14 Tales of Edgar Allan Poe — Gothic Stories and Poems for Halloween

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One of my favorite memories of scaring
myself as a child was getting a compilation

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book of Edgar Allan Poe's stories from
my elementary school library. It brought me

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so much fear and so much excitement. I remember running home from school with

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that book in my backpack as the
sky was dark and a storm was coming.

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I was in my childhood living room, but I wasn't alone. I

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had a pizza and the books of
Poe. With Halloween being so close,

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I think we should sit down with
a collection of stories and some poetry as

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well, so get comfortable. I
think I hear a storm coming in,

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but that's okay, because when the
clock strikes midnight, the stories will begin.

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The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while

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I pondered, weak and weary,
over many a quaint and curious volume of

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forgotten lore. While I nodded,
nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

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as someone gently rapping, rapping at
my chamber door. Tis some visitor,

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I muttered, tapping at my chamber
door, Only this and nothing more.

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Ah, Distinctly, I remember it
was in the bleak December, and

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each separate, dying ember wrought its
ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished

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the morrow, vainly I had sought
to borrow from my books, sircrease of

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sorrow, sorrow for the lost Leonore, for the rare and radiant maiden whom

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the angels named Lenore, nameless here
forever more. The silken, sad,

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uncertain rustling of each purple curtain thrilled
me, filled me with fans, fantastic

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terrors never felt before, So that
now to still the beating of my heart,

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I stood, repeating, tis some
visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door,

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some late visitor entreating entrance at my
chamber door. That is it,

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and nothing more. Presently my soul
grew stronger, hesitating. Then no longer

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sir, said I, or madam. Truly your forgiveness, I implore.

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But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

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and so faintly you came tapping,
tapping at my chamber door, that I

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scarce was sure I heard you.
Here. I opened wide the door.

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Darkness there and nothing more. Deep
into that darkness, peering long, I

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stood there, wondering, fearing,
doubting, dreaming dreams. No mortal ever

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dared to dream before. But the
silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave

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no token, And the only word
there spoken was the whispered word leonore.

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This I whispered, and an echo
murmured back the word lenore. Merely this

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and nothing more back into the chamber, turning all my soul within me burning.

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Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat
louder than before. Surely said I,

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surely that is something at my window
lattice. Let me see then what

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there eat is, and this mystery
explore, Let my heart be still a

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moment, And this mystery explore tis
the wind, and nothing more open Here

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I flung the shutter, when with
many a flirt and flutter in there stepp'd

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a stately raven of the saintly days
of yore. Not the least obeisance made

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he, not a minute stopp'd or
stayed he, but with mine lord or

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lady, perched above my chamber door, perched upon a bust of palace just

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above my chamber door, perched and
sat, and nothing more then this ebony

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bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling. By the graven stern decorum of the

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countenance it wore, though thy crest
be shorn and shaven, Thou, I

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said, art sure, no craven, ghastly, grim and ancient raven wandering

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from the nightly shore, Tell me
what thy lordly name is on the night's

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Plutonian shore, quoth the raven nevermore
much. I marveled this ungainly fowl to

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hear discourse so plainly, though its
answer little meaning, little relevancy bore.

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For we cannot help agreeing that not
living human being ever yet was blessed with

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seeing bird above his chamber door,
bird or beast upon the sculpted bust above

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his chamber door, with such a
name as nevermore. But the raven,

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sitting lonely on the placid bust,
spoke only that one word, as if

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his soul. In that one word
he did outpour nothing further than he uttered,

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not a feather. Then he fluttered
till I scarcely more than muttered other

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friends have flown before. On the
morrow he will leave me, as my

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hopes have flown before. Then,
the bird said, nevermore. Startled at

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the stiltness, broken by reply so
aptly spoken, doubtless, said I what

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it mutters is its only stock in
store, caught from some unhappy master whom

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unmerciful disaster followed fast, and followed
faster till his songs one burden bore till

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the dirges of his hope, that
melancholy burden bore of never nevermore. But

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the raven still beguiling my sad fancy
into smiling straight, I wheeled a cushioned

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seat in front of the bird,
and bust and door. Then upon the

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velvet sinking, I betook myself to
linking fancy, unto fancy, thinking what

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this ominous bird of yore, What
this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt

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and ominous bird of yore meant in
croaking? Nevermore? This I sat engaged

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in guessing, but no syllable expressing
to the fowl, whose fiery eyes now

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burned into my bosom's core. This
and more I sat divining, with my

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head at ease, reclining on the
cushion's velvet, lining that the lamp light

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gloated o'er. But whose velvet violet
lining, with the lamplight gloating o'er,

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she shall press ah never more?
Then, methought the air grew denser perfumed

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from an unseen censer swung by seraphim, whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.

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Wretch, I cried, Thy God
hath lent thee by these angels.

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He hath sent thee respit, respit
and nepenthee from thy memories of Lenore.

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Quaff, oh, quaff this kind
nepenthe, and forget this lost Leonore,

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quoth the raven nevermore, Prophet said, I thing of evil Prophet. If

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bird or devil, whether tempter scent, or whether temptest, tossed thee here

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ashore, desolate, yet all undaunted
on this desert land, enchanted on this

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home by horror, haunted, tell
me truly, I implore, Is there

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is there balm in glead, tell
me tell me, I implore, quoth

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the raven nevermore, Prophet said,
I thing of evil Prophet. Still,

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if bird or devil, by that
heaven that bends above us, by that

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God, we both adore. Tell
this soul with sorrow laden. If within

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the distant aiden it shall clasp a
sainted maiden whom the angel's name Leonore,

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clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom
the angels name Leonore, quoth the raven

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nevermore, be that word our sign
and parting bird or fiend, I shrieked

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upstarting get thee back into the tempest, and the knight's plutonian shore, leave

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no black plume as a token of
that lie thy soul hath spoken, Leave

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my loneliness unbroken, Quit the bust
above my door, Take thy beak from

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out my heart, and take thy
form from off my door, quoth the

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raven nevermore, And the raven never
flitting still, is sitting still, is

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sitting on the pallid bust of palace
just above my chamber door. And his

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eyes have all the seeming of a
demon's that is dreaming. And the light

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o'er him streaming throws his shadow on
the floor. And my soul from out

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that shadow that lies floating on the
floor shall be lifted nevermore. Marella a

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tale by Edgar Allan Poe, read
by Enrique Cuto, with a feeling of

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deep but most singular affection. I
regarded my friend Marilla, thrown by accident

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into her society many years ago.
My soul from our first meeting burned with

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fires it had never before known.
But the fires were not of eros and

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bitter and tormenting to my spirit was
the gradual conviction that I could in no

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manner define their unusual meaning or regulate
their vague intensity. Yet we met,

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and fate bound us together at the
altar, and I never spoke of love

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or thought of passion. She,
however, shunned society and attaching herself to

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me alone, rendered me happy.
It is a happiness to wonder, it

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is a happiness to dream. Marilla's
erudition was profound as I hoped to live.

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Her talents were of no common order. Her powers of mind were gigantic.

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I felt this, and in many
matters became her pupil. I soon,

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however, found that Marilla, perhaps
on account of her Presbourg education,

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laid before me a number of those
mystical writings which are usually considered the mere

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dross of the early German literature.
These, for what reasons I could not

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imagine, were her favorite and constant
study. And that in process of time

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they became my own, should be
attributed to the simple but effectual influence of

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habit and example. In all this, If I err not my reason had

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little to do. My convictions,
or I forget myself, were in no

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manner acted upon by the imagination,
Nor was any tincture of the mysticism which

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I read to be discovered unless I
am greatly mistaken, either in my deeds

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or in my thoughts. Feeling deeply
persuaded of this, I abandoned myself more

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implicitly to the guidance of my wife, and entered with a bolder spirit into

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the intricacies of her studies. And
then, then, when poring over forbidden

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pages, I felt the spirit kindle
within me. Would Marilla place her cold

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hand upon my own, and rake
up from the ashes of a dead philosophy,

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some low singular words whose strange meaning
burnt themselves in upon my memory.

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And then, hour after hour would
I linger by her side and dwell upon

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the music of her thrilling voice,
until at length its melody was tinged with

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terror and fell like a shadow upon
my soul, and I grew pale and

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shuddered inwardly at those two unearthly tones. And thus joy suddenly faded into horror,

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and the most beautiful became the most
hideous, as Hinnan became Guihenna.

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It is unnecessary to state the exact
character of these disquisitions, which growing out

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of the volumes I have mentioned,
formed for so long a time almost the

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sole conversation of Morella and myself.
By the learned in what might be termed

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theological morality, they will be readily
conceived, and by the unlearned they would

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at all events be little understood.
The wild pantheism of Fiji, the modified

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palangenesia of the Pythagorians, and above
all the doctrines of identity as urged by

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Shelling, were generally the points of
discussion, presenting the most of beauty to

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the imaginative Morella. That identity which
is not improperly called personal, I think,

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mister Locke, truly defines to consist
in the sameness of a rational being.

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And since by person we understand an
intelligent essence having reason, and since

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there is a consciousness which always accompanies
thinking, it is this which makes us

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all to be that which we call
ourselves, thereby distinguishing us from other beings

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that think, and giving us our
personal identity. But the principal individuanis the

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notion that identity, which at death
is or is not lost forever, was

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to me at all times a consideration
of intense interest, not more from the

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mystical and exciting nature of its consequences, than from the marked and agitated manner

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in which Marilla mentioned them. But
indeed the time had now arrived when the

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mystery of my wife's manner oppressed me
as a spell. I could no longer

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bear the touch of her wan fingers, nor the low tone of her musical

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language, nor the luster of her
melancholy eyes. And she knew all this,

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but did not upbraid. She seemed
conscious of my weakness or my folly,

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and smiling called it fate. She
seemed also conscious of a cause to

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me unknown for the gradual alienation of
my regard, But she gave me no

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hint or token of its nature.
Yet was she woman, and pined away

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daily. In time, the crimson
spot settled steadily upon the cheek, and

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the blue veins upon the pale forehead
became prominent, and one instant my nature

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melted into pity. But in the
next I met the glance of her meaning

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eyes, and then my soul sickened
and became giddy, with the giddiness of

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one who gazes downward into some dreary
and fathomless abyss. Shall I then say

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that I longed with an earnest and
consuming desire for the moment of Marella's decease.

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I did, But the fragile spirit
clung to its tenement of clay for

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many days, for many weeks,
and irksome months, until my tortured nerves

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obtained the mastery over my mind,
and I grew furious through delay, and

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with the heart of a fiend,
cursed the days and the hours, and

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the bitter moments, which seemed to
lengthen and lengthen, as her gentle life

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declined like shadows in the dying of
the day. But one autumnal evening,

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when the winds lay still in heaven, Marilla called me to her side.

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There was a dim mist over all
the earth, and a warm glow upon

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the waters, and amid the rich
october leaves of the forest, a rainbow

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from the firmament had surely fallen.
As I came, she was murmuring in

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a low undertone which trembl'd with fervor, the words of a Catholic hymn,

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Santa Maria, turn thine eyes upon
the sinner's sacrifice of fervent prayer and humble

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love from thy holy throne above At
morn at noon at twilight, dim Maria,

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thou hast heard my hymn in joy
and woe, in good and ill,

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Mother of God, be with me
Still, when my hours flew gently

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by, and no storms were in
the sky, my soul, lest it

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should truant be Thy love did guide
to thine and thee. Now, when

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clouds of fate o'ercast all my present
and my past, let my future radiant

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shine with sweet hopes of THEE and
thine. It is a day of days,

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said Marella, a day of all
days, either to live or die.

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It is a fair day for the
suns of earth and life. Ah,

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more fair for the daughters of heaven
and death. I turned towards her,

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and she continued, I am dying, yet shall I live? Therefore

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for me, Marella, thy wife, hath the Charnel house no terrors mark

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me, not even the terrors of
the worm. The days have never been

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when thou couldst love me but her
whom in life thou didst abhor. In

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death, thou shalt adore Morella.
I repeat that I am dying, but

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with me is a pledge of that
affection. Ah, how little which you

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felt for me, Marella and when
my spirit departs, shall the child live,

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thy child and mine Morella's. But
thy days shall be days of sorrow,

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that sorrow which is the most lasting
of impressions, as the cypress is

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the most enduring of trees. For
the hours of thy happiness are over,

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and joy is not gathered twice in
a life, as the roses of pestum

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twice in a year. Thou shalt
not then play the ta en with time,

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But being ignorant of the myrtle and
the vine, thou shalt bear about

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with thee thy shroud on earth like
the muslemin at Mecca Morella. I cried,

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Marella, how knowest thou this?
But she turned away, her face

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upon the pillow, and a slight
tremor coming over her limbs. She thus

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died, and I heard her voice
no more yet, as she had foretold

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her child, to which in dying
she had given birth, and which breathed

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not till the mother breathed no more. Her child, a daughter, lived,

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and she grew strangely in size and
intellect, and was the perfect resemblance

200
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of her who had departed. And
I loved her with a love more fervent

201
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and more intense than I believed it
possible to feel on earth. But ere

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long the heaven of this pure affection
became overcast, and gloom, and horror

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and grief came over it in clouds. I said. The child grew strangely

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in stature and intelligence. Strange indeed
was her rapid increase in bodily size.

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But terrible, oh terrible, were
the tommultuous thoughts which crowded upon me while

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watching the development of her mental being. Could it be otherwise? When I

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daily discovered in the conceptions of the
child the adult powers and faculties of the

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woman, When the lessons of experience
fell from the lips of infancy, and

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when the wisdom or the passions of
maturity I found hourly gleaming from its full

210
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and speculative eye. When I say
all this became evident to my appalled senses,

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when I could no longer hide it
from my soul, nor throw it

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off from those perceptions which trembled to
receive it. Is it to be wondered

213
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at that suspicions of a nature fearful
and exciting crept in upon my spirit,

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Or that my thoughts fell back aghast
upon the wild tales and thrilling theories of

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the entombed. Marilla I snatched from
the scrutiny of the world, a being

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00:24:00.759 --> 00:24:06.119
whom destiny compelled me to adore.
And in the rigid seclusion of my ancestral

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home, I watched with an agonizing
anxiety over all which concerned my daughter.

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And as the years rolled away,
and daily I gazed upon her eloquent and

219
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mild and holy face, and pored
over her maturing form, did I discover

220
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new points of resemblance in the child
to her mother, the melancholy and the

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dead, And hourly grew darker,
these shadows, as it were, of

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similitude, and became more full,
and more definite, and more perplexing,

223
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and to me more terrible in their
aspect. For that her smile was like

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her mother's I could bear, but
then I shuddered at its too perfect identity.

225
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That her eyes were like Marilla's own, I could endure. But then

226
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they looked down too often into the
depths of my soul, with Marilla's intense

227
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and bewildering meaning. And in the
contour of the high forehead, and in

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00:25:11.640 --> 00:25:15.400
the ringlets of the silken hair,
and in the wan fingers which buried themselves

229
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therein, and in the musical tones
of her speech, and above all,

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oh above all, in the phrases
and expressions of the dead, on the

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lips of the loved and the living, I found food for consuming thought,

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and horror for a worm that would
not die. Thus passed away two lustrooms

233
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of her life. Yet my daughter
remained nameless upon the earth. My child

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00:25:44.480 --> 00:25:49.240
and my love were the designations usually
prompted by a father's affection, and the

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rigid seclusion of her days precluded all
other intercourse. Marella's name died with her

236
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at her death. Of the mother, I had never spoken to the it

237
00:26:00.359 --> 00:26:06.079
was impossible to speak. Indeed,
during the brief period of her existence,

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00:26:06.279 --> 00:26:11.119
the latter had received no impressions from
the outward world, but such as might

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00:26:11.200 --> 00:26:15.200
have been afforded by the narrow limits
of her privacy. But at length,

240
00:26:15.279 --> 00:26:21.480
the ceremony of baptism presented to my
mind, in its unnerved and agitated condition,

241
00:26:21.880 --> 00:26:27.480
a present deliverance from the horrors of
my destiny. And at the baptismal

242
00:26:27.599 --> 00:26:33.079
font I hesitated for a name and
many titles of the wise and beautiful of

243
00:26:33.160 --> 00:26:38.279
Antique. In modern times of my
own and foreign lands, came thronging to

244
00:26:38.400 --> 00:26:45.720
my lips, and many many fair
titles of the gentle, and the happy

245
00:26:45.160 --> 00:26:52.039
and the good. What prompted me
then to disturb the memory of the buried

246
00:26:52.200 --> 00:26:56.000
dead? What daemon urged me to
breathe that sound, which, in its

247
00:26:56.119 --> 00:27:02.440
very recollection was wont to make ebb
and flow the purple blood in tides from

248
00:27:02.480 --> 00:27:07.359
the temples to the heart. What
fiend spoke from the recesses of my soul

249
00:27:07.559 --> 00:27:11.440
when amid those dim aisles, and
in the silence of the night, I

250
00:27:11.559 --> 00:27:21.599
shrieked within the ears of the Holy
Man. The syllables Marilla, what more

251
00:27:21.680 --> 00:27:26.039
than a fiend convulsed the features of
my child and overspread them with the hues

252
00:27:26.119 --> 00:27:32.640
of death. As starting at that
sound, she turned her glassy eyes from

253
00:27:32.640 --> 00:27:37.160
the earth to heaven, and,
falling prostrate upon the black slabs of our

254
00:27:37.200 --> 00:27:48.240
ancestral vault, responded, I am
here distinct, coldly, calmly, distinct,

255
00:27:48.640 --> 00:27:53.359
like a knell of death. Horrible, horrible death sank the eternal sounds

256
00:27:53.359 --> 00:27:59.440
within my soul. Years years may
roll away, but the memory of that

257
00:27:59.519 --> 00:28:06.240
epoch never now. Was I indeed
ignorant of the flowers and the vine,

258
00:28:06.599 --> 00:28:11.920
But the hemlock, and the cypress
overshadowed me night and day, and I

259
00:28:11.039 --> 00:28:17.319
kept no reckoning of time or place, and the stars of my fate faded

260
00:28:17.440 --> 00:28:22.920
from heaven, and therefore my spirit
grew dark, and the figures of the

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00:28:22.960 --> 00:28:30.799
earth passed by me like flitting shadows, and among them all I beheld only

262
00:28:32.359 --> 00:28:40.400
Morella. The winds of the firmament
breathed but one sound within my ears,

263
00:28:40.640 --> 00:28:49.240
and the ripples upon the sea murmured
evermore Morella. But she died, and

264
00:28:49.319 --> 00:28:56.240
with my own hands I bore her
to the tomb, and I laughed with

265
00:28:56.359 --> 00:29:00.759
a long and bitter laugh, as
I found no traces of the first in

266
00:29:00.839 --> 00:29:22.640
the charnel where I laid the second
Morella. The Oval portrait by Edgar Allan

267
00:29:22.759 --> 00:29:30.079
Poe. The chateau in which my
valet had ventured to make forcible entrance,

268
00:29:30.559 --> 00:29:34.880
rather than permit me, in my
desperately wounded condition, to pass a night

269
00:29:34.920 --> 00:29:41.160
in the open air, was one
of those piles of commingled gloom and grandeur

270
00:29:41.440 --> 00:29:47.000
which have so long frowned among the
Apennines, not less in fact, than

271
00:29:47.000 --> 00:29:52.680
in the fancy of Missus Radcliffe.
To all appearance, it had been temporarily

272
00:29:52.759 --> 00:29:59.160
and very lately abandoned, we established
ourselves in one of the smallest and least

273
00:29:59.240 --> 00:30:04.440
sumptuously furnished apartments. It lay in
a remote turret of the building. Its

274
00:30:04.519 --> 00:30:11.200
decorations were rich, yet tattered and
antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry

275
00:30:11.519 --> 00:30:18.640
and bedecked with manifold and multiform armorial
trophies, together with an unusually great number

276
00:30:19.160 --> 00:30:27.079
of very spirited modern paintings in frames
of rich golden Arabesque. In these paintings,

277
00:30:27.119 --> 00:30:32.680
which depended from the walls not only
in their main surfaces, but in

278
00:30:32.960 --> 00:30:37.960
very many nooks, which the bizarre
architecture of the chateau rendered necessary. In

279
00:30:38.000 --> 00:30:44.599
these paintings, my incipient delirium perhaps
had caused me to take deep interest,

280
00:30:45.440 --> 00:30:49.319
so that I bade Pedro to close
the heavy shutters of the room, since

281
00:30:49.359 --> 00:30:55.440
it was already night, to light
the tongues of a tall candelabrum, which

282
00:30:55.480 --> 00:30:59.759
stood by the head of my bed, and to throw open far and wide

283
00:30:59.799 --> 00:31:04.759
the fringed curtains of black velvet which
enveloped the bed itself. I wished all

284
00:31:04.759 --> 00:31:11.240
this done that I might resign myself, if not to sleep, at least

285
00:31:11.279 --> 00:31:17.759
alternately to contemplation of these pictures,
and the perusal of a small volume which

286
00:31:17.799 --> 00:31:23.480
had been found upon the pillow,
and which purported to criticize and describe them.

287
00:31:25.079 --> 00:31:30.960
Long long I read, and devoutly, devotedly, I gazed, rapidly

288
00:31:30.079 --> 00:31:36.519
and gloriously. The hours flew by, and the deep midnight came. The

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00:31:36.559 --> 00:31:41.640
position of the candelabrum displeased me,
and, out reaching my hand with difficulty,

290
00:31:42.279 --> 00:31:48.480
rather than disturb my slumbering valet,
I placed it so as to throw

291
00:31:48.519 --> 00:31:55.440
its rays more fully upon the book. But the action produced an effect altogether

292
00:31:55.559 --> 00:32:00.039
unanticipated. The rays of the numerous
candles, for there were men, now

293
00:32:00.079 --> 00:32:05.200
fell within a niche of the room, which had hitherto been thrown into deep

294
00:32:05.279 --> 00:32:10.839
shade by one of the bedposts.
I thus saw in vivid light a picture,

295
00:32:12.000 --> 00:32:17.319
all unnoticed before. It was the
portrait of a young girl just ripening

296
00:32:17.359 --> 00:32:23.599
into womanhood. I glanced at the
painting hurriedly, and then closed my eyes.

297
00:32:24.839 --> 00:32:29.200
Why I did this was not at
first apparent, even to my own

298
00:32:29.240 --> 00:32:34.680
perception. But while my lids remained
thus shut, I ran over in my

299
00:32:34.839 --> 00:32:38.759
mind my reason for so shutting them. It was an impulsive movement to gain

300
00:32:38.880 --> 00:32:45.599
time for thought, to make sure
that my vision had not deceived me to

301
00:32:45.799 --> 00:32:52.599
calm and subdue my fancy for a
more sober and more certain gaze. In

302
00:32:52.680 --> 00:32:59.720
a very few moments, I again
looked fixedly at the painting that I now

303
00:32:59.759 --> 00:33:04.200
saw aw Aright, I could not
and would not doubt, for the first

304
00:33:04.240 --> 00:33:08.440
flashing of the candles upon that canvass
had seemed to dissipate the dreamy stupor which

305
00:33:08.559 --> 00:33:15.400
was stealing over my senses, and
to startle me at once into waking life.

306
00:33:16.079 --> 00:33:20.720
The portrait, I have already said, was that of a young girl.

307
00:33:21.359 --> 00:33:24.440
It was a mere head and shoulders, done in what is technically termed

308
00:33:24.680 --> 00:33:30.119
vignette manner, much in the style
of the favorite heads of Sully. The

309
00:33:30.279 --> 00:33:37.000
arms, the bosom, and even
the ends of the radiant hair melted imperceptibly

310
00:33:37.359 --> 00:33:42.960
into the vague yet deep shadow which
formed the background of the whole. The

311
00:33:43.000 --> 00:33:50.400
frame was oval richly gilded and filigreed
in moresque. As a thing of art,

312
00:33:50.519 --> 00:33:54.160
nothing could be more admirable than the
painting itself. But it could have

313
00:33:54.200 --> 00:33:59.960
been neither the execution of the work, nor the immortal beauty of the countenance,

314
00:34:00.759 --> 00:34:06.720
which had so suddenly and so vehemently
moved me least of all. Could

315
00:34:06.720 --> 00:34:10.280
it have been that my fancy,
shaken from its half slumber, had mistaken

316
00:34:10.320 --> 00:34:15.400
the head for that of a living
person. I saw at once that the

317
00:34:15.440 --> 00:34:22.159
peculiarities of the design, of the
vignetting and of the frame must have instantly

318
00:34:22.199 --> 00:34:29.960
dispelled such idea much have prevented even
in its momentary entertainment. Thinking earnestly upon

319
00:34:30.079 --> 00:34:35.840
these points, I remained for an
hour, perhaps half sitting, half reclining,

320
00:34:36.159 --> 00:34:42.480
with my vision riveted upon the portrait. At length, satisfied with the

321
00:34:42.480 --> 00:34:46.119
true secret of its effect, I
fell back within the bed. I had

322
00:34:46.159 --> 00:34:51.880
found the spell of the picture,
in an absolute life likeliness of expression,

323
00:34:52.000 --> 00:34:57.519
which, at first startling, finally
confounded, subdued, and appalled me.

324
00:34:58.679 --> 00:35:04.559
With deep and reverent awe. I
replaced the candelabrum in its former position,

325
00:35:05.760 --> 00:35:10.639
the cause of my deep agitation being
thus shut from view, I sought eagerly

326
00:35:10.719 --> 00:35:16.320
the volume which discussed the paintings and
their histories. Turning to the number which

327
00:35:16.400 --> 00:35:22.639
designated the Oval portrait, I there
read the vague and quaint words which follow

328
00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:30.320
She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of

329
00:35:30.400 --> 00:35:35.960
glee and evil, was the hour
when she saw and loved and wedded the

330
00:35:36.039 --> 00:35:43.239
painter, he passionate, studious,
austere, and having already a bride in

331
00:35:43.320 --> 00:35:47.400
his art. She a maiden of
rarest beauty, and not more lovely than,

332
00:35:47.440 --> 00:35:52.199
full of glee, all light and
smiles and frolicsome as the young fawn,

333
00:35:52.840 --> 00:35:58.960
loving and cherishing all things, hating
only the art which was her rival,

334
00:35:59.599 --> 00:36:07.599
dreading only the palate and brushes and
other untoward instruments which deprived her of

335
00:36:07.639 --> 00:36:14.079
the countenance of her lover. It
was thus a terrible thing for this lady

336
00:36:14.119 --> 00:36:17.880
to hear the painter speak of his
desire to portray even his young bride.

337
00:36:19.840 --> 00:36:24.320
But she was humble and obedient,
and sat meekly for many weeks in the

338
00:36:24.480 --> 00:36:30.199
dark high turret chamber, where the
light dripped upon the pale canvas only from

339
00:36:30.239 --> 00:36:36.239
overhead. But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which

340
00:36:36.280 --> 00:36:40.559
went on from hour to hour and
from day to day. And he was

341
00:36:40.599 --> 00:36:46.639
a passionate and wild and moody man, who became lost in reveries, so

342
00:36:46.800 --> 00:36:52.920
that he would not see that the
light which fell so ghastly in that lone

343
00:36:52.000 --> 00:37:00.880
turret withered the health and the spirits
of his bride, who pined visibly to

344
00:37:00.039 --> 00:37:08.280
all but him. Yet she smiled
on and still on, uncomplainingly, because

345
00:37:08.320 --> 00:37:14.360
she saw that the painter, who
had high renown, took a fervid and

346
00:37:14.519 --> 00:37:19.519
burning pleasure in his task, and
wrought day and night to depict her,

347
00:37:19.800 --> 00:37:27.320
who so loved him, yet who
grew daily more dispirited and weak, And

348
00:37:27.440 --> 00:37:31.559
in sooth. Some who beheld the
portrait spoke of its resemblance in low words,

349
00:37:31.880 --> 00:37:37.039
as of a mighty marvel, and
a proof not less of the power

350
00:37:37.119 --> 00:37:40.480
of the painter than of his deep
love for her, whom he depicted so

351
00:37:40.679 --> 00:37:46.679
surpassingly well. But at length,
as the labor drew nearer to its conclusion,

352
00:37:47.599 --> 00:37:52.760
there were admittedly none into the turret, for the painter had grown wild

353
00:37:52.840 --> 00:37:59.039
with the ardor of his work,
and turned his eyes from canvas merely even

354
00:37:59.079 --> 00:38:02.280
to regard the cat mountenance of his
wife. And he would not see that

355
00:38:02.360 --> 00:38:07.679
the tints which he spread upon the
canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her

356
00:38:07.760 --> 00:38:13.440
who sate beside him. And when
many weeks bad passed, and but little

357
00:38:13.519 --> 00:38:19.079
remained to do save one brush upon
the mouth and one tint upon the eye,

358
00:38:19.119 --> 00:38:22.199
the spirit of the lady again flickered
up as the flame within the socket

359
00:38:22.280 --> 00:38:28.320
of the lamp. And then the
brush was given, and then the tint

360
00:38:28.440 --> 00:38:36.280
was placed. And for one moment
the painter stood entranced before the work which

361
00:38:36.280 --> 00:38:42.119
he had wrought. But in the
next while he yet gazed, he grew

362
00:38:42.199 --> 00:38:47.320
tremulous and very pallid, and aghast, and crying with a loud voice,

363
00:38:49.079 --> 00:38:57.760
this is indeed life itself, turned
suddenly to regard his beloved. She was

364
00:38:57.920 --> 00:39:30.960
dead. The Conqueror Worm by Edgar
Allan Poe Lo tis a gala night within

365
00:39:30.079 --> 00:39:37.079
the lonesome latter years, a mystic
throng, bewinged, bedight in veils,

366
00:39:37.199 --> 00:39:43.639
and drowned in tears, sit in
a theater to see a play of hopes

367
00:39:43.920 --> 00:39:51.559
and fears, while the orchestra breathes
fitfully the music of the spheres mimes in

368
00:39:51.639 --> 00:39:57.440
the form of God on high.
Mutter and mumble low, and hither and

369
00:39:57.519 --> 00:40:04.440
thither fly the puppets, they who
come and go at bidding of vast shadowy

370
00:40:04.559 --> 00:40:09.679
things that shift the scenery to and
fro, flapping from out their condor wings

371
00:40:10.360 --> 00:40:17.599
invisible woe that motley drama. Oh, be sure it shall not be forgot

372
00:40:19.239 --> 00:40:23.880
with its phantom chaste forevermore by a
crowd that sees it not through a circle

373
00:40:23.920 --> 00:40:30.440
that ever returneth in to the self
same spot, and much of madness,

374
00:40:30.440 --> 00:40:35.760
and more of sin and horror the
soul of the plot. But see amid

375
00:40:35.840 --> 00:40:40.920
the mimic rot, a crawling shape, intrude, a blood red thing that

376
00:40:42.159 --> 00:40:51.000
writhes from out the scenic solitude.
It writhes, it writhes with mortal pangs.

377
00:40:51.559 --> 00:40:57.800
The mimes become its food, and
the angels sob at vermin fangs in

378
00:40:57.960 --> 00:41:06.239
human gore, imbued out. Out
are the lights out all and over each

379
00:41:06.519 --> 00:41:13.360
dying form. The curtain, a
funeral pall comes down with the rush of

380
00:41:13.400 --> 00:41:21.960
a storm. The seraphs all Haggard
and Wan uprising unveiling, affirm that the

381
00:41:22.000 --> 00:41:53.079
play is the tragedy man, its
hero, the conqueror worm An The Doomed

382
00:41:53.159 --> 00:42:02.599
City, a prophecy by Edgar Allan
Poe lo death half reared himself a throne

383
00:42:04.360 --> 00:42:08.559
in a strange city, all alone, far down within the dim west.

384
00:42:09.199 --> 00:42:15.840
And the good and the bad,
and the worst and the best have gone

385
00:42:15.920 --> 00:42:22.880
to their eternal rest. Their shrines
and palaces and towers are not like anything

386
00:42:22.960 --> 00:42:30.920
of ours. Oh no, oh
no, ours never loom to heaven with

387
00:42:30.079 --> 00:42:37.000
that ungodly gloom, time eaten towers
that tremble not around by lifting winds,

388
00:42:37.039 --> 00:42:45.119
forgot resignedly beneath the sky, the
melancholy waters lie a heaven that God doth

389
00:42:45.199 --> 00:42:52.159
not contemn. With stars is like
a diadem. We liken our lady's eyes

390
00:42:52.199 --> 00:42:58.079
to them. But there that everlasting
paul. It would be mockery to call

391
00:42:58.719 --> 00:43:05.320
such dreariness a heaven at all.
Yet, though no holy rays come down

392
00:43:05.719 --> 00:43:09.480
on the long night time of that
town, light from the lurid deep sea

393
00:43:09.639 --> 00:43:15.719
streams up the turrets, silently,
up thrones, up long forgotten bowers of

394
00:43:15.840 --> 00:43:22.239
sculptured ivy and stone flowers, up
domes, upspires, up kingly halls,

395
00:43:22.639 --> 00:43:28.960
up fanes, up babylon like walls, up many a melancholy shrine, whose

396
00:43:29.159 --> 00:43:36.400
entablatures intertwine the mask, thee,
the vile, and the vine. There

397
00:43:36.440 --> 00:43:39.760
are open temples, open graves,
are on a level with the waves.

398
00:43:40.119 --> 00:43:45.840
But not the riches there that lie
in each idol's diamond eye. Not the

399
00:43:45.840 --> 00:43:52.719
galley jeweled dead tempt the waters from
their bed, For no ripples curl alas

400
00:43:53.079 --> 00:43:59.880
along that wilderness of glass, No
swellings hint that winds may be upon a

401
00:44:00.159 --> 00:44:05.320
far off happier sea. So blend
the turrets and the shadows there that all

402
00:44:05.360 --> 00:44:08.760
seem pendulous in the air, while
from the high towers of the town,

403
00:44:09.199 --> 00:44:16.119
Death looks gigantically down. But lo
a stir is in the air the wave.

404
00:44:16.400 --> 00:44:21.760
There is a ripple there, as
if the towers had thrown aside in

405
00:44:21.880 --> 00:44:27.480
slightly sinking the dull tide, as
if the turret tops had given a vacuum

406
00:44:27.559 --> 00:44:31.639
in the filmy heaven. The waves
have now a redder glow. The very

407
00:44:31.760 --> 00:44:39.159
hours are breathing low. And when
amid no earthly moans down down that town

408
00:44:39.320 --> 00:44:45.480
shall settle. Hence, Hell,
rising from a thousand thrones, shall do

409
00:44:45.639 --> 00:44:53.519
it no reverence, and death to
some more happy clime shall give his undivided

410
00:44:54.119 --> 00:45:13.880
time. The Haunted Palace by Edgar
Allan Poe, in the greenest of our

411
00:45:14.000 --> 00:45:21.320
valleys, by good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace, snow

412
00:45:21.360 --> 00:45:28.400
white palace reared its head in the
monarch Thought's dominion. It stood there.

413
00:45:29.199 --> 00:45:37.039
Never Seraph spread his pinion over fabric
half so fair banner's yellow, glorious golden

414
00:45:37.400 --> 00:45:42.679
on its roof did float and flow
this, all this was in the olden

415
00:45:43.239 --> 00:45:49.280
time long ago, And every gentle
air that dallied in that sweet day,

416
00:45:49.880 --> 00:45:54.519
along the rampant, plumed and pallid
a winged odor, went away. All

417
00:45:54.639 --> 00:46:02.559
wanderers in that happy valley through two
luminous windows saw spirits moving musically to Elute's

418
00:46:02.840 --> 00:46:09.920
well tuned law, round about a
throne, where sitting Perforgerine in state,

419
00:46:10.039 --> 00:46:16.760
his glory well befitting the sovereign of
the realm was seen, And all with

420
00:46:16.960 --> 00:46:22.719
pearl and ruby glowing was the fair
palace door, through which came flowing,

421
00:46:22.960 --> 00:46:29.840
flowing, flowing, and sparkling evermore, a troop of echoes, whose sweet

422
00:46:29.920 --> 00:46:37.159
duty was but to sing in voices
of surpassing beauty the wit and wisdom of

423
00:46:37.280 --> 00:46:43.960
their king. But evil things in
robes of sorrow assailed the monarch's high estate.

424
00:46:44.679 --> 00:46:49.199
Ah let us mourn, for never
morrow shall dawn upon him, desolate

425
00:46:50.599 --> 00:46:54.679
and round about his home. The
glory that blush'd and bloomed is but a

426
00:46:54.760 --> 00:47:04.000
dim remembered story of the old time
in tuned and travelers now within that valley,

427
00:47:04.679 --> 00:47:12.599
through the red litten windows see vast
forms that move fantastically to a discordant

428
00:47:12.679 --> 00:47:19.440
melody, while like a rapid,
ghastly river through the pale door, a

429
00:47:19.519 --> 00:47:39.360
hideous throng rush out forever and laugh, but smile no more. Fairy Land

430
00:47:40.119 --> 00:47:50.440
by Edgar Allan Poe. Dim vowels
and shadowy floods, and cloudy looking woods

431
00:47:50.760 --> 00:47:57.039
whose forms we can't discover, for
the tears that drip all over huge moons.

432
00:47:57.119 --> 00:48:04.239
There wax and wane again again again, every moment of the night,

433
00:48:04.840 --> 00:48:09.559
forever, changing places, and they
put out the starlight with the breath from

434
00:48:09.599 --> 00:48:16.039
their pale faces, about twelve by
the moon dial one more filmy than the

435
00:48:16.079 --> 00:48:22.159
rest, a sort of which upon
trial they have found to be the best,

436
00:48:22.920 --> 00:48:27.679
comes down, still, down and
down, with its center on the

437
00:48:27.800 --> 00:48:36.280
crown of a mountain's eminence, while
its wide circumference in easy drapery falls over

438
00:48:36.440 --> 00:48:42.039
hamlets and rich halls, wherever they
may be. O'er the strange woods,

439
00:48:42.079 --> 00:48:46.280
o'er the sea over, spirits on
the wing, over every drowsy thing,

440
00:48:47.000 --> 00:48:53.199
and buries them up quite in a
labyrinth of light. And then how deep,

441
00:48:53.639 --> 00:48:59.480
oh deep, is the passion of
their sleep. In the morning they

442
00:48:59.559 --> 00:49:06.239
arrive, and their moony covering is
soaring in the skies with the tempests,

443
00:49:06.280 --> 00:49:12.599
as they toss like almost anything,
or a yellow albatross. They use that

444
00:49:12.719 --> 00:49:17.599
moon no more for the same end
as before, vitilicit a tent, which

445
00:49:17.639 --> 00:49:25.280
I think extravagant its atomies, however, into a shower dissever of which those

446
00:49:25.360 --> 00:49:32.599
butterflies of earth who seek the skies
and so come down again the unbelieving things

447
00:49:34.519 --> 00:49:58.119
have brought a specimen upon their quivering
wings. Spirits of the Dead by Edgar

448
00:49:58.199 --> 00:50:06.440
Allan Poe, Thy soul shall find
itself alone mid dark thoughts of the gray

449
00:50:06.599 --> 00:50:13.199
tombstone, not one of all the
crowd to pry into thine hour of secrecy.

450
00:50:14.119 --> 00:50:19.079
Be silent in thy solitude, which
is not loneliness. For then the

451
00:50:19.119 --> 00:50:23.159
spirits of the dead, who stood
in life before thee, are again in

452
00:50:23.280 --> 00:50:30.320
death around thee, and their will
shall then o'ershadow thee be still. The

453
00:50:30.440 --> 00:50:36.320
night, though clear, shall frown, and the stars shall look not down

454
00:50:36.719 --> 00:50:42.199
from their high thrones in the heaven
with light like hope to mortals given,

455
00:50:43.159 --> 00:50:49.239
but their red orbs without beam.
To thy weariness shall seem as a burning

456
00:50:49.320 --> 00:50:53.400
and a fever, which would cling
to THEE forever, But twill leave thee,

457
00:50:53.480 --> 00:51:00.840
as each star with the dewdrop flies
afar now our thoughts. Thou canst

458
00:51:00.840 --> 00:51:07.320
not banish now our visions never to
vanish. No more like dewdrop from the

459
00:51:07.400 --> 00:51:14.480
grass, from thy spirit shall they
pass the breeze. The breath of God

460
00:51:14.639 --> 00:51:20.719
is still, and the mist upon
the hill, shadowy, shadowy, yet

461
00:51:20.760 --> 00:51:27.119
unbroken, is a symbol and a
token. How it hangs upon the trees.

462
00:51:28.039 --> 00:51:50.719
A mystery of mysteries. The Man
that Was Used up A tale of

463
00:51:50.760 --> 00:52:00.320
the late Bugaboo and Kickaboo campaign by
Edgar Allan Poe Periz Paris Mahieu ed vonnes

464
00:52:00.440 --> 00:52:07.960
vu en u la morte de ma
vis a mis larretel autombul Cornier. I

465
00:52:08.039 --> 00:52:15.360
cannot just now remember when or where
I first made the acquaintance of that truly

466
00:52:15.519 --> 00:52:21.400
fine looking fellow Brevet Brigadier General John
A. B. C. Smith.

467
00:52:22.440 --> 00:52:27.800
Someone did introduce me to the gentleman, I am sure at some public meeting

468
00:52:28.559 --> 00:52:32.239
I know very well, held about
something of great importance, no doubt,

469
00:52:32.719 --> 00:52:38.840
at some place or other I feel
convinced whose name I have unaccountably forgotten.

470
00:52:40.039 --> 00:52:45.679
The truth is that the introduction was
attended upon my part with a degree of

471
00:52:45.800 --> 00:52:52.239
anxious embarrassment, which operated to prevent
any definite impressions of either time or space.

472
00:52:53.360 --> 00:53:00.039
I am constitutionally nervous. This with
me is a family filing, and

473
00:53:00.119 --> 00:53:07.880
I can't help it. In especial, the slightest appearance of mystery of any

474
00:53:07.960 --> 00:53:14.280
point I cannot exactly comprehend, puts
me at once into a pitable state of

475
00:53:14.320 --> 00:53:21.719
agitation. There was something, as
it were, remarkable, Yes, remarkable,

476
00:53:22.360 --> 00:53:27.280
although this is but a feeble term
to express my full meaning about the

477
00:53:27.440 --> 00:53:32.960
entire individuality of the personage in question. He was perhaps six feet in height,

478
00:53:34.599 --> 00:53:40.480
and of a presence singularly commanding.
There was an air distingue pervading the

479
00:53:40.559 --> 00:53:46.840
whole man, which spoke of high
breeding and hinted at high birth. Upon

480
00:53:46.960 --> 00:53:52.960
this topic, the topic of Smith's
personal appearance, I have a kind of

481
00:53:52.519 --> 00:54:00.199
melancholy satisfaction in being minute. His
head of hair would have done honor to

482
00:54:00.239 --> 00:54:06.119
a brutus. Nothing could be more
richly flowing, or possess a brighter gloss.

483
00:54:07.119 --> 00:54:10.280
It was of a jetty black,
which was also the color, or

484
00:54:10.920 --> 00:54:17.320
more properly, the no color of
his unimaginable whiskers. You perceive. I

485
00:54:17.400 --> 00:54:22.199
cannot speak of these latter without enthusiasm. It is not too much to say

486
00:54:22.320 --> 00:54:29.039
that they were the handsomest pair of
whiskers under the sun. At all events,

487
00:54:29.679 --> 00:54:35.400
they encircled, and at times partially
overshadowed, a mouth utterly unequaled.

488
00:54:36.519 --> 00:54:42.840
Here were the most entirely even and
most brilliantly white of all conceivable teeth.

489
00:54:43.639 --> 00:54:49.400
From between them, upon every proper
occasion, issued a voice of surpassing clearness,

490
00:54:49.760 --> 00:54:54.000
melody, and strength. In the
matter of eyes, also, my

491
00:54:54.119 --> 00:55:00.880
acquaintance was pre eminently endowed. Either
one of such a pair was worth a

492
00:55:00.920 --> 00:55:07.000
couple of the ordinary ocular organs.
They were of a deep hazel, exceedingly

493
00:55:07.199 --> 00:55:15.000
large and lustrious, and there was
perceptible about them, ever and anon,

494
00:55:15.760 --> 00:55:22.960
just that amount of interesting obliquity which
gives pregnancy to expression. The bust of

495
00:55:22.000 --> 00:55:29.000
the General was unquestionably the finest bust
I ever saw. For your life could

496
00:55:29.000 --> 00:55:35.639
not have found a fault with its
wonderful proportion. This rare peculiarity set off

497
00:55:35.679 --> 00:55:39.480
to great advantage a pair of shoulders
which would have called up a blush of

498
00:55:39.599 --> 00:55:46.679
conscious inferiority into the countenance of the
marble Apollo. I have a passion for

499
00:55:46.760 --> 00:55:53.559
fine shoulders, and may say that
I never beheld them in perfection before the

500
00:55:53.760 --> 00:56:01.199
arms altogether were admirably modeled, nor
the lower limbs less superb. These were,

501
00:56:01.360 --> 00:56:09.239
indeed the knee plus ultra of good
legs. Every connoisseur in such matters

502
00:56:09.280 --> 00:56:15.599
admitted the legs to be good.
There was neither too much flesh nor too

503
00:56:15.679 --> 00:56:22.159
little, neither rudeness nor fragility.
I could not imagine a more graceful curve

504
00:56:22.599 --> 00:56:29.000
than that of the osphemeris. And
there was just that due gentle prominence in

505
00:56:29.079 --> 00:56:34.679
the rear of the fibula, which
goes to the confirmation of a properly proportioned

506
00:56:34.760 --> 00:56:40.880
calf. I wish to God,
my young and talented friend Chiponchipino the sculptor

507
00:56:42.280 --> 00:56:45.559
had seen the legs of Brevet Brigadier
General John A. B. C.

508
00:56:46.000 --> 00:56:53.280
Smith. But although men so absolutely
fine looking are neither as plenty as reasons

509
00:56:53.400 --> 00:56:59.679
or blackberries. Still, I could
not bring myself to believe that the remarkable

510
00:56:59.719 --> 00:57:05.280
soun something to which I alluded just
now, that the odd air of Genesee

511
00:57:05.400 --> 00:57:10.519
Croix which hung about my new acquaintance, lay all together, or indeed at

512
00:57:10.559 --> 00:57:17.639
all, in the supreme excellence of
his bodily endowments. Perhaps it might be

513
00:57:17.760 --> 00:57:22.599
traced to the manner. Yet here
again I could not pretend to be positive.

514
00:57:23.039 --> 00:57:29.480
There was a primness, not to
say stiffness in his carriage, a

515
00:57:29.559 --> 00:57:36.440
degree of measured and if I may
so express it, of rectangular precision attending

516
00:57:36.719 --> 00:57:42.559
his every movement, which observed in
a more diminutive figure, would have had

517
00:57:42.639 --> 00:57:50.239
the least little savor in the world
of affectation, pomposity or constraint, but

518
00:57:50.360 --> 00:57:54.760
which noticed in a gentleman of his
undoubted dimensions, was readily placed to the

519
00:57:54.840 --> 00:58:04.000
account of reserve hatour of a commendable
sense, in short of what is due

520
00:58:04.039 --> 00:58:09.880
to the dignity of colossal proportion.
The kind of friend who presented me to

521
00:58:09.960 --> 00:58:15.719
General Smith whispered in my ear some
few words of comment upon the man.

522
00:58:16.079 --> 00:58:21.840
He was a remarkable man, a
very remarkable man, indeed, one of

523
00:58:21.880 --> 00:58:28.079
the most remarkable men of the age. He was an especial favorite too with

524
00:58:28.199 --> 00:58:35.639
the ladies, chiefly on account of
his high reputation for courage. In that

525
00:58:35.840 --> 00:58:40.079
point he is unrivaled. Indeed,
he is a perfect desperado, a downright

526
00:58:40.239 --> 00:58:46.280
fire reader. And no mistake,
said my friend here, dropping his voice

527
00:58:46.320 --> 00:58:52.960
excessively low, and thrilling me with
the mystery of his tone a downright fire

528
00:58:53.039 --> 00:58:59.079
eater, and no mistake showed that
I should say to some purpose in the

529
00:58:59.159 --> 00:59:06.159
late tremendous swamp fight away down south
with the Bugaboo and Kickaboo indians, here

530
00:59:06.280 --> 00:59:10.840
my friend opened his eyes to some
extent, bless my soul, blood and

531
00:59:10.920 --> 00:59:16.000
thunder and all that prodigies of valor
heard of him. Of course, you

532
00:59:16.159 --> 00:59:22.000
know he's the man, man alive. How do you do? Why?

533
00:59:22.199 --> 00:59:28.119
How are ye very glad to see
ye? Indeed, here interrupted the General

534
00:59:28.199 --> 00:59:32.559
himself, seizing my companion by the
hand as he drew near, and bowing

535
00:59:32.639 --> 00:59:39.280
stiffly but profoundly as I was presented. I then thought, and I think

536
00:59:39.360 --> 00:59:45.039
so still, that I never heard
a clearer nor a stronger voice, nor

537
00:59:45.119 --> 00:59:50.760
beheld a finer set of teeth.
But I must say that I was sorry

538
00:59:50.880 --> 00:59:54.480
for the interruption. Just at that
moment, as owing to the whispers and

539
00:59:54.599 --> 01:00:01.440
insinuations aforesaid, my interest had been
greatly excited in the hero of the Bugaboo

540
01:00:01.519 --> 01:00:10.000
and Kickaboo campaign. However, the
delightfully luminous conversation of Brevet Brigadier General John

541
01:00:10.159 --> 01:00:16.519
A. B. C. Smith
soon completely dissipated this chagrin. My friend

542
01:00:16.679 --> 01:00:22.719
leaving us immediately. We had quite
a long tete a tete, and I

543
01:00:22.840 --> 01:00:28.480
was not only pleased, but really
instructed. I never heard a more fluent

544
01:00:28.599 --> 01:00:35.360
talker or a man of greater general
information. With becoming modesty, he forebore,

545
01:00:35.599 --> 01:00:38.880
nevertheless to touch upon the theme I
had just then most at heart.

546
01:00:39.800 --> 01:00:46.599
I mean, the mysterious circumstances attending
the Bugaboo War, and on my own

547
01:00:46.679 --> 01:00:52.000
part, what I conceive to be
a proper sense of delicacy forbade me to

548
01:00:52.079 --> 01:00:59.639
broach the subject, although in truth
I was exceedingly tempted to do so.

549
01:01:00.920 --> 01:01:07.360
I perceived too that the gallant soldier
preferred topics of philosophical interest, and that

550
01:01:07.440 --> 01:01:15.440
he delighted, especially in commenting upon
the rapid march of mechanical invention, indeed

551
01:01:16.079 --> 01:01:22.360
lead him where I would. This
was a point to which he invariably came

552
01:01:22.480 --> 01:01:28.119
back. There's nothing at all like
it, he would say. We are

553
01:01:28.119 --> 01:01:32.480
a wonderful people, and live in
a wonderful age. Parachutes and railroads,

554
01:01:32.559 --> 01:01:38.119
man traps and spring guns. Our
steamboats are upon every sea, and the

555
01:01:38.199 --> 01:01:44.960
Nassau Balloon Packet is about to run
regular trips fair either way only twenty pounds

556
01:01:45.000 --> 01:01:52.000
sterling between London and Timbuctoo, And
who shall calculate the immense influence upon social

557
01:01:52.039 --> 01:01:57.639
life, upon arts, upon commerce, upon literature, which will be the

558
01:01:57.679 --> 01:02:04.280
immediate result of the great principle of
electromagnetics. Nor is this all? Let

559
01:02:04.320 --> 01:02:08.159
me assure you there is really no
end to the march of invention, the

560
01:02:08.159 --> 01:02:14.119
most wonderful, the most ingenious,
And let me add, mister Thompson,

561
01:02:14.119 --> 01:02:16.480
I believe is your name. Let
me add, I say, the most

562
01:02:16.639 --> 01:02:23.800
useful, the most truly useful.
Mechanical contrivances are daily springing up like mushrooms,

563
01:02:24.199 --> 01:02:30.639
if I may so express myself,
or more figuratively, like a grasshoppers,

564
01:02:30.679 --> 01:02:37.119
like grasshoppers, mister Thompson, about
us and around us. Thompson,

565
01:02:37.360 --> 01:02:40.400
to be sure, is not my
name. But it is needless to say

566
01:02:40.400 --> 01:02:45.360
that I left General Smith with a
heightened interest in the man, with an

567
01:02:45.400 --> 01:02:52.360
exalted opinion of his conversational powers,
and a deep sense of the valuable privileges

568
01:02:52.440 --> 01:02:59.400
we enjoy in living in this age
of mechanical invention. My curiosity, however,

569
01:02:59.760 --> 01:03:07.159
had not been altogether satisfied, and
I resolved to prosecute immediate inquiry among

570
01:03:07.280 --> 01:03:14.960
my acquaintances touching the Brevet Brigadier General
himself, and particularly respecting the tremendous events

571
01:03:15.079 --> 01:03:23.119
quorum par magna fuit during the Bugaboo
and Kickaboo campaign. The first opportunity which

572
01:03:23.159 --> 01:03:30.440
presented opportunity, which presented itself,
and which horresco reference I did not in

573
01:03:30.519 --> 01:03:36.880
the least scruple to seize, occurred
at the church of the Reverend Doctor Drummunump,

574
01:03:37.559 --> 01:03:43.360
where I found myself established one Sunday
just at sermon Tine, not only

575
01:03:43.400 --> 01:03:47.039
in the pew, but by the
side of that worthy and communicative little friend

576
01:03:47.079 --> 01:03:55.239
of mine, Miss Tabitha t Thus
seated, I congratulated myself and with much

577
01:03:55.320 --> 01:04:00.480
reason, upon the very flattering state
of affairs. If any person knew anything

578
01:04:00.559 --> 01:04:06.199
about Brevet Brigadier General John ABC Smith, that person, it was clear to

579
01:04:06.239 --> 01:04:14.440
me, was Miss Tabitha t We
telegraphed a few signals and then commenced soto

580
01:04:14.519 --> 01:04:20.239
voce A brisk tete a tete Smith
said she in reply to my very earnest

581
01:04:20.280 --> 01:04:27.119
inquiry Smith, why not General John
Abc bless me? I thought you knew

582
01:04:27.159 --> 01:04:32.599
all about him. This is a
wonderfully inventive, age horrid affair that a

583
01:04:32.679 --> 01:04:39.280
bloody set of wretches, those kickapoos, fought like a hero, prodigies of

584
01:04:39.400 --> 01:04:45.400
valor, immortal renown smith, Brevet
Brigadier General John ABC. Why you know

585
01:04:45.679 --> 01:04:53.280
he's the man. Man here,
broke in doctor drummumump at the top of

586
01:04:53.360 --> 01:04:58.159
his voice, and with a thump
that came near knocking the pulpit. About

587
01:04:58.199 --> 01:05:01.880
our ears. Man that is born
of a woman hath but a short time

588
01:05:01.960 --> 01:05:05.840
to live, But he cometh up
and is cut down like a flower.

589
01:05:08.039 --> 01:05:13.039
I started to the extremity of the
pew, and perceived by the animated looks

590
01:05:13.079 --> 01:05:16.320
of the divine that the wrath,
which had nearly proved fatal to the pulpit,

591
01:05:16.719 --> 01:05:21.880
had been excited by the whispers of
the lady and myself. There was

592
01:05:23.000 --> 01:05:29.039
no help for it, so I
submitted with a good grace and listened in

593
01:05:29.159 --> 01:05:34.400
all the martyrdom of dignified silence to
the balance of that very capital discourse.

594
01:05:35.159 --> 01:05:45.119
Don't go away weekly, Spooky will
be right back. Next evening found me

595
01:05:45.199 --> 01:05:50.239
a somewhat late visitor at the Rantipole
Theater, where I felt sure of satisfying

596
01:05:50.280 --> 01:05:57.440
my curiosity at once by merely stepping
into the box of those exquisite specimens of

597
01:05:57.480 --> 01:06:06.000
affability and omniscience. The misses Arabella
and Miranda Cognocenti, that fine tragedian climax

598
01:06:06.159 --> 01:06:12.920
was doing lago to a very crowded
house, and I experienced some little difficulty

599
01:06:12.960 --> 01:06:18.079
in making my wishes understood, especially
as our box was next to the slips

600
01:06:18.119 --> 01:06:26.679
and completely overlooked the stage, Smith, said Miss Arabella, as she at

601
01:06:26.719 --> 01:06:32.840
comprehended the purport of my query.
Smith, why not General John A.

602
01:06:33.039 --> 01:06:40.239
B. C. Smith, inquired
Miranda, musingly, God bless me,

603
01:06:40.519 --> 01:06:45.559
did you ever behold a finer figure? Never, madam, but do tell

604
01:06:45.639 --> 01:06:50.639
me, or so imitable grace?
Never upon my word, but pray inform

605
01:06:50.679 --> 01:06:57.119
me, or so just an appreciation
of stage effect, Madam, or a

606
01:06:57.119 --> 01:07:01.440
more delicate sense of the true beauties
of Shakespeare. Be so good as to

607
01:07:01.480 --> 01:07:09.039
look at that leg the devil.
And I turned again to her sister Smith.

608
01:07:09.599 --> 01:07:13.880
She said, why not General John
A. B. C. Horrid

609
01:07:13.920 --> 01:07:18.159
affair, that wasn't it? Great
wretches, those bugaboo savage and so on.

610
01:07:18.760 --> 01:07:23.639
But we live in a wonderfully inventive
age. Smith, Oh, yes,

611
01:07:24.119 --> 01:07:29.519
great man, perfect desperado, immortal, renowned prodigies of valor. Never

612
01:07:29.679 --> 01:07:34.599
heard. This was given in a
scream, bless my soul. Why he's

613
01:07:34.639 --> 01:07:43.000
the man Mandragora. Nor all the
drowsy syrups of the world shall ever medicine

614
01:07:43.039 --> 01:07:50.280
thee to that sweet sleep which thou
oust yesterday here roared our climax, just

615
01:07:50.360 --> 01:07:55.440
in my ear, and shaking his
fist in my face all the time in

616
01:07:55.519 --> 01:08:02.440
a way that I couldn't stand,
and I wouldn't the Missus COGNOCENTI immediately went

617
01:08:02.480 --> 01:08:08.840
behind the scenes forthwith and gave the
beggarly scoundrel such a thrashing, as I

618
01:08:08.880 --> 01:08:14.360
trust he will remember till the day
of his death. At the soiree of

619
01:08:14.440 --> 01:08:18.159
the lovely widow Missus Kathleen o' trump, I was confident that I should meet

620
01:08:18.199 --> 01:08:24.439
with no similar disappointment. Accordingly,
I was no sooner seated at the card

621
01:08:24.479 --> 01:08:29.800
table with my pretty hostess for vis
a vis than I propounded those questions,

622
01:08:30.159 --> 01:08:35.640
the solution of which had become a
matter so essential to my peace. Smith,

623
01:08:36.079 --> 01:08:40.760
said my partner, Why not General
John A. B. C.

624
01:08:41.640 --> 01:08:45.079
Horrid affair, that wasn't it,
Diamonds? Did you say, terrible wretches?

625
01:08:45.159 --> 01:08:49.520
Those kickapoos? We are playing whist
if you please, mister tattle.

626
01:08:49.600 --> 01:08:55.199
However, this is the age of
invention, most certainly the age, one

627
01:08:55.199 --> 01:08:59.840
may say, the age par excellence
speak French. Oh, quite a hero,

628
01:09:00.239 --> 01:09:03.520
perfect desperado, No hearts, mister
Taddle, I don't believe it.

629
01:09:03.920 --> 01:09:10.479
Immortal renown and all that prodigies of
valor never heard. Why bless me?

630
01:09:10.760 --> 01:09:16.880
He's the man man, Captain Man
here, screamed some little feminine interloper from

631
01:09:16.960 --> 01:09:23.159
the farthest corner of the room.
Are you talking about Captain Man and the

632
01:09:23.279 --> 01:09:27.439
duel? Oh? I must hear? Do tell go on, missus o

633
01:09:27.560 --> 01:09:32.000
Trump do now, go on and
go on, missus O Trump did all

634
01:09:32.079 --> 01:09:38.720
about a certain captain man who was
either shot or hung, or should have

635
01:09:38.800 --> 01:09:43.000
been both shot and hung. Yes, missus o'trump, she went on,

636
01:09:43.600 --> 01:09:48.840
and I I went off. There
was no chance of hearing anything farther that

637
01:09:49.039 --> 01:09:53.760
evening. In regard to Brevett Brigadier
General John A. B. C.

638
01:09:54.079 --> 01:10:00.199
Smith, Still, I consoled myself
with the reflection that the tide of ill

639
01:10:00.319 --> 01:10:04.800
luck would not run against me forever, and so determined to make a bold

640
01:10:04.920 --> 01:10:13.359
push for information at the rate of
that bewitching little angel, the graceful missus

641
01:10:13.359 --> 01:10:19.439
Pirouette Smith said, missus p as
we twirled about together in a past des

642
01:10:19.439 --> 01:10:26.760
effyr Smith, Why not General John
A. B C. Dreadful business?

643
01:10:26.760 --> 01:10:30.880
That of the Bugaboos, wasn't it? Dreadful creatures? Those Indians do?

644
01:10:31.079 --> 01:10:35.199
Turn out your toes. I really
am ashamed of you, man of great

645
01:10:35.279 --> 01:10:40.880
courage, poor fellow, But this
is a wonderful age of invention. Oh

646
01:10:40.920 --> 01:10:45.279
dear me, I'm out of breath, quite a desperado. Prodigies of valor

647
01:10:45.399 --> 01:10:50.000
never heard. Can't believe it.
I shall have to sit down and enlighten

648
01:10:50.039 --> 01:10:56.279
you Smith. Why he's the man
man Fred? I tell you? Here,

649
01:10:56.319 --> 01:11:00.000
bawled out Miss bas Bleu, as
I led missus Pierreo to a seat.

650
01:11:01.079 --> 01:11:05.479
Did ever anybody hear the like?
It's Manfred, I say, And

651
01:11:05.560 --> 01:11:12.199
not at all by any means Man
Friday? Here, Miss boss blue beckoned

652
01:11:12.239 --> 01:11:16.840
to me in a very peremptory manner, And I was obliged, will I

653
01:11:16.920 --> 01:11:21.800
kneel I to leave Missus p for
the purpose of deciding a dispute touching the

654
01:11:21.800 --> 01:11:29.000
title of a certain poetical drama of
Lord Byron's, although I pronounced with great

655
01:11:29.079 --> 01:11:34.079
promptness that the true title was man
Friday, and not by any means Manfred.

656
01:11:34.199 --> 01:11:39.119
Yet when I returned to seek missus
pirouet, she was not to be

657
01:11:39.199 --> 01:11:44.560
discovered, and I made my retreat
from the house in a very bitter spirit

658
01:11:45.119 --> 01:11:51.800
of animosity against the whole race of
the boss blues. Matters had now assumed

659
01:11:51.800 --> 01:11:58.199
a really serious aspect, and I
resolved to call at once upon my particular

660
01:11:58.239 --> 01:12:03.319
friend, mister Theodoor Sinev, for
I knew that here at least I should

661
01:12:03.359 --> 01:12:12.159
get something like definite information. Smith
said he, in his well known peculiar

662
01:12:12.279 --> 01:12:20.159
way of drawling out his syllables.
Smith, why not General John ABC savage

663
01:12:20.159 --> 01:12:26.319
affair that with the kickapoos, wasn't
it? Say? Don't you think so

664
01:12:27.760 --> 01:12:34.680
perfect Desperadaoh great pity pawn my honor, wonderfully inventive age parodigies of valor.

665
01:12:35.079 --> 01:12:41.319
By the bye, did you ever
hear about captain ma'am Captain Mann? He

666
01:12:41.479 --> 01:12:45.880
did? Said, I please to
go on with your story. Humh oh,

667
01:12:45.880 --> 01:12:51.520
well quite la meme. Choose as
we say in France. Smith,

668
01:12:51.560 --> 01:12:58.520
Eh, Brigadier General John Abc,
I say, here, mister s thought

669
01:12:58.560 --> 01:13:01.439
proper to put his finger to the
side of his nose. I say,

670
01:13:01.840 --> 01:13:09.000
you don't mean to insinuate now,
really and truly and conscientiously that you don't

671
01:13:09.039 --> 01:13:13.479
know all about that affair of Smith's
as well as I do, eh Smith

672
01:13:14.039 --> 01:13:19.239
John ABC. Why bless me?
He's the man, mister Cinevat, said

673
01:13:19.239 --> 01:13:26.760
I, imploringly. Is he the
man in the mask? No? Said

674
01:13:26.760 --> 01:13:33.079
he looking wise, nor the man
in the moon. This reply I considered

675
01:13:33.119 --> 01:13:39.439
a pointed and positive insult, and
so left the house at once in high

676
01:13:39.520 --> 01:13:45.199
Dujon with a firm resolve to call
my friend mister Cinevate to a speedy account

677
01:13:45.359 --> 01:13:51.960
for his ungentlemanly conduct and ill breeding. In the meantime, however, I

678
01:13:53.039 --> 01:13:59.399
had no notion of being thwarted touching
the information I desired. There was one

679
01:13:59.479 --> 01:14:03.119
resource left me. Yet, I
would go to the fountain head. I

680
01:14:03.159 --> 01:14:10.840
would call forthwith upon the General himself, and demand in explicit terms a solution

681
01:14:11.800 --> 01:14:16.439
of this abominable piece of mystery.
Here, at least there should be no

682
01:14:16.680 --> 01:14:24.760
chance for equivocation. I would be
plain, positive peremptory, as short as

683
01:14:24.840 --> 01:14:31.199
pie crust, as concise as Tacitus
or Montesquieu. It was early when I

684
01:14:31.279 --> 01:14:36.159
called, and the General was dressing, but I pleaded urgent business, and

685
01:14:36.319 --> 01:14:41.960
was shown at once into his bedroom
by an old Negro Valet, who remained

686
01:14:41.960 --> 01:14:46.000
in attendance during my visit. As
I entered the chamber, I looked about,

687
01:14:46.000 --> 01:14:51.840
of course for the occupant, but
did not immediately perceive him. There

688
01:14:51.920 --> 01:14:57.800
was a large and exceedingly odd looking
bundle of something which lay close by my

689
01:14:57.920 --> 01:15:00.720
feet on the floor, and as
I was not in the best humor in

690
01:15:00.800 --> 01:15:05.600
the world, I gave it a
kick out of the way. Hem ahem,

691
01:15:06.079 --> 01:15:11.680
rather civil that I should say,
said the bundle, in one of

692
01:15:11.720 --> 01:15:17.359
the smallest and altogether the funniest little
voices between a squeak and a whistle that

693
01:15:17.479 --> 01:15:24.359
I ever heard in all the days
of my existence. Ahem, rather civil

694
01:15:24.359 --> 01:15:29.199
that I should observe. I fairly
shouted with terror, and made off at

695
01:15:29.199 --> 01:15:33.640
a tangent into the farthest extremity of
the room. God bless me, my

696
01:15:33.760 --> 01:15:40.560
dear fellow. Here again whistled the
bundle. What what? What? Why?

697
01:15:40.600 --> 01:15:43.960
What is the matter? I really
believe you don't know me at all?

698
01:15:45.199 --> 01:15:50.319
What could I say to all this? What could I? I staggered

699
01:15:50.319 --> 01:15:57.399
into an armchair, and with staring
eyes and open mouth awaited the solution of

700
01:15:57.439 --> 01:16:02.920
the wonder strange. You shouldn't know
me, though, isn't it presently re

701
01:16:03.079 --> 01:16:11.880
squeaked the nondescript which I now perceive
was performing upon the floor some inexplicable evolution,

702
01:16:13.159 --> 01:16:17.880
very analogous to the drawing on of
a stocking. There was only a

703
01:16:17.920 --> 01:16:24.159
single leg, however apparent strange.
You shouldn't know me, though, isn't

704
01:16:24.199 --> 01:16:29.479
it, Pompy, bring me that
leg? Here Pompey handed the bundle of

705
01:16:29.680 --> 01:16:34.560
very capital cork leg already dressed,
which it screwed on in a trice,

706
01:16:35.399 --> 01:16:44.199
and then it stood upright before my
eyes and a bloody action it was continued

707
01:16:44.239 --> 01:16:48.520
the thing as if in soliloquy.
But then one mustn't fight with the bugaboos

708
01:16:48.520 --> 01:16:55.199
and kickapoos and think of coming off
with a mere scratch. Pompy, I'll

709
01:16:55.199 --> 01:17:00.800
thank you now for that arm,
Thomas turning to me, is decidedly the

710
01:17:00.800 --> 01:17:03.680
best hand at a corked leg.
But if you should ever want an arm,

711
01:17:03.760 --> 01:17:08.119
my dear fellow, you must really
let me recommend you to Bishop.

712
01:17:08.880 --> 01:17:13.720
Here Pompey screwed on an arm.
We had rather hot work of it,

713
01:17:14.039 --> 01:17:17.800
that you may say, now,
you dog slip on my shoulders and bosom

714
01:17:18.640 --> 01:17:23.760
pettit makes the best shoulders. But
for a bosom you'll have to go to

715
01:17:23.840 --> 01:17:29.600
Dukrau, Bosom, said I,
Pompy, will you never be ready with

716
01:17:29.640 --> 01:17:33.159
that wig. Scalping is a rough
process after all, But then you can

717
01:17:33.199 --> 01:17:40.760
procure such a capital scratch at de
l'Orme's scratch. Now, you nigger my

718
01:17:40.920 --> 01:17:44.359
teeth. For a good set of
these, you had better go to Parmley's

719
01:17:44.399 --> 01:17:49.279
at once high prices, but excellent
work. I swallowed some very capital articles,

720
01:17:49.319 --> 01:17:54.159
though, and when the big bugaboo
rammed me down with the butt end

721
01:17:54.159 --> 01:18:00.600
of his rifle butt end rammed down
my eye. Oh yes, by the

722
01:18:00.640 --> 01:18:03.640
way, my eye here, Pompey, you scamp screw it in. Those

723
01:18:03.760 --> 01:18:09.600
kickapoos are not so very slow at
a gouge. But he's a blid man,

724
01:18:09.800 --> 01:18:13.600
that doctor Williams. After all,
you can't imagine how well I see

725
01:18:13.640 --> 01:18:18.039
with the eyes of his make.
I now began very clearly to perceive that

726
01:18:18.119 --> 01:18:26.640
the object before me was nothing more
nor less than my new acquaintance, Revett

727
01:18:26.640 --> 01:18:32.159
Brigadier General John A. B.
C. Smith. The manipulations of Pompey

728
01:18:32.199 --> 01:18:39.439
had made I must confess a very
striking difference in the appearance of the personal

729
01:18:39.520 --> 01:18:45.039
man. The voice, however,
still puzzled me no little, But even

730
01:18:45.119 --> 01:18:51.399
this apparent mystery was speedily cleared up. Pompy, you black rascal, squeaked

731
01:18:51.439 --> 01:18:55.960
the General, I really do believe
you would let me go out without my

732
01:18:56.079 --> 01:19:01.600
palette. Hereupon the knee grow,
grumbling out an apology, went up to

733
01:19:01.640 --> 01:19:05.520
his master, opened his mouth with
the knowing air of a horse jockey,

734
01:19:06.000 --> 01:19:13.840
and adjusted therein a somewhat singular looking
machine, in a very dexterous manner that

735
01:19:13.920 --> 01:19:19.199
I could not altogether comprehend. The
alliteration, however, in the entire expression

736
01:19:19.239 --> 01:19:26.600
of the General's countenance was instantaneous and
surprising. Then he again spoke. His

737
01:19:26.760 --> 01:19:30.319
voice had resumed all that rich melody
and strength which I had noticed upon our

738
01:19:30.359 --> 01:19:36.399
original introduction. Then the vagabonds,
said he, in so clear a tone

739
01:19:38.199 --> 01:19:43.640
that I positively started at the change. Then the vagabonds, they not only

740
01:19:43.720 --> 01:19:46.359
knocked in the roof of my mouth, but took the trouble to cut off

741
01:19:46.399 --> 01:19:51.439
at least seven eighths of my tongue. There isn't Bonfante's equal, however,

742
01:19:51.479 --> 01:19:57.560
in America, for really good articles
of this description, I can recommend you

743
01:19:57.600 --> 01:20:02.439
to him with confidence. Here the
General bowed and assure you that I have

744
01:20:02.640 --> 01:20:10.079
the greatest pleasure in doing so.
I acknowledged his kindness in my best manner,

745
01:20:10.560 --> 01:20:15.159
and took leave of him at once, with a perfect understanding of the

746
01:20:15.199 --> 01:20:20.399
true state of affairs, with a
full comprehension of the mystery which had troubled

747
01:20:20.399 --> 01:20:28.720
me so long, it was evident
it was a clear case. Brevet Brigadier

748
01:20:28.760 --> 01:20:33.800
General John A. B. C. Smith was the man, the man

749
01:20:35.159 --> 01:20:57.840
that was used up the Fall of
the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

750
01:20:58.079 --> 01:21:09.600
son kaor est un luth suspendu sitachon
le touchet ill resonnee day Beerngie. During

751
01:21:09.680 --> 01:21:14.920
the whole of a dull, dark
and soundless day in the autumn of the

752
01:21:15.039 --> 01:21:19.199
year, when the clouds hung oppressively
low in the heavens, I had been

753
01:21:19.279 --> 01:21:27.640
passing alone on horseback through a singularly
dreary tract of country, and at length

754
01:21:27.720 --> 01:21:32.760
found myself, as the shades of
the evening drew on within view of the

755
01:21:32.840 --> 01:21:40.600
melancholy House of Usher. I know
not how it was, but with the

756
01:21:40.640 --> 01:21:46.239
first glimpse of the building a sense
of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I

757
01:21:46.319 --> 01:21:51.560
say insufferable, for the feeling was
unrelieved by any of that half pleasurable,

758
01:21:53.319 --> 01:21:59.960
because poetic sentiment, with which the
mind usually receives even the sternest natural image

759
01:22:00.560 --> 01:22:05.039
of the desolate or terrible. I
looked upon the scene before me, upon

760
01:22:05.199 --> 01:22:12.039
the mere house and the simple landscape
features of the domain, upon the bleak

761
01:22:12.119 --> 01:22:17.439
walls, upon the vacant eye like
windows, upon a few rank sedges,

762
01:22:18.000 --> 01:22:25.439
and upon a few white trunks of
decayed trees, with an utter depression of

763
01:22:25.520 --> 01:22:30.359
soul, which I can compare to
no earthly sensation more properly than to the

764
01:22:30.439 --> 01:22:35.800
after dream of the reveler. Upon
opium, the bitter lapse into everyday life,

765
01:22:35.960 --> 01:22:42.520
the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a

766
01:22:42.600 --> 01:22:48.439
sinking, a sickening of the heart, an unredeemed dreariness of thought, which

767
01:22:48.520 --> 01:22:55.640
no goating of the imagination could torture
into aught of the sublime. What was

768
01:22:55.680 --> 01:23:00.159
it, I paused to think,
What was it that so unnerved me in

769
01:23:00.199 --> 01:23:05.439
the contemplation of the house of Usher. It was a mystery all insoluble.

770
01:23:06.279 --> 01:23:11.920
Nor could I grapple with the shadowy
fancies that crowded upon me. As I

771
01:23:12.039 --> 01:23:19.000
pondered, I was forced to fall
back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion that while beyond

772
01:23:19.119 --> 01:23:27.039
doubt there are combinations of very simple
natural objects which have the power of thus

773
01:23:27.079 --> 01:23:33.199
affecting us, still the analysis of
this power lies among considerations beyond our depth.

774
01:23:34.319 --> 01:23:39.920
It was possible, I reflected,
that a mere different arrangement of the

775
01:23:39.920 --> 01:23:44.960
particulars of the scene, of the
details of the picture, would be sufficient

776
01:23:45.199 --> 01:23:51.520
to modify, or perhaps to annihilate, its capacity for sorrowful impression. And

777
01:23:51.800 --> 01:23:57.720
acting upon this idea, I reined
my horse to the precipitous brink of a

778
01:23:57.760 --> 01:24:01.960
black and lurid tarn that lay an
unre ruffled luster by the dwelling, and

779
01:24:02.039 --> 01:24:08.920
gazed down, but with a shudder, even more thrilling than before, upon

780
01:24:09.039 --> 01:24:15.199
the remodeled and inverted images of the
gray sedge, and the ghastly tree stems,

781
01:24:15.000 --> 01:24:21.199
and the vacant and eye like windows. Nevertheless, in this mansion of

782
01:24:21.279 --> 01:24:28.039
gloom, I now proposed to myself
a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor,

783
01:24:28.159 --> 01:24:31.880
Roderick Usher, had been one of
my boon companions in boyhood, but

784
01:24:32.079 --> 01:24:38.319
many years had elapsed since our last
meeting. A letter, however, had

785
01:24:38.399 --> 01:24:43.159
lately reached me in a distant part
of the country, a letter from him,

786
01:24:44.239 --> 01:24:48.520
which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than

787
01:24:48.560 --> 01:24:56.840
a personal reply. The MS gave
evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke

788
01:24:56.880 --> 01:25:01.239
of acute bodily illness, of a
mental disas which oppressed him, and of

789
01:25:01.279 --> 01:25:09.960
an earnest desire to see me as
his best and indeed his only personal friend,

790
01:25:10.439 --> 01:25:15.119
with a view of attempting, by
the cheerfulness of my society, some

791
01:25:15.279 --> 01:25:19.039
alleviation of his malady. It was
the manner in which all of this,

792
01:25:19.319 --> 01:25:25.159
and much more was said. It
was the apparent heart that went with his

793
01:25:25.279 --> 01:25:30.760
request, which allowed me no room
for hesitation, and I accordingly obeyed forthwith

794
01:25:31.239 --> 01:25:38.920
what I still considered a very singular
summons. Although as boys we had been

795
01:25:39.039 --> 01:25:45.159
even intimate associates, yet I really
knew little of my friend. His reserve

796
01:25:45.239 --> 01:25:49.920
had been always excessive and habitual.
I was aware, however, that his

797
01:25:50.159 --> 01:25:57.800
very ancient family had been noted time
out of mind for a peculiar sensibility of

798
01:25:57.840 --> 01:26:03.680
temperament, displaying itself through long ages
in many works of exalted art, and

799
01:26:03.840 --> 01:26:12.439
manifested of late in repeated deeds of
munificent yet unobstructive charity, as well as

800
01:26:12.479 --> 01:26:17.520
in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than the orthodox and

801
01:26:17.680 --> 01:26:25.960
easily recognizable beauties of musical science.
I had learned too, the very remarkable

802
01:26:26.039 --> 01:26:30.720
fact that the stem of the Usher
race, all time, honored as it

803
01:26:30.880 --> 01:26:35.119
was, had put forth at no
period any enduring branch. In other words,

804
01:26:35.359 --> 01:26:40.720
that the entire family lay in the
direct line of descent, and had

805
01:26:40.760 --> 01:26:47.720
always with very trifling and very temporary
variation. So lain it was this deficiency

806
01:26:48.039 --> 01:26:54.119
I considered, while running over in
thought the perfect keeping of the character of

807
01:26:54.159 --> 01:26:59.960
the premisses with the accredited character of
the people, and while speculating upon them,

808
01:27:00.000 --> 01:27:03.680
and the possible influence with the one
in the long lapse of centuries,

809
01:27:04.039 --> 01:27:10.680
might have exercised upon the other.
It was this deficiency, perhaps of collateral

810
01:27:10.720 --> 01:27:18.039
issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission
from sire to son of the patrimony with

811
01:27:18.159 --> 01:27:25.039
the same name, which had at
length so identified the two as to merge

812
01:27:25.079 --> 01:27:30.159
the original title of the estate in
the quaint and equivocal appellation of the House

813
01:27:30.199 --> 01:27:35.439
of Usher, an appellation which seemed
to include, in the minds of the

814
01:27:35.479 --> 01:27:42.840
peasantry who used it, both the
family and the family mansion. I have

815
01:27:42.920 --> 01:27:47.039
said that the sole effect of my
somewhat childish experiment, that of looking down

816
01:27:47.119 --> 01:27:54.159
within the tarn, had been to
deepen the first singular impression. There can

817
01:27:54.199 --> 01:27:59.439
be no doubt that the consciousness of
the rapid increase of my superstition, for

818
01:27:59.479 --> 01:28:03.399
why should I not term it,
served mainly to accelerate the increase itself.

819
01:28:04.199 --> 01:28:11.279
Such I have long known is the
paradoxical law of all sentience having terror as

820
01:28:11.319 --> 01:28:15.079
a basis. And it might have
been for this reason only that when I

821
01:28:15.199 --> 01:28:19.880
again uplifted my eyes to the house
itself from its image in the pool,

822
01:28:20.600 --> 01:28:27.600
there grew in my mind a strange
fancy, a fancy so ridiculous, indeed,

823
01:28:28.279 --> 01:28:31.279
that I but mention it to show
the vivid force of the sensations which

824
01:28:31.279 --> 01:28:36.720
oppressed me. I had so worked
upon my imagination as really to believe that

825
01:28:36.800 --> 01:28:43.520
about the whole mansion and domain there
hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their

826
01:28:43.560 --> 01:28:47.399
immediate vicinity, an atmosphere which had
no affinity with the air of heaven,

827
01:28:48.399 --> 01:28:54.239
but which had waked up from the
decayed trees and the gray wall and the

828
01:28:54.279 --> 01:29:01.880
silent tarn, a pestilent and mystic
vapor dull, sluggish, faintly discernible,

829
01:29:02.800 --> 01:29:08.840
and leaden hued. Shaking off from
my spirit what must have been a dream.

830
01:29:09.399 --> 01:29:14.920
I scanned more narrowly the real aspect
of the building. Its principal features

831
01:29:14.960 --> 01:29:19.199
seemed to be that of an excessive
antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been

832
01:29:19.239 --> 01:29:26.760
great, minute fungi overspread the whole
exterior, hanging in a fine tangled webwork

833
01:29:26.840 --> 01:29:32.479
from the eaves. Yet all this
was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No

834
01:29:32.640 --> 01:29:39.119
portion of the masonry had fallen,
and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency

835
01:29:39.239 --> 01:29:45.479
between its still perfect adaptation of parts
and the crumbling condition of the individual stones.

836
01:29:45.760 --> 01:29:49.840
In this there was much that reminded
me of the specious totality of old

837
01:29:49.880 --> 01:29:56.720
woodwork, which has rotted for long
years in some neglected vault with no disturbance

838
01:29:56.760 --> 01:30:00.840
from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay,

839
01:30:00.960 --> 01:30:06.479
however, the fabric gave little token
of instability. Perhaps the eye of a

840
01:30:06.520 --> 01:30:14.000
scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely
perceptible fissure which, extending from the roof

841
01:30:14.039 --> 01:30:17.159
of the building in front, made
its way down the wall in a zigzag

842
01:30:17.239 --> 01:30:25.159
direction until it became lost in the
sullen waters of the tarn. Noticing these

843
01:30:25.199 --> 01:30:29.880
things, I rode over a short
causeway to the house. A servant in

844
01:30:29.960 --> 01:30:33.199
waiting took my horse, and I
entered the gothic archway of the hall.

845
01:30:33.920 --> 01:30:41.119
A valet of stealthy step thence conducted
me in silence through many dark and intricate

846
01:30:41.159 --> 01:30:45.960
passages in my progress to the studio
of his master. Much that I encountered

847
01:30:45.960 --> 01:30:51.760
on the way contributed. I know
not how to heighten the vague sentiments of

848
01:30:51.840 --> 01:30:58.720
which I have already spoken, While
the objects around me, while the carvings

849
01:30:58.760 --> 01:31:03.920
of the ceilings, the somber tapestries
of the walls, the ebb on blackness

850
01:31:03.960 --> 01:31:11.159
of the floors, and the phantasmagoric
armorial trophies which rattled as I strode,

851
01:31:11.520 --> 01:31:15.680
were but matters to which, or
to such as which I had been accustomed

852
01:31:16.000 --> 01:31:21.279
from my infancy. While I hesitated
not to acknowledge how familiar was all this,

853
01:31:23.039 --> 01:31:29.119
I still wondered to find how unfamiliar
were the fancies which ordinary images were

854
01:31:29.159 --> 01:31:32.279
stirring up. On one of the
staircases, I met the physician of the

855
01:31:32.359 --> 01:31:39.840
family, his countenance, I thought
wore a mingled expression of low cunning and

856
01:31:39.960 --> 01:31:45.680
perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation
and passed on. The valet now threw

857
01:31:45.720 --> 01:31:51.399
open a door and ushered me into
the presence of his master. The room

858
01:31:51.479 --> 01:31:57.680
in which I found myself was very
large and lofty. The windows were long,

859
01:31:58.279 --> 01:32:02.319
narrow and pointed, and at so
vast a distance from the black oaken

860
01:32:02.399 --> 01:32:10.680
floor as to be altogether inaccessible from
within. Feeble gleams of chrismed light made

861
01:32:10.760 --> 01:32:15.560
their way through the trellised panes and
served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent

862
01:32:15.640 --> 01:32:21.800
objects around the eye, however,
struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles

863
01:32:21.880 --> 01:32:28.840
of the chamber or the recesses of
the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies

864
01:32:28.920 --> 01:32:34.279
hung upon the walls. The general
furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique,

865
01:32:34.319 --> 01:32:41.239
and tattered. Many books and musical
instruments lay scattered about, but failed to

866
01:32:41.239 --> 01:32:45.399
give any vitality to the scene.
I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of

867
01:32:45.520 --> 01:32:53.479
sorrow, an air of stern,
deep and irredeemable gloom, hung over and

868
01:32:53.560 --> 01:32:59.359
pervaded all upon my entrance. Usher
arose from a sofa on which he had

869
01:32:59.399 --> 01:33:03.479
been lying at full length, and
greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had

870
01:33:03.560 --> 01:33:10.119
much in it. I at first
thought of an overdone cordiality, of the

871
01:33:10.159 --> 01:33:15.520
constrained effort of the Annua man of
the world. A glance, however,

872
01:33:15.600 --> 01:33:19.880
at his countenance, convinced me of
his perfect sincerity. We sat down,

873
01:33:19.960 --> 01:33:25.880
and for some moments while he spoke
not I gazed upon him with a feeling

874
01:33:26.000 --> 01:33:31.720
half of pity, half of awe. Surely man had never before so terribly

875
01:33:31.760 --> 01:33:38.039
altered in so brief a period as
had Roderick Usher. It was with difficulty

876
01:33:38.079 --> 01:33:41.960
that I could bring myself to admit
the identity of the wand being before me

877
01:33:42.399 --> 01:33:46.359
with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had

878
01:33:46.439 --> 01:33:56.239
been at all times remarkable. A
cadaverousness of complexion, an eye large liquid

879
01:33:56.399 --> 01:34:01.680
and luminous beyond comparison, lips somewhat
thin and very pallid, but of a

880
01:34:01.720 --> 01:34:08.920
surpassingly beautiful curve. A nose of
a delicate Hebrew model, but with a

881
01:34:08.960 --> 01:34:16.079
breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations. A finely molded chin speaking in its

882
01:34:16.159 --> 01:34:21.039
want of prominence, of a want
of moral energy, hair of a more

883
01:34:21.079 --> 01:34:27.800
than weblike softness and tenuity. These
features, with an inordinate expansion above the

884
01:34:27.840 --> 01:34:31.880
regions of the temple, made up
altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten.

885
01:34:32.560 --> 01:34:36.920
And now, in the mere exaggeration
of the prevailing character of these features

886
01:34:38.479 --> 01:34:43.720
and of the expression they were wont
to convey, lay so much of change

887
01:34:43.880 --> 01:34:47.600
that I doubt to whom I spoke. The now ghastly paler of the skin,

888
01:34:48.479 --> 01:34:55.279
and the now miraculous luster of the
eye above all things startled and even

889
01:34:55.640 --> 01:35:00.399
awed me. The silken hair,
too had been suffered to grow all unheeded,

890
01:35:00.439 --> 01:35:05.600
and as in its wild gossamer texture
it floated rather than fell about the

891
01:35:05.640 --> 01:35:11.960
face. I could not, even
with effort, connect its arabesque expression with

892
01:35:12.039 --> 01:35:15.720
any idea of simple humanity. In
the manner of my friend, I was

893
01:35:15.760 --> 01:35:21.159
at once struck with an incoherence,
an inconsistency, And I soon found this

894
01:35:21.279 --> 01:35:28.199
to arise from a series of feeble
and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidacy,

895
01:35:28.760 --> 01:35:33.439
an excessive nervous agitation for something of
this nature. I had indeed been

896
01:35:33.479 --> 01:35:40.399
prepared no less by his letter than
by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and

897
01:35:40.479 --> 01:35:47.279
by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical
confirmation and temperament. His action was alternately

898
01:35:47.359 --> 01:35:56.119
vivacious and sullen. His voice varied
rapidly from a tremulous indecision when the animal

899
01:35:56.199 --> 01:36:02.199
spirit seemed utterly in abeyance, to
that species of energetic concision, that abrupt,

900
01:36:02.439 --> 01:36:10.479
weighty, unhurried, and hollow sounding
enunciation that Leeden self balanced imperfectly modulated

901
01:36:10.520 --> 01:36:15.520
guttural utterance, which may be observed
in the lost drunkard or the irreclaimable eater

902
01:36:15.600 --> 01:36:20.760
of opium. During the periods of
his most intense excitement, it was thus

903
01:36:20.840 --> 01:36:26.239
that he spoke of the object of
my visit, of his earnest desire to

904
01:36:26.279 --> 01:36:30.880
see me, and of the solace
he expected me to afford him. He

905
01:36:30.039 --> 01:36:34.479
entered at some length into what he
conceived to be the nature of his malady.

906
01:36:35.279 --> 01:36:41.920
It was, he said, a
constitutional and a family evil, and

907
01:36:42.039 --> 01:36:45.439
one for which he despaired to find
a remedy. A mere nervous affection,

908
01:36:46.000 --> 01:36:53.399
he immediately added, which would undoubtedly
soon pass off. It displayed itself in

909
01:36:53.479 --> 01:36:59.279
a host of unnatural sensations, some
of these, as he detailed them interested

910
01:36:59.279 --> 01:37:04.000
and bewildered me. Although perhaps the
terms and the general manner of the narration

911
01:37:04.159 --> 01:37:09.560
had their weight. He suffered much
from a morbid acuteness of the senses.

912
01:37:10.560 --> 01:37:15.720
The most insipid food was alone endurable. He could wear only garments of a

913
01:37:15.760 --> 01:37:20.560
certain texture. The odors of all
flowers were oppressive. His eyes were tortured

914
01:37:20.560 --> 01:37:27.720
by even a faint light. And
there were but peculiar sounds, and these

915
01:37:27.800 --> 01:37:33.840
from stringed instruments, which did not
inspire him with horror. To an anomalous

916
01:37:33.840 --> 01:37:40.560
species of terror, I found him
abounden slave. I shall perish, said

917
01:37:40.560 --> 01:37:45.840
he, I must perish in this
deplorable folly. Thus, thus and not

918
01:37:46.039 --> 01:37:50.079
otherwise, shall I be lost.
I dread the events of the future,

919
01:37:50.640 --> 01:37:55.760
not in themselves, but in their
results. I shudder at the thought of

920
01:37:55.840 --> 01:38:01.560
any even the most trivial incident,
which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of

921
01:38:01.640 --> 01:38:09.520
soul. I have indeed no abhorrence
of danger, except in its absolute effect

922
01:38:10.520 --> 01:38:16.279
in terror. In this unnerved,
in this pitiable condition, I feel that

923
01:38:16.359 --> 01:38:21.840
the period will sooner or later arrive
when I must abandon life and reason altogether.

924
01:38:23.560 --> 01:38:30.920
In some struggle with the grim phantasm
fear, I learned moreover, at

925
01:38:30.920 --> 01:38:38.079
intervals and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition.

926
01:38:39.560 --> 01:38:44.560
He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions
in regard to the dwelling which he

927
01:38:44.640 --> 01:38:49.800
tenanted, and whence for many years
he had never ventured forth in regard to

928
01:38:49.840 --> 01:38:56.199
an influence whose superstitious force was conveyed
in terms too shadowy here to be restated,

929
01:38:56.800 --> 01:39:00.479
an influence which some peculiarities in the
mere form and substance of his family

930
01:39:00.560 --> 01:39:05.880
mansion had, by dint of long
sufferance, he said, obtained over his

931
01:39:05.960 --> 01:39:11.239
spirit, an effect which the physique
of the gray walls and turrets, and

932
01:39:11.319 --> 01:39:15.960
of the dim tarn into which they
all looked down, had at length brought

933
01:39:15.079 --> 01:39:21.399
upon the morale of his existence.
He admitted, however, although without hesitation,

934
01:39:21.840 --> 01:39:27.359
that much of the peculiar gloom which
thus afflicted him could be traced to

935
01:39:27.439 --> 01:39:32.920
a more natural and far more palpable
origin, to the severe and long continued

936
01:39:32.960 --> 01:39:40.439
illness, indeed, to the evidently
approaching disillusion of a tenderly beloved sister,

937
01:39:41.159 --> 01:39:45.760
his sole companion for long years,
his last and only relative on earth.

938
01:39:46.760 --> 01:39:50.680
Her decease, he said, with
a bitterness, which I can never forget,

939
01:39:51.479 --> 01:39:57.279
would leave him, him the hopeless
and the frail, the last of

940
01:39:57.359 --> 01:40:02.119
the ancient race of the Ushers.
While he spoke, the Lady Madeleine,

941
01:40:02.439 --> 01:40:08.399
for so was she called, passed
slowly through a remote portion of the apartment,

942
01:40:08.880 --> 01:40:14.319
and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with

943
01:40:14.359 --> 01:40:18.479
an utter astonishment, not unmingled with
dread. And yet I found it impossible

944
01:40:18.520 --> 01:40:25.079
to account for such feelings. A
sensation of stupor oppressed me as my eyes

945
01:40:25.159 --> 01:40:30.600
followed her retreating steps. When a
door at length closed upon her, my

946
01:40:30.720 --> 01:40:36.000
glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance
of the brother, But he had buried

947
01:40:36.039 --> 01:40:41.600
his face in his hands, and
I could only perceive that a far more

948
01:40:41.640 --> 01:40:47.359
than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated
fingers through which trickled many passionate tears.

949
01:40:48.560 --> 01:40:58.439
Don't go away weakly, Spooky will
be right back. The disease of Lady

950
01:40:58.479 --> 01:41:03.359
Madeleine had long bath the skill of
her physicians, A settled apathy, a

951
01:41:03.399 --> 01:41:09.960
gradual wasting away of the person,
and frequent, although transient, affectations of

952
01:41:10.000 --> 01:41:17.000
a partially cataleptical character were the unusual
diagnosis hitherto she had steadily borne up against

953
01:41:17.039 --> 01:41:21.640
the pressure of her malady, and
had not betaken herself finally to bed.

954
01:41:23.039 --> 01:41:27.000
But on the closing in of the
evening of my arrival at the house,

955
01:41:27.680 --> 01:41:31.079
she succumbed, as her brother told
me at night, with inexpressible agitation,

956
01:41:31.840 --> 01:41:36.560
to the prostrating power of the destroyer. And I learned that the glimpse I

957
01:41:36.600 --> 01:41:43.119
had obtained of her would thus probably
be the last I should obtain. That

958
01:41:43.159 --> 01:41:47.159
the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no more

959
01:41:48.640 --> 01:41:54.800
for several hours, ensuing, her
name was unmentioned by either Usher or myself,

960
01:41:55.399 --> 01:41:59.960
And during this period I was busied
in earnest endeavors to alleviate the melancho

961
01:42:00.399 --> 01:42:04.479
of my friend. We painted and
read together, or I listened, as

962
01:42:04.520 --> 01:42:11.039
if in a dream, to the
wild improvisations of his speaking guitar, and

963
01:42:11.199 --> 01:42:16.319
thus, as a closer and still
closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the

964
01:42:16.359 --> 01:42:21.640
recesses of his spirit. The more
bitterly did I perceive the futility of all

965
01:42:21.680 --> 01:42:28.359
attempt at cheering a mind from which
darkness, as if an inherent positive quality,

966
01:42:28.399 --> 01:42:33.520
poured forth upon all objects of the
moral and physical universe in one unceasing

967
01:42:34.000 --> 01:42:40.560
radiation of gloom. I shall ever
bear about me a memory of the many

968
01:42:40.680 --> 01:42:45.239
solemn hours I thus spent alone with
the Master of the House of Usher.

969
01:42:45.279 --> 01:42:50.279
Yet I should fail in any attempt
to convey an idea of the exact character

970
01:42:50.359 --> 01:42:56.520
of the studies or of the occupations
in which he involved me, or led

971
01:42:56.560 --> 01:43:01.640
me the way and excited highly distempered
I reality threw a sulfurious luster. Over

972
01:43:01.720 --> 01:43:08.840
All, his long improvised dirges will
ring for ever in my ears. Among

973
01:43:08.960 --> 01:43:15.279
other things, I hold painfully in
mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of

974
01:43:15.319 --> 01:43:20.000
the wild air of the last Waltz
of von Weber. From the paintings over

975
01:43:20.039 --> 01:43:27.760
which his elaborate fancy brooded and which
grew touch by touch into vaguenessis at which

976
01:43:27.800 --> 01:43:31.880
I shuddered the more thrillingly, because
I shuddered, knowing not why from these

977
01:43:31.920 --> 01:43:36.640
paintings, vivid as their images now
are before me, I would in vain

978
01:43:36.800 --> 01:43:43.079
endeavor to induce more than a small
portion which should lie within the compass of

979
01:43:43.199 --> 01:43:48.760
merely written words. By the utter
simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs,

980
01:43:49.000 --> 01:43:57.399
he arrested and over awed attention,
if ever mortal painted an idea that

981
01:43:57.520 --> 01:44:03.199
Mortal was Roderick usher for me,
at least in the circumstances then surrounding me.

982
01:44:03.840 --> 01:44:11.279
There arose out of the pure abstractions
which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon

983
01:44:11.359 --> 01:44:17.159
his canvas, an intensity of intolerable
awe, no shadow of which felt I

984
01:44:17.239 --> 01:44:23.800
ever, Yet, in the contemplation
of the certainly glowing yet two concrete reveries

985
01:44:24.359 --> 01:44:30.239
of Fuselli, one of the phantasmagoric
conceptions of my friend partaking not so rigidly

986
01:44:30.319 --> 01:44:36.720
of the spirit of abstraction, may
be overshadowed forth, although feebly in words.

987
01:44:38.399 --> 01:44:44.479
A small picture presented the interior of
an immensely long and rectangular vault or

988
01:44:44.640 --> 01:44:49.239
tunnel, with low walls, smooth
white, and without interruption or device.

989
01:44:50.239 --> 01:44:56.960
Certain accessory points of the design served
well to convey the idea that this excavation

990
01:44:57.239 --> 01:45:01.399
lay at an exceeding depth below the
so surface of the Earth. No outlet

991
01:45:01.520 --> 01:45:06.520
was observed in any portion of its
vast extent, and no torch or other

992
01:45:06.640 --> 01:45:13.680
artificial source of light was discernible.
Yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout

993
01:45:14.039 --> 01:45:21.079
and bathed the whole in a ghastly
and inappropriate splendor. I have just spoken

994
01:45:21.119 --> 01:45:26.800
of that morbid condition of the auditory
nerve, which rendered all music intolerable to

995
01:45:26.840 --> 01:45:31.720
the sufferer, with the exception of
certain effects of stringed instruments. It was

996
01:45:31.840 --> 01:45:38.119
perhaps the narrow limits to which he
thus confined himself upon the guitar which gave

997
01:45:38.199 --> 01:45:44.960
birth in great measure to the fantastic
character of his performances. But the fervid

998
01:45:45.000 --> 01:45:49.199
facility of his impromptus could not be
so accounted, for they must have been

999
01:45:49.439 --> 01:45:55.600
and were in the notes as well
as in the words of his wild fantasias,

1000
01:45:56.439 --> 01:46:00.640
for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with
rhymed verbs, improvisations, and the

1001
01:46:00.680 --> 01:46:06.439
result of that intense mental collectedness and
concentration to which I have previously alluded as

1002
01:46:06.479 --> 01:46:13.239
the observable only in particular moments of
the highest artificial excitement. The words of

1003
01:46:13.319 --> 01:46:19.000
one of these rhapsodies I have easily
remembered. I was perhaps the more forcibly

1004
01:46:19.039 --> 01:46:25.239
impressed with it as he gave it, because in the under or mystic current

1005
01:46:25.319 --> 01:46:29.600
of its meaning, I fancied that
I perceived, and for the first time,

1006
01:46:30.000 --> 01:46:34.399
a full consciousness on the part of
usher of the tottering of his lofty

1007
01:46:34.479 --> 01:46:43.119
reason upon her throne. The verses
which were entitled the Haunted Palace ran very

1008
01:46:43.239 --> 01:46:49.199
nearly, if not accurately. Thus
one, in the greenest of our valleys,

1009
01:46:49.880 --> 01:46:56.960
by the good angels tenanted, once
a fair and stately palace, radiant

1010
01:46:57.039 --> 01:47:02.279
palace reared its head in the monarch
thought's dominion. It stood there, never

1011
01:47:02.399 --> 01:47:13.000
surrafh spread opinion over fabric half so
fair. Two banner's yellow, glorious golden

1012
01:47:13.359 --> 01:47:16.520
on its roof did float and flow. This and all this was in the

1013
01:47:16.560 --> 01:47:23.359
olden time, long ago. And
every gentle air that dallied in that sweet

1014
01:47:23.439 --> 01:47:28.680
day along the ramparts, plumbed and
pallid, a winged odor went away.

1015
01:47:30.000 --> 01:47:36.640
Three wanderers in that happy valley,
through two luminous windows, saw spirits moving

1016
01:47:36.720 --> 01:47:45.039
musically to Elute's well tumbed law round
about a throne, where sitting Porphyrygine in

1017
01:47:45.159 --> 01:47:51.039
state his glory, well befitting the
ruler of the realm was seen. Four

1018
01:47:53.520 --> 01:47:58.720
and all, with pearl and ruby
glowing was the fair palace door, through

1019
01:47:58.760 --> 01:48:03.319
which came flowing, flowing, flowing, and sparkling evermore, a troop of

1020
01:48:03.399 --> 01:48:10.319
echoes, whose sweet duty was but
to sing in voices of surpassing beauty,

1021
01:48:10.920 --> 01:48:17.439
the wit and wisdom of their king. Five, But evil things in robes

1022
01:48:17.479 --> 01:48:23.880
of sorrow assailed the monarch's high estate. Ah let us mourn, for never

1023
01:48:24.039 --> 01:48:30.840
morrow shall dawn upon him, desolate
and round about his home. The glory

1024
01:48:30.920 --> 01:48:36.720
that blushed and bloomed is that a
dim remembered story of the old time entombed.

1025
01:48:39.039 --> 01:48:44.680
Six. And travelers now within that
valley, through the red Litton windows

1026
01:48:44.760 --> 01:48:51.520
see vast forms that move fantastically to
a discordant melody, while like a rapid,

1027
01:48:51.560 --> 01:48:58.600
ghastly river through the pale door,
a hideous throng rush out forever and

1028
01:48:58.800 --> 01:49:08.960
laugh but small no more. I
well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad

1029
01:49:09.399 --> 01:49:14.239
led us into a train of thought, wherein there became manifest an opinion of

1030
01:49:14.399 --> 01:49:17.239
ushers, which I mention not so
much on account of its novelty, for

1031
01:49:17.399 --> 01:49:21.800
other men have thought thus, as
on account of the pertinacity with which he

1032
01:49:21.920 --> 01:49:28.159
maintained it. This opinion, in
its general form was that of the sentience

1033
01:49:28.199 --> 01:49:33.239
of all vegetable things. But in
his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed

1034
01:49:33.279 --> 01:49:41.359
a more daring character and trespassed under
certain conditions upon the kingdom of inorganization.

1035
01:49:42.439 --> 01:49:46.720
I lack words to express the full
extent or the earnest abandon of his persuasion.

1036
01:49:47.439 --> 01:49:51.359
The belief, however, was connected, as I have previously hinted,

1037
01:49:51.680 --> 01:49:57.239
with the gray stones of the home
of his forefathers. The conditions of the

1038
01:49:57.279 --> 01:50:01.800
sentience had been there, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of

1039
01:50:01.880 --> 01:50:06.760
these stones, in the order of
their arrangement, as well as in that

1040
01:50:06.880 --> 01:50:13.199
of many fungi which overspread them,
and of the decayed trees which stood around.

1041
01:50:13.640 --> 01:50:17.319
Above all, in the long,
undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and

1042
01:50:17.439 --> 01:50:24.439
in its reduplication in the still waters
of the Tarn, its evidence, the

1043
01:50:24.479 --> 01:50:28.960
evidence of the sentience was to be
seen, he said. And I here

1044
01:50:29.039 --> 01:50:33.279
started, as he spoke, in
the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere

1045
01:50:33.520 --> 01:50:39.520
of their own about the waters and
the walls. The result was discoverable,

1046
01:50:39.600 --> 01:50:44.840
he added, in that silent,
yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries

1047
01:50:44.880 --> 01:50:48.000
had molded the destinies of his family, and which made him what I now

1048
01:50:48.039 --> 01:50:55.000
saw him, what he was.
Such opinions need no comment, and I

1049
01:50:55.079 --> 01:51:00.239
will make none Our books, the
books which for years had formed no small

1050
01:51:00.279 --> 01:51:05.560
portion of the mental existence of the
invalid were, as might be supposed,

1051
01:51:05.920 --> 01:51:12.920
in strict keeping with his character of
phantasm, we poured together over such works

1052
01:51:13.399 --> 01:51:19.239
as the vervets et Chartreuse of Grezee, the Belfegor of Machiavelli, The Heaven

1053
01:51:19.319 --> 01:51:26.800
and Hell of Swedenborg, the Subterranean
Voyage of Nicholas klem by Holberg, the

1054
01:51:26.880 --> 01:51:32.880
Cairomancy of Robert Flood, of Jean
Donagina and of de la Chambre, The

1055
01:51:33.000 --> 01:51:39.399
Journey into the Blue Distance of Tiec, the City of the Sun of Campanella.

1056
01:51:40.159 --> 01:51:45.439
One favorite volume was a small octavio
edition of the Directorium Inquisitorium by the

1057
01:51:45.439 --> 01:51:53.239
Dominican Emeric de Gerone, and there
were passages in Pomponius Melee about the old

1058
01:51:53.279 --> 01:52:00.319
African satyrs and Edgipenns, over which
Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His

1059
01:52:00.520 --> 01:52:03.600
chief delight, however, was found
in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and

1060
01:52:03.680 --> 01:52:12.159
curious book in Quarto Gothic, the
Manual of a forgotten Church, the Vigilie

1061
01:52:12.279 --> 01:52:19.239
Mortorium secondum Korum Ecclesia. Magnutine I
could not help thinking of the wild ritual

1062
01:52:19.279 --> 01:52:26.479
of this work and of its probable
influence upon the hypochondriac. When one evening,

1063
01:52:26.880 --> 01:52:30.439
having informed me abruptly that Lady Madeleine
was no more, he stated his

1064
01:52:30.520 --> 01:52:39.199
intention of preserving her corpse for a
fortnight previously to its final interment in one

1065
01:52:39.239 --> 01:52:44.479
of the numerous vaults within the main
walls of the building. The worldly reason,

1066
01:52:44.600 --> 01:52:48.079
however, assigned for this singular proceeding, was one which I did not

1067
01:52:48.199 --> 01:52:53.800
feel at liberty to dispute. The
brother had been led to his resolution,

1068
01:52:54.239 --> 01:52:59.279
so he told me by consideration of
the unusual character of the malady of the

1069
01:52:59.319 --> 01:53:04.119
deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager
inquiries on the part of her medical men,

1070
01:53:04.399 --> 01:53:09.760
and of the remote and exposed situation
of the burial ground of the family,

1071
01:53:10.720 --> 01:53:14.800
I will not deny that when I
called to mind the sinister countenance of

1072
01:53:14.840 --> 01:53:17.960
the person whom I met upon the
staircase on the day of my arrival at

1073
01:53:17.960 --> 01:53:23.039
the house, I had no desire
to oppose what I regarded as at best

1074
01:53:23.600 --> 01:53:29.680
but a harmless and by no means
an unnatural precaution. At the request of

1075
01:53:29.800 --> 01:53:34.399
Usher, I personally aided him in
the arrangements for the temporary entombment the body

1076
01:53:34.479 --> 01:53:40.399
having been in coffin, we two
alone bore it to its rest. The

1077
01:53:40.479 --> 01:53:44.840
vault in which we placed it,
and which had been so long unopened that

1078
01:53:44.880 --> 01:53:49.560
our torches half smothered in its oppressive
atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation.

1079
01:53:50.279 --> 01:53:55.880
Was small, damp, and entirely
without means of admission for light.

1080
01:53:56.720 --> 01:54:00.439
Lying at great depth immediately beneath that
portion of the building in which was my

1081
01:54:00.520 --> 01:54:06.640
own sleeping apartment, it had been
used, apparently in remote feudal times for

1082
01:54:06.720 --> 01:54:12.119
the worst purposes of a don john
keep, and in later days as a

1083
01:54:12.119 --> 01:54:16.680
place of deposit for powder or some
other highly combustible substance. As a portion

1084
01:54:16.800 --> 01:54:20.920
of its floor and the whole interior
of a long archway through which we reached

1085
01:54:20.960 --> 01:54:28.560
it were carefully sheathed with copper.
The door of massive iron had been also

1086
01:54:28.760 --> 01:54:34.600
similarly protected. Its immense weight caused
an unusually sharp grating sound as it moved

1087
01:54:34.720 --> 01:54:42.239
upon its hinges. Having deposited our
mournful burden upon trestles within this region of

1088
01:54:42.319 --> 01:54:46.680
horror, we partially turned aside the
yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and

1089
01:54:46.760 --> 01:54:53.199
looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between the brother and

1090
01:54:53.319 --> 01:54:59.840
sister now first arrested my attention,
and usher divining perhaps my thoughts, murmured

1091
01:54:59.840 --> 01:55:04.439
out some few words, from which
I learned that the deceased and himself had

1092
01:55:04.479 --> 01:55:11.680
been twins, and that sympathies of
a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between

1093
01:55:11.720 --> 01:55:15.680
them. Our glances, however,
rested not long upon the dead, for

1094
01:55:15.800 --> 01:55:21.600
we could not regard her unawed.
The disease which had thus entombed the lady

1095
01:55:21.640 --> 01:55:27.119
in the maturity of youth, had
left, as usual in all maladies of

1096
01:55:27.159 --> 01:55:31.119
a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery
of a faint blush upon the bosom and

1097
01:55:31.159 --> 01:55:36.800
the face, and that suspiciously lingering
smile upon the lip, which is so

1098
01:55:38.159 --> 01:55:44.279
terrible in death. We replaced and
screwed down the lid, and having secured

1099
01:55:44.319 --> 01:55:48.359
the door of iron, made our
way with toil into the scarcely less gloomy

1100
01:55:48.399 --> 01:55:55.239
apartments of the upper portion of the
house. And now some days of bitter

1101
01:55:55.359 --> 01:56:00.039
grief having elapsed, an observable change
came over the features of the disorder of

1102
01:56:00.079 --> 01:56:06.800
my friend. His ordinary manner had
vanished, his ordinary occupations were neglected or

1103
01:56:06.800 --> 01:56:13.680
forgotten. He roamed from chamber to
chamber with hurried, unequal and objectless step.

1104
01:56:14.960 --> 01:56:18.840
The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly

1105
01:56:18.960 --> 01:56:25.520
hue, but the luminousness of his
eye had utterly gone out. The once

1106
01:56:25.600 --> 01:56:30.840
occasional huskiness of his tone was heard
no more, and a tremulous quaver,

1107
01:56:30.479 --> 01:56:36.199
as if of extreme terror, habitually
characterized his utterance. There were times,

1108
01:56:36.319 --> 01:56:43.880
indeed, when I thought his unceasingly
agitated mind was labouring with some oppressive secret

1109
01:56:44.279 --> 01:56:48.359
to divulge, which he struggled for
the necessary courage. At times, again,

1110
01:56:48.880 --> 01:56:55.000
I was obliged to resolve all into
the mere, inexplicable vagaries of madness.

1111
01:56:55.800 --> 01:57:00.960
For I beheld him gazing upon vacancy
for lawng hours, in an attitude

1112
01:57:01.000 --> 01:57:06.600
of the profoundest attention, as if
listening to some imaginary sound. It was

1113
01:57:06.680 --> 01:57:14.119
no wonder that his condition terrified,
that it infected me. I felt creeping

1114
01:57:14.239 --> 01:57:17.920
upon me, by slow yet certain
degrees, the wild influences of his own

1115
01:57:18.039 --> 01:57:25.840
fantastic yet impressive superstitions. It was
especially upon retiring to bed late in the

1116
01:57:25.960 --> 01:57:30.239
night of the seventh or eighth day
after the placing of the Lady Madeleine within

1117
01:57:30.279 --> 01:57:36.239
the donjon, that I experienced the
full power of such feelings. Sleep came

1118
01:57:36.319 --> 01:57:42.560
not near my couch. While the
hours waned and waned away. I struggled

1119
01:57:42.560 --> 01:57:46.399
to reason off the nervousness which had
dominion over me. I endeavored to believe

1120
01:57:46.479 --> 01:57:49.960
that much, if not all,
of what I felt, was due to

1121
01:57:50.000 --> 01:57:55.960
the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture
of the room. Of the dark and

1122
01:57:56.039 --> 01:58:00.239
tattered draperies, which tortured into motion
by the breath of a rising tempest,

1123
01:58:00.640 --> 01:58:06.840
swayed fitfully to and fro upon the
walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations

1124
01:58:06.840 --> 01:58:14.680
of the bed. But my efforts
were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded

1125
01:58:14.720 --> 01:58:19.359
my frame, and at length there
sat upon my very heart an incubus of

1126
01:58:19.479 --> 01:58:25.960
utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off
with a gasp and a struggle, I

1127
01:58:26.079 --> 01:58:30.760
uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of

1128
01:58:30.800 --> 01:58:38.319
the chamber, hearkened. I know
not why, except that an instinctive spirit

1129
01:58:38.439 --> 01:58:44.039
prompted me to certain low and indefinite
sounds which came through the pauses of the

1130
01:58:44.119 --> 01:58:49.399
storm at long intervals, I knew
not whence, overpowered by an intense sentiment

1131
01:58:49.439 --> 01:58:55.439
of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable,
I threw on my clothes with haste,

1132
01:58:55.720 --> 01:58:59.560
for I felt I should sleep no
more during the night, and endeavored to

1133
01:58:59.600 --> 01:59:04.039
arouse myself from the pitiable condition into
which I had fallen. By pacing rapidly

1134
01:59:04.119 --> 01:59:10.600
to and fro through the apartment.
I had taken but few turns in this

1135
01:59:10.760 --> 01:59:15.880
manner. When a light step on
an adjoining staircase arrested my attention, I

1136
01:59:15.960 --> 01:59:21.439
presently recognized it as that of Usher
in an instant Afterward, he rapped with

1137
01:59:21.520 --> 01:59:28.000
a gentle touch at my door,
and entered bearing a lamp. His countenance

1138
01:59:28.159 --> 01:59:34.039
was as usual cadaverously wan, but
moreover, there was a species of mad

1139
01:59:34.159 --> 01:59:41.880
hilarity in his eyes, and evidently
restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor. His

1140
01:59:42.039 --> 01:59:46.039
air appalled me, but anything was
preferable to the solitude which had so long

1141
01:59:46.159 --> 01:59:53.960
endured, and I even welcomed his
presence as a relief more scarce to come

1142
01:59:54.359 --> 02:00:01.840
after these quick messages. You've not
seen it, he said abruptly, after

1143
02:00:01.880 --> 02:00:06.319
having stared about him for some moments
in silence, have you not seen it?

1144
02:00:08.000 --> 02:00:13.319
But stay you shall? Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp,

1145
02:00:13.479 --> 02:00:16.119
he hurried to one of the casements
and threw it freely open to the

1146
02:00:16.199 --> 02:00:21.560
storm. The impetuous fury of the
entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet.

1147
02:00:23.000 --> 02:00:27.680
It was indeed a tempestuous, yet
sternly beautiful night, and one wildly

1148
02:00:27.800 --> 02:00:32.840
singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently collected its force

1149
02:00:32.920 --> 02:00:39.119
in our vicinity, for there were
frequent and violent alterations in the direction of

1150
02:00:39.159 --> 02:00:44.159
the wind. And the exceeding density
of the clouds, which hung so low

1151
02:00:44.239 --> 02:00:47.760
as to press upon the turrets of
the house, did not prevent our perceiving

1152
02:00:47.880 --> 02:00:54.119
the lifelike velocity with which they flew, careening from all points against each other,

1153
02:00:54.359 --> 02:00:59.399
without passing away into the distance.
I say that even their exceeding density

1154
02:00:59.640 --> 02:01:03.279
did not prevent our perceiving this.
Yet we had no glimpse of the moon

1155
02:01:03.840 --> 02:01:10.039
or stars, nor was there any
flashing forth of the light. But the

1156
02:01:10.159 --> 02:01:15.119
under surfaces of the huge masses of
agitated vapor, as well as all terrestrial

1157
02:01:15.159 --> 02:01:19.399
objects immediately around us, were glowing
in an unnatural light of a faintly luminous

1158
02:01:19.560 --> 02:01:27.039
and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung
about and enshrouded the mansion. You must

1159
02:01:27.079 --> 02:01:30.199
not, you shall not behold this, said I, shudderingly to Usher,

1160
02:01:30.560 --> 02:01:34.279
as I led him with a gentle
violence from the window to a seat.

1161
02:01:35.319 --> 02:01:42.279
These appearances which bewilder you are merely
electrical phenomena, not uncommon. Or it

1162
02:01:42.399 --> 02:01:45.880
may be that they have their ghastly
origin in the rank miasma of the tarn.

1163
02:01:46.800 --> 02:01:51.399
Let us close this casement. The
air is chilling and dangerous to your

1164
02:01:51.439 --> 02:01:56.640
frame. Here is one of your
favorite romances. I will read, and

1165
02:01:56.760 --> 02:02:00.039
you shall listen, and so we
will pass away this tearable knight together.

1166
02:02:00.760 --> 02:02:05.359
The antique volume which I had taken
up was The Mad Tryst of Sir Launcelot

1167
02:02:05.439 --> 02:02:11.079
Canning. But I had called it
a favorite of ushers more in sad jest

1168
02:02:11.279 --> 02:02:15.560
than in earnest, for in truth, there is little in its uncouth and

1169
02:02:15.680 --> 02:02:20.680
unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest
for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my

1170
02:02:20.800 --> 02:02:26.640
friend. It was, however,
the only book immediately at hand, and

1171
02:02:26.760 --> 02:02:30.880
I indulged a vague hope that the
excitement, which now agitated the hypochondriac might

1172
02:02:31.000 --> 02:02:35.319
find relief, for the history of
mental disorder is full of similar anomalies.

1173
02:02:35.800 --> 02:02:41.319
Even in the extremeness of the folly
which I should read, could I have

1174
02:02:41.520 --> 02:02:45.720
judged indeed, by the wild,
overstrained air of vivacity with which he hearkened,

1175
02:02:46.079 --> 02:02:49.880
or apparently hearkened to the words of
the tale, I might well have

1176
02:02:49.960 --> 02:02:56.439
congratulated myself upon the success of my
design. I had arrived at that well

1177
02:02:56.479 --> 02:03:00.319
known portion of the story where ethel
read, the hero of the tr tryst,

1178
02:03:00.800 --> 02:03:03.600
having sought in vain for peaceable admission
into the dwelling of the hermit,

1179
02:03:03.960 --> 02:03:09.760
proceeds to make good an entrance by
force. Here it will be remembered the

1180
02:03:09.800 --> 02:03:15.239
words of the narrative run thus and
Ethelred, who was by nature of a

1181
02:03:15.359 --> 02:03:19.800
dody heart, and who was now
mighty, while on account of the powerfulness

1182
02:03:19.800 --> 02:03:24.960
of the wine which he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with

1183
02:03:25.039 --> 02:03:30.560
the hermit, who in sooth was
of an obstinate and maliceful turn. But

1184
02:03:30.319 --> 02:03:34.479
feeling the rain upon his shoulders,
and fearing the risking of the tempest,

1185
02:03:35.039 --> 02:03:41.399
uplifted his mace outright and with blows
made quickly room in the plankings of the

1186
02:03:41.439 --> 02:03:46.319
door for his gauntleted hand, and
now pulling therewith sturdily, he so cracked

1187
02:03:46.359 --> 02:03:51.359
and ripped and tore all asunder that
the noise of the dry and hollow sounding

1188
02:03:51.399 --> 02:03:58.319
wood alarmed and reverberated through the forest. At the termination of this sentence,

1189
02:03:58.479 --> 02:04:01.359
I started, and for a moment
moment paused, for it appeared to me,

1190
02:04:01.920 --> 02:04:06.760
although I at once concluded that my
excited fancy had deceived me, it

1191
02:04:06.800 --> 02:04:12.720
appeared to me that from some very
remote portion of the mansion there came,

1192
02:04:13.319 --> 02:04:17.479
indistinctly to my ears, which might
have been, in its exact similarity of

1193
02:04:17.600 --> 02:04:23.439
character, the echo, but a
stifled and dull one, certainly of the

1194
02:04:23.600 --> 02:04:30.319
very cracking and ripping sound which Sir
Lancelot had so particularly described. It was

1195
02:04:30.760 --> 02:04:36.880
beyond doubt the coincidence alone which had
arrested my attention, For amid the rattling

1196
02:04:36.960 --> 02:04:43.800
of the sashes of the casements and
the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing

1197
02:04:43.840 --> 02:04:51.960
storm, the sound in itself had
nothing surely which should have interested or disturbed

1198
02:04:53.000 --> 02:04:59.800
me. I continued the story.
But the good champion ethelred now entering within

1199
02:04:59.840 --> 02:05:03.319
them, the door was sore,
enraged, and amazed to perceive no signal

1200
02:05:03.640 --> 02:05:10.039
of the maliceful hermit. But in
the stead thereof a dragon, of a

1201
02:05:10.079 --> 02:05:15.039
scaly and prodigious demeanor, and of
a fiery tongue, which sate in guard

1202
02:05:15.119 --> 02:05:18.439
before a palace of gold with a
floor of silver. And upon the wall

1203
02:05:18.520 --> 02:05:23.399
there hung a shield of shining brass, with this legend, and written,

1204
02:05:24.119 --> 02:05:30.680
who entereth herein a conqueror hath been? Who slayeth the dragon, the shield

1205
02:05:30.760 --> 02:05:35.079
he shall win. And Ethelred uplifted
his mace and struck upon the head of

1206
02:05:35.119 --> 02:05:41.039
the dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath with

1207
02:05:41.119 --> 02:05:45.319
a shriek so horrid and harsh,
and withal so piercing that Ethelred had feigned

1208
02:05:45.359 --> 02:05:50.199
to close his ears with his hands
against the dreadful noise of it, the

1209
02:05:50.439 --> 02:05:58.000
like whereof was never heard before.
Here Again, I paused abruptly, and

1210
02:05:58.119 --> 02:06:01.359
now with a feeling of wild a
man, for there could be no doubt

1211
02:06:01.359 --> 02:06:06.760
whatever that in this instance I did
actually hear, although from what direction it

1212
02:06:06.800 --> 02:06:12.560
preceded I found it impossible to say. A low and apparently distant, but

1213
02:06:12.720 --> 02:06:18.319
harsh protracted and most unusual screaming or
grating sound, the exact counterpart of what

1214
02:06:18.439 --> 02:06:24.880
my fancy had already conjured up for
the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the

1215
02:06:25.000 --> 02:06:30.199
romancer. Oppressed as I certainly was
upon the occurrence of this second and most

1216
02:06:30.279 --> 02:06:38.720
extraordinary coincidence by a thousand conflicting sensations
in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant,

1217
02:06:39.239 --> 02:06:44.960
I still retained sufficient presence of mind
to avoid exciting by any observation the

1218
02:06:45.039 --> 02:06:49.840
sensitive nervousness of my companion. I
was by no means certain that he had

1219
02:06:49.840 --> 02:06:57.119
noticed the sounds in question, although
assuredly a strange alteration had during the last

1220
02:06:57.119 --> 02:07:01.239
few minutes taken place in his demeanor. From a position fronting my own,

1221
02:07:01.800 --> 02:07:06.199
he had gradually brought round his chair
so as to sit with his face to

1222
02:07:06.279 --> 02:07:12.359
the door of the chamber, and
thus I could but partially perceive his features,

1223
02:07:13.359 --> 02:07:16.920
although I saw that his lips trembled
as if he were murmuring inaudibly,

1224
02:07:17.560 --> 02:07:21.359
his head had dropped upon his breast. Yet I knew that he was not

1225
02:07:21.479 --> 02:07:26.600
asleep from the wide and rigid opening
of the eye, as I caught a

1226
02:07:26.640 --> 02:07:30.800
glance of it in his profile The
motion of his body, too, was

1227
02:07:30.840 --> 02:07:35.640
at variance with this idea, for
he rocked from side to side with a

1228
02:07:35.760 --> 02:07:42.640
gently yet constant and uniform sway.
Having rapidly taken notice of all this,

1229
02:07:43.119 --> 02:07:47.640
I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded. And now the

1230
02:07:47.760 --> 02:07:53.520
champion, having escaped from the terrible
fury of the dragon, bethinking himself of

1231
02:07:53.560 --> 02:07:58.000
the brazen shield and of the breaking
up of the enchantment which was upon it,

1232
02:07:58.399 --> 02:08:03.159
removed the carcass from out of the
way before him, and approached valorously

1233
02:08:03.359 --> 02:08:07.640
over the silver pavement of the castle, to wear the shield upon the wall,

1234
02:08:07.159 --> 02:08:11.560
which in sooth tarried not for his
full coming, but fell down at

1235
02:08:11.560 --> 02:08:16.960
his feet upon the silver floor,
with a mighty, great and terrible ringing

1236
02:08:16.039 --> 02:08:22.199
sound. No sooner had these syllables
passed my lips than as if a shield

1237
02:08:22.239 --> 02:08:24.960
of brass had, indeed, at
the moment fallen heavily upon a floor of

1238
02:08:26.000 --> 02:08:31.359
silver, I became aware of a
distinct, hallow, metallic and clangorous,

1239
02:08:31.479 --> 02:08:37.479
yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet, but

1240
02:08:37.560 --> 02:08:43.720
the measured rocking movement of Usher was
undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in

1241
02:08:43.760 --> 02:08:48.520
which he sat. His eyes were
bent fixedly before him, and throughout his

1242
02:08:48.600 --> 02:08:54.720
whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But as I placed my hand upon

1243
02:08:54.800 --> 02:08:58.479
his shoulder, there came a strong
shudder over his whole person. A sickly

1244
02:08:58.600 --> 02:09:03.560
smile quivered about his lips, and
I saw that he spoke in a low,

1245
02:09:03.119 --> 02:09:09.119
hurried and gibbering murmur, as if
unconscious of my presence. Bending closely

1246
02:09:09.199 --> 02:09:15.399
over him, I at length drank
in the hideous import of his words.

1247
02:09:15.960 --> 02:09:18.840
Not hear it? Yes, I
hear it, and have heard it the

1248
02:09:20.000 --> 02:09:22.359
long, long, long, many
minutes, many hours, many days.

1249
02:09:22.479 --> 02:09:26.279
Have I heard it? Yet I
dared not. Oh, pity me,

1250
02:09:26.479 --> 02:09:28.920
miserable wretch that I am. I
dared not. I dared not speak.

1251
02:09:30.800 --> 02:09:33.239
We have put her living in the
tomb, said I not, that my

1252
02:09:33.359 --> 02:09:39.239
senses were acute. I now tell
you that I heard her first feeble movements

1253
02:09:39.239 --> 02:09:43.359
in the hollow coffin. I heard
them many many days ago. Yet I

1254
02:09:43.439 --> 02:09:48.039
dared not. I dared not speak. And now tonight ethel read ha ha,

1255
02:09:48.800 --> 02:09:52.000
the breaking of the hermit's door,
and the death cry of the dragon,

1256
02:09:52.159 --> 02:09:56.439
and the clanger of the shield say, rather the rendering of her coffin,

1257
02:09:56.720 --> 02:10:01.199
and the grating of the iron hinges
of her prison, and her struggles

1258
02:10:01.239 --> 02:10:03.960
within the coppered archway of the vault. Oh, whither shall I fly?

1259
02:10:05.800 --> 02:10:09.760
Will she not be here? Anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me

1260
02:10:09.000 --> 02:10:13.159
from my haste? Have I not
heard her footstep on the stair? Do

1261
02:10:13.239 --> 02:10:20.600
I not distinguish that heavy and horrible
beating of her heart? Madman? Here

1262
02:10:20.640 --> 02:10:24.760
he sprung furiously to his feet and
shrieked out his syllables, as if in

1263
02:10:24.800 --> 02:10:28.880
the effort he were giving up his
soul. Mad Man, I tell you

1264
02:10:28.000 --> 02:10:33.000
that she now stands without the door, as if in the superhuman energy of

1265
02:10:33.039 --> 02:10:37.199
his utterance there had been found the
potency of a spell. The huge antique

1266
02:10:37.239 --> 02:10:43.840
panels to which the speaker pointed threw
slowly back upon the instant their ponderous and

1267
02:10:43.880 --> 02:10:48.359
ebony jaws. It was the work
of the rushing gust. But then without

1268
02:10:48.399 --> 02:10:52.840
those doors there did stand the lofty
and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeleine of

1269
02:10:52.920 --> 02:10:58.159
Usher. There was blood upon her
white robes, and the evidence of some

1270
02:10:58.239 --> 02:11:05.000
bitter struggle upon every portion of her
emaciated frame. For a moment she remained

1271
02:11:05.039 --> 02:11:09.560
trembling and reeling to and fro upon
the threshold. Then, with a low,

1272
02:11:09.720 --> 02:11:16.199
moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon
the person of her brother, and

1273
02:11:16.279 --> 02:11:20.239
in her violent and now final death, agonies bore him to the floor,

1274
02:11:20.279 --> 02:11:26.319
a corpse and a victim to the
terrors he had anticipated from that chamber and

1275
02:11:26.399 --> 02:11:31.319
from that mansion. I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all

1276
02:11:31.359 --> 02:11:35.880
its wrath, as I found myself
crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot

1277
02:11:35.920 --> 02:11:39.560
along the path a wild light,
and I turned to see whence a gleam

1278
02:11:39.720 --> 02:11:43.720
so unusual could have issued for the
vast house and its shadows were alone behind

1279
02:11:43.720 --> 02:11:48.600
me. The radiance was that of
the full setting and blood red moon,

1280
02:11:50.039 --> 02:11:54.920
which now shone vividly through that once
barely discernible fissure of which I have before

1281
02:11:54.960 --> 02:12:00.760
spoken as extending from the roof of
the building in a zigzagder direction to the

1282
02:12:00.760 --> 02:12:07.119
base. While I gazed, this
fissure rapidly widened, there came a fierce

1283
02:12:07.159 --> 02:12:11.319
breath of the whirlwind. The entire
orb of the satellite burst at once upon

1284
02:12:11.399 --> 02:12:18.359
my sight. My brain reeled as
I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder there

1285
02:12:18.439 --> 02:12:22.319
was a long, tumultuous shouting,
sound like the voice of a thousand waters,

1286
02:12:24.159 --> 02:12:28.199
and the deep and dank tarn at
my feet closed sullenly and silently over

1287
02:12:28.239 --> 02:12:58.439
the fragments of the House of Usher
imitation by Edgar Allan Poe. A dark,

1288
02:12:58.680 --> 02:13:07.199
unfathomed tide of interminable pride, a
mystery, and a dream should my

1289
02:13:07.399 --> 02:13:15.159
early life seem? I say that
dream was fraught with a wild and waking

1290
02:13:15.319 --> 02:13:22.039
thought of beings that have been,
which my spirit hath not seen. Had

1291
02:13:22.039 --> 02:13:28.399
I let them pass me by with
a dreaming eye, let none of earth

1292
02:13:28.439 --> 02:13:35.760
inherit that vision of my spirit,
those thoughts I would control as a spell

1293
02:13:37.000 --> 02:13:41.680
upon his soul. For that bright
hope at last, and that light time

1294
02:13:41.840 --> 02:13:48.600
hath passed, and my worldly rest
hath gone. With a sigh as it

1295
02:13:48.720 --> 02:13:54.279
passed on, I care not though
it perish. With a thought, I

1296
02:13:54.439 --> 02:14:18.720
then did cherish the cask of Amontiado
by Edgar Allan Poe. The thousands of

1297
02:14:18.800 --> 02:14:26.920
injuries of Fortunado had borne as I
best could, But when he ventured upon

1298
02:14:26.079 --> 02:14:33.279
insult, I vowed revenge. You
who so well know the nature of my

1299
02:14:33.520 --> 02:14:37.720
soul, will not suppose however,
that I gave utterance to a threat at

1300
02:14:37.880 --> 02:14:45.920
length I would be avenged. This
was a point definitively settled, but the

1301
02:14:46.079 --> 02:14:52.119
very definitiveness with which it was resolved
precluded the idea of risk. I must

1302
02:14:52.199 --> 02:14:58.960
not only punish, but punish with
impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retributed

1303
02:15:00.279 --> 02:15:05.399
overtakes its redresser. It is equally
unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself

1304
02:15:05.600 --> 02:15:13.800
felt as such to him who has
done the wrong. It must be understood

1305
02:15:13.800 --> 02:15:18.600
that neither by word nor deed had
I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good

1306
02:15:18.640 --> 02:15:24.159
will. I continued, as was
my wont to smile in his face,

1307
02:15:24.840 --> 02:15:31.560
and he did not perceive that my
smile now was at the thought of his

1308
02:15:31.960 --> 02:15:37.960
immolation. He had a weak point, this Fortunato, Although in other regards

1309
02:15:39.000 --> 02:15:43.920
he was a man to be respected
and even feared, he prided himself on

1310
02:15:43.000 --> 02:15:50.600
his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians
have the true virtuoso spirit. For the

1311
02:15:50.600 --> 02:15:56.720
most part, their enthusiasm is adopted
to suit the time and opportunity to practice

1312
02:15:56.760 --> 02:16:03.680
imposture upon the British and Austrian millionaire
in painting and gemmery, Fortunado, like

1313
02:16:03.720 --> 02:16:09.520
his countrymen, was a quack,
but in the matter of old wines he

1314
02:16:09.640 --> 02:16:16.319
was sincere. In this respect I
did not differ from him materially. I

1315
02:16:16.479 --> 02:16:22.000
was skillful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could.

1316
02:16:22.560 --> 02:16:28.199
It was about dusk one evening,
during the supreme madness of the carnival season,

1317
02:16:28.039 --> 02:16:35.440
that I encountered my friend. He
accosted me with excessive warmth, for

1318
02:16:35.559 --> 02:16:41.319
he had been drinking much. The
man wore motley, he had on tight

1319
02:16:41.399 --> 02:16:46.239
fitting party striped dress, and his
head was surmounted by the conical cap and

1320
02:16:46.319 --> 02:16:50.479
bells. I was so pleased to
see him that I thought I should never

1321
02:16:50.559 --> 02:16:56.840
have done wringing his hand. I
said to him, my dear Fortunado,

1322
02:16:58.079 --> 02:17:03.399
you are luckily met, how remarkably
well you are looking today. But I

1323
02:17:03.440 --> 02:17:07.079
have received a pipe of what passes
for a montiado, and I have my

1324
02:17:07.239 --> 02:17:15.799
doubts, how said he, A
montiado a pipe impossible, and in the

1325
02:17:15.799 --> 02:17:20.840
middle of the carnival. I have
my doubts, I replied, And I

1326
02:17:20.920 --> 02:17:24.440
was silly enough to pay the full
a montiado price without consulting you in the

1327
02:17:24.479 --> 02:17:28.239
matter. You were not to be
found, and I was fearful of losing

1328
02:17:28.280 --> 02:17:35.840
a bargain a Montiado. I have
my doubts, a montiado, and I

1329
02:17:35.920 --> 02:17:41.920
must satisfy them, a Montiado,
as you are engaged, I am on

1330
02:17:41.000 --> 02:17:46.159
my way to Luchesi. If anyone
has a critical turn, it is he.

1331
02:17:46.159 --> 02:17:52.559
He will tell me Luceesi cannot tell
a montiado from sherry. Yet some

1332
02:17:52.799 --> 02:17:58.360
fools will have it that his taste
is a match for yours. Come,

1333
02:17:58.639 --> 02:18:03.520
let's go with it to your vaults, my friend. No, I will

1334
02:18:03.559 --> 02:18:09.920
not impose upon your good nature.
I perceive you have an engagement. Luceesi,

1335
02:18:09.399 --> 02:18:13.879
I have no engagement. Come,
my friend. No, it is

1336
02:18:13.920 --> 02:18:18.200
not the engagement, but the severe
cold with which I perceive you are afflicted.

1337
02:18:18.719 --> 02:18:24.000
The vaults are insufferably damp, they
are encrusted with niter. Let us

1338
02:18:24.040 --> 02:18:28.920
go. Nevertheless, the cold is
merely nothing. A montiado, you have

1339
02:18:28.959 --> 02:18:35.799
been imposed upon. And as for
Luceesi, he cannot distinguish sherry from a

1340
02:18:35.840 --> 02:18:41.520
montiado. Thus speaking, Fortunado possessed
himself of my arm, putting on a

1341
02:18:41.639 --> 02:18:48.799
mask of black silk, drawing a
roculaure slee upon my person. I suffered

1342
02:18:48.879 --> 02:18:54.200
him to hurry me to my palazzo. There were no attendants at home.

1343
02:18:54.920 --> 02:18:58.200
They had absconded to make Mary an
honor of the time. I had told

1344
02:18:58.239 --> 02:19:03.079
them that I should not return until
the morning, and had given them explicit

1345
02:19:03.280 --> 02:19:07.120
orders not to stir from the house. These orders were sufficient, I well

1346
02:19:07.200 --> 02:19:13.079
knew, to insure their immediate disappearance
one and all. As soon as my

1347
02:19:13.200 --> 02:19:18.680
back was turned, I took from
their sconces to Flambeaux, and, giving

1348
02:19:18.719 --> 02:19:24.760
one to Fortunado, bowed him through
several suites of rooms to the archway that

1349
02:19:24.959 --> 02:19:31.719
led into the vaults. I passed
down a long and winding staircase, requesting

1350
02:19:31.799 --> 02:19:35.639
him to be cautious as he followed. We came at length to the foot

1351
02:19:35.680 --> 02:19:41.440
of the descent, and stood together
on the damp ground of the catacombs Montressor's.

1352
02:19:43.360 --> 02:19:46.079
The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap

1353
02:19:46.440 --> 02:19:52.239
jingled as he strode the pipe.
Said he. It is farther on,

1354
02:19:52.719 --> 02:19:58.959
said I, but observed the white
web work which gleams from these cavern walls.

1355
02:20:00.000 --> 02:20:05.040
He turned towards me and looked into
my eyes with two filmy orbs that

1356
02:20:05.159 --> 02:20:11.600
distilled the room of intoxication, Niter, he asked. At length, niter,

1357
02:20:11.159 --> 02:20:22.959
I replied, how long have you
had that cough? My poor friend

1358
02:20:22.000 --> 02:20:28.959
found it impossible to reply for many
minutes. It is nothing, he said.

1359
02:20:28.000 --> 02:20:33.360
At last, come, I said, with decision, we will go

1360
02:20:33.479 --> 02:20:37.159
back. Your health is precious.
You are rich, respected, admired,

1361
02:20:37.239 --> 02:20:41.319
beloved. You are happy as once
I was. You are a man to

1362
02:20:41.399 --> 02:20:45.200
be missed for me. It is
no matter. We will go back.

1363
02:20:45.680 --> 02:20:50.200
You will be ill, and I
cannot be responsible. Besides, there is

1364
02:20:50.319 --> 02:20:54.200
luces enough, he said. The
cough is a mere nothing. It will

1365
02:20:54.200 --> 02:21:00.479
not kill me. I shall not
die of a cough. True, true,

1366
02:21:00.760 --> 02:21:05.159
I replied, And indeed I had
no intention of alarming you unnecessarily,

1367
02:21:05.840 --> 02:21:11.239
but you should use all proper caution. A draft of this medic will defend

1368
02:21:11.319 --> 02:21:15.200
us from the damps. Ere.
I knocked off the neck of a bottle,

1369
02:21:15.239 --> 02:21:18.239
which I drew from a long row
of its fellows that lay upon the

1370
02:21:18.280 --> 02:21:24.000
mold drink, I said, presenting
him the wine. He raised it to

1371
02:21:24.079 --> 02:21:30.239
his lips with a leer. He
paused and nodded to me familiarly, while

1372
02:21:30.280 --> 02:21:37.000
his bells jingled. I drink,
he said. The buried that repose around

1373
02:21:37.079 --> 02:21:43.319
us and I to your long life. He again took my arm, and

1374
02:21:43.360 --> 02:21:50.280
we proceeded. These vaults, he
said, are extensive. The Montressors,

1375
02:21:50.520 --> 02:21:56.559
I replied, were a great and
numerous family. I forget your arms.

1376
02:21:56.399 --> 02:22:03.200
A huge human foot door azure.
The foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs

1377
02:22:03.319 --> 02:22:11.120
are embedded in the heel, and
the motto Emo me impune lasette good,

1378
02:22:11.520 --> 02:22:16.159
he said. The wine sparkled in
his eyes, and the bells jingled.

1379
02:22:16.840 --> 02:22:22.120
My own fancy grew warm with the
meadock. We had passed through the walls

1380
02:22:22.120 --> 02:22:28.239
of piled bones, with casks and
puncheons intermingling, to the inmost recesses of

1381
02:22:28.280 --> 02:22:33.399
the catacombs. I paused again,
and this time I made bold to seize

1382
02:22:33.399 --> 02:22:39.319
Fortunado by an arm above the elbow. The niter, I said, see

1383
02:22:39.719 --> 02:22:45.680
it increases. It hangs like moss
upon the vaults. We are below the

1384
02:22:45.760 --> 02:22:50.559
river's bed. The drops of moisture
trickle among the bones. Come. We

1385
02:22:50.600 --> 02:22:54.360
will go back ere. It is
too late, your cough, it is

1386
02:22:54.440 --> 02:23:00.079
nothing, he said. Let us
go on. But first another draft of

1387
02:23:00.079 --> 02:23:05.159
the medic I broke and reached him, a flescent of de grave. He

1388
02:23:05.200 --> 02:23:09.159
emptied it at a breath. His
eyes flashed with a fierce light. He

1389
02:23:09.280 --> 02:23:13.959
laughed and threw the bottle upwards with
a gesticulation. I did not understand,

1390
02:23:15.879 --> 02:23:22.559
I looked at him in surprise.
He repeated the movement, a grotesque one.

1391
02:23:22.799 --> 02:23:28.200
You do not comprehend, he said, not I, I replied,

1392
02:23:28.120 --> 02:23:35.319
Then you are not of the brotherhood. How you are not of the Masons?

1393
02:23:35.040 --> 02:23:41.159
Yes, yes, I said,
yes, yes, you impossible a

1394
02:23:41.200 --> 02:23:46.680
Mason, A Mason, I replied, a sign? He said, it

1395
02:23:46.799 --> 02:23:50.879
is this, I answered, producing
a trowel from beneath the folds of my

1396
02:23:50.680 --> 02:23:56.440
lair. You jest, he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. Let us

1397
02:23:56.479 --> 02:24:03.959
proceed to the Amantiado. Be it, so, I said, replacing the

1398
02:24:03.000 --> 02:24:09.239
tool beneath the cloak, and again
offering him my arm. He leaned upon

1399
02:24:09.280 --> 02:24:13.920
it heavily. We continued our route
in search of the Amantiado. We passed

1400
02:24:13.959 --> 02:24:18.600
through a range of low arches,
descended, passed on, and descending again.

1401
02:24:20.159 --> 02:24:24.159
Arrived at a deep crypt, in
which the foulness of the air caused

1402
02:24:24.159 --> 02:24:28.719
our flambeaux rather to glow than flame. At the most remote end of the

1403
02:24:28.760 --> 02:24:35.239
crypt there appeared another, less spacious. Its walls had been lined with human

1404
02:24:35.319 --> 02:24:39.879
remains piled to the vault overhead,
in the fashion of the Great Catacombs of

1405
02:24:39.959 --> 02:24:46.920
Paris. Three sides of this interior
crypt were still ornamented in this manner.

1406
02:24:46.879 --> 02:24:52.120
From the fourth the bones had been
thrown down and lay promiscuously upon the earth,

1407
02:24:52.479 --> 02:24:56.920
forming at one point a mound of
some size. Within the wall.

1408
02:24:58.040 --> 02:25:03.600
Thus exposed by the displacing of the
bones, we perceived a still interior recess

1409
02:25:03.319 --> 02:25:11.079
in depth about four feet with three
in height six or seven seemed to have

1410
02:25:11.120 --> 02:25:16.040
been constructed for no especial use within
itself, but formed merely the interval between

1411
02:25:16.120 --> 02:25:20.959
two of the colossal supports of the
roof of the catacombs, and was backed

1412
02:25:22.000 --> 02:25:28.000
by one of their circumscribing walls of
solid granite. It was in vain that

1413
02:25:28.040 --> 02:25:33.159
Fortnado, uplifting his dull torch,
endeavored to pry into the depths of the

1414
02:25:33.200 --> 02:25:39.840
recess its termination. The feeble light
did not enable us to see proceed.

1415
02:25:39.319 --> 02:25:45.840
I said, herein is the Amontiado, As for Luceesi, he is an

1416
02:25:45.879 --> 02:25:50.239
Ignoramus, interrupted my friend, as
he stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed

1417
02:25:50.280 --> 02:25:54.879
immediately at his heels. In an
instant he had reached the extremity of the

1418
02:25:54.959 --> 02:26:01.760
Niche, finding his progress arrested by
the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A

1419
02:26:01.799 --> 02:26:05.719
moment more, and I had fettered
him to the granite. In its surface

1420
02:26:07.440 --> 02:26:13.319
were two iron staplest and from each
other, about two feet horizontally. From

1421
02:26:13.360 --> 02:26:18.159
one of these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. Throwing

1422
02:26:18.200 --> 02:26:22.280
the lynx about his waist. It
was but the work of a few seconds

1423
02:26:22.319 --> 02:26:28.760
to secure it. He was too
much astounded to resist. Withdrawing the key,

1424
02:26:28.840 --> 02:26:33.479
I stepped back from the recess.
Pass your hand, I said,

1425
02:26:33.959 --> 02:26:37.479
over the wall. You cannot help
feeling the nier. Indeed, it is

1426
02:26:37.719 --> 02:26:41.719
very damp. Once more, let
me implore you to return. No,

1427
02:26:43.879 --> 02:26:48.399
then I will positively leave. You. Must first render you all little attentions

1428
02:26:48.680 --> 02:26:56.159
in my power. The Amontiato ejaculated, my friend, not yet recovered from

1429
02:26:56.200 --> 02:27:03.120
his astonishment. True, I replied
the Amontiado. As I said these words,

1430
02:27:03.159 --> 02:27:07.879
I busied myself among the pile of
bones of which I have before spoken,

1431
02:27:09.719 --> 02:27:13.639
throwing them aside. I soon uncovered
a quantity of building stone and mortar.

1432
02:27:15.760 --> 02:27:20.120
With these materials, and with the
aid of my trowel, I began

1433
02:27:20.319 --> 02:27:24.959
vigorously to wall up the entrance of
the niche. I had scarcely laid the

1434
02:27:26.000 --> 02:27:31.479
first tear of my masonry when I
discovered that the intoxication of Fortunado had in

1435
02:27:31.559 --> 02:27:37.040
great measure worn off. The earliest
indication I had of this was a low,

1436
02:27:37.159 --> 02:27:43.559
moaning cry from the depth of the
recess. It was not the cry

1437
02:27:43.200 --> 02:27:50.639
of a drunken man. There was
then a long and obstinate silence. I

1438
02:27:50.760 --> 02:27:54.360
laid the second tier, and the
third and the fourth, and then I

1439
02:27:54.399 --> 02:28:00.840
heard the furious vibrations of the chain. The noise lasted for several minutes,

1440
02:28:00.959 --> 02:28:05.440
during which that I might hearken to
it with the more satisfaction, I ceased

1441
02:28:05.479 --> 02:28:11.399
my labors and sat down upon the
bones. When at last the clanking subsided,

1442
02:28:11.479 --> 02:28:16.680
I resumed the trowel and finished without
interruption the fifth, the sixth,

1443
02:28:18.120 --> 02:28:22.559
and the seventh tier. The wall
was now nearly upon a level with my

1444
02:28:22.680 --> 02:28:26.159
breast. I again paused, and, holding the flambeaux over the mason work,

1445
02:28:26.719 --> 02:28:33.040
threw a few feeble rays upon the
figure. Within a succession of loud

1446
02:28:33.079 --> 02:28:37.479
and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from
the throat of the chained form, seemed

1447
02:28:37.520 --> 02:28:41.120
to thrust me violently back. For
a brief moment, I hesitated, I

1448
02:28:41.159 --> 02:28:46.520
trembled, sheathing my rapier, I
began to grope with it about the recess.

1449
02:28:48.479 --> 02:28:52.559
The thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the

1450
02:28:52.600 --> 02:28:58.559
solid fabric of the catacombs, and
felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall.

1451
02:28:58.959 --> 02:29:03.239
I replied to the yell of him
who clamored. I re echoed, I

1452
02:29:03.319 --> 02:29:07.040
aid it. I surpassed them in
volume and in strength. I did this,

1453
02:29:07.719 --> 02:29:13.200
and the clamorer grew still. It
was now midnight, and my task

1454
02:29:13.399 --> 02:29:16.959
was drawing to a close. I
had completed the eighth, the ninth,

1455
02:29:18.399 --> 02:29:22.319
and the tenth tear. I had
finished a portion of the last and the

1456
02:29:22.360 --> 02:29:26.799
eleventh. There remained but a single
stone to be fitted and plastered in.

1457
02:29:28.440 --> 02:29:31.760
I struggled with its weight. I
placed it partially in its destined position.

1458
02:29:33.360 --> 02:29:39.280
But now there came from out of
the niche a low laugh that erected the

1459
02:29:39.319 --> 02:29:45.200
hairs upon my head. It was
succeeded by a sad voice, which I

1460
02:29:45.239 --> 02:29:50.680
had difficulty in recognizing as that of
the noble Fortunado. The voice said,

1461
02:29:50.639 --> 02:29:56.280
ha ha ha he he he,
A very good joke, indeed, an

1462
02:29:56.319 --> 02:30:01.319
excellent jest. We will have many
a rich laugh about it at the palazzo.

1463
02:30:01.840 --> 02:30:07.520
He he he over our wine,
he he he. The Amontiado,

1464
02:30:07.319 --> 02:30:13.719
I said, yes, the Amontiado. But is it not getting late?

1465
02:30:15.079 --> 02:30:18.959
Will they not be awaiting us at
the palazzo eighty Fortunato and the rest?

1466
02:30:20.440 --> 02:30:28.520
Let us be gone? Yes,
I said, Let us be gone for

1467
02:30:28.600 --> 02:30:33.479
the love of God Montressor. Yes, I said, for the love of

1468
02:30:33.559 --> 02:30:39.120
God. But to these words I
hearkened in vain for a reply. I

1469
02:30:39.200 --> 02:30:48.799
grew impatient. I called aloud Fortunato. No answer. I called again,

1470
02:30:48.719 --> 02:30:56.479
Fortunato. No answer. Still I
thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and

1471
02:30:56.559 --> 02:31:03.120
let it fall within. Came forth
in return only a jingling of the bells.

1472
02:31:03.840 --> 02:31:07.879
My heart grew sick. On account
of the dampness of the catacombs.

1473
02:31:09.920 --> 02:31:13.479
I hastened to make an end of
my labor. I forced the last stone

1474
02:31:13.799 --> 02:31:18.879
into its position. I plastered it
up against the new masonry. I re

1475
02:31:18.959 --> 02:31:26.559
erected the old rampart of bones.
Half of a century no mortal has disturbed

1476
02:31:26.600 --> 02:31:41.479
them in pace. Requiescat to her, whose name is written below by Edgar

1477
02:31:41.559 --> 02:31:50.719
Allan Poe. For her, these
lines are penned whose luminous eyes, bright

1478
02:31:50.799 --> 02:31:54.920
and expressive as the stars of Leda, shall find her own sweet name that

1479
02:31:56.120 --> 02:32:03.840
nesting lies upon this page in app
from every reader. Search narrowly these words,

1480
02:32:03.879 --> 02:32:09.520
which hold a treasure, divine,
a talisman, an amulet that must

1481
02:32:09.600 --> 02:32:15.719
be worn at heart. Search well
the measure the words, the letters themselves.

1482
02:32:16.079 --> 02:32:20.280
Do not forget the smallest point,
or you may lose your labor.

1483
02:32:20.840 --> 02:32:26.760
And yet there is in this no
Gordian not which one might not undo without

1484
02:32:26.799 --> 02:32:31.520
a saber. If one could merely
comprehend the plot. Upon the open page

1485
02:32:31.879 --> 02:32:37.520
on which are peering such sweet eyes. Now there lies, I say,

1486
02:32:37.639 --> 02:32:43.959
Purdue, a musical name oft uttered
in the hearing of poets by poets,

1487
02:32:45.399 --> 02:32:50.639
for the name is a poet's too. In common sequence, set the letters

1488
02:32:50.760 --> 02:32:56.760
lying compose a sound, delighting all
to hear. Ah this you'd have no

1489
02:32:56.840 --> 02:33:01.680
trouble in decrying, were you not
some of a dunce, my dear.

1490
02:33:01.680 --> 02:33:20.000
And now I leave these riddles to
their seer. Well, my spookys,

1491
02:33:20.079 --> 02:33:28.200
I hope you enjoyed this dive into
Poe. It's almost Halloween, you know,

1492
02:33:28.840 --> 02:33:33.479
It's the twenty ninth when we're publishing
this. The thirtieth is tomorrow with

1493
02:33:33.600 --> 02:33:37.559
monthly Spooky and then we have a
very special Halloween episode coming right up.

1494
02:33:37.159 --> 02:33:45.200
So keep the Halloween feelings going,
because Spooky season isn't really just in October.

1495
02:33:45.959 --> 02:33:50.440
That's just when all the other people
join us, and oh what a

1496
02:33:50.479 --> 02:34:07.440
fun time it is. See you
tomorrow and stay scared. Depict s