard and glossy, with
all the appearance of burnished gold. The weight of the insect
was very remarkable, and, taking all things into consideration, I
could hardly blame Jupiter for his opinion respecting it; but
what to make of Legrand's concordance with that opinion, I could
not, for the life of me, tell.

“I sent for you,” said he, in a grandiloquent tone, when I had
completed my examination of the beetle, “I sent for you, that I
might have your counsel and assistance in furthering the views
of Fate and of the bug”—

“My dear Legrand,” I cried, interrupting him, “you are certainly
unwell, and had better use some little precautions. You
shall go to bed, and I will remain with you a few days, until you
get over this. You are feverish and”—

“Feel my pulse,” said he.

I felt it, and, to say the truth, found not the slightest indication
of fever.

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“But you may be ill and yet have no fever. Allow me this
once to prescribe for you. In the first place, go to bed. In the
next”—

“You are mistaken,” he interposed, “I am as well as I can
expect to be under the excitement which I suffer. If you really
wish me well, you will relieve this excitement.”

“And how is this to be done?”

“Very easily. Jupiter and myself are going upon an expedition
into the hills, upon the main land, and, in this expedition,
we shall need the aid of some person in whom we can confide.
You are the only one we can trust. Whether we succeed or fail,
the excitement which you now perceive in me will be equally allayed.”

“I am anxious to oblige you in any way,” I replied; “but do
you mean to say that this infernal beetle has any connection with
your expedition into the hills?”

“It has.”

“Then, Legrand, I can become a party to no such absurd proceeding.”

“I am sorry—very sorry—for we shall have to try it by ourselves.”

“Try it by yourselves! The man is surely mad!—but stay!—
how long do you propose to be absent?”

“Probably all night. We shall start immediately, and be
back, at all events, by sunrise.”

“And will you promise me, upon your honor, that when this
freak of yours is over, and the bug business (good God!) settled
to your satisfaction, you will then return home and follow my advice
implicitly, as that of your physician?”

“Yes; I promise; and now let us be off, for we have no time
to lose.”

With a heavy heart I accompanied my friend. We started
about four o'clock—Legrand, Jupiter, the dog, and myself. Jupiter
had with him the scythe and spades—the whole of which
he insisted upon carrying—more through fear, it seemed to me,
of trusting either of the implements within reach of his master,
than from any excess of industry or complaisance. His demeanor
was dogged in the extreme, and “dat deuced bug” were the sole

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words which escaped his lips during the journey. For my own
part, I had charge of a couple of dark lanterns, while Legrand
contented himself with the scarabœus, which he carried attached
to the end of a bit of whip-cord; twirling it to and fro, with the
air of a conjuror, as he went. When I observed this last, plain
evidence of my friend's aberration of mind, I could scarcely refrain
from tears. I thought it best, however, to humor his fancy,
at least for the present, or until I could adopt some more energetic
measures with a chance of success. In the mean time I endeavored,
but all in vain, to sound him in regard to the object of
the expedition. Having succeeded in inducing me to accompany
him, he seemed unwilling to hold conversation upon any topic of
minor importance, and to all my questions vouchsafed no other
reply than “we shall see!”

We crossed the creek at the head of the island by means of a
skiff, and, ascending the high grounds on the shore of the main land,
proceeded in a northwesterly direction, through a tract of country
excessively wild and desolate, where no trace of a human footstep
was to be seen. Legrand led the way with decision; pausing
only for an instant, here and there, to consult what appeared
to be certain landmarks of his own contrivance upon a former
occasion.

In this manner we journeyed for about two hours, and the sun
was just setting when we entered a region infinitely more dreary
than any yet seen. It was a species of table land, near the summit
of an almost inaccessible hill, densely wooded from base to
pinnacle, and interspersed with huge crags that appeared to lie
loosely upon the soil, and in many cases were prevented from
precipitating themselves into the valleys below, merely by the
support of the trees against which they reclined. Deep ravines,
in various directions, gave an air of still sterner solemnity to the
scene.

The natural platform to which we had clambered was thickly
overgrown with brambles, through which we soon discovered that it
would have been impossible to force our way but for the scythe;
and Jupiter, by direction of his master, proceeded to clear for us
a path to the foot of an enormously tall tulip-tree, which stood,
with some eight or ten oaks, upon the level, and far surpassed them

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or two narrow escapes from falling, at length wriggled himself
into the first great fork, and seemed to consider the whole business
as virtually accomplished. The risk of the achievement was, in
fact, now over, although the climber was some sixty or seventy
feet from the ground.

“Which way mus go now, Massa Will?” he asked.

“Keep up the largest branch—the one on this side,” said Legrand.
The negro obeyed him promptly, and apparently with
but little trouble; ascending higher and higher, until no glimpse
of his squat figure could be obtained through the dense foliage
which enveloped it. Presently his voice was heard in a sort of
halloo.

“How much fudder is got for go?”

“How high up are you?” asked Legrand.

“Ebber so fur,” replied the negro; “can see de sky fru de top
ob de tree.”

“Never mind the sky, but attend to what I say. Look down
the trunk and count the limbs below you on this side. How
many limbs have you passed?”

“One, two, tree, four, fibe—I done pass fibe big limb, massa,
pon dis side.”

“Then go one limb higher.”

In a few minutes the voice was heard again, announcing that
the seventh limb was attained.

“Now, Jup,” cried Legrand, evidently much excited, “I want
you to work your way out upon that limb as far as you can. If
you see anything strange, let me know.”

By this time what little doubt I might have entertained of my
poor friend's insanity, was put finally at rest. I had no alternative
but to conclude him stricken with lunacy, and I became seriously
anxious about getting him home. While I was pondering
upon what was best to be done, Jupiter's voice was again heard.

“Mos feerd for to ventur pon dis limb berry far—tis dead
limb putty much all de way.”

“Did you say it was a dead limb, Jupiter?” cried Legrand in
a quavering voice.

“Yes, massa, him dead as de door-nail—done up for sartain—
done departed dis here life.”

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“What in the name of heaven shall I do?” asked Legrand,
seemingly in the greatest distress.

“Do!” said I, glad of an opportunity to interpose a word,
“why come home and go to bed. Come now!—that's a fine fellow.
It's getting late, and, besides, you remember your promise.”

“Jupiter,” cried he, without heeding me in the least, “do you
hear me?”

“Yes, Massa Will, hear you ebber so plain.”

“Try the wood well, then, with your knife, and see if you
think it very rotten.”

“Him rotten, massa, sure nuff,” replied the negro in a few
moments, “but not so berry rotten as mought be. Mought ventur
out leetle way pon de limb by myself, dat's true.”

“By yourself!—what do you mean?”

“Why I mean de bug. 'Tis berry hebby bug. Spose I drop
him down fuss, and den de limb won't break wid just de weight
ob one nigger.”

“You infernal scoundrel!” cried Legrand, apparently much
relieved, “what do you mean by telling me such nonsense as
that? As sure as you drop that beetle I'll break your neck.
Look here, Jupiter, do you hear me?”

“Yes, massa, needn't hollo at poor nigger dat style.”

“Well! now listen!—if you will venture out on the limb as
far as you think safe, and not let go the beetle, I'll make you
a present of a silver dollar as soon as you get down.”

“I'm gwine, Massa Will—deed I is,” replied the negro very
promptly—“mos out to the eend now.”

“Out to the end!” here fairly screamed Legrand, “do you
say you are out to the end of that limb?”

“Soon be to de eend, massa,—o-o-o-o-oh! Lor-gol-a-marcy!
what is dis here pon de tree?”

“Well!” cried Legrand, highly delighted, “what is it?”

“Why taint noffin but a skull—somebody bin lef him head up
de tree, and de crows done gobble ebery bit ob de meat off.”

“A skull, you say!—very well!—how is it fastened to the
limb?—what holds it on?”

“Sure nuff, massa; mus look. Why dis berry curous

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sarcumstance, pon my word—dare's a great big nail in de skull,
what fastens ob it on to de tree.”

“Well now, Jupiter, do exactly as I tell you—do you hear?”

“Yes, massa.”

“Pay attention, then!—find the left eye of the skull.”

“Hum! hoo! dat's good! why dare aint no eye lef at all.”

“Curse your stupidity! do you know your right hand from
your left?”

“Yes, I nose dat—nose all bout dat—tis my lef hand what I
chops de wood wid.”

“To be sure! you are left-handed; and your left eye is on
the same side as your left hand. Now, I suppose, you can find
the left eye of the skull, or the place where the left eye has been.
Have you found it?”

Here was a long pause. At length the negro asked,

“Is de lef eye of de skull pon de same side as de lef hand of
de skull, too?—cause de skull aint got not a bit ob a hand at
all—nebber mind! I got de lef eye now—here de lef eye! what
mus do wid it?”

“Let the beetle drop through it, as far as the string will
reach—but be careful and not let go your hold of the string.”

“All dat done, Massa Will; mighty easy ting for to put de bug
fru de hole—look out for him dare below!”

During this colloquy no portion of Jupiter's person could be
seen; but the beetle, which he had suffered to descend, was now
visible at the end of the string, and glistened, like a globe of burnished
gold, in the last rays of the setting sun, some of which
still faintly illumined the eminence upon which we stood. The
scarabœus hung quite clear of any branches, and, if allowed to
fall, would have fallen at our feet. Legrand immediately took
the scythe, and cleared with it a circular space, three or four
yards in diameter, just beneath the insect, and, having accomplished
this, ordered Jupiter to let go the string and come down
from the tree.

Driving a peg, with great nicety, into the ground, at the precise
spot where the beetle fell, my friend now produced from his pocket
a tape-measure. Fastening one end of this at that point of the
trunk of the tree which was nearest the peg, he unrolled it till it

[figure description] Page 016.[end figure description]

reached the peg, and thence farther unrolled it, in the direction
already established by the two points of the tree and the peg, for
the distance of fifty feet—Jupiter clearing away the brambles
with the scythe. At the spot thus attained a second peg was
driven, and about this, as a centre, a rude circle, about four feet
in diameter, described. Taking now a spade himself, and giving
one to Jupiter and one to me, Legrand begged us to set about digging
as quickly as possible.

To speak the truth, I had no especial relish for such amusement
at any time, and, at that particular moment, would most
willingly have declined it; for the night was coming on, and I
felt much fatigued with the exercise already taken; but I saw no
mode of escape, and was fearful of disturbing my poor friend's
equanimity by a refusal. Could I have depended, indeed, upon
Jupiter's aid, I would have had no hesitation in attempting to get
the lunatic home by force; but I was too well assured of the old
negro's disposition, to hope that he would assist me, under any
circumstances, in a personal contest with his master. I made no
doubt that the latter had been infected with some of the innumerable
Southern superstitions about money buried, and that his
phantasy had received confirmation by the finding of the scarab
œus, or, perhaps, by Jupiter's obstinacy in maintaining it to be
“a bug of real gold.” A mind disposed to lunacy would readily
be led away by such suggestions—especially if chiming in with
favorite preconceived ideas—and then I called to mind the poor
fellow's speech about the beetle's being “the index of his fortune.”
Upon the whole, I was sadly vexed and puzzled, but, at length, I
concluded to make a virtue of necessity—to dig with a good will,
and thus the sooner to convince the visionary, by ocular demonstration,
of the fallacy of the opinions he entertained.

The lanterns having been lit, we all fell to work with a zeal
worthy a more rational cause; and, as the glare fell upon our
persons and implements, I could not help thinking how picturesque
a group we composed, and how strange and suspicious our
labors must have appeared to any interloper who, by chance,
might have stumbled upon our whereabouts.

We dug very steadily for two hours. Little was said; and
our chief embarrassment lay in the yelpings of the dog, who took

[figure description] Page 017.[end figure description]

exceeding interest in our proceedings. He, at length, became so
obstreperous that we grew fearful of his giving the alarm to some
stragglers in the vicinity;—or, rather, this was the apprehension
of Legrand;—for myself, I should have rejoiced at any interruption
which might have enabled me to get the wanderer home.
The noise was, at length, very effectually silenced by Jupiter,
who, getting out of the hole with a dogged air of deliberation, tied
the brute's mouth up with one of his suspenders, and then returned,
with a grave chuckle, to his task.

When the time mentioned had expired, we had reached a depth
of five feet, and yet no signs of any treasure became manifest.
A general pause ensued, and I began to hope that the farce was
at an end. Legrand, however, although evidently much disconcerted,
wiped his brow thoughtfully and recommenced. We had
excavated the entire circle of four feet diameter, and now we
slightly enlarged the limit, and went to the farther depth of two
feet. Still nothing appeared. The gold-seeker, whom I sincerely
pitied, at length clambered from the pit, with the bitterest disappointment
imprinted upon every feature, and proceeded, slowly
and reluctantly, to put on his coat, which he had thrown off at
the beginning of his labor. In the mean time I made no remark.
Jupiter, at a signal from his master, began to gather up his tools.
This done, and the dog having been unmuzzled, we turned in
profound silence towards home.

We had taken, perhaps, a dozen steps in this direction, when,
with a loud oath, Legrand strode up to Jupiter, and seized him by
the collar. The astonished negro opened his eyes and mouth to
the fullest extent, let fall the spades, and fell upon his knees.

“You scoundrel,” said Legrand, hissing out the syllables from
between his clenched teeth—“you infernal black villain!—speak,
I tell you!—answer me this instant, without prevarication!—
which—which is your left eye?”

“Oh, my golly, Massa Will! aint dis here my lef eye for sartain?”
roared the terrified Jupiter, placing his hand upon his right
organ of vision, and holding it there with a desperate pertinacity,
as if in immediate dread of his master's attempt at a gouge.

“I thought so!—I knew it! hurrah!” vociferated Legrand,
letting the negro go, and executing a series of curvets and cara.

[figure description] Page 018.[end figure description]

cols, much to the astonishment of his valet, who, arising from his
knees, looked, mutely, from his master to myself, and then from
myself to his master.

“Come! we must go back,” said the latter, “the game's not
up yet;” and he again led the way to the tulip-tree.

“Jupiter,” said he, when we reached its foot, “come here!
was the skull nailed to the limb with the face outwards, or with
the face to the limb?”

“De face was out, massa, so dat de crows could get at de eyes
good, widout any trouble.”

“Well, then, was it this eye or that through which you dropped
the beetle?”—here Legrand touched each of Jupiter's eyes.

“Twas dis eye, massa—de lef eye—jis as you tell me,” and
here it was his right eye that the negro indicated.

“That will do—we must try it again.”

Here my friend, about whose madness I now saw, or fancied
that I saw, certain indications of method, removed the peg which
marked the spot where the beetle fell, to a spot about three inches
to the westward of its former position. Taking, now, the tape-measure
from the nearest point of the trunk to the peg, as before,
and continuing the extension in a straight line to the distance of
fifty feet, a spot was indicated, removed, by several yards, from
the point at which we had been digging.

Around the new position a circle, somewhat larger than in the
former instance, was now described, and we again set to work
with the spades. I was dreadfully weary, but, scarcely understanding
what had occasioned the change in my thoughts, I felt
no longer any great aversion from the labor imposed. I had become
most unaccountably interested—nay, even excited. Perhaps
there was something, amid all the extravagant demeanor of
Legrand—some air of forethought, or of deliberation, which impressed
me. I dug eagerly, and now and then caught myself
actually looking, with something that very much resembled expectation,
for the fancied treasure, the vision of which had demented
my unfortunate companion. At a period when such vagaries
of thought most fully possessed me, and when we had been
at work perhaps an hour and a half, we were again interrupted
by the violent howlings of the dog. His uneasiness, in the first

[figure description] Page 019.[end figure description]

instance, had been, evidently, but the result of playfulness or caprice,
but he now assumed a bitter and serious tone. Upon Jupiter's
again attempting to muzzle him, he made furious resistance,
and, leaping into the hole, tore up the mould frantically with his
claws. In a few seconds he had uncovered a mass of human
bones, forming two complete skeletons, intermingled with several
buttons of metal, and what appeared to be the dust of decayed
woollen. One or two strokes of a spade upturned the blade of a
large Spanish knife, and, as we dug farther, three or four loose
pieces of gold and silver coin came to light.

At sight of these the joy of Jupiter could scarcely be restrained,
but the countenance of his master wore an air of extreme disappointment.
He urged us, however, to continue our exertions, and
the words were hardly uttered when I stumbled and fell forward,
having caught the toe of my boot in a large ring of iron that lay
half buried in the loose earth.

We now worked in earnest, and never did I pass ten minutes
of more intense excitement. During this interval we had fairly
unearthed an oblong chest of wood, which, from its perfect preservation
and wonderful hardness, had plainly been subjected to
some mineralizing process—perhaps that of the Bi-chloride of
Mercury. This box was three feet and a half long, three feet
broad, and two and a half feet deep. It was firmly secured by
bands of wrought iron, riveted, and forming a kind of open trelliswork
over the whole. On each side of the chest, near the top,
were three rings of iron—six in all—by means of which a firm
hold could be obtained by six persons. Our utmost united endeavors
served only to disturb the coffer very slightly in its bed.
We at once saw the impossibility of removing so great a weight.
Luckily, the sole fastenings of the lid consisted of two sliding bolts.
These we drew back—trembling and panting with anxiety. In
an instant, a treasure of incalculable value lay gleaming before
us. As the rays of the lanterns fell within the pit, there flashed
upwards a glow and a glare, from a confused heap of gold and of
jewels, that absolutely dazzled our eyes.

I shall not pretend to described the feelings with which I gazed.
Amazement was, of course, predominant. Legrand appeared exhausted
with excitement, and spoke very few words. Jupiter's

[figure description] Page 020.[end figure description]

countenance wore, for some minutes, as deadly a pallor as it is
possible, in the nature of things, for any negro's visage to assume.
He seemed stupified—thunderstricken. Presently he fell upon
his knees in the pit, and, burying his naked arms up to the
elbows in gold, let them there remain, as if enjoying the luxury of a
bath. At length, with a deep sigh, he exclaimed, as if in a soliloquy,

“And dis all cum ob de goole-bug! de putty goole-bug! de
poor little goole-bug, what I boosed in dat sabage kind ob style!
Aint you shamed ob yourself, nigger?—answer me dat!”

It became necessary, at last, that I should arouse both master
and valet to the expediency of removing the treasure. It was
growing late, and it behooved us to make exertion, that we might
get every thing housed before daylight. It was difficult to say
what should be done, and much time was spent in deliberation—
so confused were the ideas of all. We, finally, lightened the box
by removing two thirds of its contents, when we were enabled,
with some trouble, to raise it from the hole. The articles taken
out were deposited among the brambles, and the dog left to guard
them, with strict orders from Jupiter neither, upon any pretence,
to stir from the spot, nor to open his mouth until our return. We
then hurriedly made for home with the chest; reaching the hut
in safety, but after excessive toil, at one o'clock in the morning.
Worn out as we were, it was not in human nature to do more immediately.
We rested until two, and had supper; starting for
the hills immediately afterwards, armed with three stout sacks,
which, by good luck, were upon the premises. A little before
four we arrived at the pit, divided the remainder of the booty, as
equally as might be, among us, and, leaving the holes unfilled,
again set out for the hut, at which, for the second time, we deposited
our golden burthens, just as the first faint streaks of the
dawn gleamed from over the tree-tops in the East.

We were now thoroughly broken down; but the intense excitement
of the time denied us repose. After an unquiet slumber
of some three or four hours' duration, we arose, as if by preconcert,
to make examination of our treasure.

The chest had been full to the brim, and we spent the whole
day, and the greater part of the next night, in a scrutiny of its

[figure description] Page 021.[end figure description]

contents. There had been nothing like order or arrangement.
Every thing had been heaped in promiscuously. Having assorted
all with care, we found ourselves possessed of even vaster wealth
than we had at first supposed. In coin there was rather more
than four hundred and fifty thousand dollars—estimating the
value of the pieces, as accurately as we could, by the tables of
the period. There was not a particle of silver. All was gold
of antique date and of great variety—French, Spanish, and German
money, with a few English guineas, and some counters, of
which we had never seen specimens before. There were several
very large and heavy coins, so worn that we could make nothing
of their inscriptions. There was no American money. The
value of the jewels we found more difficulty in estimating. There
were diamonds—some of them exceedingly large and fine—a
hundred and ten in all, and not one of them small; eighteen rubies
of remarkable brilliancy;—three hundred and ten emeralds,
all very beautiful; and twenty-one sapphires, with an opal.
These stones had all been broken from their settings and thrown
loose in the chest. The settings themselves, which we picked out
from among the other gold, appeared to have been beaten up with
hammers, as if to prevent identification. Besides all this, there
was a vast quantity of solid gold ornaments;—nearly two hundred
massive finger and ear rings;—rich chains—thirty of these,
if I remember;—eighty-three very large and heavy crucifixes;—
five gold censers of great value;—a prodigious golden punch-bowl,
ornamented with richly chased vine-leaves and Bacchanalian
figures; with two sword-handles exquisitely embossed, and
many other smaller articles which I cannot recollect. The
weight of these valuables exceeded three hundred and fifty pounds
avoirdupois; and in this estimate I have not included one hundred
and ninety-seven superb gold watches; three of the number
being worth each five hundred dollars, if one. Many of them
were very old, and as time keepers valueless; the works having
suffered, more or less, from corrosion—but all were richly jewelled
and in cases of great worth. We estimated the entire contents
of the chest, that night, at a million and a half of dollars;
and, upon the subsequent disposal of the trinkets and jewels (a

[figure description] Page 022.[end figure description]

few being retained for our own use), it was found that we had
greatly undervalued the treasure.

When, at length, we had concluded our examination, and the
intense excitement of the time had, in some measure, subsided,
Legrand, who saw that I was dying with impatience for a solution
of this most extraordinary riddle, entered into a full detail
of all the circumstances connected with it.

“You remember,” said he, “the night when I handed you the
rough sketch I had made of the scarabœus. You recollect also,
that I became quite vexed at you for insisting that my drawing
resembled a death's-head. When you first made this assertion I
thought you were jesting; but afterwards I called to mind the
peculiar spots on the back of the insect, and admitted to myself
that your remark had some little foundation in fact. Still, the
sneer at my graphic powers irritated me—for I am considered a
good artist—and, therefore, when you handed me the scrap of
parchment, I was about to crumple it up and throw it angrily
into the fire.”

“The scrap of paper, you mean,” said I.

“No; it had much of the appearance of paper, and at first I
supposed it to be such, but when I came to draw upon it, I discovered
it, at once, to be a piece of very thin parchment. It was
quite dirty, you remember. Well, as I was in the very act of
crumpling it up, my glance fell upon the sketch at which you had
been looking, and you may imagine my astonishment when I
perceived, in fact, the figure of a death's-head just where, it
seemed to me, I had made the drawing of the beetle. For a moment
I was too much amazed to think with accuracy. I knew that
my design was very different in detail from this—although there
was a certain similarity in general outline. Presently I took a
candle, and seating myself at the other end of the room, proceeded
to scrutinize the parchment more closely. Upon turning it
over, I saw my own sketch upon the reverse, just as I had made
it. My first idea, now, was mere surprise at the really remarkable
similarity of outline—at the singular coincidence involved in
the fact, that unknown to me, there should have been a skull upon
the other side of the parchment, immediately beneath my figure of
the scarabœus, and that this skull, not only in outline, but in size,

[figure description] Page 023.[end figure description]

should so closely resemble my drawing. I say the singularity of
this coincidence absolutely stupified me for a time. This is the
usual effect of such coincidences. The mind struggles to establish
a connexion—a sequence of cause and effect—and, being
unable to do so, suffers a species of temporary paralysis. But,
when I recovered from this stupor, there dawned upon me gradually
a conviction which startled me even far more than the coincidence.
I began distinctly, positively, to remember that there had
been no drawing upon the parchment when I made my sketch of
the scarabœus. I became perfectly certain of this; for I recollected
turning up first one side and then the other, in search of
the cleanest spot. Had the skull been then there, of course I
could not have failed to notice it. Here was indeed a my stery
which I felt it impossible to explain; but, even at that early moment,
there seemed to glimmer, faintly, within the most remote
and secret chambers of my intellect, a glow-worm-like conception
of that truth which last night's adventure brought to so magnificent
a demonstration. I arose at once, and putting the parchment
securely away, dismissed all farther reflection until I should
be alone.

“When you had gone, and when Jupiter was fast asleep, I be-took
myself to a more methodical investigation of the affair. In
the first place I considered the manner in which the parchment
had come into my possession. The spot where we discovered the
scarabœus was on the coast of the main land, about a mile eastward
of the island, and but a short distance above high water
mark. Upon my taking hold of it, it gave me a sharp bite, which
caused me to let it drop. Jupiter, with his accustomed caution, before
seizing the insect, which had flown towards him, looked about
him for a leaf, or something of that nature, by which to take hold
of it. It was at this moment that his eyes, and mine also, fell
upon the scrap of parchment, which I then supposed to be paper.
It was lying half buried in the sand, a corner sticking up. Near
the spot where we found it, I observed the remnants of the hull of
what appeared to have been a ship's long boat. The wreck
seemed to have been there for a very great while; for the resemblance
to boat timbers could scarcely be traced.

“Well, Jupiter picked up the parchment, wrapped the beetle

[figure description] Page 024.[end figure description]

in it, and gave it to me. Soon afterwards we turned to go home,
and on the way met Lieutenant G—. I showed him the insect,
and he begged me to let him take it to the fort. Upon my consenting,
he thrust it forthwith into his waistcoat pocket, without
the parchment in which it had been wrapped, and which I had
continued to hold in my hand during his inspection. Perhaps he
dreaded my changing my mind, and thought it best to make sure
of the prize at once—you know how enthusiastic he is on all subjects
connected with Natural History. At the same time, without
being conscious of it, I must have deposited the parchment in
my own pocket.

“You remember that when I went to the table, for the purpose
of making a sketch of the beetle, I found no paper where it was
usually kept. I looked in the drawer, and found none there. I
searched my pockets, hoping to find an old letter, when my hand
fell upon the parchment. I thus detail the precise mode in which
it came into my possession; for the circumstances impressed me
with peculiar force.

“No doubt you will think me fanciful—but I had already established
a kind of connexion. I had put together two links of a
great chain. There was a boat lying upon a sea-coast, and not
far from the boat was a parchment—not a paper—with a skull
depicted upon it. You will, of course, ask 'where is the connection?
' I reply that the skull, or death's-head, is the well-known
emblem of the pirate. The flag of the death's-head is hoisted in
all engagements.

“I have said that the scrap was parchment, and not paper.
Parchment is durable—almost imperishable. Matters of little
moment are rarely consigned to parchment; since, for the mere
ordinary purposes of drawing or writing, it is not nearly so well
adapted as paper. This reflection suggested some meaning—
some relevancy—in the death's-head. I did not fail to observe,
also, the form of the parchment. Although one of its corners had
been, by some accident, destroyed, it could be seen that the original
form was oblong. It was just such a slip, indeed, as might
have been chosen for a memorandum—for a record of something
to be long remembered and carefully preserved.”

“But,” I interposed, “you say that the skull was not upon the

[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]

parchment when you made the drawing of the beetle. How then
do you trace any connexion between the boat and the skull—
since this latter, according to your own admission, must have
been designed (God only knows how or by whom) at some period
subsequent to your sketching the scarabœus?”

“Ah, hereupon turns the whole mystery; although the secret,
at this point, I had comparatively little difficulty in solving. My
steps were sure, and could afford but a single result. I reasoned,
for example, thus: When I drew the scarabœus, there was no
skull apparent upon the parchment. When I had completed the
drawing I gave it to you, and observed you narrowly until you
returned it. You, therefore, did not design the skull, and no one
else was present to do it. Then it was not done by human agency.
And nevertheless it was done.

“At this stage of my reflections I endeavored to remember,
and did remember, with entire distinctness, every incident which
occurred about the period in question. The weather was chilly
(oh rare and happy accident!), and a fire was blazing upon the
hearth. I was heated with exercise and sat near the table. You,
however, had drawn a chair close to the chimney. Just as I placed
the parchment in your hand, and as you were in the act of inspecting
it, Wolf, the Newfoundland, entered, and leaped upon your
shoulders. With your left hand you caressed him and kept him
off, while your right, holding the parchment, was permitted to fall
listlessly between your knees, and in close proximity to the fire. At
one moment I thought the blaze had caught it, and was about to
caution you, but, before I could speak, you had withdrawn it, and
were engaged in its examination. When I considered all these
particulars, I doubted not for a moment that heat had been the agent
in bringing to light, upon the parchment, the skull which I saw designed
upon it. You are well aware that chemical preparations
exist, and have existed time out of mind, by means of which it is
possible to write upon either paper or vellum, so that the characters
shall become visible only when subjected to the action of fire.
Zaffre, digested in aqua regia, and diluted with four times its weight
of water, is sometimes employed; a green tint results. The regulus
of cobalt, dissolved in spirit of nitre, gives a red. These
colors disappear at longer or shorter intervals after the material

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

written upon cools, but again become apparent upon the re-application
of heat.

“I now scrutinized the death's-head with care. Its outer
edges—the edges of the drawing nearest the edge of the vellum—
were far more distinct than the others. It was clear that the action
of the caloric had been imperfect or unequal. I immediately
kindled a fire, and subjected every portion of the parchment to a
glowing heat. At first, the only effect was the strengthening of
the faint lines in the skull; but, upon persevering in the experiment,
there became visible, at the corner of the slip, diagonally
opposite to the spot in which the death's-head was delineated, the
figure of what I at first supposed to be a goat. A closer scrutiny,
however, satisfied me that it was intended for a kid.”

“Ha! ha!” said I, “to be sure I have no right to laugh at you—
a million and a half of money is too serious a matter for mirth—
but you are not about to establish a third link in your chain—
you will not find any especial connexion between your pirates
and a goat—pirates, you know, have nothing to do with goats;
they appertain to the farming interest.”

“But I have just said that the figure was not that of a goat.”

“Well, a kid then—pretty much the same thing.”

“Pretty much, but not altogether,” said Legrand. “You may
have heard of one Captain Kidd. I at once looked upon the
figure of the animal as a kind of punning or hieroglyphical signature.
I say signature; because its position upon the vellum
suggested this idea. The death's-head at the corner diagonally
opposite, had, in the same manner, the air of a stamp, or seal.
But I was sorely put out by the absence of all else—of the body
to my imagined instrument—of the text for my context.”

“I presume you expected to find a letter between the stamp
and the signature.”

“Something of that kind. The fact is, I felt irresistibly impressed
with a presentiment of some vast good fortune impending.
I can scarcely say why. Perhaps, after all, it was rather a desire
than an actual belief;—but do you know that Jupiter's
silly words, about the bug being of solid gold, had a remarkable
effect upon my fancy? And then the series of accidents and
coincidences—these were so very extraordinary. Do you

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

observe how mere an accident it was that these events should have
occurred upon the sole day of all the year in which it has been,
or may be, sufficiently cool for fire, and that without the fire, or
without the intervention of the dog at the precise moment in which
he appeared, I should never have become aware of the death's-head,
and so never the possessor of the treasure?”

“But proceed—I am all impatience.”

“Well; you have heard, of course, the many stories current—
the thousand vague rumors afloat about money buried, somewhere
upon the Atlantic coast, by Kidd and his associates. These
rumors must have had some foundation in fact. And that the
rumors have existed so long and so continuous, could have resulted,
it appeared to me, only from the circumstance of the
buried treasure still remaining entombed. Had Kidd concealed
his plunder for a time, and afterwards reclaimed it, the rumors
would scarcely have reached us in their present unvarying form.
You will observe that the stories told are all about money-seekers,
not about money-finders. Had the pirate recovered his money,
there the affair would have dropped. It seemed to me that some
accident—say the loss of a memorandum indicating its locality—
had deprived him of the means of recovering it, and that this accident
had become known to his followers, who otherwise might
never have heard that treasure had been concealed at all, and
who, busying themselves in vain, because unguided attempts, to
regain it, had given first birth, and then universal currency, to
the reports which are now so common. Have you ever heard
of any important treasure being unearthed along the coast?”

“Never.”

“But that Kidd's accumulations were immense, is well known.
I took it for granted, therefore, that the earth still held them; and
you will scarcely be surprised when I tell you that I felt a hope,
nearly amounting to certainty, that the parchment so strangely
found, involved a lost record of the place of deposit.”

“But how did you proceed?”

“I held the vellum again to the fire, after increasing the heat;
but nothing appeared. I now thought it possible that the coating
of dirt might have something to do with the failure; so I carefully
rinsed the parchment by pouring warm water over it, and,

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

having done this, I placed it in a tin pan, with the skull downwards,
and put the pan upon a furnace of lighted charcoal. In a few
minutes, the pan having become thoroughly heated, I removed
the slip, and, to my inexpressible joy, found it spotted, in several
places, with what appeared to be figures arranged in lines. Again
I placed it in the pan, and suffered it to remain another minute.
Upon taking it off, the whole was just as you see it now.”

Here Legrand, having re-heated the parchment, submitted it to
my inspection. The following characters were rudely traced, in
a red tint, between the death's-head and the goat:

53‡‡†305))6*;4826)4‡.)4‡);806*;48†8¶60))85;1‡(;:‡*8†83(88)
5*†;46(;88*96*?;8)*‡(;485);5*†2:*‡(;4956*2(5*—4)8¶8*;40692
85);)6†8)4‡‡;1(‡9;48081;8:8‡1;48†85;4)485†528806*81(‡9;48;
(88;4(‡?34;48)4‡;161;:188;‡?;

“But,” said I, returning him the slip, “I am as much in the
dark as ever. Were all the jewels of Golconda awaiting me
upon my solution of this enigma, I am quite sure that I should be
unable to earn them.”

“And yet,” said Legrand, “the solution is by no means so
difficult as you might be lead to imagine from the first hasty inspection
of the characters. These characters, as any one might
readily guess, form a cipher—that is to say, they convey a meaning;
but then, from what is known of Kidd, I could not suppose
him capable of constructing any of the more abstruse cryptographs.
I made up my mind, at once, that this was of a simple
species—such, however, as would appear, to the crude intellect
of the sailor, absolutely insoluble without the key.”

“And you really solved it?”

“Readily; I have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand
times greater. Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind,
have led me to take interest in such riddles, and it may well be
doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the
kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve.
In fact, having once established connected and legible
characters, I scarcely gave a thought to the mere difficulty of developing
their import.

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

“In the present case—indeed in all cases of secret writing—
the first question regards the language of the cipher; for the principles
of solution, so far, especially, as the more simple ciphers
are concerned, depend upon, and are varied by, the genius of the
particular idiom. In general, there is no alternative but experiment
(directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him
who attempts the solution, until the true one be attained. But,
with the cipher now before us, all difficulty was removed by the
signature. The pun upon the word 'Kidd' is appreciable in no
other language than the English. But for this consideration I
should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and French, as
the tongues in which a secret of this kind would most naturally
have been written by a pirate of the Spanish main. As it was, I
assumed the cryptograph to be English.

“You observe there are no divisions between the words. Had
there been divisions, the task would have been comparatively
easy. In such case I should have commenced with a collation
and analysis of the shorter words, and, had a word of a single letter
occurred, as is most likely, (a or I, for example,) I should
have considered the solution as assured. But, there being no division,
my first step was to ascertain the predominant letters, as
well as the least frequent. Counting all, I constructed a table,
thus:

Of the character	8	there are	33.
	;	⪆“	26.
	4	⪆“	19.
	‡ )	⪆“	16.
	*	⪆“	13.
	5	⪆“	12.
	6	⪆“	11.
	† 1	⪆“	8.
	0	⪆“	6.
	9 2	⪆“	5.
	: 3	⪆“	4.
	?	⪆“	3.
	¶	⪆“	2.
	— .	⪆“	1.

“Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

e. Afterwards, the succession runs thus: a o i d h n r s t u y c
vf g l m w b k p q x z. E predominates so remarkably that an
individual sentence of any length is rarely seen, in which it is not
the prevailing character.

“Here, then, we have, in the very beginning, the groundwork
for something more than a mere guess. The general use which
may be made of the table is obvious—but, in this particular
cipher, we shall only very partially require its aid. As our predominant
character is 8, we will commence by assuming it as the
e of the natural alphabet. To verify the supposition, let us observe
if the 8 be seen often in couples—for e is doubled with great
frequency in English—in such words, for example, as 'meet,'
'fleet,' 'speed,' 'seen,' been,' 'agree,'&c. In the present instance
we see it doubled no less than five times, although the
cryptograph is brief.

“Let us assume 8, then, as e. Now, of all words in the language,
'the' is most usual; let us see, therefore, whether there
are not repetitions of any three characters, in the same order of
collocation, the last of them being 8. If we discover repetitions
of such letters, so arranged, they will most probably represent
the word 'the.' Upon inspection, we find no less than seven such
arrangements, the characters being;48. We may, therefore, assume
that; represents t, 4 represents h, and 8 represents e—the
last being now well confirmed. Thus a great step has been
taken.

“But, having established a single word, we are enabled to establish
a vastly important point; that is to say, several commencements
and terminations of other words. Let us refer, for
example, to the last instance but one, in which the combination;
48 occurs—not far from the end of the cipher. We know that
the; immediately ensuing is the commencement of a word, and,
of the six characters succeeding this 'the,' we are cognizant of
no less than five. Let us set these characters down, thus, by the
letters we know them to represent, leaving a space for the unknown—

t eeth.

“Here we are enabled, at once, to discard the 'th,' as forming
no portion of the word commencing with the first t; since, by

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

experiment of the entire alphabet for a letter adapted to the vacancy,
we perceive that no word can be formed of which this th can be
a part. We are thus narrowed into

t ee,

“Looking beyond these words, for a short distance, we again
see the combination;48, and employ it by way of termination to
what immediately precedes. We have thus this arrangement:

the tree;4(‡?34 the,

the tree thr‡?3h the.

“Now, if, in place of the unknown characters, we leave blank
spaces, or substitute dots, we read thus:

the tree thr...h the,

“Looking now, narrowly, through the cipher for combinations
of known characters, we find, not very far from the beginning,
this arrangement,

83(88, or egree,

“Four letters beyond the word 'degree,' we perceive the combination

;48(;88.

“Translating the known characters, and representing the unknown
by dots, as before, we read thus:

th rtee.

“Referring, now, to the beginning of the cryptograph, we find
the combination,

53‡‡†.

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

“Translating, as before, we obtain

.good,

“It is now time that we arrange our key, as far as discovered,
in a tabular form, to avoid confusion. It will stand thus:

5	represents	a
†	⪆“	d
8	represents	e
3	represents	g
4	represents	h
6	represents	i
*	represents	n
‡	represents	o
(	represents	r
;	represents	t

“We have, therefore, no less than ten of the most important
letters represented, and it will be unnecessary to proceed with the
details of the solution. I have said enough to convince you that
ciphers of this nature are readily soluble, and to give you some
insight into the rationale of their development. But be assured
that the specimen before us appertains to the very simplest species
of cryptograph. It now only remains to give you the full
translation of the characters upon the parchment, as unriddled.
Here it is:

'A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat forty-one
degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by north main branch
seventh limb east side shoot from the left eye of the death's-head a
bee line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out.' ”

“But,” said I, “the enigma seems still in as bad a condition
as ever. How is it possible to extort a meaning from all this jargon
about 'devil's seats,' 'death's-heads,' and 'bishop's hotels?' ”

“I confess,” replied Legrand, “that the matter still wears a
serious aspect, when regarded with a casual glance. My first
endeavor was to divide the sentence into the natural division intended
by the cryptographist.”

“You mean, to punctuate it?”

“Something of that kind.”

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

“But how was it possible to effect this?”

“I reflected that it had been a point with the writer to run his
words together without division, so as to increase the difficulty of
solution. Now, a not over-acute man, in pursuing such an object,
would be nearly certain to overdo the matter. When, in the
course of his composition, he arrived at a break in his subject
which would naturally require a pause, or a point, he would be
exceedingly apt to run his characters, at this place, more than
usually close together. If you will observe the MS., in the present
instance, you will easily detect five such cases of unusual
crowding. Acting upon this hint, I made the division thus:

'A good glass in the Bishop's hostel in the Devil's seat—forty-
one degrees and thirteen minutes—northeast and by north—main
branch seventh limb east side—shoot from the left eye of the
death's-head—a bee-line from the tree through the shot fifty feet
out.'”

“Even this division,” said I, “leaves me still in the dark.”

“It left me also in the dark,” replied Legrand, “for a few
days; during which I made diligent inquiry, in the neighborhood
of Sullivan's Island, for any building which went by the name of
the 'Bishop's Hotel;' for, of course, I dropped the obsolete word
'hostel.' Gaining no information on the subject, I was on the
point of extending my sphere of search, and proceeding in a more
systematic manner, when, one morning, it entered into my head,
quite suddenly, that this 'Bishop's Hostel' might have some reference
to an old family, of the name of Bessop, which, time out of
mind, had held possession of an ancient manor-house, about four
miles to the northward of the Island. I accordingly went over to
the plantation, and re-instituted my inquiries among the older negroes
of the place. At length one of the most aged of women
said that she had heard of such a place as Bessop's Castle, and
thought that she could guide me to it, but that it was not a castle,
nor a tavern, but a high rock.

“I offered to pay her well for her trouble, and, after some demur,
she consented to accompany me to the spot. We found it
without much difficulty, when, dismissing her, I proceeded to examine
the place. The 'castle' consisted of an irregular assemblage
of cliffs and rocks—one of the latter being quite

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

remarkablefor its height as well as for its insulated and artificial appearance.
I clambered to its apex, and then felt much at a loss
as to what should be next done.

“While I was busied in reflection, my eyes fell upon a narrow
ledge in the eastern face of the rock, perhaps a yard below the summit
upon which I stood. This ledge projected about eighteen
inches, and was not more than a foot wide, while a niche in the
cliff just above it, gave it a rude resemblance to one of the hollow-backed
chairs used by our ancestors. I made no doubt that
here was the 'devil's-seat' alluded to in the MS., and now I seemed
to grasp the full secret of the riddle.

“The 'good glass,' I knew, could have reference to nothing
but a telescope; for the word 'glass' is rarely employed in any
other sense by seamen. Now here, I at once saw, was a telescope
to be used, and a definite point of view, admitting no variation,
from which to use it. Nor did I hesitate to believe that the
phrases, “forty-one degrees and thirteen minutes,' and 'northeast
and by north,' were intended as directions for the levelling of the
glass. Greatly excited by these discoveries, I hurried home, procured
a telescope, and returned to the rock.

“I let myself down to the ledge, and found that it was impossible
to retain a seat upon it except in one particular position.
This fact confirmed my preconceived idea. I proceeded to use
the glass. Of course, the 'forty-one degrees and thirteen minutes'
could allude to nothing but elevation above the visible horizon,
since the horizontal direction was clearly indicated by the
words, 'northeast and by north.' This latter direction I at once
established by means of a pocket-compass; then, pointing the
glass as nearly at an angle of forty-one degrees of elevation as I
could do it by guess, I moved it cautiously up or down, until my
attention was arrested by a circular rift or opening in the foliage
of a large tree that overtopped its fellows in the distance. In the
centre of this rift I perceived a white spot, but could not, at first,
distinguish what it was. Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I
again looked, and now made it out to be a human skull.

“Upon this discovery I was so sanguine as to consider the
enigma solved; for the phrase 'main branch, seventh limb, east
side,' could refer only to the position of the skull upon the tree,

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

while 'shoot from the left eye of the death's-head' admitted, also,
of but one interpretation, in regard to a search for buried treasure.
I perceived that the design was to drop a bullet from the
left eye of the skull, and that a bee-line, or, in other words, a
straight line, drawn from the nearest point of the trunk through
'the shot,' (or the spot where the bullet fell,) and thence extended
to a distance of fifty feet, would indicate a definite point—and beneath
this point I thought it at least possible that a deposit of
value lay concealed.”

“All this,” I said, “is exceedingly clear, and, although ingenious,
still simple and explicit. When you left the Bishop's
Hotel, what then?”

“Why, having carefully taken the bearings of the tree, I
turned homewards. The instant that I left 'the devil's seat,' however,
the circular rift vanished; nor could I get a glimpse of it
afterwards, turn as I would. What seems to me the chief ingenuity
in this whole business, is the fact (for repeated experiment
has convinced me it is a fact) that the circular opening in question
is visible from no other attainable point of view than that afforded
by the narrow ledge upon the face of the rock.

“In this expedition to the 'Bishop's Hotel' I had been attended
by Jupiter, who had, no doubt, observed, for some weeks past, the
abstraction of my demeanor, and took especial care not to leave
me alone. But, on the next day, getting up very early, I contrived
to give him the slip, and went into the hills in search of
the tree. After much toil I found it. When I came home at
night my valet proposed to give me a flogging. With the rest of
the adventure I believe you are as well acquainted as myself.”

“I suppose,” said I, “you missed the spot, in the first attempt
at digging, through Jupiter's stupidity in letting the bug fall
through the right instead of through the left eye of the skull.”

“Precisely. This mistake made a difference of about two
inches and a half in the 'shot'—that is to say, in the position of
the peg nearest the tree; and had the treasure been beneath the
'shot,' the error would have been of little moment; but 'the shot,'
together with the nearest point of the tree, were merely two
points for the establishment of a line of direction; of course the
error, however trivial in the beginning, increased as we

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

proceeded with the line, and by the time we had gone fifty feet, threw us
quite off the scent. But for my deep-seated impressions that
treasure was here somewhere actually buried, we might have had
all our labor in vain.”

“But your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swinging the
beetle—how excessively odd! I was sure you were mad. And
why did you insist upon letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet,
from the skull?”

“Why, to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident
suspicions touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you
quietly, in my own way, by a little bit of sober mystification.
For this reason I swung the beetle, and for this reason I let it fall
it from the tree. An observation of yours about its great weight
suggested the latter idea.”

“Yes, I perceive; and now there is only one point which puzzles
me. What are we to make of the skeletons found in the hole?”

“That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself.
There seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting
for them—and yet it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my
suggestion would imply. It is clear that Kidd—if Kidd indeed secreted
this treasure, which I doubt not—it is clear that he must
have had assistance in the labor. But this labor concluded, he
may have thought it expedient to remove all participants in his
secret. Perhaps a couple of blows with a mattock were sufficient,
while his coadjutors were busy in the pit; perhaps it required
a dozen—who shall tell?”

p321-050 THE BLACK CAT.

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

cause 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 were 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

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

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—

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

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 chim
æras 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—

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

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 fire-place,
that had been filled up, and made to resemble the rest 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 brick-work. 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

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

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
damned 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!

p321-060 MESMERIC REVELATION.

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

p321-071 LIONIZING.

—all people went
Upon their ten toes in wild wonderment.
Bishop Hall's Satires.

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

I am—that is to say I was—a great man; but I am neither the
author of Junius nor the man in the mask; for my name, I believe,
is Robert Jones, and I was born somewhere in the city of
Fum-Fudge.

The first action of my life was the taking hold of my nose with
both hands. My mother saw this and called me a genius:—my
father wept for joy and presented me with a treatise on Nosology.
This I mastered before I was breeched.

I now began to feel my way in the science, and soon came to
understand that, provided a man had a nose sufficiently conspicuous,
he might, by merely following it, arrive at a Lionship.
But my attention was not confined to theories alone. Every
morning I gave my proboscis a couple of pulls and swallowed a
half dozen of drams.

When I came of age my father asked me, one day, if I would
step with him into his study.

“My son,” said he, when we were seated, “what is the chief
end of your existence?”

“My father,” I answered, “it is the study of Nosology.”

“And what, Robert,” he inquired, “is Nosology?”

“Sir,” I said, “it is the Science of Noses.”

“And can you tell me,” he demanded, “what is the meaning
of a nose?”

“A nose, my father,” I replied, greatly softened, “has been
variously defined by about a thousand different authors.” [Here

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

I pulled out my watch.] “It is now noon or thereabouts—we
shall have time enough to get through with them all before midnight.
To commence then:—The nose, according to Bartholinus,
is that protuberance—that bump—that excrescence—
that—”

“Will do, Robert,” interrupted the good old gentleman. “I
am thunderstruck at the extent of your information—I am positively—
upon my soul.” [Here he closed his eyes and placed his
hand upon his heart.] “Come here!” [Here he took me by
the arm.] “Your education may now be considered as finished—
it is high time you should scuffle for yourself—and you cannot
do a better thing than merely follow your nose—so—so—so—”
[Here he kicked me down stairs and out of the door]—“so get
out of my house, and God bless you!”

As I felt within me the divine afflatus, I considered this accident
rather fortunate than otherwise. I resolved to be guided by the
paternal advice. I determined to follow my nose. I gave it a
pull or two upon the spot, and wrote a pamphlet on Nosology
forthwith.

All Fum-Fudge was in an uproar.

“Wonderful genius!” said the Quarterly.

“Superb physiologist!” said the Westminster.

“Clever fellow!” said the Foreign.

“Fine writer!” said the Edinburgh.

“Profound thinker!” said the Dublin.

“Great man!” said Bentley.

“Divine soul!” said Fraser.

“One of us!” said Blackwood.

“Who can he be?” said Mrs. Bas-Bleu.

“What can he be?” said big Miss Bas-Bleu.

“Where can he be?” said little Miss Bas-Bleu.—But I paid
these people no attention whatever—I just stepped into the shop
of an artist.

The Duchess of Bless-my-Soul was sitting for her portrait;
the Marquis of So-and-So was holding the Duchess' poodle; the
Earl of This-and-That was flirting with her salts; and his Royal
Highness of Touch-me-Not was leaning upon the back of her
chair.

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

I approached the artist and turned up my nose.

“Oh, beautiful!” sighed her Grace.

“Oh my!” lisped the Marquis.

“Oh, shocking!” groaned the Earl.

“Oh, abominable!” growled his Royal Highness.

“What will you take for it?” asked the artist.

“For his nose!” shouted her Grace.

“A thousand pounds,” said I, sitting down.

“A thousand pounds?” inquired the artist, musingly.

“A thousand pounds,” said I.

“Beautiful!” said he, entranced.

“A thousand pounds,” said I.

“Do you warrant it?” he asked, turning the nose to the light.

“I do,” said I, blowing it well.

“Is it quite original?” he inquired, touching it with reverence.

“Humph!” said I, twisting it to one side.

“Has no copy been taken?” he demanded, surveying it
through a microscope.

“None,” said I, turning it up.

“Admirable!” he ejaculated, thrown quite off his guard by
the beauty of the manœuvre.

“A thousand pounds,” said I.

“A thousand pounds?” said he.

“Precisely,” said I.

“A thousand pounds?” said he.

“Just so,” said I.

“You shall have them,” said he. “What a piece of virtu!”
So he drew me a check upon the spot, and took a sketch of my
nose. I engaged rooms in Jermyn street, and sent her Majesty
the ninety-ninth edition of the “Nosology,” with a portrait of the
proboscis.—That sad little rake, the Prince of Wales, invited me
to dinner.

We were all lions and recherchés.

There was a modern Platonist. He quoted Porphyry, Iamblicus,
Plotinus, Proclus, Hierocles, Maximus Tyrius, and Syrianus.

There was a human-perfectibility man. He quoted Turgôto,

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

Price, Priestly, Condorcêt, De Stäel, and the “Ambitious Student
in Ill Health.”

There was Sir Positive Paradox. He observed that all fools
were philosophers, and that all philosophers were fools.

There was Æstheticus Ethix. He spoke of fire, unity, and
atoms; bi-part and pre-existent soul; affinity and discord; primitive
intelligence and homöomeria.

There was Theologos Theology. He talked of Eusebius and
Arianus; heresy and the Council of Nice; Puseyism and consubstantialism;
Homousios and Homouioisios.

There was Fricassée from the Rocher de Cancale. He mentioned
Muriton of red tongue; cauliflowers with velouté sauce;
veal à la St. Menehoult; marinade à la St. Florentin; and
orange jellies en mosäiques.

There was Bibulus O'Bumper. He touched upon Latour and
Markbrünnen; upon Mousseux and Chambertin; upon Richbourg
and St. George; upon Haubrion, Leonville, and Medoc;
upon Barac and Preignac; upon Grâve, upon Sauterne, upon
Lafitte, and upon St. Peray. He shook his head at Clos de Vougeot,
and told, with his eyes shut, the difference between Sherry
and Amontillado.

There was Signor Tintontintino from Florence. He discoursed
of Cimabué, Arpino, Carpaccio, and Argostino—of the gloom of
Caravaggio, of the amenity of Albano, of the colors of Titian, of
the frows of Rubens, and of the waggeries of Jan Steen.

There was the President of the Fum-Fudge University. He
was of opinion that the moon was called Bendis in Thrace, Bubastis
in Egypt, Dian in Rome, and Artemis in Greece.

There was a Grand Turk from Stamboul. He could not help
thinking that the angels were horses, cocks, and bulls; that somebody
in the sixth heaven had seventy thousand heads; and that
the earth was supported by a sky-blue cow with an incalculable
number of green horns.

There was Delphinus Polyglott. He told us what had become
of the eighty-three lost tragedies of Æschylus; of the fifty-four
orations of Isæus; of the three hundred and ninety-one speeches of
Lysias; of the hundred and eighty treatises of Theophrastus; of
the eighth book of the conic sections of Apollonius; of Pindar's

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

hymns and dithyrambics; and of the five and forty tragedies of
Homer Junior.

There was Ferdinand Fitz-Fossillus Feltspar. He informed
us all about internal fires and tertiary formations; about äeriforms,
fluidiforms, and solidiforms; about quartz and marl;
about schist and schorl; about gypsum and trap; about talc and
calc; about blende and horn-blende; about mica-slate and pudding-stone;
about cyanite and lepidolite; about hæmatite and
tremolite; about antimony and calcedony; about manganese and
whatever you please.

There was myself. I spoke of myself;—of myself, of myself,
of myself;—of Nosology, of my pamphlet, and of myself. I
turned up my nose, and I spoke of myself.

“Marvellous clever man!” said the Prince.

“Superb!” said his guest:—and next morning her Grace of
Bless-my-Soul paid me a visit.

“Will you go to Almack's, pretty creature?” she said, tapping
me under the chin.

“Upon honor,” said I.

“Nose and all?” she asked.

“As I live,” I replied.

“Here then is a card, my life. Shall I say you will be
there?”

“Dear Duchess, with all my heart.”

Pshaw, no!—but with all your nose?”

“Every bit of it, my love,” said I:—so I gave it a twist or
two, and found myself at Almack's.

“The rooms were crowded to suffocation.

“He is coming!” said somebody on the staircase.

“He is coming!” said somebody farther up.

“He is coming!” said somebody farther still.

“He is come!” exclaimed the Duchess. “He is come, the
little love!”—and, seizing me firmly by both hands, she kissed
me thrice upon the nose.

A marked sensation immediately ensued.

“Diavolo!” cried Count Capricornutti.

“Dios guarda!” muttered Don Stiletto.

“Mille tonnerres!” ejaculated the Prince de Grenouille.

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

“Tousand teufel!” growled the Elector of Bluddennuff.

It was not to be borne. I grew angry. I turned short upon
Bluddennuff.

“Sir!” said I to him, “you are a baboon.”

“Sir,” he replied, after a pause, “Donner und Blitzen!”

This was all that could be desired. We exchanged cards.
At Chalk-Farm, the next morning, I shot off his nose—and then
called upon my friends.

“Bête!” said the first.

“Fool!” said the second.

“Dolt!” said the third.

“Ass!” said the fourth.

“Ninny!” said the fifth.

“Noodle!” said the sixth.

“Be off!” said the seventh.

At all this I felt mortified, and so called upon my father.

“Father,” I asked, “what is the chief end of my existence?”

“My son,” he replied, “it is still the study of Nosology; but
in hitting the Elector upon the nose you have overshot your mark.
You have a fine nose, it is true; but then Bluddennuff has none.
You are damned, and he has become the hero of the day. I grant
you that in Fum-Fudge the greatness of a lion is in proportion to
the size of his proboscis—but, good heavens! there is no competing
with a lion who has no proboscis at all.”

p321-077 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER.

Son cœur est un luth suspendu;
Sitôto qu'on le touche il rèsonne.
De Béranger.

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

way through the trellissed panes, and served to render sufficiently
distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however,
struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or
the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies
hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless,
antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments
lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the
scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air
of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded
all.

Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had
been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth
which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality—
of the constrained effort of the ennuyé man of the world. A
glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect
sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke
not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe.
Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a
period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I
could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before
me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character
of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness
of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison;
lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly
beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a
breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded
chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral
energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these
features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the
temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten.
And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character
of these features, and of the expression they were wont to
convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke.
The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre
of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The
silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as,
in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

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,

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

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:

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace—
Radiant palace—reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion—
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
II.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This—all this—was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.
III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-tunéd law,
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
IV.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
V.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

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 men1 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

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

family, and which made him what I now saw him—what he was.
Such opinions need no comment, and I will make none.

Our books—the books which, for years, had formed no small
portion of the mental existence of the invalid—were, as might be
supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We
pored together over such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of
Gresset; the Belphegor of Machiavelli; the Heaven and Hell of
Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by
Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D'Indaginé,
and of De la Chambre; the Journey into the Blue Distance of
Tieck; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favorite
volume was a small octavo edition of the Directorium Inquisitorium,
by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were
passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and
Ægipans, 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

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

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,

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

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,

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a
glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at
variance with this idea—for he rocked from side to side with a
gentle yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken
notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot,
which thus proceeded:

“And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible
fury of the dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and
of the breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed
the carcass from out of the way before him, and approached
valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to
where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not
for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the silver floor,
with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound.”

No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than—as if a
shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a
floor of silver—I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic,
and clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely
unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking
movement of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in
which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and
throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity.
But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a
strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered
about his lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and
gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending
closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous import of his
words.

“Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long—
long—long—many minutes, many hours, many days, have I
heard it—yet I dared not—oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I
am!—I dared not—I dared not speak! We have put her living
in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell
you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin.
I heard them—many, many days ago—yet I dared not—I dared
not speak! And now—to-night—Ethelred—ha! ha!—the breaking
of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and
the clangor of the shield!—say, rather, the rending of her coffin,

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her strug
gles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh whither shall I
fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid
me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair?
Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart?
Madman!”—here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked
out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul—
“Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!”

As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had
been found the potency of a spell—the huge antique pannels to
which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant,
their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing
gust—but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and
enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was
blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle
upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment
she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold—
then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the
person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies,
bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he
had anticipated.

From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The
storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing
the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild
light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have
issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me.
The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon,
which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure,
of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of
the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this
fissure rapidly widened—there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind—
the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight—
my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder—
there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a
thousand waters—and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed
sullenly and silently over the fragments of the “House of Usher.”

p321-096 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTRÖM.

The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways; nor
are the models that we frame any way commensurate to the vastness, profundity,
and unsearchableness of His works, which have a depth in them greater
than the well of Democritus.

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

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 before 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

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

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 it its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking for
ever. 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

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

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 any thing? 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

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

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 Maelström.”

“So it is sometimes termed,” said he. “We Norwegians call
it the Moskoe-ström, from the island of Moskoe in the midway.”

The ordinary accounts of this vortex had by no means prepared
me for what I saw. That of Jonas Ramus, which is perhaps the
most circumstantial of any, cannot impart the faintest conception
either of the magnificence, or of the horror of the scene—or of
the wild bewildering sense of the novel which confounds the beholder.
I am not sure from what point of view the writer in
question surveyed it, nor at what time; but it could neither have
been from the summit of Helseggen, nor during a storm. There
are some passages of his description, nevertheless, which may be
quoted for their details, although their effect is exceedingly feeble
in conveying an impression of the spectacle.

“Between Lofoden and Moskoe,” he says, “the depth of the water
is between thirty-six and forty fathoms; but on the other side,
toward Ver (Vurrgh) this depth decreases so as not to afford a
convenient passage for a vessel, without the risk of splitting on
the rocks, which happens even in the calmest weather. When it
is flood, the stream runs up the country between Lofoden and
Moskoe with a boisterous rapidity; but the roar of its impetuous
ebb to the sea is scarce equalled by the loudest and most dreadful

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

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 tranquillity 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-ström 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

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

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 Encyclop
ædia Britannica. Kircher and others imagine that in the
centre of the channel of the Maelström is an abyss penetrating
the globe, and issuing in some very remote part—the Gulf of
Bothnia being somewhat decidedly named in one instance. This
opinion, idle in itself, was the one to which, as I gazed, my imagination
most readily assented; and, mentioning it to the guide,
I was rather surprised to hear him say that, although it was the
view almost universally entertained of the subject by the Norwegians,
it nevertheless was not his own. As to the former notion
he confessed his inability to comprehend it; and here I agreed
with him—for, however conclusive on paper, it becomes altogether
unintelligible, and even absurd, amid the thunder of the abyss.

“You have had a good look at the whirl now,” said the old
man, “and if you will creep round this crag, so as to get in its
lee, and deaden the roar of the water, I will tell you a story that
will convince you I ought to know something of the Moskoe-str
öm.”

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;

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

but among the whole of the Lofoden coastmen, we three were the
only ones who made a regular business of going out to the islands,
as I tell you. The usual grounds are a great way lower
down to the southward. There fish can be got at all hours,
without much risk, and therefore these places are preferred.
The choice spots over here among the rocks, however, not only
yield the finest variety, but in far greater abundance; so that we
often got in a single day, what the more timid of the craft could
not scrape together in a week. In fact, we made it a matter of
desperate speculation—the risk of life standing instead of labor,
and courage answering for capital.

“We kept the smack in a cove about five miles higher up the
coast than this; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take
advantage of the fifteen minutes' slack to push across the main
channel of the Moskoe-ström, far above the pool, and then drop
down upon anchorage somewhere near Otterholm, or Sandflesen,
where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere. Here we used
to remain until nearly time for slack-water again, when we
weighed and made for home. We never set out upon this expedition
without a steady side wind for going and coming—one that
we felt sure would not fail us before our return—and we seldom
made a mis-calculation upon this point. Twice, during six years,
we were forced to stay all night at anchor on account of a dead
calm, which is a rare thing indeed just about here; and once we
had to remain on the grounds nearly a week, starving to death,
owing to a gale which blew up shortly after our arrival, and made
the channel too boisterous to be thought of. Upon this occasion
we should have been driven out to sea in spite of everything, (for
the whirlpools threw us round and round so violently, that, at
length, we fouled our anchor and dragged it) if it had not been
that we drifted into one of the innumerable cross currents—here
to-day and gone to-morrow—which drove us under the lee of
Flimen, where, by good luck, we brought up.

“I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties we
encountered 'on the grounds'—it is a bad spot to be in, even in
good weather—but we made shift always to run the gauntlet of
the Moskoe-ström itself without accident; although at times my
heart has been in my mouth when we happened to be a minute

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

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 Ström at slack water, which we
knew would be at eight.

“We set out with a fresh wind on our starboard quarter, and
for some time spanked along at a great rate, never dreaming of
danger, for indeed we saw not the slightest reason to apprehend it.
All at once we were taken aback by a breeze from over Helseggen.
This was most unusual—something that had never happened
to us before—and I began to feel a little uneasy, without
exactly knowing why. We put the boat on the wind, but could
make no headway at all for the eddies, and I was upon the point
of proposing to return to the anchorage, when, looking astern, we
saw the whole horizon covered with a singular copper-colored
cloud that rose with the most amazing velocity.

“In the meantime the breeze that had headed us off fell away,

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

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 overeast—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 deek, with only a small
batch near the bow, and this batch it had always been our custom
to batten down when about to cross the Ström, by way of
precaution against the chopping seas. But for this circumstance
we should have foundered at once—for we lay entirely buried
for some moments. How my elder brother escaped destruction
I cannot say, for I never had an opportunity of ascertaining. For
my part, as soon as I had let the foresail run, I threw myself flat
on deck, with my feet against the narrow gunwale of the bow,
and with my hands grasping a ring-bolt near the foot of the foremast.
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

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

horror—for he put his mouth close to my ear, and screamed out
the word 'Moskoe-ström!'

“No one ever will know what my feelings were at that moment.
I shook from head to foot as if I had had the most violent
fit of the ague. I knew what he meant by that one word well
enough—I knew what he wished to make me understand. With
the wind that now drove us on, we were bound for the whirl of
the Ström, and nothing could save us!

“You perceive that in crossing the Ström channel, we always
went a long way up above the whirl, even in the calmest weather,
and then had to wait and watch carefully for the slack—but now
we were driving right upon the pool itself, and in such a hurricane
as this! 'To be sure,' I thought, 'we shall get there just about
the slack—there is some little hope in that'—but in the next moment
I cursed myself for being so great a fool as to dream of
hope at all. I knew very well that we were doomed, had we
been ten times a ninety-gun ship.

“By this time the first fury of the tempest had spent itself, or
perhaps we did not feel it so much, as we scudded before it, but
at all events the seas, which at first had been kept down by the
wind, and lay flat and frothing, now got up into absolute mountains.
A singular change, too, had come over the heavens.
Around in every direction it was still as black as pitch, but nearly
overhead there burst out, all at once, a circular rift of clear sky—
as clear as I ever saw—and of a deep bright blue—and through
it there blazed forth the full moon with a lustre that I never before
knew her to wear. She lit up every thing about us with the greatest
distinctness—but, oh God, what a scene it was to light up!

“I now made one or two attempts to speak to my brother—but,
in some manner which I could not understand, the din had so increased
that I could not make him hear a single word, although
I screamed at the top of my voice in his ear. Presently he shook
his head, looking as pale as death, and held up one of his fingers,
as if to say 'listen!'

“At first I could not make out what he meant—but soon a
hideous thought flashed upon me. I dragged my watch from its
fob. It was not going. I glanced at its face by the moonlight,
and then burst into tears as I flung it far away into the ocean.

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

It had run down at seven o'clock! We were behind the time of
the slack, and the whirl of the Ström was in full fury!

“When a boat is well built, properly trimmed, and not deep
laden, the waves in a strong gale, when she is going large, seem
always to slip from beneath her—which appears very strange to
a landsman—and this is what is called riding, in sea phrase.
Well, so far we had ridden the swells very cleverly; but presently
a gigantic sea happened to take us right under the counter,
and bore us with it as it rose—up—up—as if into the sky. I
would not have believed that any wave could rise so high. And
then down we came with a sweep, a slide, and a plunge, that
made me feel sick and dizzy, as if I was falling from some lofty
mountain-top in a dream. But while we were up I had thrown
a quick glance around—and that one glance was all sufficient.
I saw our exact position in an instant. The Moskoe-ström whirlpool
was about a quarter of a mile dead ahead—but no more like
the every-day Moskoe-ström, than the whirl as you now see it is
like a mill-race. If I had not known where we were, and what we
had to expect, I should not have recognised the place at all. As
it was, I involuntarily closed my eyes in horror. The lids clenched
themselves together as if in a spasm.

“It could not have been more than two minutes afterward until
we suddenly felt the waves subside, and were enveloped in foam.
The boat made a sharp half turn to larboard, and then shot off
in its new direction like a thunderbolt. At the same moment the
roaring noise of the water was completely drowned in a kind of
shrill shriek—such a sound as you might imagine given out by
the waste-pipes of many thousand steam-vessels, letting off their
steam all together. We were now in the belt of surf that always
surrounds the whirl; and I thought, of course, that another moment
would plunge us into the abyss—down which we could only
see indistinctly on account of the amazing velocity with which
we were 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

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

jaws of the gulf, I felt more composed than when we were only
approaching it. Having made up my mind to hope no more, I
got rid of a great deal of that terror which unmanned me at first.
I suppose it was despair that strung my nerves.

“It may look like boasting—but what I tell you is truth—I
began to reflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a
manner, and how foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration
as my own individual life, in view of so wonderful a
manifestation of God's power. I do believe that I blushed with
shame when this idea crossed my mind. After a little while I
became possessed with the keenest curiosity about the whirl
itself. I positively felt a wish to explore its depths, even at the
sacrifice I was going to make; and my principal grief was that I
should never be able to tell my old companions on shore about the
mysteries I should see. These, no doubt, were singular fancies
to occupy a man's mind in such extremity—and I have often
thought since, that the revolutions of the boat around the pool
might have rendered me a little light-headed.

“There was another circumstance which tended to restore my
self-possession; and this was the cessation of the wind, which
could not reach us in our present situation—for, as you saw
yourself, the belt of surf is considerably lower than the general
bed of the ocean, and this latter now towered above us, a high,
black, mountainous ridge. If you have never been at sea in a
heavy gale, you can form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned
by the wind and spray together. They blind, deafen, and
strangle you, and take away all power of action or reflection.
But we were now, in a great measure, rid of these annoyances—
just as death-condemned felons in prison are allowed petty indulgences,
forbidden them while their doom is yet uncertain.

“How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impossible to
say. We careered round and round for perhaps an hour, flying
rather than floating, getting gradually more and more into the
middle of the surge, and then nearer and nearer to its horrible
inner edge. All this time I had never let go of the 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

[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]

watch, with a strange interest, the numerous things that floated
in our company. I must have been delirious—for I even sought
amusement in speculating upon the relative velocities of their several
descents toward the foam below. 'This fir tree,' I found
myself at one time saying, 'will certainly be the next thing that
takes the awful plunge and disappears,'—and then I was disappointed
to find that the wreck of a Dutch merchant ship overtook
it and went down before. At length, after making several
guesses of this nature, and being deceived in all—this fact—the
fact of my invariable miscalculation—set me upon a train of reflection
that made my limbs again tremble, and my heart beat
heavily once more.

“It was not a new terror that thus affected me, but the dawn of
a more exciting hope. This hope arose partly from memory,
and partly from present observation. I called to mind the great
variety of buoyant matter that strewed the coast of Lofoden, having
been absorbed and then thrown forth by the Moskoe-ström.
By far the greater number of the articles were shattered in the
most extraordinary way—so chafed and roughened as to have
the appearance of being stuck full of splinters—but then I distinctly
recollected that there were some of them which were not
disfigured at all. Now I could not account for this difference except
by supposing that the roughened fragments were the only
ones which had been completely absorbed—that the others had
entered the whirl at so late a period of the tide, or, for some reason,
had descended so slowly after entering, that they did not
reach the bottom before the turn of the flood came, or of the ebb,
as the case might be. I conceived it possible, in either instance,
that they might thus be whirled up again to the level of the
ocean, without undergoing the fate of those which had been
drawn in more early, or absorbed more rapidly. I made, also,
three important observations. The first was, that, as a general
rule, the larger the bodies were, the more rapid their descent—
the second, that, between two masses of equal extent, the one
spherical, and the other of any other shape, the superiority in
speed of descent was with the sphere—the third, that, between
two masses of equal size, the one cylindrical, and the other of
any other shape, the cylinder was absorbed the more slowly.

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

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.2

“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

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

quitting the smack, when, having descended to a vast distance beneath
me, it made three or four wild gyrations in rapid succession,
and, bearing my loved brother with it, plunged headlong, at
once and forever, into the chaos of foam below. The barrel to
which I was attached sunk very little farther than half the distance
between the bottom of the gulf and the spot at which I leaped
overboard, before a great change took place in the character
of the whirlpool. The slope of the sides of the vast funnel became
momently less and less steep. The gyrations of the whirl
grew, gradually, less and less violent. By degrees, the froth and
the rainbow disappeared, and the bottom of the gulf seemed slowly
to uprise. The sky was clear, the winds had gone down, and
the full moon was setting radiantly in the west, when I found
myself on the surface of the ocean, in full view of the shores of
Lofoden, and above the spot where the pool of the Moskoe-ström
had been. It was the hour of the slack—but the sea still heaved
in mountainous waves from the effects of the hurricane. I was
borne violently into the channel of the Ström, and in a few minutes
was hurried down the coast into the 'grounds' of the fishermen.
A boat picked me up—exhausted from fatigue—and (now
that the danger was removed) speechless from the memory of its
horror. Those who drew me on board were my old mates and
daily companions—but they knew me no more than they would
have known a traveller from the spirit-land. My hair which had
been raven-black the day before, was as white as you see it now.
They say too that the whole expression of my countenance had
changed. I told them my story—they did not believe it. I now
tell it to you—and I can scarcely expect you to put more faith
in it than did the merry fishermen of Lofoden.”

p321-113 THE COLLOQUY OF MONOS AND UNA. Μελλοντα ταυτα Sophocles—Antig: These things are in the future.

[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]

p321-123 THE CONVERSATION OF EIROS AND CHARMION.

Πυρ σοι προσοισω
I will bring fire to thee.
Euripides—Androm:

[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]

THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE.

What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid
himself among women, although puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.

[figure description] Page 116.[end figure description]

The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in
themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate
them only in their effects. We know of them, among other
things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately
possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong
man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as
call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral
activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the
most trivial occupations bringing his talent into play. He is fond
of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his
solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary
apprehension præternatural. His results, brought about by
the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air
of intuition.

The faculty of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by
mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it
which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations,
has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate
is not in itself to analyse. A chess-player, for example,
does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game
of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood.
I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing
a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at

[figure description] Page 117.[end figure description]

random; I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher
powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more
usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all
the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces
have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable
values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error)
for what is profound. The attention is here called powerfully
into play. If it flag for an instant, an oversight is committed,
resulting in injury or defeat. The possible moves being not only
manifold but involute, the chances of such oversights are multiplied;
and in nine cases out of ten it is the more concentrative
rather than the more acute player who conquers. In draughts, on
the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but little variation,
the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the
mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what advantages
are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen.
To be less abstract—Let us suppose a game of draughts where
the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no
oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can
be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherch
é movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect.
Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into
the spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not unfrequently
sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometimes
indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error
or hurry into miscalculation.

Whist has long been noted for its influence upon what is
termed the calculating power; and men of the highest order of
intellect have been known to take an apparently unaccountable
delight in it, while eschewing chess as frivolous. Beyond doubt
there is nothing of a similar nature so greatly tasking the faculty
of analysis. The best chess-player in Christendom may be little
more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies
capacity for success in all those more important undertakings
where mind struggles with mind. When I say proficiency, I
mean that perfection in the game which includes a comprehension
of all the sources whence legitimate advantage may be derived.
These are not only manifold but multiform, and lie frequently

[figure description] Page 118.[end figure description]

among recesses of thought altogether inaccessible to the ordinary
understanding. To observe attentively is to remember distinctly;
and, so far, the concentrative chess-player will do very well at
whist; while the rules of Hoyle (themselves based upon the mere
mechanism of the game) are sufficiently and generally comprehensible.
Thus to have a retentive memory, and to proceed by
“the book,” are points commonly regarded as the sum total of
good playing. But it is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule
that the skill of the analyst is evinced. He makes, in silence, a
host of observations and inferences. So, perhaps, do his companions;
and the difference in the extent of the information obtained,
lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in the
quality of the observation. The necessary knowledge is that of
what to observe. Our player confines himself not at all; nor,
because the game is the object, does he reject deductions from
things external to the game. He examines the countenance of
his partner, comparing it carefully with that of each of his opponents.
He considers the mode of assorting the cards in each
hand; often counting trump by trump, and honor by honor, through
the glances bestowed by their holders upon each. He notes every
variation of face as the play progresses, gathering a fund of
thought from the differences in the expression of certainty, of
surprise, of triumph, or of chagrin. From the manner of gathering
up a trick he judges whether the person taking it can make
another in the suit. He recognises what is played through feint,
by the air with which it is thrown upon the table. A casual or
inadvertent word; the accidental dropping or turning of a card,
with the accompanying anxiety or carelessness in regard to its
concealment; the counting of the tricks, with the order of their
arrangement; embarrassment, hesitation, eagerness or trepidation—
all afford, to his apparently intuitive perception, indications of
the true state of affairs. The first two or three rounds having
been played, he is in full possession of the contents of each hand,
and thenceforward puts down his cards with as absolute a precision
of purpose as if the rest of the party had turned outward the
faces of their own.

The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity;
for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the

p321-132 [figure description] Page 119.[end figure description]

ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis. The constructive
or combining power, by which ingenuity is usually
manifested, and to which the phrenologists (I believe erroneously)
have assigned a separate organ, supposing it a primitive faculty,
has been so frequently seen in those whose intellect bordered otherwise
upon idiocy, as to have attracted general observation among
writers on morals. Between ingenuity and the analytic ability
there exists a difference far greater, indeed, than that between the
fancy and the imagination, but of a character very strictly analogous.
It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always
fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.

The narrative which follows will appear to the reader somewhat
in the light of a commentary upon the propositions just advanced.

Residing in Paris during the spring and part of the summer of
18—, I there became acquainted with a Monsieur C. Auguste
Dupin. This young gentleman was of an excellent—indeed of an
illustrious family, but, by a variety of untoward events, had been
reduced to such poverty that the energy of his character succumbed
beneath it, and he ceased to bestir himself in the world,
or to care for the retrieval of his fortunes. By courtesy of his
creditors, there still remained in his possession a small remnant
of his patrimony; and, upon the income arising from this, he
managed, by means of a rigorous economy, to procure the necessaries
of life, without troubling himself about its superfluities.
Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries, and in Paris these are
easily obtained.

Our first meeting was at an obscure library in the Rue Montmartre,
where the accident of our both being in search of the
same very rare and very remarkable volume, brought us into
closer communion. We saw each other again and again. I was
deeply interested in the little family history which he detailed to
me with all that candor which a Frenchman indulges whenever
mere self is his theme. I was astonished, too, at the vast extent
of his reading; and, above all, I felt my soul enkindled within
me by the wild fervor, and the vivid freshness of his imagination.
Seeking in Paris the objects I then sought, I felt that the society

[figure description] Page 120.[end figure description]

of such a man would be to me a treasure beyond price; and this
feeling I frankly confided to him. It was at length arranged that
we should live together during my stay in the city; and as my
worldly circumstances were somewhat less embarrassed than his
own, I was permitted to be at the expense of renting, and furnishing
in a style which suited the rather fantastic gloom of our
common temper, a time-eaten and grotesque mansion, long deserted
through superstitions into which we did not inquire, and
tottering to its fall in a retired and desolate portion of the Faubourg
St. Germain.

Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the
world, we should have been regarded as madmen—although, perhaps,
as madmen of a harmless nature. Our seclusion was perfect.
We admitted no visitors. Indeed the locality of our retirement
had been carefully kept a secret from my own former
associates; and it had been many years since Dupin had ceased
to know or be known in Paris. We existed within ourselves
alone.

It was a freak of fancy in my friend (for what else shall I call
it?) to be enamored of the Night for her own sake; and into
this bizarrerie, as into all his others, I quietly fell; giving myself
up to his wild whims with a perfect abandon. The sable divinity
would not herself dwell with us always; but we could counterfeit
her presence. At the first dawn of the morning we closed
all the massy shutters of our old building; lighting a couple of
tapers which, strongly perfumed, threw out only the ghastliest
and feeblest of rays. By the aid of these we then busied our
souls in dreams—reading, writing, or conversings, until warned
by the clock of the advent of the true Darkness. Then we
sallied forth into the streets, arm in arm, continuing the topics of
the day, or roaming far and wide until a late hour, seeking, amid
the wild lights and shadows of the populous city, that infinity of
mental excitement which quiet observation can afford.

At such times I could not help remarking and admiring (although
from his rich ideality I had been prepared to expect it) a
peculiar analytic ability in Dupin. He seemed, too, to take an
eager delight in its exercise—if not exactly in its display—and
did not hesitate to confess the pleasure thus derived. He boasted

[figure description] Page 121.[end figure description]

to me, with a low chuckling laugh, that most men, in respect to
himself, wore windows in their bosoms, and was wont to follow
up such assertions by direct and very startling proofs of his intimate
knowledge of my own. His manner at these moments
was frigid and abstract; his eyes were vacant in expression;
while his voice, usually a rich tenor, rose into a treble which
would have sounded petulantly but for the deliberateness and entire
distinctness of the enunciation. Observing him in these
moods, I often dwelt meditatively upon the old philosophy of the
Bi-Part Soul, and amused myself with the fancy of a double
Dupin—the creative and the resolvent.

Let it not be supposed, from what I have just said, that I am
detailing any mystery, or penning any romance. What I have
described in the Frenchman, was merely the result of an excited,
or perhaps of a diseased intelligence. But of the character
of his remarks at the periods in question an example will best
convey the idea.

We were strolling one night down a long dirty street, in the
vicinity of the Palais Royal. Being both, apparently, occupied
with thought, neither of us had spoken a syllable for fifteen minutes
at least. All at once Dupin broke forth with these words:

“He is a very little fellow, that's true, and would do better for
the Théâtre des Variétés.”

“There can be no doubt of that,” I replied unwittingly, and
not at first observing (so much had I been absorbed in reflection)
the extraordinary manner in which the speaker had chimed in
with my meditations. In an instant afterward I recollected myself,
and my astonishment was profound.

“Dupin,” said I, gravely, “this is beyond my comprehension.
I do not hesitate to say that I am amazed, and can scarcely
credit my senses. How was it possible you should know I was
thinking of—?” Here I paused, to ascertain beyond a
doubt whether he really knew of whom I thought.

—“of Chantilly,” said he, “why do you pause? You
were remarking to yourself that his diminutive figure unfitted
him for tragedy.”

This was precisely what had formed the subject of my reflections.
Chantilly was a quondam cobbler of the Rue St. Denis,

[figure description] Page 122.[end figure description]

who, becoming stage-mad, had attempted the rôle of Xerxes, in
Crébillon's tragedy so called, and been notoriously Pasquinaded
for his pains.

“Tell me, for Heaven's sake,” I exclaimed, “the method—if
method there is—by which you have been enabled to fathom my
soul in this matter.” In fact I was even more startled than I
would have been willing to express.

“It was the fruiterer,” replied my friend, “who brought you
to the conclusion that the mender of soles was not of sufficient
height for Xerxes et id genus omne.”

“The fruiterer!—you astonish me—I know no fruiterer whomsoever.”

“The man who ran up against you as we entered the street—
it may have been fifteen minutes ago.”

I now remembered that, in fact, a fruiterer, carrying upon his
head a large basket of apples, had nearly thrown me down, by
accident, as we passed from the Rue C—into the thoroughfare
where we stood; but what this had to do with Chantilly I
could not possibly understand.

There was not a particle of charlatânerie about Dupin. “I
will explain,” he said, “and that you may comprehend all
clearly, we will first retrace the course of your meditations, from
the moment in which I spoke to you until that of the rencontre
with the fruiterer in question. The larger links of the chain run
thus—Chantilly, Orion, Dr. Nichols, Epicurus, Stereotomy, the
street stones, the fruiterer.”

There are few persons who have not, at some period of their
lives, amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular
conclusions of their own minds have been attained. The occupation
is often full of interest; and he who attempts it for the
first time is astonished by the apparently illimitable distance and
incoherence between the starting-point and the goal. What, then,
must have been my amazement when I heard the Frenchman
speak what he had just spoken, and when I could not help acknowledging
that he had spoken the truth. He continued:

“We had been talking of horses, if I remember aright, just
before leaving the Rue C—. This was the last subject we
discussed. As we crossed into this street, a fruiterer, with a

[figure description] Page 123.[end figure description]

large basket upon his head, brushing quickly past us, thrust you
upon a pile of paving-stones collected at a spot where the causeway
is undergoing repair. You stepped upon one of the loose
fragments, slipped, slightly strained your ankle, appeared vexed
or sulky, muttered a few words, turned to look at the pile, and
then proceeded in silence. I was not particularly attentive to
what you did; but observation has become with me, of late, a
species of necessity.

“You kept your eyes upon the ground—glancing, with a petulant
expression, at the holes and ruts in the pavement, (so that I
saw you were still thinking of the stones,) until we reached the
little alley called Lamartine, which has been paved, by way of
experiment, with the overlapping and riveted blocks. Here your
countenance brightened up, and, perceiving your lips move, I
could not doubt that you murmured the word 'stereotomy,' a
term very affectedly applied to this species of pavement. I knew
that you could not say to yourself 'stereotomy' without being
brought to think of atomies, and thus of the theories of Epicurus;
and since, when we discussed this subject not very long ago, I
mentioned to you how singularly, yet with how little notice, the
vague guesses of that noble Greek had met with confirmation in
the late nebular cosmogony, I felt that you could not avoid casting
your eyes upward to the great nebula in Orion, and I certainly
expected that you would do so. You did look up; and I
was now assured that I had correctly followed your steps. But
in that bitter tirade upon Chantilly, which appeared in yesterday's
'Musée,' the satirist, making some disgraceful allusions
to the cobbler's change of name upon assuming the buskin, quoted
a Latin line about which we have often conversed. I mean the
line

Perdidit antiquum litera prima sonum

[figure description] Page 124.[end figure description]

thought of the poor cobbler's immolation. So far, you had been
stooping in your gait; but now I saw you draw yourself up to
your full height. I was then sure that you reflected upon the
diminutive figure of Chantilly. At this point I interrupted your
meditations to remark that as, in fact, he was a very little fellow—
that Chantilly—he would do better at the Théâtre des Vari
étés.”

Not long after this, we were looking over an evening edition
of the “Gazette des Tribunaux,” when the following paragraphs
arrested our attention.

“Extraordinary Murders.—This morning, about three
o'clock, the inhabitants of the Quartier St. Roch were aroused
from sleep by a succession of terrific shrieks, issuing, apparently,
from the fourth story of a house in the Rue Morgue, known to be
in the sole occupancy of one Madame L'Espanaye, and her
daughter, Mademoiselle Camille L'Espanaye. After some delay,
occasioned by a fruitless attempt to procure admission in the
usual manner, the gateway was broken in with a crowbar, and
eight or ten of the neighbors entered, accompanied by two gendarmes.
By this time the cries had ceased; but, as the party
rushed up the first flight of stairs, two or more rough voices, in
angry contention, were distinguished, and seemed to proceed from
the upper part of the house. As the second landing was reached,
these sounds, also, had ceased, and everything remained perfectly
quiet. The party spread themselves, and hurried from room to
room. Upon arriving at a large back chamber in the fourth
story, (the door of which, being found locked, with the key inside,
was forced open,) a spectacle presented itself which struck
every one present not less with horror than with astonishment.

“The apartment was in the wildest disorder—the furniture
broken and thrown about in all directions. There was only one
bedstead; and from this the bed had been removed, and thrown
into the middle of the floor. On a chair lay a razor, besmeared
with blood. On the hearth were two or three long and thick tresses
of grey human hair, also dabbled in blood, and seeming to have
been pulled out by the roots. Upon the floor were found four
Napoleons, an ear-ring of topaz, three large silver spoons, three
smaller of métal d' Alger, and two bags, containing nearly four

[figure description] Page 125.[end figure description]

thousand francs in gold. The drawers of a bureau, which stood
in one corner, were open, and had been, apparently, rifled, although
many articles still remained in them. A small iron safe
was discovered under the bed (not under the bedstead). It was
open, with the key still in the door. It had no contents beyond
a few old letters, and other papers of little consequence.

“Of Madame L'Espanaye no traces were here seen; but an
unusual quantity of soot being observed in the fire-place, a
search was made in the chimney, and (horrible to relate!) the
corpse of the daughter, head downward, was dragged therefrom;
it having been thus forced up the narrow aperture for a considerable
distance. The body was quite warm. Upon examining
it, many excoriations were perceived, no doubt occasioned by the
violence with which it had been thrust up and disengaged. Upon
the face were many severe scratches, and, upon the throat, dark
bruises, and deep indentations of finger nails, as if the deceased
had been throttled to death.

“After a thorough investigation of every portion of the house,
without farther discovery, the party made its way into a small
paved yard in the rear of the building, where lay the corpse of
the old lady, with her throat so entirely cut that, upon an attempt
to raise her, the head fell off. The body, as well as the head, was
fearfully mutilated—the former so much so as scarcely to retain
any semblance of humanity.

“To this horrible mystery there is not as yet, we believe, the
slightest clew.”

The next day's paper had these additional particulars.

“The Tragedy in the Rue Morgue. Many individuals have
been examined in relation to this most extraordinary and frightful
affair.” [The word 'affaire' has not yet, in France, that levity
of import which it conveys with us,] “but nothing whatever has
transpired to throw light upon it. We give below all the material
testimony elicited.

“Pauline Dubourg, laundress, deposes that she has known
both the deceased for three years, having washed for them during
that period. The old lady and her daughter seemed on good
terms—very affectionate towards each other. They were excellent
pay. Could not speak in regard to their mode or means of

[figure description] Page 126.[end figure description]

living. Believed that Madame L. told fortunes for a living.
Was reputed to have money put by. Never met any persons in
the house when she called for the clothes or took them home.
Was sure that they had no servant in employ. There appeared
to be no furniture in any part of the building except in the fourth
story.

“Pierre Moreau, tobacconist, deposes that he has been in the
habit of selling small quantities of tobacco and snuff to Madame
L'Espanaye for nearly four years. Was born in the neighborhood,
and has always resided there. The deceased and her
daughter had occupied the house in which the corpses were found,
for more than six years. It was formerly occupied by a jeweller,
who under-let the upper rooms to various persons. The house
was the property of Madame L. She became dissatisfied with
the abuse of the premises by her tenant, and moved into them
herself, refusing to let any portion. The old lady was childish.
Witness had seen the daughter some five or six times during the
six years. The two lived an exceedingly retired life—were reputed
to have money. Had heard it said among the neighbors that
Madame L. told fortunes—did not believe it. Had never seen
any person enter the door except the old lady and her daughter,
a porter once or twice, and a physician some eight or ten
times.

“Many other persons, neighbors, gave evidence to the same
effect. No one was spoken of as frequenting the house. It was
not known whether there were any living connexions of Madame
L. and her daughter. The shutters of the front windows were
seldom opened. Those in the rear were always closed, with the
exception of the large back room, fourth story. The house was
a good house—not very old.

“Isidore Musèt, gendarme, deposes that he was called to the
house about three o'clock in the morning, and found some twenty
or thirty persons at the gateway, endeavoring to gain admittance.
Forced it open, at length, with a bayonet—not with a crowbar.
Had but little difficulty in getting it open, on account of its being
a double or folding gate, and bolted neither at bottom nor top.
The shrieks were continued until the gate was forced—and then
suddenly ceased. They seemed to be screams of some person

[figure description] Page 127.[end figure description]

(or persons) in great agony—were loud and drawn out, not short
and quick. Witness led the way up stairs. Upon reaching the
first landing, heard two voices in loud and angry contention—the
one a gruff voice, the other much shriller—a very strange voice.
Could distinguish some words of the former, which was that of a
Frenchman. Was positive that it was not a woman's voice.
Could distinguish the words 'sacré' and 'diable.' The shrill
voice was that of a foreigner. Could not be sure whether it was
the voice of a man or of a woman. Could not make out what
was said, but believed the language to be Spanish. The state of
the room and of the bodies was described by this witness as we
described them yesterday.

“Henri Duval, a neighbor, and by trade a silver-smith, deposes
that he was one of the party who first entered the house.
Corroborates the testimony of Musèt in general. As soon as
they forced an entrance, they reclosed the door, to keep out the
crowd, which collected very fast, notwithstanding the lateness of
the hour. The shrill voice, this witness thinks, was that of an
Italian. Was certain it was not French. Could not be sure that
it was a man's voice. It might have been a woman's. Was not
acquainted with the Italian language. Could not distinguish the
words, but was convinced by the intonation that the speaker was
an Italian. Knew Madame L. and her daughter. Had conversed
with both frequently. Was sure that the shrill voice was
not that of either of the deceased.

“—Odenheimer, restaurateur. This witness volunteered
his testimony. Not speaking French, was examined through an
interpreter. Is a native of Amsterdam. Was passing the house
at the time of the shrieks. They lasted for several minutes—
probably ten. They were long and loud—very awful and distressing.
Was one of those who entered the building. Corroborated
the previous evidence in every respect but one. Was sure
that the shrill voice was that of a man—of a Frenchman. Could
not distinguish the words uttered. They were loud and quick—
unequal—spoken apparently in fear as well as in anger. The
voice was harsh—not so much shrill as harsh. Could not call it
a shrill voice. The gruff voice said repeatedly 'sacré,' 'diable,'
and once 'mon Dieu.'

[figure description] Page 128.[end figure description]

“Jules Mignaud, banker, of the firm of Mignaud et Fils,
Rue Deloraine. Is the elder Mignaud. Madame L'Espanaye
had some property. Had opened an account with his banking
house in the spring of the year—(eight years previously).
Made frequent deposits in small sums. Had checked for nothing
until the third day before her death, when she took out in person
the sum of 4000 francs. This sum was paid in gold, and a
clerk sent home with the money.

“Adolphe Le Bon, clerk to Mignaud et Fils, deposes that on the
day in question, about noon, he accompanied Madame L'Espanaye
to her residence with the 4000 francs, put up in two bags. Upon
the door being opened, Mademoiselle L. appeared and took from
his hands one of the bags, while the old lady relieved him of the
other. He then bowed and departed. Did not see any person
in the street at the time. It is a bye-street—very lonely.

“William Bird, tailor, deposes that he was one of the party
who entered the house. Is an Englishman. Has lived in Paris
two years. Was one of the first to ascend the stairs. Heard
the voices in contention. The gruff voice was that of a Frenchman.
Could make out several words, but cannot now remember
all. Heard distinctly 'sacré' and 'mon Dieu.' There was a
sound at the moment as if of several persons struggling—a scraping
and scuffling sound. The shrill voice was very loud—louder
than the gruff one. Is sure that it was not the voice of an Englishman.
Appeared to be that of a German. Might have been
a woman's voice. Does not understand German.

“Four of the above-named witnesses, being recalled, deposed
that the door of the chamber in which was found the body of
Mademoiselle L. was locked on the inside when the party reached
it. Every thing was perfectly silent—no groans or noises of
any kind. Upon forcing the door no person was seen. The
windows, both of the back and front room, were down and firmly
fastened from within. A door between the two rooms was closed,
but not locked. The door leading from the front room into the
passage was locked, with the key on the inside. A small room
in the front of the house, on the fourth story, at the head of the
passage, was open, the door being ajar. This room was crowded
with old beds, boxes, and so forth. These were carefully

[figure description] Page 129.[end figure description]

removed and searched. There was not an inch of any portion of the
house which was not carefully searched. Sweeps were sent up
and down the chimneys. The house was a four story one, with
garrets (mansardes.) A trap-door on the roof was nailed down
very securely—did not appear to have been opened for years.
The time elapsing between the hearing of the voices in contention
and the breaking open of the room door, was variously stated by
the witnesses. Some made it as short as three minutes—some as
long as five. The door was opened with difficulty.

“Alfonzo Garcio, undertaker, deposes that he resides in the
Rue Morgue. Is a native of Spain. Was one of the party who
entered the house. Did not proceed up stairs. Is nervous, and
was apprehensive of the consequences of agitation. Heard the
voices in contention. The gruff voice was that of a Frenchman.
Could not distinguish what was said. The shrill voice was that
of an Englishman—is sure of this. Does not understand the
English language, but judges by the intonation.

“Alberto Montani, confectioner, deposes that he was among the
first to ascend the stairs. Heard the voices in question. The
gruff voice was that of a Frenchman. Distinguished several
words. The speaker appeared to be expostulating. Could not
make out the words of the shrill voice. Spoke quick and unevenly.
Thinks it the voice of a Russian. Corroborates the
general testimony. Is an Italian. Never conversed with a native
of Russia.

“Several witnesses, recalled, here testified that the chimneys
of all the rooms on the fourth story were too narrow to admit the
passage of a human being. By 'sweeps' were meant cylindrical
sweeping-brushes, such as are employed by those who clean
chimneys. These brushes were passed up and down every flue
in the house. There is no back passage by which any one could
have descended while the party proceeded up stairs. The body
of Mademoiselle L'Espanaye was so firmly wedged in the chimney
that it could not be got down until four or five of the party
united their strength.

“Paul Dumas, physician, deposes that he was called to view
the bodies about day-break. They were both then lying on the
sacking of the bedstead in the chamber where Mademoiselle L.

[figure description] Page 130.[end figure description]

was found. The corpse of the young lady was much bruised
and excoriated. The fact that it had been thrust up the chimney
would sufficiently account for these appearances. The throat
was greatly chafed. There were several deep scratches just below
the chin, together with a series of livid spots which were evidently
the impression of fingers. The face was fearfully discolored,
and the eye-balls protruded. The tongue had been partially
bitten through. A large bruise was discovered upon the pit
of the stomach, produced, apparently, by the pressure of a knee.
In the opinion of M. Dumas, Mademoiselle L'Espanaye had been
throttled to death by some person or persons unknown. The
corpse of the mother was horribly mutilated. All the bones of
the right leg and arm were more or less shattered. The left tibia
much splintered, as well as all the ribs of the left side. Whole
body dreadfully bruised and discolored. It was not possible to
say how the injuries had been inflicted. A heavy club of wood,
or a broad bar of iron—a chair—any large, heavy, and obtuse
weapon would have produced such results, if wielded by the hands
of a very powerful man. No woman could have inflicted the
blows with any weapon. The head of the deceased, when seen
by witness, was entirely separated from the body, and was also
greatly shattered. The throat had evidently been cut with some
very sharp instrument—probably with a razor.

“Alexandre Etienne, surgeon, was called with M. Dumas to
view the bodies. Corroborated the testimony, and the opinions
of M. Dumas.

“Nothing farther of importance was elicited, although several
other persons were examined. A murder so mysterious, and so
perplexing in all its particulars, was never before committed in
Paris—if indeed a murder has been committed at all. The police
are entirely at fault—an unusual occurrence in affairs of this
nature. There is not, however, the shadow of a clew apparent.”

The evening edition of the paper stated that the greatest excitement
still continued in the Quartier St. Roch—that the premises
in question had been carefully re-searched, and fresh examinations
of witnesses instituted, but all to no purpose. A postscript,
however, mentioned that Adolphe Le Bon had been arrested

[figure description] Page 131.[end figure description]

and imprisoned—although nothing appeared to criminate him, beyond
the facts already detailed.

Dupin seemed singularly interested in the progress of this affair—
at least so I judged from his manner, for he made no comments.
It was only after the announcement that Le Bon had been imprisoned,
that he asked me my opinion respecting the murders.

I could merely agree with all Paris in considering them an insoluble
mystery. I saw no means by which it would be possible
to trace the murderer.

“We must not judge of the means,” said Dupin, “by this shell
of an examination. The Parisian police, so much extolled for
acumen, are cunning, but no more. There is no method in their
proceedings, beyond the method of the moment. They make a
vast parade of measures; but, not unfrequently, these are so ill
adapted to the objects proposed, as to put us in mind of Monsieur
Jourdain's calling for his robe-de-chambre—pour mieux entendre
la musique. The results attained by them are not unfrequently
surprising, but, for the most part, are brought about by simple
diligence and activity. When these qualities are unavailing,
their schemes fail. Vidocq, for example, was a good guesser,
and a persevering man. But, without educated thought, he erred
continually by the very intensity of his investigations. He impaired
his vision by holding the object too close. He might see,
perhaps, one or two points with unusual clearness, but in so doing
he, necessarily, lost sight of the matter as a whole. Thus
there is such a thing as being too profound. Truth is not always
in a well. In fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I
do believe that she is invariably superficial. The depth lies in the
valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where
she is found. The modes and sources of this kind of error are
well typified in the contemplation of the heavenly bodies. To
look at a star by glances—to view it in a side-long way, by turning
toward it the exterior portions of the retina (more susceptible
of feeble impressions of light than the interior), is to behold the
star distinctly—is to have the best appreciation of its lustre—a
lustre which grows dim just in proportion as we turn our vision
fully upon it. A greater number of rays actually fall upon the
eye in the latter case, but, in the former, there is the more refined

[figure description] Page 132.[end figure description]

capacity for comprehension. By undue profundity we perplex
and enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even Venus herself
vanish from the firmament by a scrutiny too sustained, too
concentrated, or too direct.

“As for these murders, let us enter into some examinations for
ourselves, before we make up an opinion respecting them. An
inquiry will afford us amusement,” [I thought this an odd term,
so applied, but said nothing] “and, besides, Le Bon once rendered
me a service for which I am not ungrateful. We will go
and see the premises with our own eyes. I know G—, the
Prefect of Police, and shall have no difficulty in obtaining the necessary
permission.”

The permission was obtained, and we proceeded at once to the
Rue Morgue. This is one of those miserable thoroughfares
which intervene between the Rue Richelieu and the Rue St.
Roch. It was late in the afternoon when we reached it; as this
quarter is at a great distance from that in which we resided.
The house was readily found; for there were still many persons
gazing up at the closed shutters, with an objectless curiosity, from
the opposite side of the way. It was an ordinary Parisian house,
with a gateway, on one side of which was a glazed watch-box,
with a sliding panel in the window, indicating a loge de concierge.
Before going in we walked up the street, turned down an alley,
and then, again turning, passed in the rear of the building—Dupin,
meanwhile, examining the whole neighborhood, as well as
the house, with a minuteness of attention for which I could see
no possible object.

Retracing our steps, we came again to the front of the dwelling,
rang, and, having shown our credentials, were admitted by
the agents in charge. We went up stairs—into the chamber
where the body of Mademoiselle L'Espanaye had been found,
and where both the deceased still lay. The disorders of the room
had, as usual, been suffered to exist. I saw nothing beyond what
had been stated in the “Gazette des Tribunaux.” Dupin scrutinized
every thing—not excepting the bodies of the victims. We
then went into the other rooms, and into the yard; a gendarme
accompanying us throughout. The examination occupied us until
dark, when we took our departure. On our way home my

[figure description] Page 133.[end figure description]

companion stepped in for a moment at the office of one of the
daily papers.

I have said that the whims of my friend were manifold, and
that Je les ménagais:—for this phrase there is no English equivalent.
It was his humor, now, to decline all conversation on the
subject of the murder, until about noon the next day. He then
asked me, suddenly, if I had observed any thing peculiar at the
scene of the atrocity.

There was something in his manner of emphasizing the word
“peculiar,” which caused me to shudder, without knowing why.

“No, nothing peculiar,” I said; “nothing more, at least, than
we both saw stated in the paper.”

“The 'Gazette,' ” he replied, “has not entered, I fear, into
the unusual horror of the thing. But dismiss the idle opinions of
this print. It appears to me that this mystery is considered insoluble,
for the very reason which should cause it to be regarded
as easy of solution—I mean for the outré character of its features.
The police are confounded by the seeming absence of motive—
not for the murder itself—but for the atrocity of the murder.
They are puzzled, too, by the seeming impossibility of reconciling
the voices heard in contention, with the facts that no one was discovered
up stairs but the assassinated Mademoiselle L'Espanaye,
and that there were no means of egress without the notice of the
party ascending. The wild disorder of the room; the corpse
thrust, with the head downward, up the chimney; the frightful
mutilation of the body of the old lady; these considerations, with
those just mentioned, and others which I need not mention, have
sufficed to paralyze the powers, by putting completely at fault the
boasted acumen, of the government agents. They have fallen
into the gross but common error of confounding the unusual with
the abstruse. But it is by these deviations from the plane of the
ordinary, that reason feels its way, if at all, in its search for the
true. In investigations such as we are now pursuing, it should
not be so much asked 'what has occurred,' as 'what has occurred
that has never occurred before.' In fact, the facility with
which I shall arrive, or have arrived, at the solution of this mystery,
is in the direct ratio of its apparent insolubility in the eyes
of the police.”

[figure description] Page 134.[end figure description]

I stared at the speaker in mute astonishment.

“I am now awaiting,” continued he, looking toward the door
of our apartment—“I am now awaiting a person who, although
perhaps not the perpetrator of these butcheries, must have been
in some measure implicated in their perpetration. Of the worst
portion of the crimes committed, it is probable that he is innocent.
I hope that I am right in this supposition; for upon it I build my
expectation of reading the entire riddle. I look for the man here—
in this room—every moment. It is true that he may not arrive;
but the probability is that he will. Should he come, it
will be necessary to detain him. Here are pistols; and we both
know how to use them when occasion demands their use.”

I took the pistols, scarcely knowing what I did, or believing
what I heard, while Dupin went on, very much as if in a soliloquy.
I have already spoken of his abstract manner at such
times. His discourse was addressed to myself; but his voice,
although by no means loud, had that intonation which is commonly
employed in speaking to some one at a great distance.
His eyes, vacant in expression, regarded only the wall.

“That the voices heard in contention,” he said, “by the party
upon the stairs, were not the voices of the women themselves, was
fully proved by the evidence. This relieves us of all doubt upon
the question whether the old lady could have first destroyed the
daughter, and afterward have committed suicide. I speak of
this point chiefly for the sake of method; for the strength of
Madame L'Espanaye would have been utterly unequal to the
task of thrusting her daughter's corpse up the chimney as it was
found; and the nature of the wounds upon her own person entirely
preclude the idea of self-destruction. Murder, then, has
been committed by some third party; and the voices of this third
party were those heard in contention. Let me now advert—not
to the whole testimony respecting these voices—but to what was
peculiar in that testimony. Did you observe any thing peculiar
about it?”

I remarked that, while all the witnesses agreed in supposing
the gruff voice to be that of a Frenchman, there was much disagreement
in regard to the shrill, or, as one individual termed it,
the harsh voice.

[figure description] Page 135.[end figure description]

“That was the evidence itself,” said Dupin, “but it was not
the peculiarity of the evidence. You have observed nothing distinctive.
Yet there was something to be observed. The witnesses,
as you remark, agreed about the gruff voice; they were
here unanimous. But in regard to the shrill voice, the peculiarity
is—not that they disagreed—but that, while an Italian, an
Englishman, a Spaniard, a Hollander, and a Frenchman attempted
to describe it, each one spoke of it as that of a foreigner.
Each is sure that it was not the voice of one of his own countrymen.
Each likens it—not to the voice of an individual of any
nation with whose language he is conversant—but the converse.
The Frenchman supposes it the voice of a Spaniard, and 'might
have distinguished some words had he been acquainted with the
Spanish.' The Dutchman maintains it to have been that of a
Frenchman; but we find it stated that 'not understanding French
this witness was examined through an interpreter.' The Englishman
thinks it the voice of a German, and 'does not understand
German.' The Spaniard 'is sure' that it was that of an
Englishman, but 'judges by the intonation' altogether, 'as he has
no knowledge of the English.' The Italian believes it the voice
of a Russian, but 'has never conversed with a native of Russia.'
A second Frenchman differs, moreover, with the first, and is positive
that the voice was that of an Italian; but, not being cognizant
of that tongue, is, like the Spaniard, 'convinced by the intonation.
' Now, how strangely unusual must that voice have really
been, about which such testimony as this could have been elicited!
—in whose tones, even, denizens of the five great divisions of
Europe could recognise nothing familiar! You will say that it
might have been the voice of an Asiatic—of an African. Neither
Asiatics nor Africans abound in Paris; but, without denying
the inference, I will now merely call your attention to three
points. The voice is termed by one witness 'harsh rather than
shrill.' It is represented by two others to have been 'quick and
unequal.' No words—no sounds resembling words—were by
any witness mentioned as distinguishable.

“I know not,” continued Dupin, “what impression I may
have made, so far, upon your own understanding; but I do not
hesitate to say that legitimate deductions even from this portion of

[figure description] Page 136.[end figure description]

the testimony—the portion respecting the gruff and shrill voices—
are in themselves sufficient to engender a suspicion which
should give direction to all farther progress in the investigation of
the mystery. I said 'legitimate deductions;' but my meaning is
not thus fully expressed. I designed to imply that the deductions
are the sole proper ones, and that the suspicion arises inevitably
from them as the single result. What the suspicion is,
however, I will not say just yet. I merely wish you to bear in
mind that, with myself, it was sufficiently forcible to give a definite
form—a certain tendency—to my inquiries in the chamber.

“Let us now transport ourselves, in fancy, to this chamber.
What shall we first seek here? The means of egress employed
by the murderers. It is not too much to say that neither of us
believe in præternatural events. Madame and Mademoiselle
L'Espanaye were not destroyed by spirits. The doers of the
deed were material, and escaped materially. Then how? Fortunately,
there is but one mode of reasoning upon the point, and
that mode must lead us to a definite decision.—Let us examine,
each by each, the possible means of egress. It is clear that the
assassins were in the room where Mademoiselle L'Espanaye was
found, or at least in the room adjoining, when the party ascended
the stairs. It is then only from these two apartments that we
have to seek issues. The police have laid bare the floors, the
ceilings, and the masonry of the walls, in every direction. No
secret issues could have escaped their vigilance. But, not trusting
to their eyes, I examined with my own. There were, then,
no secret issues. Both doors leading from the rooms into the passage
were securely locked, with the keys inside. Let us turn
to the chimneys. These, although of ordinary width for some
eight or ten feet above the hearths, will not admit, throughout
their extent, the body of a large cat. The impossibility of egress,
by means already stated, being thus absolute, we are reduced to
the windows. Through those of the front room no one could
have escaped without notice from the crowd in the street. The
murderers must have passed, then, through those of the back
room. Now, brought to this conclusion in so unequivocal a manner
as we are, it is not our part, as reasoners, to reject it on

[figure description] Page 137.[end figure description]

account of apparent impossibilities. It is only left for us to prove
that these apparent 'impossibilities' are, in reality, not such.

“There are two windows in the chamber. One of them is unobstructed
by furniture, and is wholly visible. The lower portion
of the other is hidden from view by the head of the unwieldy
bedstead which is thrust close up against it. The former was
found securely fastened from within. It resisted the utmost force
of those who endeavored to raise it. A large gimlet-hole had
been pierced in its frame to the left, and a very stout nail was
found fitted therein, nearly to the head. Upon examining the
other window, a similar nail was seen similarly fitted in it; and
a vigorous attempt to raise this sash, failed also. The police
were now entirely satisfied that egress had not been in these
directions. And, therefore, it was thought a matter of supererogation
to withdraw the nails and open the windows.

“My own examination was somewhat more particular, and was
so for the reason I have just given—because here it was, I knew,
that all apparent impossibilities must be proved to be not such in
reality.

“I proceeded to think thus—á postcriori. The murderers did
escape from one of these windows. This being so, they could
not have re-fastened the sashes from the inside, as they were
found fastened;—the consideration which put a stop, through its
obviousness, to the scrutiny of the police in this quarter. Yet
the sashes were fastened. They must, then, have the power of
fastening themselves. There was no escape from this conclusion.
I stepped to the unobstructed casement, withdrew the nail with
some difficulty, and attempted to raise the sash. It resisted all
my efforts, as I had anticipated. A concealed spring must, I now
knew, exist; and this corroboration of my idea convinced me
that my premises, at least, were correct, however mysterious still
appeared the circumstances attending the nails. A careful
search soon brought to light the hidden spring. I pressed it, and,
satisfied with the discovery, forbore to upraise the sash.

“I now replaced the nail and regarded it attentively. A person
passing out through this window might have reclosed it, and
the spring would have caught—but the nail could not have been
replaced. The conclusion was plain, and again narrowed in the

[figure description] Page 138.[end figure description]

field of my investigations. The assassins must have escaped
through the other window. Supposing, then, the springs upon
each sash to be the same, as was probable, there must be found a
difference between the nails, or at least between the modes of
their fixture. Getting upon the sacking of the bedstead, I looked
over the head-board minutely at the second casement. Passing
my hand down behind the board, I readily discovered and
pressed the spring which was, as I had supposed, identical in
character with its neighbor. I now looked at the nail. It was
as stout as the other, and apparently fitted in the same manner—
driven in nearly up to the head.

“You will say that I was puzzled; but, if you think so, you
must have misunderstood the nature of the inductions. To use a
sporting phrase, I had not been once 'at fault.' The scent had
never for an instant been lost. There was no flaw in any link
of the chain. I had traced the secret to its ultimate result,—and
that result was the nail. It had, I say, in every respect, the appearance
of its fellow in the other window; but this fact was an
absolute nullity (conclusive as it might seem to be) when compared
with the consideration that here, at this point, terminated
the clew. 'There must be something wrong,' I said, 'about the
nail.' I touched it; and the head, with about a quarter of an
inch of the shank, came off in my fingers. The rest of the
shank was in the gimlet-hole, where it had been broken off.
The fracture was an old one (for its edges were incrusted with
rust), and had apparently been accomplished by the blow of a
hammer, which had partially imbedded, in the top of the bottom
sash, the head portion of the nail. I now carefully replaced this
head portion in the indentation whence I had taken it, and the resemblance
to a perfect nail was complete—the fissure was invisible.
Pressing the spring, I gently raised the sash for a few
inches; the head went up with it, remaining firm in its bed. I
closed the window, and the semblance of the whole nail was
again perfect.

“The riddle, so far, was now unriddled. The assassin had
escaped through the window which looked upon the bed. Droping
of its own accord upon his exit (or perhaps purposely closed),
it had become fastened by the spring; and it was the retention of

[figure description] Page 139.[end figure description]

this spring which had been mistaken by the police for that of the
nail,—farther inquiry being thus considered unnecessary.

“The next question is that of the mode of descent. Upon this
point I had been satisfied in my walk with you around the building.
About five feet and a half from the casement in question
there runs a lightning-rod. From this rod it would have been
impossible for any one to reach the window itself, to say nothing
of entering it. I observed, however, that the shutters of the fourth
story were of the peculiar kind called by Parisian carpenters ferrades—
a kind rarely employed at the present day, but frequently
seen upon very old mansions at Lyons and Bourdeaux. They
are in the form of an ordinary door, (a single, not a folding door)
except that the lower half is latticed or worked in open trellis—
thus affording an excellent hold for the hands. In the present
instance these shutters are fully three feet and a half broad.
When we saw them from the rear of the house, they were both
about half open—that is to say, they stood off at right angles from
the wall. It is probable that the police, as well as myself, examined
the back of the tenement; but, if so, in looking at these
ferrades in the line of their breadth (as they must have done),
they did not perceive this great breadth itself, or, at all events,
failed to take it into due consideration. In fact, having once
satisfied themselves that no egress could have been made in this
quarter, they would naturally bestow here a very cursory examination.
It was clear to me, however, that the shutter belonging
to the window at the head of the bed, would, if swung fully back
to the wall, reach to within two feet of the lightning-rod. It was
also evident that, by exertion of a very unusual degree of activity
and courage, an entrance into the window, from the rod, might
have been thus effected.—By reaching to the distance of two feet
and a half (we now suppose the shutter open to its whole extent)
a robber might have taken a firm grasp upon the trellis-work.
Letting go, then, his hold upon the rod, placing his feet securely
against the wall, and springing, boldly from it, he might have
swung the shutter so as to close it, and, if we imagine the window
open at the time, might even have swung himself into the room.

“I wish you to bear especially in mind that I have spoken of
a very unusual degree of activity as requisite to success in so

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hazardous and so difficult a feat. It is my design to show you,
first, that the thing might possibly have been accomplished:—
but, secondly and chiefly, I wish to impress upon your understanding
the very extraordinary—the almost præternatural character
of that agility which could have accomplished it.

“You will say, no doubt, using the language of the law, that
'to make out my case,' I should rather undervalue, than insist
upon a full estimation of the activity required in this matter.
This may be the practice in law, but it is not the usage of reason.
My ultimate object is only the truth. My immediate purpose is
to lead you to place in juxta-position, that very unusual activity
of which I have just spoken, with that very peculiar shrill (or
harsh) and unequal voice, about whose nationality no two persons
could be found to agree, and in whose utterance no syllabification
could be detected.”

At these words a vague and half-formed conception of the
meaning of Dupin flitted over my mind. I seemed to be upon
the verge of comprehension, without power to comprehend—as
men, at times, find themselves upon the brink of remembrance,
without being able, in the end, to remember. My friend went on
with his discourse.

“You will see,” he said, “that I have shifted the question from
the mode of egress to that of ingress. It was my design to convey
the idea that both were effected in the same manner, at the
same point. Let us now revert to the interior of the room. Let
us survey the appearances here. The drawers of the bureau, it
is said, had been rifled, although many articles of apparel still remained
within them. The conclusion here is absurd. It is a
mere guess—a very silly one—and no more. How are we to
know that the articles found in the drawers were not all these
drawers had originally contained? Madame L'Espanaye and
her daughter lived an exceedingly retired life—saw no company—
seldom went out—had little use for numerous changes of habiliment.
Those found were at least of as good quality as any
likely to be possessed by these ladies. If a thief had taken any,
why did he not take the best—why did he not take all? In a
word, why did he abandon four thousand francs in gold to encumber
himself with a bundle of linen? The gold was abandoned.

[figure description] Page 141.[end figure description]

Nearly the whole sum mentioned by Monsieur Mignaud, the
banker, was discovered, in bags, upon the floor. I wish you,
therefore, to discard from your thoughts the blundering idea of
motive, engendered in the brains of the police by that portion of
the evidence which speaks of money delivered at the door of the
house. Coincidences ten times as remarkable as this (the delivery
of the money, and murder committed within three days
upon the party receiving it), happen to all of us every hour of
our lives, without attracting even momentary notice. Coincidences,
in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that
class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the
theory of probabilities—that theory to which the most glorious
objects of human research are indebted for the most glorious of
illustration. In the present instance, had the gold been gone,
the fact of its delivery three days before would have formed
something more than a coincidence. It would have been corroborative
of this idea of motive. But, under the real circumstances
of the case, if we are to suppose gold the motive of this outrage,
we must also imagine the perpetrator so vacillating an idiot as to
have abandoned his gold and his motive together.

“Keeping now steadily in mind the points to which I have
drawn your attention—that peculiar voice, that unusual agility,
and that startling absence of motive in a murder so singularly
atrocious as this—let us glance at the butchery itself. Here is
a woman strangled to death by manual strength, and thrust up a
chimney, head downward. Ordinary assassins employ no such
modes of murder as this. Least of all, do they thus dispose of
the murdered. In the manner of thrusting the corpse up the
chimney, you will admit that there was something excessively
outré—something altogether irreconcilable with our common notions
of human action, even when we suppose the actors the most
depraved of men. Think, too, how great must have been that
strength which could have thrust the body up such an aperture
so forcibly that the united vigor of several persons was found
barely sufficient to drag it down!

“Turn, now, to other indications of the employment of a vigor
most marvellous. On the hearth were thick tresses—very thick
tresses—of grey human hair. These had been torn out by the

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roots. You are aware of the great force necessary in tearing
thus from the head even twenty or thirty hairs together. You
saw the locks in question as well as myself. Their roots (a
hideous sight!) were clotted with fragments of the flesh of the
scalp—sure token of the prodigious power which had been exerted
in uprooting perhaps half a million of hairs at a time. The
throat of the old lady was not merely cut, but the head absolutely
severed from the body: the instrument was a mere razor. I
wish you also to look at the brutal ferocity of these deeds. Of
the bruises upon the body of Madame L'Espanaye I do not speak.
Monsieur Dumas, and his worthy coadjutor Monsieur Etienne, have
pronounced that they were inflicted by some obtuse instrument;
and so far these gentlemen are very correct. The obtuse instrument
was clearly the stone pavement in the yard, upon which the
victim had fallen from the window which looked in upon the bed.
This idea, however simple it may now seem, escaped the police
for the same reason that the breadth of the shutters escaped them—
because, by the affair of the nails, their perceptions had been hermetically
sealed against the possibility of the windows having
ever been opened at all.

“If now, in addition to all these things, you have properly reflected
upon the odd disorder of the chamber, we have gone so
far as to combine the ideas of an agility astounding, a strength
superhuman, a ferocity brutal, a butchery without motive, a grotesquerie
in horror absolutely alien from humanity, and a voice
foreign in tone to the ears of men of many nations, and devoid
of all distinct or intelligible syllabification. What result, then,
has ensued? What impression have I made upon your fancy?”

I felt a creeping of the flesh as Dupin asked me the question.
“A madman,” I said, “has done this deed—some raving maniac,
escaped from a neighboring Maison de Santé.”

“In some respects,” he replied, “your idea is not irrelevant.
But the voices of madmen, even in their wildest paroxysms, are
never found to tally with that peculiar voice heard upon the
stairs. Madmen are of some nation, and their language, however
incoherent in its words, has always the coherence of syllabification.
Besides, the hair of a madman is not such as I now
hold in my hand. I disentangled this little tuft from the rigidly

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clutched fingers of Madame L'Espanaye. Tell me what you
can make of it.”

“Dupin!” I said, completely unnerved; “this hair is most
unusual—this is no human hair.”

“I Have not asserted that it is,” said he; “but, before we decide
this point, I wish you to glance at the little sketch I have
here traced upon this paper. It is a fac-simile drawing of what
has been described in one portion of the testimony as 'dark
bruises, and deep indentations of finger nails,' upon the throat of
Mademoiselle L'Espanaye, and in another, (by Messrs. Dumas
and Etenne,) as a 'series of livid spots, evidently the impression
of fingers.'

“You will perceive,” continued my friend, spreading out the
paper upon the table before us, “that this drawing gives the idea
of a firm and fixed hold. There is no slipping apparent. Each
finger has retained—possibly until the death of the victim—the
fearful grasp by which it originally imbedded itself. Attempt,
now, to place all your fingers, at the same time, in the respective
impressions as you see them.”

I made the attempt in vain.

“We are possibly not giving this matter a fair trial,” he said.
“The paper is spread out upon a plane surface; but the human
throat is cylindrical. Here is a billet of wood, the circumference
of which is about that of the throat. Wrap the drawing around
it, and try the experiment again.”

I did so; but the difficulty was even more obvious than before.
“This,” I said, “is the mark of no human hand.”

“Read now,” replied Dupin, “this passage from Cuvier.”

It was a minute anatomical and generally descriptive account
of the large fulvous Ourang-Outang of the East Indian Islands.
The gigantic stature, the prodigious strength and activity, the
wild ferocity, and the imitative propensities of these mammalia
are sufficiently well known to all. I understood the full horrors
of the murder at once.

“The description of the digits,” said I, as I made an end of
reading, “is in exact accordance with this drawing. I see that
no animal but an Ourang-Outang, of the species here mentioned,
could have impressed the indentations as you have traced them.

[figure description] Page 144.[end figure description]

This tuft of tawny hair, too, is identical in character with that of
the beast of Cuvier. But I cannot possibly comprehend the particulars
of this frightful mystery. Besides, there were two voices
heard in contention, and one of them was unquestionably the
voice of a Frenchman.”

“True; and you will remember an expression attributed almost
unanimously, by the evidence, to this voice,—the expression,
'mon Dieu!' This, under the circumstances, has been justly
characterized by one of the witnesses (Montani, the confectioner,)
as an expression of remonstrance or expostulation. Upon these
two words, therefore, I have mainly built my hopes of a full solution
of the riddle. A Frenchman was cognizant of the murder.
It is possible—indeed it is far more than probable—that he was
innocent of all participation in the bloody transactions which took
place. The Ourang-Outang may have escaped from him. He
may have traced it to the chamber; but, under the agitating circumstances
which ensued, he could never have re-captured it.
It is still at large. I will not pursue these guesses—for I have no
right to call them more—since the shades of reflection upon
which they are based are scarcely of sufficient depth to be appreciable
by my own intellect, and since I could not pretend to make
them intelligible to the understanding of another. We will call
them guesses then, and speak of them as such. If the Frenchman
in question is indeed, as I suppose, innocent of this atrocity,
this advertisement, which I left last night, upon our return home,
at the office of 'Le Monde,' (a paper devoted to the shipping interest,
and much sought by sailors,) will bring him to our residence.”

He handed me a paper, and I read thus:
Caught—In the Bois de Boulogne, early in the morning of
the—inst., (the morning of the murder,) a very large, tawny
Ourang-Outang of the Bornese species. The owner, (who is ascertained
to be a sailor, belonging to a Maltese vessel,) may have
the animal again, upon identifying it satisfactorily, and paying a
few charges arising from its capture and keeping. Call at No.—,
Rue—, Faubourg St. Germain—au troisiême.

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